Linguistic term "contrastive negation" applied to Claude's style
3Sep 14 1:42 PM · 13d ago · 2 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 5
A commenter provides technical terminology for the writing pattern, noting that sentences like "This wonderful feature does this, not that" employ a specific linguistic structure called contrastive negation.
“The name for sentences constructed like this is not "contrarian", but "contrastive negative."”
Sep 15Sep 16Sep 17Sep 18Sep 19Sep 20Sep 21Sep 22Sep 23Sep 24Sep 25Sep 26now · 1:13 AM ET
What people said 2 voices · verbatim
S
That's true but Claude has so many more forms of this. It tries so hard not to be sycophantic that it inserts little negging sidecars into any sentence that agrees with you. "That's true but not how you're thinking" or simply "yes but" answers. All kinds of "I didn't" and "You didn't" statements to the point it's often talking more about what…