> A: 君だけこれを知らなかった。
>
> A': You are the only person who did not know this.

As しか must be followed by a negative predicate then I have to write as

> B: 君しかこれを知らなくなかった。

# Confirmation question

Is 君しかこれを知らなくなかった the same as 君だけこれを知らなかった?

# Edit

Based on the given comment below, I have to mention that if I just use one
negation as follows,

> 君しかこれを知らなかった。

then the meaning is

> You are the only person who knew this.

which is totally different from the meaning I want to say.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-06T22:57:43.847
36483
2016-07-07T00:25:25.657
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
-1
11192
question
grammar particle-しか
Is 君しかこれを知らなくなかった the same as 君だけこれを知らなかった?
> Is 君しかこれを知らなくなかった the same as 君だけこれを知らなかった?

A simple answer would be 'No', but more precisely, it is just not possible to
answer this question. Why not? Because the first sentence is not grammatical
and therefore, it does not really mean anything.

As you stated, 「しか」 must be followed by a negative predicate. 「知ら **なくなかった**
」, however, is affirmative. Why is it affirmative? That is because it contains
two forms of 「ない」 in 「なく」 and 「なかった」. **Two 「ない's」 cancel each other's
negativity and make the phrase affirmative**. Thus,

> 「知らなくなかった」 means 「知っていた」.

If you absolutely must use 「しか」 to form a sentence that means the same thing
as:

> 「君だけ（が）これを知らなかった。」 = " You are the only person who did not know this."

You could do so by saying:

> 「これを知らなかったのは、君 **しか** いない。」 or
>
> 「君 **しか** いないよ、これを知らなかったのは。」

Those two sentences use 「しか」 correctly.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-07T00:20:22.063
36484
2016-07-07T00:25:25.657
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
-1
36483
answer