Position of 'not' in a negative interrogative?

Question

Source: Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company [1892], judgement of Lindley LJ

But there is another view. Does not the person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer ♦ put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants? Is it nothing to use this ball three times daily for two weeks according to the directions at the request of the advertiser? Is that to go for nothing?

I tried ELU. Am I right that this is a negative interrogative, and that Lindley LJ is just asking rhetorically: 'Does not the person .... put himself to some inconvenience ...'?

Why or why not should not be situated where I have inserted ♦ (ie the lozenge)? What differs?

PS: This Reddit post explicates this older syntax.

Answer 1

The key here is Heavy Noun Phrase Shift. Here's how it works:

1. First, let's start with the canonical (declarative, affirmative) version:

   [The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject puts himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.

2. Then we'll add the dummy auxiliary do. We need this auxiliary for two reasons: to negate the predicate, and to mark the clause as interrogative through inversion:

   [The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject does_auxiliary put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.

3. At this point, we can negate the predicate:

   [The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject does_auxiliary not_negator put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.

4. And now we can invert the subject and auxiliary, turning our declarative clause into an interrogative clause:

   Does_auxiliary [the person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject not_negator put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants?

5. Last, because our subject is so long and syntactical complex, and because this is particularly formal English, we can optionally make use of the rare Heavy Noun Phrase Shift, pushing our subject to the right out of its basic position, past the negator:

   Does_auxiliary not_negator [the person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants?

When these conditions aren't met, we can't shift the subject noun phrase to the right:

Does_auxiliary she_subject not_negator like ice cream?

*Does_auxiliary not_negator she_subject like ice cream?　(ungrammatical)

The subject she isn't long or syntactically complex enough to count as as a "heavy" noun phrase, so it can't be shifted past the negator.

In contrast, the contracted form doesn't doesn't involve Heavy NP Shift; -n't is a suffix, and so doesn't is a single word which inverts with a subject without any of these restrictions:

She_subject doesn't_{negated-auxiliary} like ice cream.

Doesn't_{negated-auxiliary} she_subject like ice cream?

For more discussion, see my previous answer.

Answer 2

It reminds me of the bit in Merchant Of Venice:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

It seems to be hinting that the expected answer to the rhetorical question is the other way round - yes, we do. Or in the court ruling - yes, the plaintiff did.