@jutfrank. What do the sources you use say?
I haven't 'used' any sources because I'm going on logic. My point was to say that when you have a negative sentence, you generally use a positive tag. A negative sentence is one that negates a positive sentence.
"He doesn't have many friends, does he?" seems more natural to me.
My point was about the positive/negative logic of sentences, not about what is natural.
He doesn't have friends, does he?
This is a negative sentence (it has
not negating the auxiliary), so the tag is positive.
He doesn't have no friends, does he?
This is also a negative sentence, despite the double negative provided by
no, which semantically means that he does have friends. Logically, it's a negation of
He has no friends. Still, the tag is positive since the sentence is negative.
I think we might just have to agree to disagree on this topic. I can't get past the fact that I'm judging
He barely speaks, doesn't he? as the most obvious question (I think I'm alone on this) whereas others seem to prefer
He barely speaks, does he? The same with
He has few friends, does he?, which I just can't come to terms with (I don't know if I'm alone on this too). I suppose it comes ultimately down to what thought the speaker really has in mind, as usual.
My original goal in answering this thread was to try to simplify things rather than confuse them, as it seems to have turned out.