Negating a negative

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alice
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Negating a negative

Post by alice »

In many languages, the presence of at least one negative word in a clause negates the entire clause, so that the equivalent of "I didn't see nothing" means "I saw nothing". So... how in these languages do you say "I didn't see nothing" when you mean "I actually saw something"?
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Radius Solis
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Post by Radius Solis »

By saying "I actually saw something."


Alternatively, negative scope is less likely to cross clause boundaries, so in most such languages it is probably possible to use a subclause, on the order of "It is not the case that I saw nothing". But keep in mind that our penchant for using double-negation for affirmation in English is a language-specific rhetorical device (or at most an areal feature in W. Europe), and not, in general, something you would expect speakers of Randomlanguage to have a close analog for.
Last edited by Radius Solis on Thu May 13, 2010 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Tengado »

I don't know, but I would guess (and I've been thinking about it for my conlang) you could maybe express it in two clauses: it was nothing that I didn't see. Or perhaps they just don't use that structure: we use it in English for emphasis (apart from when it is direct negation of anotehr person's statement), maybe they just have a different method of emphasis.


My conlang has cooccurring negation of verb and object as the default neutral form of negation. If you want to emphasise that it is the verb or object specifically that is in error, you omit the negation of the other one.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Yiuel Raumbesrairc
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Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

Here are examples from French :

Je suis allé nulle part. -> Je ne suis pas allé nulle part.
Je n'ai pas vu personne. -> Je n'ai pas pas vu personne.

Verncaular does the same thing :
J'ai rien. -> J'ai pas rien.
Je suis jamais allé là. -> Je suis pas jamais allé là.

What this means is that, whatever the construction which negates an element, you just need to add "pas" (again, in some cases) just further negate it to negate the negative word.
"Ez amnar o amnar e cauč."
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Post by linguoboy »

Radius Solis wrote:But keep in mind that our penchant for using double-negation for affirmation in English is a language-specific rhetorical device (or at most an areal feature in W. Europe), and not, in general, something you would expect speakers of Randomlanguage to have a close analog for.
I'm sceptical of that. It's fully conventional in Korean for instance. (E.g. the most common way to say "you must do X" is "if you do not do X, it is not becoming".) Doesn't Japanese also allow affirmation by doubled negation in this way?

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Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

linguoboy wrote:
Radius Solis wrote:But keep in mind that our penchant for using double-negation for affirmation in English is a language-specific rhetorical device (or at most an areal feature in W. Europe), and not, in general, something you would expect speakers of Randomlanguage to have a close analog for.
I'm sceptical of that. It's fully conventional in Korean for instance. (E.g. the most common way to say "you must do X" is "if you do not do X, it is not becoming".) Doesn't Japanese also allow affirmation by doubled negation in this way?
Double negation is usually a sign of rhetorical questions., involving questioning negatives. My favorite has always been "Imi ga nakunai?" (Does it not have no meaning?)

And Japanese also has the "if not X, Y will not become/go/pass etc".
"Ez amnar o amnar e cauč."
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Post by Niedokonany »

In Polish one can form litotes like nie żebym nic nie widział or nie że nic nie widziałem i.e. literally 'not that I didn't see nothing' (=I did see something). In case of, say, negated adjectives it works more like in English.
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Post by Skomakar'n »

I just have to put a wonderful quote from Back to the Future in here:

Don't nobody go nowhere.

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Post by Yng »

Yiuel wrote:Here are examples from French :

Je suis allé nulle part. -> Je ne suis pas allé nulle part.
Je n'ai pas vu personne. -> Je n'ai pas pas vu personne.
I thought that it was incorrect to say 'je n'ai pas vu personne' - aren't you supposed to say 'je n'ai vu personne'?

If not, I went through a learning curve for nothing. :P

I'm pretty sure in Welsh I've heard a construction with 'peidio', which is kind of a negativising verb. I've definitely heard it with 'methu', which means 'miss' but can colloquially mean 'not able to':

'dw i ddim methu mynd' - I'm not not able to go = it's not that I CAN'T go

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Post by Radius Solis »

linguoboy wrote:
Radius Solis wrote:But keep in mind that our penchant for using double-negation for affirmation in English is a language-specific rhetorical device (or at most an areal feature in W. Europe), and not, in general, something you would expect speakers of Randomlanguage to have a close analog for.
I'm sceptical of that. It's fully conventional in Korean for instance. (E.g. the most common way to say "you must do X" is "if you do not do X, it is not becoming".)
Is that two clauses, each with a negation? Or is that one negated clause that has a negated constituent? It's the intra-clause double negation that is supposed to be unusual to express a positive meaning. I make no claims to anything about what happens across multiple clauses in any other language. Nor that a few languages here and there might not do what English does too - only that in general that's supposed to be unusual, by all I've ever heard and read.

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Post by Tengado »

linguoboy wrote:
Radius Solis wrote:But keep in mind that our penchant for using double-negation for affirmation in English is a language-specific rhetorical device (or at most an areal feature in W. Europe), and not, in general, something you would expect speakers of Randomlanguage to have a close analog for.
I'm sceptical of that. It's fully conventional in Korean for instance. (E.g. the most common way to say "you must do X" is "if you do not do X, it is not becoming".) Doesn't Japanese also allow affirmation by doubled negation in this way?
This is the same construction basically as Chinese 非做不可, yes? (roughly, "not doing it is not ok"). This is not the same kind of double negation we're talking about - it is two clauses (sort of - the chinese is compressed into a serial verb construction, but the two negatives are being equated, not one negative then negating the other - ie they're not nested). We're talking about things like "I didn't see no one" or "I didn't not see anyone" being used to mean "I saw someone."

In Chinese you can say 我不是没看他 (wo3 bu2 shi4 mei2 kan4 ta1) [I not be didn't see he] "I didn't not see him" - this expresses contrastive focus, as in when someone says "You don't know what he looks like, you haven't seen him" and you reply "I didn't not see him." This sounds odd in English but is much more idiomatic sounding in Chinese. The verb 是 shi4 "to be" is used in many focusing constructions. Perhaps translates better to "It's not that I didn't see him, ..." complete with the implication that you are going to add afterwards what is actually the case. As far as I am aware, there is no way to actually say "I didn't see no one" - there isn't a specific way to negate the pronoun; it's done by the verb. That is, there's no equivalent to to "I saw no-one" which could be negated again.
- "But this can be stopped."
- "No, I came all this way to show you this because nothing can be done. Because I like the way your pupils dilate in the presence of total planetary Armageddon.
Yes, it can be stopped."

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Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

YngNghymru wrote:
Yiuel wrote:Here are examples from French :

Je suis allé nulle part. -> Je ne suis pas allé nulle part.
Je n'ai pas vu personne. -> Je n'ai pas pas vu personne.
I thought that it was incorrect to say 'je n'ai pas vu personne' - aren't you supposed to say 'je n'ai vu personne'?

If not, I went through a learning curve for nothing. :P
Actually, I wondered about it myself. I might be actually using vernacular here. So keep it the way you do it.
"Ez amnar o amnar e cauč."
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Post by linguoboy »

Radius Solis wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I'm sceptical of that. It's fully conventional in Korean for instance. (E.g. the most common way to say "you must do X" is "if you do not do X, it is not becoming".)
Is that two clauses, each with a negation? Or is that one negated clause that has a negated constituent? It's the intra-clause double negation that is supposed to be unusual to express a positive meaning.
In that example, there are two clauses. But Korean does frequently allow intraclausal double negation with positive meaning. For instance:

좋지 않지 않다
/coh.ci anh.ci anh.ta/
good-SUSP[*] NEG-SUSP NEG-DECL
"It's not not good."

(않다 /anh.ta/ is a contraction of the negative particle 안 /an/ with the light verb 하다 /hata/. 안 /an/ can also be prefixed directly to 좋다 /coh.ta/ although this is less common [and not possible at all with most descriptive verbs], i.e. 안좋지 않다 /an.coh.ci anh.ta/.)

[*] SUSP = "suspective". Also glossed by Martin "the uncertain fact (whether)".

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Post by johanpeturdam »

If you add 'einki' (nothing) to a negative sentence, you do actually not only negate the negativeness but more or less enhance it into something close to exaggeration.

Eg sá ikki einki. = (lit.) I saw not nothing = I saw quite a lot.

I can't find anything about this in the dictionaries or grammars that I have right here, so it's maybe a colloquialism.
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