[333] in tlhIngan-Hol
RE: Multiple negatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue May 19 12:24:28 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Allan C. Wechsler <ACW@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1992 11:25-0400
In-Reply-To: <92May18.190157pdt.11581@alpha.xerox.com>
Interesting subject -- sorry for the long message -- no actual Klingon
here, so hit D now unless you are a masochist.
Date: Mon, 18 May 1992 22:01 EDT
From: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
French routinely requires two negative-like words:
The French case in particular is historically fascinating.
Je ne vous aime pas.
I not you love not (I don't love you)
Historically, "I don't love you a step."
Je ne vous aimerai jamais.
I not you will-love never. (I will never love you)
Historically, "... ever".
Personne ne m'aime.
Nobody not me love. (Nobody loves me)
Historically, "A person doesn't love me."
Je ne sais rien.
I not know nothing. (I don't know anything)
Historically, "I don't know a thing."
In fact, one need not analyze those auxiliary particles as negatives at
all, but rather as co-negatives like the English ones beginning "any-",
with "pas" being the neutral one.
"I don't love you any."
"I won't love you anytime."
etc.
Butbutbut, this analysis falls apart because (as mentioned by another
poster), the negative sense is (at present only in the colloquial
language) being shifted away from "ne" and onto those auxiliary
particles. It's as if English were to allow "I love you any." as a
negative.
It is not clear (despite high-school English teachers) that English is a
"negative-counting" language, even in the formal literary register. For
me at least, "I don't like nobody." is simply ungrammatical, not an
alternate phrasing of "I like some people.". Or rather, I should say,
the sentence forces me out of the formal register into a vernacular
(which I understand passively but of which I am not a native speaker)
that allows "pervasive" negation.
For an example of a strict negative-counting language, we can probably
do no better than Navaho, which counts negatives as religiously as a
Lisp compiler. In fact, if you ask a Navaho (in English) "Don't you
want to go out for dinner with me?" she may answer (if you are lucky)
"No." which in this case means, "It is not true that I don't want to go
out with you." Our casual pseudo-negative questions confuse them -- and
they would confuse us too if we were strict negative-counters.
As a capper to this long message, I would like to mention Warlpiri,
which before contact with Europeans had _no_ negatives at all. They got
by with words that meant things like "lack" (Warlpiri _lawa_). The
closest they could get to "I don't love you," would be "I sit without
loving you." But I think they would use a different verb that they
could put in the positive: "I avoid you.", or "I hate you.". It's
very direct, and almost ... Klingon.
