[341] in tlhIngan-Hol
RE: Multiple negatives
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue May 19 18:18:03 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1992 14:08:00 PDT
In-Reply-To: "tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma:us:Xerox's message of 19 M
[Warning: Contains no Klingon.]
Allan Wechsler writes:
"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."
Woody Allen somewhere describes a language/culture where there is no word for
"no." Instead they say "I'll get back to you."
In Klingon, I was much amused to find
par = dislike
parHa' = like (opposite of dislike)
the implication being that "dislike" was the neutral or unmarked notion. Has
anyone else noticed any similar examples?
Wechsler also writes:
"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."
I'm told there's a similar problem when English speakers communicate with the
Japanese (corrections welcome--I don't pretend to know any Japanese or Navajo).
The postulate is that when the Japanese speaker says "yes", they mean something
like "I agree with what you said"; and when they say "no" it means "I don't
agree with what you said." So when you invite your Navajo friend out to dinner
by saying "Don't you want to go out to dinner with me" she is perhaps hearing
~ (you want to go out with me)
And she disagrees with that understood statement by saying "no."
A similar phenomenon can be heard closer to home in French. A question like
"Don't you want to go out to dinner with me" or the equivalent French "Ne
voulez-vous pas di^ner avec moi" at least suggests or "presupposes" that the
person you are talking to does not want to have dinner with you. The speaker
is almost expecting a rejection. To accept your invitation and overcome the
negative presupposition in the question, a Frenchwoman would use the special
answer "si" rather than "oui."
Ken Beesley
