[Multilingual Monday] And I said no, no, no

[aadroma]

Today we're discussing "no", or more specifically, languages having many kinds of "no". We've touched on this several times, but my studies with Georgian have added a new aspect to this, as it does so many other concepts of grammar and language. Let's look at a simple Georgian sentence:

მე ქართულად არ ვლაპარაკობ.
me kartulad ar vlap'arak'ob."I

Comments

[progbear]

Of course, Spanish is the opposite in English in terms of negation. In English, double-negatives are grammatically incorrect as supposedly the second negative cancels out the first (but they are used in slang all the time, nonetheless). In Spanish, the more negative words included in a sentence, the more negative it’s considered, second (or more) negatives are considered to emphasize negativity rather than negating it.

There’s also the unique “ne...pas...” construction in French.

[muckefuck]

It's not unique; it's also found in Occitan and in Catalan, e.g. Sóc pas l'home que vostè busca "I'm not the man you're looking for". However, in Barcelona Catalan, this is still emphatic and carries the sense of "contrary to expectations" or "despite appearances". (Cf. German doch nicht.) In North Catalan, it's the usual, non-emphatic means of negation. And just as in informal French, the initial negative particle can be dropped with no change in meaning.

More generally, circumfixal negation is found in languages far from Europe. Sm'algyax (a.k.a. Coast Tsimshian), for instance, e.g. aƚga nandi düü'nƚ ol "I didn't kill any bears". In this example, negation is marked both on the temporal prefix nah (denoting completed action) as well as on the verb, in addition to with the negative particle aƚga.

[gorkabear]

The "pas" you describe in Catalan is getting alarmly outdated. The standard describes what you say as Barcelonian. In the Empordà, where my boyfriend lives, they still use it a little bit more than we do in the city but I guess it'll be extinct in 10-20 years. The only people still using "pas" normally are the northern Catalans - And except on TV, I have never seen one, and we go shopping in Perpignan very often (cheese is cheaper in France).

We do double negate... We say things such as "Ningú no va venir" (literally: nobody didn't come), No tornis mai (Never don't come), Tampoc no sé com fer-ho (I don't know neither how to do it). Those in Catalan, then in Spanish the rule says that you shouldn't really double negate, but we do say "No vino nadie" (although we say "Nadie vino"), No vuelvas nunca (although I suspect that it would be more correct to say "No vuelvas jamás").

[muckefuck]

Korean distinguishes two negatives, which Martin calls "regular" and "strong". The regular negative has the basic form 아니 /ani/; the strong negative is 못 /mos/, which Martin glosses as "not (possibly), definitely not, never, under no circumstances". For instance, 안좋다 /an.coh.ta/, 좋지 않다 /coh.ci anh.ta/ "is not good" vs. 좋지 못 하다 /coh.ci mos hata/ "can't possibly be good, isn't good at all". (As you can see, the two negatives also differ in syntax; it's not grammatical in Korean to say *못 좋다 /mos coh.ta/.) Although the sense of volition is not central to 못 /mos/, it often carries with it an implication of refusal, e.g. 마을 못하다 /mal ul mos hata/ "he won't talk, he refuses to talk".

Of Osage, Quintero says "There are two negatives...: ðįké and the less emphatic aži." Unlike Martin, however, she doesn't gloss them any differently. In terms of distribution, aži is more common in derived forms but ðįké is preferred in imperatives (where it takes the imperative suffix -á). You can see examples of both these usages in kisúaži ðįká "don't forget

[wiped]

persian has an informal and formal 'no': نه (na) and خیر (kheyr), respectively. very often they are combined to form نه خیر (nakheyr) for a formal 'no', and خیر alone sounds kind of old-fashioned to my ears. نه خیر also functions as an emphatic 'no', and can be used in casual/informal speech as a stronger replacement for نه. نه alone is considered too rude for polite speech, and even نه خیر is frequently softened by following it with 'sir' or 'madam': نه خیر آقا (nakheyr, agha) or نه خیر خانم (nakheyr, khanum) - 'no sir' or 'no ma'am'.

[gorkabear]

Spanish negations are so simple. Put a single "NO" in the sentence and off you go.

Quiero pan - no quiero pan
Te quiero - no te quiero

You can't imagine how difficult is to make people understand the use of "Don't" in English...

[muckefuck]

I don't know if it's "unique", but Welsh has a somewhat unusual negative construction that's deeply counterintuitive to non-native speakers. Take the sentence Weles i'r un onyn nhw. Literally, this is "Saw I the one of them", and a non-native speaker would quite reasonably assume it means "I saw one of them." But actually, the meaning is "I didn't see either of them."

As you know, Welsh--like French--has a two-pronged negation, e.g. Dw i ddim yn deall y Gymraeg "I don't understand Welsh". And Welsh--like French--drops the first prong in certain circumstances. You'll virtually never hear Ni welais i ddim ohonyn "I didn't see them" any more, only Welais i ddim ohonyn nhw (colloquially Weles i monyn nhw). So when yr un, which means "the same" in positive contexts but "not a one" in negative ones (cf. French personne, etc.), replaces dim, you end up with a sentence that is formally ambiguous. (Technically, the verb should be unmutated in the affirmative, i.e. gwelais/gweles, but the current usage is to extend the soft mutation to all