Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Creole languages and double negatives Message-ID: <1893@utcsrgv.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Aug-83 11:20:30 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1893 Posted: Fri Aug 5 11:20:30 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Aug-83 20:14:53 EDT References: <780@sdchema.UUCP> Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto Lines: 35 Well, Donn, what about Portuguese? It requires the double negative like Italian, but unlike your example it requires it whether the pronoun is at the beginning or not: Maria nao viu ninguem Mary ^ saw nobody Ninguem nao falou com Sergio Nobody ^ spoke with Sergio I agree that the use of the double negative in certain contexts carries an intuitive (if not logical) negative value. Interestingly, Hebrew, which is totally of different origin than the Indo-European languages, uses the double negative (it must have it) with word such as "nothing", "no-one", etc.: Lo ra'iti clum (No I-saw nothing --> I didn't see anything) Af echad lo haya po (one not was here --> No-one was here) Af pa'am lo nafalti ( time no I-fell --> I never fell) Arguably, the word for "nothing" in such languages does not mean the same as "nothing" in English. It requires a negative verb form because syntactically it means "something" or "someone", although semantically it means "nothing" or "no-one". The Hebrew word "af" seems to fit this; it can't be translated any better than "no", but it always requires a negative verb. As can be seen from the above examples, it can be used with "one" to mean "no-one", with "time" to mean "never". Another word, "shum", has the same function with "thing": Lo ra'iti shum davar (No I-saw thing -> I saw nothing) (as far as I can determine, "shum davar" and "clum" are interchangeable terms for "nothing" [cf. English no-one and no-body]) Dave Sherman (unfinished Linguistics major 1978) Toronto -- {linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!dave