Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!purdue!lerc.nasa.gov!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!hookup!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!commpost!usenet
From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
Message-ID: <DD38LB.4CA@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <KANZE.95Aug9114322@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 09:19:59 GMT
Lines: 41


In article <KANZE.95Aug9114322@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de>, kanze@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:
-->In article <19950808T175053Z@naggum.no> Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
-->writes:
-->
-->|> [Richard Riehle]
-->
-->|> |   "I do not have no money."  In any language but English, the more times
-->|> |   I include a negative in my sentence, the more I mean "No."
-->
-->|> neither French, German, Danish, Norwegian, nor Swedish seem to fit your
-->|> idea of "any language but English".  in other words: hogwash.  it is only
-->|> in colloquial English that I have ever seen anything like double negations
-->|> meaning "more negative".  in all the languages I know, double negations are
-->|> either meaningless or just hard to parse positives.
-->
-->Come now: in French, the standard is at least two negatives.  A
-->sentence like ``Personne n'en saura plus jamais rien'' is not at all
-->strange or sub-standard, although it contains five negatives.
-->(Literally: ``Nobody won't never know nothing no more.''  But I don't
-->think you'd say it this way in English:-).)  Italian has similar
-->constructs (``Nessuno non sapera piu mai niente.''  The French, word
-->for word.)

Is this true?  The words that accompany `ne' aren't negatives, at least in
origin.  `pas' means `a step', `personne' means a `person', `aucun' (related to
`alcuno', `algo') means `something' not `nothing' ...and so.  And there used to
be more of these words:  `je ne mange miette', `je ne vois point'.  I suspect
that `(ja)mais' (`mai', `mas') has a positive meaning.  I don't know about
`rien'.

The sentence could be literally translated `any person won't ever know anything
more about it'.  (It's not so clear in Italian because `nessuno' and `niente'
are nagatives.)

Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form.  `On nikogda ne
jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.

-- jP --


