[Lexicog] "something" vs "anything/nothing"

[Rudolph C Troike]

Wayne,

     I think that taking "hova'ehe" as either positive or negative may be
more a result of thinking of the English translation than considering the
word itself. The shift between "something" and "anything/nothing" is a
fact about English, in which what Labov called Negative Concord occurs. In
a number of languages, forms like this occur which are best analyzed as
simply unspecified indefinites, and the negativity or positivity is a
matter of the presence or absence of negation in the predicate, not a
property of the word itself.

	Rudy


The Cheyenne language has a word which can be either positive or
> > negative depending on the context:
> >
> > hova'ehe 'something, nothing'
> >
> > for example,
> >
> > Ehene'ena hova'ehe. 'He knows something.'
> > Esaahene'enohe hova'ehe. 'He doesn't know anything.'
> >
> > Wayne
> > -----
> > Wayne Leman
> > Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________



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