[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

[Daniel Ross]

This reminds me of playful, emphatic usage in English like "I don't have
good news for you. I have great news!" So it seems that one possible effect
is that the negation is intended to convey that the description is beyond
(better than) the negated category. "It's not pretty. It's beautiful!" Then
maybe just "It's not (even) beautiful" would indicate something like "There
are no words for how beautiful it is!" or "Beautiful doesn't even describe
it!" Of course in English it's hard to get this sort of reading without the
right context (both pragmatic and discourse), so it may be more
grammaticalized in the other languages described here if they occur
spontaneously without something leading up to that usage, but I imagine the
development might be similar in some ways. (From a pragmatic perspective
it's interesting how this plays with or ignores scalar implicatures for
emphasis, so it seems metalinguistic in a sense.)

Daniel

On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 12:22 PM Heath Jeffrey <schweinehaxen at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Sometimes "negative" = emphatic positive clauses are covert rhetorical
> questions without an overt interrogative element. I find this in some West
> African languages, highly conventionalized and indistinguishable in form
> from actual negation. A pain in the butt for fieldworkers analysing texts.
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Nestor Hernandez-Green <nestorhgreen at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 24, 2020 1:14 PM
> *To:* Bastian Persohn <persohn.linguistics at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions
>
> In some regions of Mexico, there is a negative construction with similar
> effects:
>
> Casi/no/es/borracho
> almost/no/is/drunkard.MASC
> "he's a heavy drinker" (lit. he's not much of a drunkard)
>
> I don't know if this has been researched yet in Spanish.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> = Néstor Hernández-Green =
> Sitio web: http://goo.gl/jsw4zs
>
> [Este mensaje puede haber sido escrito utilizando funciones de dictado en
> Android]
>
> El vie., 24 de enero de 2020 11:16, Bastian Persohn <
> persohn.linguistics at gmail.com> escribió:
>
> Dear group members,
>
> I am posting the below on behalf of a student of mine. Any input will be
> greatly appreciated, be it on similar conventionalized uses of negation and
> irony in other languages of the world, general thoughts, or even specific
> remarks regarding isiXhosa (or the larger Nguni branch of Bantu).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Bastian
>
>
> I would like some help with finding resources/getting more information on
> ironic negative constructions, which are a rather frequent device in
> isiXhosa (Bantu, South Africa). I’m not sure if they go by any other name,
> I found this term in Oosthuysen’s (2016) Grammar of isiXhosa. He describes
> it as “The use of a grammatical negative to convey a predicate with an
> emphatic positive connotation”. So, these constructions read as negative
> statements but in actual fact mean the opposite. The prosody is different
> which helps in realising that it’s the ironic negative. Here are some
> examples (numbers indicate noun classes, FV is the default final vowel
> morpheme):
>
>
> *A-ka-se-m-hle lo mntwana*
> NEG-SBJ.NEG.1-still-1-pretty PROX.1 1.child
> 'This child is so/very beautiful' (lit: 'This child is no longer
> beautiful')
>
>
> *A-ni-sa-hlafun-i*
> NEG-SBJ.2PL-still-chew-NEG
> 'You are chewing so much/so loudly' (lit: 'You are no longer chewing')
>
>
> *A-ndi-sa-dinw-anga*
> NEG-SBJ.1SG-still-be(come)_tired-NEG.PFV
> 'I am so/very tired.' (lit: 'I am not tired anymore')
>
> *Be-ndi-nge-minc-e*
> REC.PST-SBJ.1SG-NEG-tense_up-PFV
> 'I was so very tense' (lit: 'I was not tensed up')
>
> *A-yi-nints-i imi-buzo ya-m*
> NEG-COP.4-many 4-question 4-POSS.1SG
> 'My questions are so many' (lit: 'My questions are not many')
>
> Any input in the form of papers, books, tiny excerpt, noting that it
> you’ve encountered a similar thing in another language etc would be of
> great help.
>
> Thanks!
>
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