<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Just an anecdotal example from certain registers of colloquial Finnish: vähä(n) ‘few, a little, scarcely’ in the meaning ‘very much indeed’, also in connection with a specific word order pattern and optionally marked as a (rhetoric) question:<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">vähä(-ks) <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>toi on hyvä</div><div class="">scarcely(-Q)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>that is good</div><div class="">‘that’s really good’</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I wouldn't be surprised to find more or less established ironic uses of negative markers or low-quantity quantifiers in colloquial registers in other languages, too.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best</div><div class="">Johanna<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">Bastian Persohn <<a href="mailto:persohn.linguistics@gmail.com" class="">persohn.linguistics@gmail.com</a>> kirjoitti 24.1.2020 kello 18.12:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class=""><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class="">Dear group members,<br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class="">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).<br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class="">Best regards,</p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class="">Bastian<br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class=""><br class=""></p><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><p style="margin-top:6px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:6px;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class="">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<span style="display:inline;font-family:inherit" class=""> it’s the ironic negative. Here are some examples (numbers indicate noun classes, FV is the default final vowel morpheme):</span></p><div style="display:inline;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,33,41);font-size:14px" class=""><p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-family:inherit" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class=""><i class="">A-ka-se-m-hle lo mntwana</i><br class="">NEG-SBJ.NEG.1-still-1-pretty PROX.1 1.child<br class="">'This child is so/very beautiful' (lit: 'This child is no longer beautiful')
</p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class=""><i class="">A-ni-sa-hlafun-i</i><br class="">NEG-SBJ.2PL-still-chew-NEG<br class="">'You are chewing so much/so loudly' (lit: 'You are no longer chewing')<br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class=""><i class="">A-ndi-sa-dinw-anga</i><br class="">NEG-SBJ.1SG-still-be(come)_tired-NEG.PFV<br class="">'I am so/very tired.' (lit: 'I am not tired anymore')<br class=""></p><br class="">
<i class="">Be-ndi-nge-minc-e</i><div class="">REC.PST-SBJ.1SG-NEG-tense_up-PFV<br class=""></div><div class="">'I was so very tense' (lit: 'I was not tensed up')<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><i class="">A-yi-nints-i imi-buzo ya-m</i></div><div class="">NEG-COP.4-many 4-question 4-POSS.1SG <br class=""></div><div class="">'My questions are so many' (lit: 'My questions are not many')<br class=""></div><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class="">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.</p><p style="margin:6px 0px;font-family:inherit" class="">Thanks!<br class=""></p></div></blockquote></div>
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