Negative Concord

[r_scherp]

Hails!

Incidentally, until 'enlightened' educators took control of the German language c1800 German was negative concord. Examples can even be found in Goethe.

Randulfs

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "anheropl0x" <anheropl0x at ...> wrote:
>
> Hello, all! Do you think that Gothic might have been a negative Concord language? I know a few old Germanic languages were, and there exist several today that are.
> 
> Negative concord, for those who do not know, is the use of multiple negatives in a single clause that do not cancel each other out.
> 
> In English and German, we do not have negative concord, so the negatives cancel each other out ("I have not seen him" vs "I have never not seen him")
> 
> So far, I have only found one possible example of negative concord in Gothic: Matt 27:14 "jah ni andhof imma wiþra ni ainhun waurde..." (And not answered to him not any/none/no of words) "And he answered to him not a word..."
> 
> Negative concord was common in Old English, and existed in a specific form in OHG. Do you think that Gothic could have had negative concord as well?
>


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