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

[Peter Kirk]

On 29/01/2005 07:37, Rudolph C Troike wrote:

>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
>
>
>
But in some languages there are words in this category which still have
a negative sense when the negation in the predicate is deleted. A good
example is "personne" in French, which can mean "person", but means
"nobody" when following the negative particle "ne", and still means
"nobody" when "ne" is deleted as for example in a short verbless reply,
e.g. "Qui vient? Personne" which means "Who is coming? Nobody". At least
that is what I remember from my rather limited knowledge of French.

--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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