What about how

[Richard Madsen]

It's a good point Alan makes. The English expression is paralleled by
Danish "Hvor skulle jeg vide det fra?" and Hungarian "Honnan tudjam?" both
meaning literally "Where should I know it from?". However, if we adopt
such a broader view, all interrogatives will be markers of negation since
posing a question implies that the poser of the question does *not* have
certain pieces of information.

Richard

Alan Jones <Alan.Jones at LING.MQ.EDU.AU> den 21. marts 2005 kl. 03:42 +0000
skrev:
>I see people are now listing languages -- like English -- that *cannot*
>use WHERE to form an negative. If we broaden our focus to include
>HOW, then we do have English expressions such as "How should I know?" (=
>"I don't know and you should know better than to ask").
>
>Does HOW ocur in other languages in this negative function?
>
>My memory suggests that some Turkish speakers also use "nasil" (how) in
>this way.
>
>Another reason I ask is a morphological and semantic link between WHERE
>and WHAT and WHICH and HOW in East Mekeo, a language I studied in the
>field.
>
>ala lo-lao?    "Where are you going?"
>au ala?         "Which man?" ("What man?" - ?)
>ala koa         "What like?"  ("Like what?" and also "How?")
>
>Alan
>
>
>Dr Alan Jones,
>Department of Linguistics,
>Division of Linguistics & Psychology,
>Macquarie University,
>NSW 2109.
>
>Building W3A, Room 409.
>Tel. 61 2 9850 9664
>Fax. 61 2 9850 7849
>E-mail: [ mailto:ajones at ling.mq.edu.au ]ajones at ling.mq.edu.au
>Web: [ http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/home/jones_alan/index.html
>]http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/home/jones_alan/index.html
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