[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

[Gussenhoven, C.H.M. (Carlos)]

To supply a case from colloquial British English: ''not half'', as in 'He wasn't half pleased',
'She didn't half like it' ('He was very pleased', 'She liked it a lot').

Best,
Carlos 
________________________________________
From: Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf of Johanna Laakso [johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at]
Sent: Saturday, 25 January, 2020 11:40 AM
To: Bastian Persohn
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

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:

vähä(-ks) toi   on hyvä
scarcely(-Q) that is  good
‘that’s really good’

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.

Best
Johanna

Bastian Persohn <persohn.linguistics at gmail.com<mailto:persohn.linguistics at gmail.com>> kirjoitti 24.1.2020 kello 18.12:


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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Univ.Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
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