LL-L "Syntax" 2003.04.12 (02) [E]

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From: Clark Hapeman <egsidf at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2003.04.11 (06) [E]

As a French major, I know a little about French, and in spoken French, one
generally omits the "ne" with the verbs. One can say, "je suis pas" instead
of "je ne suis pas" for "I am not."

Clark Hapeman

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From: Ed Alexander <edsells at cogeco.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Syntax" 2003.04.11 (06) [E]

At 04:02 PM 04/11/03 -0700, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>The same word (res in the nominative) that gave English the word
>"re" "on the subject of", which is now in the subject of almost all
>of our e-mails. Not an abbrevation of "reply".

Actually, it's the abbreviation of "regarding" or "in regards to".

Ed Alexander.

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From: jari at delphisexpress.com <jari at delphisexpress.com>
Subject: Etymology

Hello again and thanks for everything so far!

It is easy to compare the Afrikaans double negation to the French "ne pas",
but
there is something fishy about the French "double negation". It seems to be
a
fusion of the Latin-type of negation, where the negation precedes the verb,
and
the Germanic-type of negation, where the negations comes after the verb.

This is actually the reason that I have misgivings about the French "ne-pas"
analogy. The analogy works only if the sentence have no more than four words
(subject-negation-verb-negation): "Je ne sais pas". "Ek nie weet nie".

When the sentences grow longer, the analogy breaks down. "Nie-nie" doesn't
follow the logic of "ne pas". The first "nie" is still the Latin-type
negation
(for lack of a better term), which precedes the verb, but the second "nie"
doesn't have to be next to a verb at all. This second "nie" sounds more like
a
friendly tag, a bit like "hoor"!

The Brabant thesis is more in line with the double negation, which isn't
necessarily the same thing we have in Afrikaans. In Brabant the double
negative
is not obligatory, for starters, whereas in Afrikaans it is, which implies
it
isn't really a double negative at all.

Maybe we could approach the Afrikaans "nie-nie" from the opposite direction.
Can one "nie" be left out under any circumstances? In some dialect perhaps?
That would point to one "nie" being the "right" one.

Jari Nousiainen

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