Summary: How to say 'without anything'/'without anybody'
Loren A. Billings
billings at mailer.fsu.edu
Sat Feb 24 08:04:46 UTC 1996
Thanks to the following kind souls for responding to date: W. Mucha, K.
Dziwirek, K. Krivinkova, T. Krstic, S. Forrester, W. Browne, L. Jasinskyj.
This is what I found out from each language indicated (_^_ = hac^ek):
'without anything' 'without anybody'
Polish: bez niczego bez nikogo
Czech: bez nic^eho bez nikoho
Serbo-Croatian: bez ic^ega bez ikoga
Bulgarian: bez nis^to bez nikogo
Ukrainian: bez nic^oho bez nikoho
Russian: bez nic^ego bez nikogo
To my knowledge, _bez_ is the only preposition that precedes *both* _ni_
(or _i_) *and* the interrogative stem in all the Slavic languages. I
doubt very much that the remaining Slavic languages depart from this
surprising uniformity. I would still be very interested in learning how any
additional languages, both modern and older, behave with regard to this
phrase. Thanks again to the respondents. --Loren (billings at mailer.fsu.edu)
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