Re: negation and compounding

Joe Mondello wrote:
>=20
> In English, most or all negative words formed from non-negative words h=
ave n-
> or no-  in them
Used to be even more such as:
Nill =3D will not (believed to be the first part of willy-nilly - "will
I,   nill I?")
Nis =3D is not

In Old English:
Neom =3D ne eom (am not)
Naebbe (sp?) =3D ne haebbe =3D have not (this, I think, might've survived=
 =20
into Early Modern English as nave)
Naes =3D ne waes =3D was not

I sometimes like to coin even more n- words, like:
nam (am not)
nare (are not)
nad (had not)
nas (was not)
nere (were not)
nould (would not)

> fold-foolish (lit. f + [english] old, this is a bilingual compund)
So, the -old is exactly the same meaning as our "old"?  So, "fould" is
literally "young"?

> Are there any other languages (I mean, of course there are, I am just >=
 looking for examples) in which negative words are consistently=20
> compounded with other words in such a fashion?
Well, in Watakass=ED, _fil_, "not" (interesting co-incidence with your
"fu") can be compounded with any word to negate.  There are also several
prefixes that have fil- merged with a positive suffix, examples:

Pas-: Be able to
Fas-: Be unable to (fil--pas- would mean "be able to not"; double
hyphen   means that other prefixes can go between them)
Pisi-/Pisy-: Know how to
Filpis-: Not know how to
Lib(a)-: Must
Filb(a)-: Must not
Ni-: Want to
Fin-: Not want to

As well as at least one word that was fused to the fil-
La: Or
Fa (sometimes Fla): Nor

_Fil_ is usually a free word, when it becomes a prefix, it may acquire a
different, or specialized, meaning.  Fil- usually means something like
"exact opposite, un-", while _fil_ simply means "not".  In addition,
there are many examples of words with fil- that have no positive
counterpart, like _filfak=EDyasa_ (still) from fil- (not) fak=ED (go) -ya=
sa
(adj.), thus, "unmoving", but *fak=EDyasa is not a word.

--=20
Yaw=EDntasva natab=ED, plansaf=ED nlak=FAsi
The boy dies giving birth to the man
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