Re: A question and introduction

>
>I believe there are other natlangs that put the negation on the noun
>instead of the verb. <convenient>All my linguistics texts are at
>home and I'm in the office now, so no examples...</convenient>.
>
>To the point: there's a difference between zero amount of something
>and nothing of something. Saying that there's zero of something
>implies that there *can* be more than zero of something, or that it
>*used to be* more than zero. With a "not" you may imply that
>something has never, or will never exist. (Ignore neat double
>negations like 'not unbig' for the moment.)
>
>"There are no elephants here."
>"There are zero elephants here."
>
>Is the nullar a 'zero' or a 'not'? Both?
>
Yes indeed!  You can negate a noun in English, but (I guess because one
doesn't normally) it always changes the emphasis...  He is a person, He
isn't a person, He is a non-person... they all seem to mean different things
in some unnamable, symbolic way.

So, "I don't see a house" (or even "I see no house") implies that I probably
see nothing at all of any interest, and certainly not a house.

If I say "I see a non-house" it seems, to a native English speaker, that I
certainly don't see a house, but that I do see an object (and following the
lojban thread from yesterday, that this object is probably near enough to a
house for me to be described in terms of houses, even though it isn't one -
"I see an ersatz house" or "I see a house shaped thing")

Let's say you have a natlang "Splink" that typically negates nouns instead
of verbs - does Splink's regular kind of negation mean the first kind above
(no house, and no object), or the second kind (an object but not a house)?
In other words - does it depend on the language or is there a primary
"concept" of negation, regardless of how it is grammaticised in a language?

Andy






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