Re: Kinds of Negation

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 05:44:17AM -0700, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
> --- "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:
>
> > I don't know how natural it is, but Ebisedian
> > has 3 types of negatives (explained below).
> >
> > > A) indicating the boolean negation of the
> > > entire clause
> > > B) indicating the negative of a set of
> > > entities i.e. whatever isn't in the named
> > > set.
> >
> > Ebisedian uses the nullar number for (B), and a
> > negation particle for (A).
> > The nullar number simply indicates the absence
> > of a noun; while the
> > negation particles negate the sentence.
>
> Kerno has a similar division, though "ne" is
> involved with both.
Etymologically, the Ebisedian nullar noun is derived from the same source
as the verbal negative particle. The nominal nullar prefix is _my'_ ["my]
and the verbal negative is _my'e_ ["my?&].

> > Examples:
> > 1) mw'p3z3d3 juli'r.    "There is no man in the
> > house."
> >    man(nul)  house(loc)
> >
> > 2) my'e p33'z3d3 juli'r. "It is not true that
> > the man is in the house. "
> >    NEG  man(cvy) house(loc)
>
> Are mw and my are the negations? In K.:
They are in fact the same morpheme. The conveyant case is spelled _mw_
[m8] due to vowel contouring (ablaut?).

> 1) Ysta nenom 'n? domme. "Noman is home."
>
> 2) N' ysta pass 'n? domme il om. "Not at home is
> the man."
I should note that although Ebisedian distinguishes between these two,
it seems to prefer (1) over (2) even when semantically (2) is meant.
(2) sounds a bit hyper-corrective in Ebisedian.

[snip]
> > There is a third type of "negative" which
> > indicates opposition, rather
> > than absence. It's not strictly on par with the
> > above two negatives, but
> > Ebisedian does distinguish between "X is not
> > true" and "not-X is true".
>
> K. has a- and ni- to indicate opposition in this
> way: amath = evil [a- + math, good]; nigouisiboel
> = invisible. Mind you, ni- also means "up from
> below", so nitener doesn't mean "to not hold".
> Rather, it means "to support".
On the scale of good/evil, Ebisedian has a positive (good), a negative
(neutral), and an "oppositive" (evil, i.e., actively un-good as opposed to
passively neutral).

[snip]
> > For example, if somebody claimed "all dogs are
> > white", you could respond in one of the following ways:
> > - _ji'e_ (yes, all dogs are white)
> > - _my'e_ (no, some dogs aren't white---negation
> > of universal quantifier)
> > - _khe'e_ (no, no dogs are white---universal
> > quantifier on negation of the
> >   statement)
>
> Very succinct. The K. answer would be "Ke
> domdeckis!?" = What did you say!? To follow the
> scheme given, you'd most likely encounter:
>
> Si (yes) or Sey (ya), vlanck y thot lor gon.
> Ouel (well), vlanck y nuis, ces alch chon.
> Mir? (look here), n' vlanck puiyn y nechon.
>
> Translations:
> Yep, white (are) all the dogs.
> Well, white (are) some, some dogs.
> Now look here, (there are) no white at all dogs.
Cool, Kerno seems to show a similar tendency to break complex sentences
into smaller pieces, just like Ebisedian.

> Double negatives don't cancel; like in English,
> they intensify. Adding ne- to cy in the last
> sentence intensifies the idea of "not at all".
> Sort of like "ain't no white dogs nohow!"
[snip]

Reminds me of classical Greek.


T

--
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. --
azephrahel