Re: Russian "a" and Norwegian "ikke/ingen" (was: Re: Question about Latin.)

 --- Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> skrev:
> Hi!
>
> "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> writes:
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 09:20:29AM +0200, Philippe
> Caquant wrote:
> > > We say "Je n'ai pas de voiture", "je n'ai pas
> > > d'enfants" (interesting, normally 'voiture'
> singular,
> > > but 'enfants' plural).
> >
> > Hm .  If |enfants| is plural, why isn't it
> preceded by |des| instead of |d'| ?
>
> After 'je n'ai pas/plus/rien de..', there is never
> an article in
> French, but just plain 'de'.  Thus:
>
>   a) Je    voudrais     du cafe / de la biere / des
> croissants.
>   b) Je ne voudrais pas de cafe / de biere    / de
> croissants.
>
Yes, except one would probably not use "voudrais" in
the negative form: rather "je ne veux pas", or "je ne
désire pas", or "je ne prendrai pas" (or simply: "pas
de café / de biere / de croissants pour moi, merci".
One says "je voudrais" because it is a polite form to
say "je veux", but in case you don't want, you don't
need to attenuate your requirement the same way (at
least this is the way I understand it).

Yet there always can be found some exceptions, for ex:
Je ne veux pas des faveurs de Cleopatre (since
Cleopatra came around recently): I don't want
Cleopatra's favours; "des" = "de les". (I hope this
sentence is understandable in English; I asked for a
French-English Harrap's for my birthday, in November).

Also: Je ne veux pas des restes des autres: I don't
want what the others left, others' leavings. This is
probably because "les faveurs", "les restes" are
essentially plural expressions, having a particular
meaning. "La faveur", "le reste", also exist, but they
have not quite the same meaning. (Also: je ne veux pas
des vetements de mon grand frere, I don't want [of] my
elder brother's clothes, etc.)

When I'll retire from work, I will probably write a
book about negation, if nobody did it before.


=====
Philippe Caquant


Ceterum censeo *vi* esse oblitterandum (Me).