Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

En réponse à Nik Taylor :


>Hey, there's a potential difference in IB French, _point_ has displaced
>_pas_.  :-)
A very good idea! I'm gonna adopt it right now! :)

Note that Narbonósc also had the same kind of second negative word as 
French as, except that the standard one is "reim", from Latin "res" and 
cognate with French "rien". "pas" (identical to French, including in 
pronunciation) is used only with verbs of movement, while verbs of speech 
tend to use rather "palavre". So the system in Narbonósc is rather like 
French used to be, except  using some different words. Also, "ne" is less 
elided than it is in French.
__________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à =?win-1250?Q?Tamás_Racskó?= :


>   Yes, it's a true Hungarism from me, but I'd rather call it
>Continentalism, cf. German "recht haben", Slovak "mat' pravdu",
>Albanian "ka te: drejte:", etc.
Dutch is also the same "gelijk hebben".


>   I see. But I found the following example in my dictionary:
>"de'cidez-vous avant qu'il ne soit trop tard". It's a clear
>negative for me, cf. Hungarian 'do:ntso:n, ami'g _nem_ ke'so"'.
But not to me. Restrictive yes, negative certainly not. The restriction is 
very affirmative! :))

>   The same is true for English "I shall not go unless the weather
>is fine" 'nem megyek el, ha(csak) jo' ido" _nem_ lesz'.
But "avant que" doesn't mean "unless", it means "before". It's "decide 
before it's too late". Nothing negative in that.


>   (Apropos, can you place sentence "de'cidez-vous avant qu'il ne
>soit trop tard" in negative, e.g. "*de'cidez-vous avant qu'il ne
>soit pas trop tard"? The negated [=affrimative] pair of the
>Hungarian equivalent doesn't exist.)
It is meaningless to put the subclause in the negative. You cannot make 
people hurry because of the *absence* of a reason ;)) .

>   Another borderline usage of the negative in French (and in other
>Romance languages) is "ne .. que". "Il ne parle que le hongrois" is
>semantically affirmative, cf. "il ne parle uniquement / seulement
>le hongrois".
It's clearly negative. As Philippe said, it's a short-cut for "Il ne parle 
pas d'autre langue que le hongrois". It's clearly a negative turn of 
phrase. There is an affirmative way to say that, but you can do it with 
many negative sentences. You can for instance say "he's going to stay" 
instead of "he's not going to go", with the only difference being a slight 
change of emphasis. Does it mean that "he's not going to go" is not 
negative? Not at all. And yes, I feel there's a difference of emphasis 
between "il ne parle que le hongrois" and "il parle seulement le hongrois", 
about the same kind of difference as the one in my English example.
___________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>There is a very strange form in French with the verb
>"savoir" (to know) used negatively:
>- Je ne sache pas que cela vous concerne ("sache" =
>subjunctive form), meaning something like : as far as
>I might know, this is no matter of yours.
Where in the world did you ever hear such an expression?! Sometimes, I get 
the idea you're inventing French expressions that have never really 
existed. I've never seen a subjunctive not preceeded with a conjunction 
like "que" before, and I've read a lot of things of all styles. "Je ne 
crois pas que cela vous concerne" is the only expression I know meaning this.

>  This is a
>rather literary style.
Where can I read such an expression then?

>  Normally, the subjunctive
>cannot be used in the main phrase, only in
>subordinates.
The subjunctive is dying in French. It's a shame, but it just isn't 
contrastive enough to stay, and its functional load is getting really minimal.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

Reply