Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

AFAIK, the "ne" in "De'cidez-vous avant qu'il ne soit
trop tard" is not negative. It is a nuance about a
possibility in the future (make a decision now,
because it might soon be too late). We sometimes say
"avant qu'il soit trop tard", but it somehow looks
nicer (better style) to say "qu'il ne soit trop tard".
But it is impossible to say "avant qu'il ne soit pas
trop tard", it just doesn't mean anything.

"Il ne parle que le hongrois" is a restrictive form.
It can be glosed as "Il ne parle [pas d'autre langue]
que le hongrois" (he doesn't speak any other language
than Hungarian, he doesn't speak any language except
Hungarian = Hungarian is the only language he speaks).

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. This is a
rather literary style. Normally, the subjunctive
cannot be used in the main phrase, only in
subordinates.

--- Tamás_Racskó <tracsko@...> wrote:
> On 22 May 2004 Christophe Grandsire
> <christophe.grandsire@F...>
> wrote:
>
> > Does Hungarian use an expression translated as "to
> have right"?
> > Funny, so does French :))
>
>   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.
>
> > Nope. If we fear the cancellation of the action,
> we say: je crains
> > qu'il ne vienne *pas*: I fear he will not come.
> "Je crains qu'il ne
> > vienne" is for all purposes really affirmative.
>
>   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"'.
>
>   The same is true for English "I shall not go
> unless the weather
> is fine" 'nem megyek el, ha(csak) jo' ido" _nem_
> lesz'.
>
>   I think that in these cases both English (cf.
> "_un_less"
> conjunction makes a signle negative), and French had
> originally
> negative. And they was only later re-interpreted as
> affirmative. I
> think that this kind of borderline usage is highly
> "bound" , that
> it's no use to include it in systemic analyses.
>
>   (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.)
>
>   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".

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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