Re: double negatives

En réponse à Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>:

> On Mon, 23 Oct 2000 15:15:16 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
> <christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
>
> >En réponse à Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>:
>
> > Yet you can say: "Je n'ai rien dit à personne" even if it sounds a
> >little awckward ("well, if you didn't say anything, of course you
> didn't
> say it
> >to anyone!", I would answer to this kind of sentence).
>
> So, do you have any equivalent of _I haven't told anything to anybody_,
> which would be stylistically acceptable?
>
> Also, I've just thought that with a slightly different intonation,
> English
> might allow something like _I've told nothing, to nobody, under no
> circumstances_ - am I wrong? I thought this could be how 'heaped
> negations' could become normal in a language formerly forbidding them.
>
I've just thought that with the same kind of intonation you describe, it would
become perfectly acceptable to say "Je n'ai rien dit, et à personne" (with the
comma marking a pause, and the "et" not mandatory but advisable). The pause
would make "et à personne" look like an addition, and thus would make the
sentence less awckward.

Christophe.