Re: double negatives (was "bad French")

On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>:
>
> > And OC I rather like the ne...pas, ne...jamais, ne...rien, etc.
> > constructions in French.
>
> They are not double negative constructions, simply negation is split in two
> parts in French. Really 'pas', 'jamais', 'rien' had originally an affirmative
> meaning (and sometimes still have, ex: Avez-vous *jamais* vu ça? Did you *ever*
> see that?). They are taking now the negative meaning only when "ne" is not
> around (and it usually disappears in speech because it's not stressed, unlike
> the other part of the negation. That's also why a second part appeared
> originally).
Sorry--I knew that, but I like the fact that they're split in two parts.
:-p

YHL