Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 September 14

= September 14 =

French negation.
Hi everyone.

From an orthographic point of view, the 'pas' in a phrase such as 'Je ne fais pas', 'Je ne vois pas' &c is a separate word. But, from the point of view of a linguistic analysis, is it correct to say that 'pas' is morphologically attached to the verb? As in, there is nothing that can be inserted between the verb and the negative morpheme.

Thanks

Duomillia (talk) 19:04, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's a particularly useful thing to do.


 * There are plenty of other words that would need to get moved into this class - jamais, aucun(e), que, rien, plus, personne and so on. Trouble is, in most cases that's not the only way those words can be used.  Personne n'a mangé le fromage.  Rien ne s'est passé.  Personne and rien in those sentences are clearly nothing to do with verb conjugation, so you have to accept them as independent words.  And it's unnecessarily complicated to say, well it's part of verb conjugation here but a separate word here.  Far simpler to analyse rien in je n'ai rien vu as the same word as rien in rien ne s'est passé.


 * It would work in the same way if you tried to analyse not as a verb ending in English. In some ways you can make a better case for this, since very often English uses shortened forms: don't, won't, haven't, aren't whereas the French forms are independent of the verbs they modify.  But you have the same problem - not all instances of not come directly after a verb.  If not has to be a separate word anyway, and the simplest analysis holds that it doesn't become a conjugation just because it happens to come directly after a verb. Kahastok talk 20:00, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Grammatically it's kind of a circumposition, isn't it? Not really a circumfix since they're not actually attached to the verb. By the way, it's not strictly true that you can't insert something between the verb and pas - you can put donc, cependant, toutefois, and peut-être between them (and probably many other words, but those 4 spring to mind immediately). Informally, sometimes you can also leave out either ne or pas, and even in formal writing you can leave out pas if you're using pouvoir. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * (Add néanmoins, alors, ainsi to that list...I sense a theme here... Adam Bishop (talk) 23:51, 14 September 2017 (UTC))
 * Also interesting: cycle de Jespersen, Jespersen's Cycle. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 09:51, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * In answers like "pas du tout!" or "absolument pas!" there is no verb at all. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 11:33, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Also note that there are constructions in which you can insert additional words between the verb and "pas". For example: "il ne mange à peu près pas (he hardly eats anything)", or "je ne fais vraiment pas" to build on the OP's original example. --Xuxl (talk) 13:59, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Also: The negative in French is not "pas", it is "ne". "Pas" originally was just another complementary like "guère", "jamais", "que", "rien", "plus", personne", etc. It's only recently in the history of French, that "pas" became such a central usage for negation. Akseli9 (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This discussion is quite interesting and germaine. -- Jayron 32 14:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

How to make an actual double negative in Spanish?
140.254.70.33 (talk) 20:54, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not the incorrect answer.
 * Esa no es la respuesta incorrecta.
 * Nobody wants to eat nothing. (Everybody wants to eat something.)


 * No hay nadie que no quiere comer nada. Serial negation is usually confined to a single clause.  The use of que in "(No hay nadie) que (no quiere comer nada)" makes it clear there are two separate negative thoughts:no hay and no quiere. μηδείς (talk) 23:34, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Storybook vs anthology vs short story
Is "storybook" mainly used for children's books while anthologies and short stories are books for older people? Or is "storybook" a child's term for anthology or short story? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * We use simple obvious terms for children storybook is a book with stories and more complicated terms like anthology to show our erudition as adults. English words first, Greek later.  This is for the same reason we teach children counting before calculus; the complex needs a simple foundation. μηδείς (talk) 23:42, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * A "short story" is just a single story, whereas an "anthology" is a collection. -- 87.151.34.217 (talk) 00:45, 15 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Specifically, an anthology is a series of unrelated stories (other than perhaps a general theme), as opposed to a series. StuRat (talk) 13:15, 15 September 2017 (UTC)


 * (short story : short story collection : anthology) :: (music track : album : compilation album) jnestorius(talk) 01:09, 15 September 2017 (UTC)


 * One you missed is omnibus; a collection of stories generally by the same author. You don't see the term much these days, but when I was 10 or 11 years old, one of my most treasured posessions was the THE FIRST BIGGLES OMNIBUS (younger or non-British readers should refer to our Biggles article). Alansplodge (talk) 09:08, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * 10 or 11 years old . . . when was that time period? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 12:59, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was 10 in 1968, a few months after the death of W. E. Johns. Alansplodge (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Unlike with Baseball Bugs and his "rabbit years", this is the straight dope.  Alansplodge was born no earlier than 1954 and no later than 1959 . 92.8.216.51 (talk) 14:53, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, the indelible footprints of the internet. C'est vrai, I started secondary school in 1970. Alansplodge (talk) 23:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)