Negative constructions.

[Padraic Brown <agricola@wam.umd.edu>]

Hello everyone,

I was wading through sci.lang today and came across an interesting thread,
namely negative constructions in Romance languages along the line of
ne...pas in French. The reason why this would be appropriate here, besides
the fact that negation is not fully covered on the Page, is that,
according to the group's Resident Linguist, although this particular
construction is found generally throughout Romania, it is found most
prominently in the more Celtic areas of Romania: France, Catalonia, and
northern Italy. 

Question: if this perhaps is some sort of Celtic feature that has made its
way into the continental Romance languages, should it not also end up in
Brithenig.  [Kernu already makes use of ne...rhen for negation, but in all
honesty this is as much a tendency towards excessive negation as any
(hertofore unwot of) underlying Celtic feature.]

>>>> Original Post Follows <<<<
[Someone else's comment snippt.]

But we do!  We find MICA, GOTTA, BOCCA, PUNCTU, PASSU, FICU, PERA,
GRANU, FABA, GENUS etc. used like this from Portugal to Romania (cf.
Rom. nimica "nothing"), and we find similar expressions already in
Plautus: "pluma haud interest", etc.  It is true that the phenomenon
is most prominent in French, Occitan, Catalan, Rhaetic and Northern
Italian ("Gallo-Romance" for short). 

The "pattern" non micam [com]edere/manducare, non guttam bibere, non
passum ire/ambulare, non punctum videre [?], isn't really a pattern:
these are fixed expressions which could <h>ave arisen anytime, and which
were extended analogically to other verbs, to the point that the most
popular one(s) [passu, punctu and mica in Gaul; gutta, bucca in
Rhaetia, etc.] replaced the others even in the verbs they originally
"belonged with": e.g. je ne bois/mange pas.  Nus nu vains vis ngueta
(Engad.) "we haven't seen [a drop =>] anything". 


==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
mcv@wxs.nl                 |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
>>>> End Original Post <<<<

Any thoughts on how this could/should fit?  It makes perfect sense to me
that native speakers might use such turns of phrase as emphatics; but what
about the possibility of making it systemic (ie., more or less required)?

... ill ces tostad ti blegh, no?
ooo!, eo n'ai mannugad mech alch clas di ces tostad in -- eo ne sab puith
cant muis! ...

Padraic.