Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763
writes:
|> [Richard Riehle]
|> | "I do not have no money." In any language but English, the more times
|> | I include a negative in my sentence, the more I mean "No."
|> neither French, German, Danish, Norwegian, nor Swedish seem to fit your
|> idea of "any language but English". in other words: hogwash. it is only
|> in colloquial English that I have ever seen anything like double negations
|> meaning "more negative". in all the languages I know, double negations are
|> either meaningless or just hard to parse positives.
Come now: in French, the standard is at least two negatives. A
sentence like ``Personne n'en saura plus jamais rien'' is not at all
strange or sub-standard, although it contains five negatives.
(Literally: ``Nobody won't never know nothing no more.'' But I don't
think you'd say it this way in English:-).) Italian has similar
constructs (``Nessuno non sapera piu mai niente.'' The French, word
for word.)
Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
double negatives is a purely Germanic phenomena. In which case,
(re-)introducing it into English would be a return to the source (and
a denial of the French influence which allowed it in the first place).
On the other hand, in the French example, all of the `negatives'
except ne (n') derive from positives in Latin, and with the exception
of `rien', can be positives in other contexts.
BTW: I have added sci.lang to the cross-postings, and set followups
there. Interesting as it is, this has really wandered too far from
C++ to belong in comp.lang.c++ anymore.
--
James Kanze Tel.: (+33) 88 14 49 00 email: ka...@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, Sarl., 8 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
Conseils en informatique industrielle --
-- Beratung in industrieller Datenverarbeitung
Harlan Messinger
:
: Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
: double negatives is a purely Germanic phenomena.
Except that Afrikaans brought it back. "Ek het nie die boek nie" = "I
don't have the book."
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
There is no such thing as bad data, only data from bad homes.
Colin Matheson
>Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
>double negatives is a purely Germanic phenomena. In which case,
>(re-)introducing it into English would be a return to the source (and
>a denial of the French influence which allowed it in the first place).
Actually, Old English used the very common system of negating
everything in a sentence that could be negated - here's the first
example I could find in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader (Judith, line 234):
nanne ne sparedon thaes herefolces
none not spared (3PL) the (GEN) army (GEN)
"they didn't spare any of the army"
(I think the verb translation is ok - I can't remember the
conjugations very well). Anyway, in modern English this would be
something like:
they didn't spare none of the army
The "rule" that two negatives make a positive is a fairly ill-informed
extra-linguistic notion imposed on the language from some kind of
"logical" perspective, I guess - their actual use probably never died
out in everyday speech.
Colin
--
Colin Matheson | Human Communication Research Centre
Phone: +44 131 650 4632 | University of Edinburgh
Fax: +44 131 650 4587 | 2 Buccleuch Place
Email: Colin.M...@ed.ac.uk | Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland
Ralph T. Edwards
ka...@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) wrote:
``Nobody won't never know nothing no more.'' But I don't
> think you'd say it this way in English:-).)
I wouldn't, but any native speaker of English would know the meaning,
and if the speaker were holding a gun, I'd run:-).
--
R.T.Edwards r...@elmo.att.com 908 576-3031
Anthea F Gupta
: writes:
: |> [Richard Riehle]
: |> | "I do not have no money." In any language but English, the more times
: |> | I include a negative in my sentence, the more I mean "No."
Bit sweeping...
: |> in colloquial English that I have ever seen anything like double negations
: |> meaning "more negative". in all the languages I know, double negations are
: |> either meaningless or just hard to parse positives.
Bit sweeping too
: Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
: double negatives is a purely Germanic phenomena.
Bit sweeping some more...
Well there's some languages where you can't have no double negation
whatsoever (Chinese, for example), then there's others where you got it
all the time (French). Then English -- well -- Modern Standard English
you can't no way do that sort of stuff.
Anthea
_________________________________________________________________________
Anthea Fraser GUPTA
English Language & Literature
National University of Singapore
Kent Ridge e-mail: ellg...@nus.sg
Singapore 0511 telephone: (65) 772 3933
________________________________________________________________________
Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428
In article <KANZE.95A...@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de>, ka...@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:
-->In article <19950808...@naggum.no> Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no>
-->writes:
-->
-->|> [Richard Riehle]
-->
-->|> | "I do not have no money." In any language but English, the more times
-->|> | I include a negative in my sentence, the more I mean "No."
-->
-->|> neither French, German, Danish, Norwegian, nor Swedish seem to fit your
-->|> idea of "any language but English". in other words: hogwash. it is only
-->|> in colloquial English that I have ever seen anything like double negations
-->|> meaning "more negative". in all the languages I know, double negations are
-->|> either meaningless or just hard to parse positives.
-->
-->Come now: in French, the standard is at least two negatives. A
-->sentence like ``Personne n'en saura plus jamais rien'' is not at all
-->strange or sub-standard, although it contains five negatives.
-->(Literally: ``Nobody won't never know nothing no more.'' But I don't
-->think you'd say it this way in English:-).) Italian has similar
-->constructs (``Nessuno non sapera piu mai niente.'' The French, word
-->for word.)
Is this true? The words that accompany `ne' aren't negatives, at least in
origin. `pas' means `a step', `personne' means a `person', `aucun' (related to
`alcuno', `algo') means `something' not `nothing' ...and so. And there used to
be more of these words: `je ne mange miette', `je ne vois point'. I suspect
that `(ja)mais' (`mai', `mas') has a positive meaning. I don't know about
`rien'.
The sentence could be literally translated `any person won't ever know anything
more about it'. (It's not so clear in Italian because `nessuno' and `niente'
are nagatives.)
Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form. `On nikogda ne
jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.
-- jP --
Barbara Need
>
> In article <KANZE.95A...@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de>,
ka...@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:
[stuff deleted]
> -->Come now: in French, the standard is at least two negatives. A
> -->sentence like ``Personne n'en saura plus jamais rien'' is not at all
> -->strange or sub-standard, although it contains five negatives.
> -->(Literally: ``Nobody won't never know nothing no more.'' But I don't
> -->think you'd say it this way in English:-).) Italian has similar
> -->constructs (``Nessuno non sapera piu mai niente.'' The French, word
> -->for word.)
>
> Is this true? The words that accompany `ne' aren't negatives, at least
> in origin. `pas' means `a step', `personne' means a `person', `aucun'
> (related to `alcuno', `algo') means `something' not `nothing' ...and so.
> And there used to be more of these words: `je ne mange miette', `je ne
> vois point'. I suspect that `(ja)mais' (`mai', `mas') has a positive
> meaning. I don't know about `rien'.
>
_rien_ is from a word meaning 'thing'; _mas_ (in _jamais_) is related to
the Spanish word mweaning 'more'. HOWEVER, in Modern French, _pas_ is
definitely a negative. In fact, in fast speech it is the ONLY negative
_Je ne sais pas_ ends up sounding like, Shaipa. I suspect the others are
now considered negatives (having NO positive uses).
Barbara Need
University of Chicago--Linguistics
[more stuff deleted]
Mark Odegard
>Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form. `On nikogda
ne
>jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.
You would have to phrase it "He does not ever eat anything"
to establish negation. J. Pardoe's example is confusing for
an English speaker: you hear all the negatation, but after
analyzing it, the only thing that makes sense is a positive.
Indeed, two negatives usually equal a positive. It's not
something learned in school. It's just intrinsic to my
native-speaker-ness.
Vidhyanath K. Rao
Don't tell that to an intuitionist :-) [If you don't understand the joke,
read book about the history of foundations of mathematics.]
>It's not something learned in school. It's just intrinsic to my
>native-speaker-ness.
I always thought that a double negative was a weak form of the positive:
``It is not unnatural''means to me that `I think it is natural, but
I am not going to bet on it'. This in spite of the fact that as a
mathematician, I am not an intuitionist. On the other hand, triple
and higher negatives make my head spin. And they can be simplified, even in
intuitionistic logic.
--
Vidhyanath Rao It is the man, not the method, that solves
nath...@osu.edu the problem. - Henri Poincare
(614)-366-9341 [as paraphrased by E. T. Bell]
Colin Matheson
>In sci.lang par...@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428) said:
>
>
>>Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form. `On nikogda
>ne
>>jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.
>
>
>Which means, to me, that he always does eat something.
>
>
>Indeed, two negatives usually equal a positive. It's not
>native-speaker-ness.
I'm sorry, but I think you're kidding yourself. There are cases in
English, with unusual stress and intonation, in which two negatives
are intended to be positive -
I *never* ate *nothing*
Whereas with neutral stress and intonation, "I never ate nothing"
clearly means that nothing was eaten. Analysing the sentences means
imposing extra-linguistic processing, based (as I said before) on a
mistaken application of logic to natural language. English looks as
if it always had, and probably always will make use of, mulitiple
negation as a means of emphasis.
There's a song (from "Hair"?) that goes "Ain't got no ... (and so
on)", and I'd be very surprised if anyone interprets that naturally as
a positive.
Obviously, what actually counts as a "negative" element in natural
language is often pretty unclear - I'm not saying that litotes doesn't
exist - so there are lots of caveats, but I for one have never heard
the Big Bopper say "I ain't got no money honey" and ever, for an
instant, got the impression that he was suggesting that he'd just been
paid.
Ivan A Derzhanski
>English looks as if it always had, and probably always will make use
>of, mulitiple negation as a means of emphasis.
>
>There's a song (from "Hair"?) that goes "Ain't got no ... (and
>so on)", and I'd be very surprised if anyone interprets that
>naturally as a positive.
>I for one have never heard the Big Bopper say "I ain't got no money
>honey" and ever, for an instant, got the impression that he was
>suggesting that he'd just been paid.
That's why people who work on multiple negation normally specify
which English they're talking of. Negative concord is a feature of
some varieties of English, of which Modern Standard English is not one.
So although _I ain't got no money_ would be readily identified as an
instance of negative concord, I'm not sure that the same is true for
_I don't have no money_. Other netters' opinions welcome, of course.
--
`Man, is that no terrible? [...] Ah wunner whit we should dae wi ye?'
Ivan A Derzhanski (i...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk) (J Stuart, _Auld Testament Tales_)
* Centre for Cognitive Science, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW, UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
John E Koontz
|> In article <KANZE.95A...@slsvhdt.lts.sel.alcatel.de> ka...@lts.sel.alcatel.de (James Kanze US/ESC 60/3/141 #40763) writes:
|>
|> >Its just an impression, but I get the feeling that the rule concerning
|> >(re-)introducing it into English would be a return to the source (and
|> >a denial of the French influence which allowed it in the first place).
|>
|> Actually, Old English used the very common system of negating
|> everything in a sentence that could be negated - here's the first
|> example I could find in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader (Judith, line 234):
I believe Matheson is quite correct.
And it's my understanding that modern negation with postposed not
derives from a construction more or less parallel with the French two
part scheme with ne ... pas/rien/etc. The earlier English version
was ne ... not. This, of course, isn't quite the same thing as
double negation, but I gather it's being discussed under this heading
here.
----
John E. Koontz (koo...@bldr.nist.gov)
Disclaimer: Views and recommendations, express or implied, are my own, and
do not reflect the opinion or policy of my employers.
Mark Odegard
[snip snip snip]
>>>'He never doesn't eat nothing'.
>>Which means, to me, that he always does eat something.
>>
>> [ ]
>>
>>Indeed, two negatives usually equal a positive. It's not
>>something learned in school. It's just intrinsic to my
>>native-speaker-ness.
>
>I'm sorry, but I think you're kidding yourself. There are cases in
>English, with unusual stress and intonation, in which two negatives
>are intended to be positive -
>
>I *never* ate *nothing*
however, "He never doesn't eat nothing" is a triple
negation. "He never does not eat" = he does eat (logically),
but can be construed as "he never eats". But add that
third negative. Oh dear. The only logical analysis is that
he *does* eat something (always). But then, because it's so
odd, you just have to understand this is a ghastly piece of
English and just assume it's all negative. "He never eats
anything at all".
>Whereas with neutral stress and intonation, "I never ate nothing"
>clearly means that nothing was eaten. Analysing the sentences means
>imposing extra-linguistic processing, based (as I said before) on a
>negation as a means of emphasis.
>
>There's a song (from "Hair"?) that goes "Ain't got no ... (and so
>on)", and I'd be very surprised if anyone interprets that naturally as
>a positive.
is nonetheless idiomatic.
Marek Konski
>
>
>>Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form. `On
nikogda
>ne
>>jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.
It would be very interesting to find out what a Slavic language is this
-- looks like Russian with Polish spelling.
Regards,
Marek
Michael Blaheta
> I always thought that a double negative was a weak form of the positive:
> ``It is not unnatural''means to me that `I think it is natural, but
> I am not going to bet on it'. This in spite of the fact that as a
> mathematician, I am not an intuitionist. On the other hand, triple
> and higher negatives make my head spin. And they can be simplified, even in
> intuitionistic logic.
Of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that most people think in
three-valued systems, but the language is almost always classified into
two-valued systems. For example, "colourful" is an obvious positive, and
"colourless" indicates a lack of colour. These two words are considered
negatives, but when you apply a negation to the first, you get "not
colourful", which almost anyone will agree is not the same as
"colourless". In general, it seems that when a negation is applied
through "not", you are excluding a class, while if you have a negative
word (e.g. colourless) you are asserting a certain class. Thus, in your
example, you have "natural", which asserts a positive relation to
nature, "unnatural", which asserts a negative relation to nature, and
"not unnatural", which excludes a negative relation to nature but says
nothing about the positiveness of such a relation.
Of course, to throw a wrench into the issue you might note that "not
natural" is almost *always* synonymous with "unnatural"... this is, of
course, a matter that natives usually never bother to think about, and
which trips up foreigners all the time. To analyse another set of
statements:
"I am artistic." means I am good at art.
"I am unartistic." means I am bad at art.
"I am not artistic." means I am not good at art.
"I am not unartistic." means I am not bad at art. See?
So, instead of just "positive" and "negative" there are really three
states of "positive" "neutral" and "negative" which we utilize. (Terry
Pratchett, a British author, realizes this and loves to play with this
with such works of prose like "most people don't realize that `dry' is
merely the *absence* of water. This place was past dry and out the
other side, the true *opposite* of being wet.")
The so-called "double-negation" which excludes someone from a "bad"
category is an extremely common vehicle for both modesty and flattery. :)
Of course, in addition to these three classes we can use words like
"particularly" or "hardly" or "almost" to further nudge the meaning of a
word. For example, "I am not particularly artistic" would probably
connote some slight talent at art, although someone who was "hardly
artistic" would have only minimal abilities in the art field, quite
close to "unartistic".
> Vidhyanath Rao It is the man, not the method, that solves
> nath...@osu.edu the problem. - Henri Poincare
> (614)-366-9341 [as paraphrased by E. T. Bell]
Don Blaheta
bla...@quincy.edu
Paul J. Kriha
Hasn't this horse been flocked to death on this group
several times already? :-)
The IE languages with the notable exception of English
use multiple negations to stress the negative.
No double takes or deep thinking is required. As soon
as the sentence contains a negative it's negative.
More negations just make the negative stronger.
The English "Boolean logic" is relatively recent invention
(cca 200 yrs) and the colloquial use is still fighting
that silly rule.
Paul JK
Bill Fisher
> In article <40h99d$9...@pipe3.nyc.pipeline.com>,
> mlo...@nyc.pipeline.com (Mark Odegard) wrote:
> >In sci.lang co...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Colin Matheson) said:
> >
> >[snip snip snip]
> >
> >>>>'He never doesn't eat nothing'.
Just one more flock on that horse: take my word for it as a
native double-neg speaker, this utterance gives me that feeling
of bizarreness in the tummy that signals ungrammaticality.
Far, far better would be "He don't never eat nothing.".
- billf
Mark Odegard
>Hasn't this horse been flocked to death on this group
>several times already? :-)
but stray atoms by now.
>The IE languages with the notable exception of English
>use multiple negations to stress the negative.
>
>No double takes or deep thinking is required. As soon
>as the sentence contains a negative it's negative.
>More negations just make the negative stronger.
>
>The English "Boolean logic" is relatively recent invention
>(cca 200 yrs) and the colloquial use is still fighting
>that silly rule.
into my skull at grammar school, though it was one of the
topics you pick up as you progress through school.
Double negatives (except for litotes) violate my sense
of English. They are just wrong. And when encountering
them, with the exception of the stereotyped ain't +
another negative, my first instinct is to start cancelling
to find out what is *really* meant. My second instinct,
almost on top of the first is to analyze the source to see
if it falls under the rubric "uneducated".
As to why English works this way (against the general trend
of other languages) -- you tell me. This is not an artificial
rule, but is something automatic for a very large number of
native speakers.
Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428
-->In <40eai1$l...@pipe4.nyc.pipeline.com> mlo...@nyc.pipeline.com (Mark
-->Odegard) writes:
-->>
-->>In sci.lang par...@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428) said:
-->>>Slavic languages tend to want all the words in negative form. `On nikogda
-->>>ne jest niczego': `He never doesn't eat nothing'.
-->
-->It would be very interesting to find out what a Slavic language is this
-->-- looks like Russian with Polish spelling.
-->
-->Regards,
-->
-->Marek
It is, if you forgive any mistakes I might have made, Russian in my own (and
hence preferred) transliteration. I like it because it looks "natural" and I
can read almost as quickly as I can read Cyrillic. It is quite like Polish
spelling. (I know a few words of Polish -- by/lem na praktyce w Polsce w roku
siedemdziesi,atym-sz'ostym -- so those `sz's don't trip me up! For those that
don't like `sz' etc., try this:
Chrz,aszcz brzmi w trzcinie w szczebrzeszynie.
Forgive the spelling mistakes.)
`Cz', `sz' and `zs' (zh) are equivalent to `c'-haczek, `s'-haczek and `z'-haczek
when accented characters are mot available.
It's other Polish-like feature is that softness before a vowel (`a', `o' and `u'
anyway) is indicated by inserting `i'. `J' does double duty, as a consonant
and as a sign of softness when no vowel follows. For "n" we have
hard hard + j soft soft + j
- n *n'j[5] nj *njj[5]
a na n'ja nia nja
e n'e n'je ne nje
i ny *n'ji[5] ni nji
o no n'jo nio[2] njo
u nu n'ju niu nju
[1] Note `nocz' not `noczj': `cz' is always soft. `Ty govorisz' not `-iszj':
`sz' is always hard.
[2] I handle `e' v. `"e' by extending the spelling rule to say that `o'
can only follow a soft consonant if stressed; otherwise `e' must be written.
[3] "'" is the "separator" and makes two letters keep the values they have
in isolation, where otherwise they'd affect each other. Hence it mostly
corresponds to the hard sign. However, when haczeks are not used it has
other uses: Luz'skij (rajon) = Luz + skij, Richard fon Vajc'zekker (former(?)
president of the FRG). It can sometime also be used if you're concerned to
show the exact Russian spelling: Russian `rajon' is r+a+j+o+n not r+a+jo+n:
``raj'on'' can only be converted to Cyrillic in one way! Likewise `J'jemen'.
[4] If I'm feeling particularly perverse I'll use `h' with the same value as `g'
and even `th' with the value `f'.
[5] These starred forms are more theoretical than practical possibilities.
Julian Pardoe par...@lonnds.ml.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Global Swaps Technology, Merrill Lynch Europe +44 (0) 171-573 1428
Werner Maurer
"Two negs is a positive" is math, not language.
Werner Maurer
but never "He never does not eat" or "I do not have not money".
Hence it could be argued that the latter two expressions don't even
exist, so why argue about them?
- Werner Maurer
____________________________________________________________________________
Quality Language Services
WERNER International Communications Ottawa, ON Canada
wma...@achilles.net
____________________________________________________________________________