Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 1 no. 106
November 20, 1991
 
1) Reply to Aren Abramson (Mikhl herzog)
2) Double negatives (Ruvn-Mendl Turkel)
3) Double negatives (david Sherman)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91  15:51 EST
From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.BITNET
Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.104

Aren:   Unless Uriel referred to the matter in his articles
in Leshoneynu (in the easrly and mid 60's--too late for
what you recall, no?), he doesn't discuss the nasalization
of ayin at all. Surprisingly, there's no explicit reference
to the phenomenon in his "Outlines of Yiddish Dialectology"
(for which see Vol 1 of THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ATLAS OF
ASHKENAZIC JEWRY, in press). Max Weinreich discusses
nasalization (including ayin) and attributes it to the
sequence hataph-hataph patah. In Eastern Yiddish, by the
way, there seems to be some- thing of a west to east
continuum in which nasalized vowels in the west are
resolved into vowel plus nasal consonant in the east: e.g.
(capital = nasalized vowel) mA:se 'story', yA:kef 'Jacob',
vO:ses 'mustaches' in western Poland are ultimately
realized as ma(j)nse, ya(j)nkev, vonses/vonces/voncjes.
 
Rick Turkel: Do you consider ayin a guttural? Isn't it the
voiced counterpart of het, a pharyngeal? Aren Abramson,
HELP! Do pharyngeals = gutturals?
 
Speaking of double negatives, I'm afraid I don't know
nothing more about English bubbis and tushis. Surely, nisht
keyn and the like (ikh hob gornisht nit keyn gelt!!!) are
"true" double/triple negatives. No?

2)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 12:37:09 EST
From: rmt51@cas.bitnet
Subject: RE: Double negatives/positives (Mendele Vol 1.104)

In reference to Harold Bershady's question about double
negatives in Yiddish: ALL of the Slavic languages require
double (and even triple) negatives in such constructions.
E.g., (Serbocroatian) nisam nikad nikud is^ao, I never went
~~    ~~    ~~ anywhere (negative particles underlined).
 
        Rick (Ruvn-Mendl) Turkel

3----------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 91 23:44:43 EST
From: dave@lsuc.on.CA
Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 1.104

> There's an old joke that in Yiddish the double positive --
> "Yah, yah" -- is a negative (of course inflection is all).

Actually, I've heard that joke told about *English*, the
context being a linguistics lecture where the lecturer
explains that although double negatives in English are a
positive, the reverse isn't true (and then a voice pipes up
from the back, etc...)

> However, as a friend pointed out to me in Yiddish there are
> "double negatives" that do not mean a "positive," as would
> be the case in English.  E.g."Ich hob nisht kein gelt" (a
> refrain often heard). Is there a true double negative here?

It's clearly a negative meaning, but I think the verb +
"nisht" + "kein" is how the negative is expressed (when an
indefinite article is called for).  Perhaps the best
analogy is to the French "ne ... pas", where both are
normally required to make a complete negative (although
it's possible to have "ne" with some other words, like
"rien" or "jamais", and it's possible to have "pas" in some
cases without the "ne").

On the other hand, the Yiddish "kein" is very different
from the German "kein", from what I remember of my years of
German. The German "kein" is used with a positive verb to
create a negative meaning, and so is a genuine negative.
("Kein Mann ist gekommen.")  The Yiddish "kein" requires a
negative verb to create a negative meaning ("Kein man iz
nisht gekimen"). Using "kein" in Yiddish with a positive
verb would simply be wrong.

Now, I'm sure someone with a different dialect of Yiddish
will tell me that what I've said isn't true in their
case...

> If so, why doesn't the logical rule apply in Yiddish as it
> does in English?  This is a minor conundrum for me, which
> doesn't interfere with comprehension, yet I'd appreciate a
> solution.

You just need to think of "nisht" and "kein" as two halves
of the negative, much like "ne" and "pas".  It's found in
other languages, too.  For example, "Nao tenho nada" (I
have nothing) or "Nao vi ninguem" (I saw nobody) in
Portuguese; "Eyn li clum" (I have nothing) or "Lo ra'iti
shum ekhad" (I saw nobody) in Hebrew.

And, of course, certain dialects of spoken English use a
double negative to convey a negative.  "Ain't" requires a
negative inflexion to complete it.

David Sherman

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End of Mendele Vol 1.106