Expletive negation

The term expletive negation is often used (especially in the linguistics of the Romance languages) for a negative marker that has no negative meaning.

Examples

• French Je crains qu'elle ne vient 'I fear that she comes';
• Italian Io sono più alto che tu non sei 'I am taller than you are'
• English We don't need no education. (Pink Floyd song)

Synonyms

• pleonastic negation (this was the usual term until the latter part of the 20th century)
• paratactic negation (Jespersen 1940)
• formal negation (Jack 1977)
• abusive negation (Vendryès 1950)

Polysemy

See expletive (disambiguation page).

Origin

The term was apparently introduced only in the 1970s (cf. Muller 1978, Nocentini 2003).

References

• Jack, G.B. 1977. "Negation in later Middle English prose." Archivum Linguisticum 9:58-72.
• Jespersen, Otto. 1940. A modern English grammar on historical principles. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
• Muller, Claude. 1978. "La negation explétive dans les constructions complétives." Langue Française 39:76-103.
• Nocentini, Alberto. 2003. "La cosidetta negazione espletiva in italiano." Archivio Glottologico Italiano 88:72-90.
• Vendryès, Joseph. 1950. "Sur la nègation abusive." Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 46: 1-18.