Double Negative - Romance Languages

Romance Languages

In Romance languages, negation is generally expressed by placing a negative adverb (non in Latin and Italian, no in Spanish and Catalan, não in Portuguese, ne in French, nu in Romanian) before the verb, but more negative adverbs or pronouns may appear elsewhere to indicate what kind of negation is being made.

In French, a second negative particle pas is normally employed in simple negation. Standard Catalan uses the same particle, but only to express emphasis or reversal of one's expectations. In Latin, passus was the word for "step", so that originally French Je ne marche pas and Catalan No camino pas meant "I will not go a single step". In French, this initially emphatic usage spread so thoroughly that in colloquial speech it is often ne which is left out while pas serves as the sole negating element. A similar practice occurs in dialectal Catalan, which omits no, and Occitan, which uses non only as a short answer to questions. In Venetian, the double negation no ... mìa can likewise lose the first particle and rely only on the second: magno mìa ("I eat not") and vegno mìa ("I know not").

In Italian a second negative particle usually turns the phrase into a positive one, but with a different meaning. For instance Voglio mangiare ("I want to eat") and Non voglio non mangiare ("I don't want not to eat") mean "I want to eat", but the second one means more precisely "I'd prefer to eat".

Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese and Romanian often employ doubled negative correlatives. Portuguese Não vi nada, não ("I did not see nothing, no"), and Romanian Nu văd nimic ("I do not see nothing") are used to express "No, I didn't see anything".

Other Romance languages employ double negatives less regularly. In Asturian, an extra negative particle is used with negative adverbs: Yo nunca nun lu viera ("I had not never seen him") expresses "I have never seen him", and A mi tampoco nun me presta ("I neither do not like it") - "I do not like it, either". Standard Catalan also formerly possessed a tendency to double no with other negatives, such as Jo tampoc no l'he vista ("I neither have not seen her") to mean "I have not seen her either", but this practice is dying out.