Re: [asa] Empiricism, Faith and Science

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 08:30:28 +0100 "Iain Strachan"
<igd.strachan@gmail.com> writes:
> <snip>
> I do not think the aleph tau is like French pas. Pas is a regular
> word, not
> > a mere grammatical marker.
> >
>
> OK, so I got it slightly wrong. In fact it is the "ne" that doesn't
>
> have a
> meaning. This definition came from an online dictionary:
>
> *1 ne * Adverbe *(a)* *(placed before a negated verb: carries no
> translation
> as such, and frequently absent in non-emphatic speech)* *je ~
> travaille pas*I don't work, I do not work
> *(frm)*; *il ~ travaille jamais* he never works
>
> So ne is merely an untranslatable particle that indicated the
> following verb
> is negated. Hence it's exactly analogous to the aleph tau.
> <snip>

I fear you are imposing standard English idiom onto French. Romance
languages seem always to go negative all the way. "Il n'y a rien jamais"
is rational with three negatives, but "toujours" won't fit. Spanish
similarly piles on the negatives. So does nonstandard English, "We ain't
got none no more." I've noted, as a bilingual, that translation may
require considerable rethinking. I recall getting "death-breath" as
equivalent to "coup de grace" (worse than any imaginable case of
halitosis) from a translation program because it missed the meaning of
"blow." Consequently, I don't see the supposed similarity with aleph-tau.
Dave

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Received on Sat Sep 23 15:15:56 2006