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Spanish preposition "de" in negatives | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 13 17 July 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spansh is my 2nd native language, but I don't understand this, from a grammatical point of view, and it is killing me.
Consider the following: Vimos lo que sucedió. No vimos lo que sucedió. Makes sense up to now. But... Vimos todo lo que sucedió. No vimos nada DE lo que sucedió. Another example: Hemos entendido todo lo que dijo. No hemos entendido nada DE lo que dijo. What the heck is that? Why is there a "de" inserted in the negative and not the affirmative? I am only going by my personal use and what "sounds right", and what I have heard in speech. I'm pretty sure that is standard usage. Any linguist or professor, or just someone that has studied Spanish grammar deeply that can elucidate to me what that is so, or even if it is just perhaps dialectal? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4634 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 18 July 2012 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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We saw everything that happened
We didn't see anything _of_ what happened If I'm correct Wir haben alles gesehen, was passiert ist Wir haben nichts von dem gesehen was passiert ist I might be wrong, but it seems to me as if it were a widespread phenomenon. A reason, that I could think of is, that all/everything/alles/todo comprises everything, while nada/nothing/nichts is a part of what you are talking about (at least in a grammatical sense. Nothing is a subset of all sets, while everything is just the whole set) so you use de/of/von to express the idea that you are talking about a subset hope that doesn't sound all gibberish 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 5044 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 3 of 13 18 July 2012 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with cortical.
(Nosotros) No vimos nada DE lo que sucedió. Translating it literally: Nosotros = We Nosotros no = we didn't (assuming we already know it's going to be in the past tense) Nosotros no vimos = We didn't see Nosotros no vimos nada = We didn't see nothing (ok, it's the literally meaning... double negation, it'd really be: "We didn't see anything") Nosotros no vimos nada de lo que: "We didn't see anything of what" Nosotros no vimos nada de lo que sucedió: "We didn't see anything of what happened". Now, suppose you simply eliminate that "de"... it'd be: Nosotros no vimos nada lo que sucedió. Literally meaning "We didn't see anything what happened" ... at least to my intermediate English level it doesn't make any sense. Nor in Spanish! (and as it seems, accoding to the sir here up, neither in German). The second sentence: "(Nosotros) No hemos entendido nada DE lo que dijo." Nostros no = "we don't" Nostros No hemos = "We haven't" Nostros No hemos entendido = "We haven't understood" Nostros No hemos entendido nada = "We haven't understood anything" (actual meaning, literally it'd be "We haven't understood nothing") Nostros No hemos entendido nada de lo que = "We haven't understood anything of what" Nostros No hemos entendido nada de lo que (él) dijo = "We haven't understood anything of what he said" Again, let's try to simply delete the "de", so, the sentence would be: "No hemos entendido nada lo que dijo" Literally: "We haven't understood anything what he said". (I think) it doesn't mean anything. Same in Spanish. There're related sentences like: "No hemos entendido PARA nada lo que dijo" which aproximately means the same and avoid the use of "de" (but, in this case for example, you'll have to use a "para") App. translation: "We haven't understood what he said at all" About the positive thing, as said by Cortical, think about English. You wouldn't say "We saw of what happened", you'd say "We saw what happened" Same with Spanish. "(Nosotros) vimos de que sucedió" or "(Nosotros) vimos lo de que sucedió" are wrong (and if you speak Spanish, these sentences will sound "horribly horrible" -sorry for being redundant, I wanted to ^^ -), the right would be "(Nosotros) vimos que sucedió" And the negative without nada... "No vimos lo que sucedió". (Nosotros) = We (Nosotros) no = We didn't (Nosotros) no vimos = We didn't see (Nosotros) no vimos lo que = "We didn't see what" (Nosotros) no vimos lo que sucedió = "We didn't see what happened" try adding a "de": "(Nosotros) no vimos de lo que sucedió" Translation: "We didn't see of what happened". Does it make any sense ? Ans: No. Ok, I'm not a Spanish teacher, I've neither studied Spanish grammar (further than the basics at school ...), but I think that could be ... Hope it helps, 98789 Edited by 98789 on 18 July 2012 at 2:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 13 18 July 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Cortical,
Very sagacious comment, thanks. Now that brings up the question, is my English "wrong"? Because I would say: We didn't see anything that happened. To me that sounds OK. I have googled it and the phrase does indeed show up exactly as such, so it is a living construction. The thing is, is it incorrect? "We didn't see anything of what happened" at first sounded slighty odd to me, but it does after the second read and on sound quite right. At this point I'm so mixed up thinking about the whole thing, even in my native languages, that I can't really make anything out. In the English phrases at least, both are probably correct in the colloquial sense, but one of them (and I would presume it that is the case it would be "my" phrase), may not be considered prescriptive grammar. My German is not confident enough yet that I would have said the above with "von dem", because I may have hesitated to place the "gesehen" in between "nichts" and "was" (I understand why that happens stylistically however). I would have simply said "Wir haben nicht gesehen, was passiert ist". It sounds slightly familiar, so I may have read it or heard it, but I haven't had enough exposure yet to be fully confident, though slowly getting there. @98789 Wow, that was a very detailed post! I agree that not using "de" makes no sense in Spanish. But ever since both Cortical and yourself brought the English examples to the fore, you have made me realize the English construction (which I had not even considered because I usually say "anything that happened" and not "anything of what happened"), does follow the pattern. So now that I have examples in English and German alongside Spanish, I'm suspecting the usage of the preposition is related to some sort of partitive/genitive nature of "anything/nada/nichts/etc". There is the example of this with "Nadie me ayuda" vs. "Ninguno (de ellos) me ayuda", which mean slightly different things. Consider English: "Nobody helps me" vs "None (of them) help me". Or German (for Cortical): "Niemand hilft mir" vs "Keiner (von ihnen) hilft mir". In ALL three examples, you cannot really use "nadie/nobody/niemand" when you have a countable group of people, since those three words are an abstract "no one". At the very least it sounds "wrong" in all three languages, and is likely incorrect grammar as well. I am guessing that "seeing nothing" in the examples above, is a PART of "absolutely nothing", and because it is a PART (partitive/genitive) it takes the preposition to mark it. So Cortical was on to something with his subset comment, but instead of "nothing" being a subset of "everything", maybe "seeing nothing" is a subset of "nothing" (absolute)? Wow, we are probably overcomplicating this to the umpteenth degree. But that is what makes language fun!! edit: or maybe "nothing" is gramatically part of whatever happened"?? I think I agree more with Cortical than with myself now :o Edited by outcast on 18 July 2012 at 3:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 5 of 13 18 July 2012 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
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It may be a relic of something very ancient in Indoeuropean. To give you an example from Serbian, the affirmative
of "I have X" has the object in the accusative case: Imam knjigu = I have the book (accusative) However, the negative of "I do not have X" has the object in the genitive case: Nemam knjige = I do not have (of) the book (genitive) Maybe this just tells you to "accept it" without knowing the why in Spanish and just move on... Edited by Merv on 18 July 2012 at 3:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 13 18 July 2012 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah it's the same in Russian, and Finnish takes this even further. (so it'a not just an IE thing)
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 7 of 13 18 July 2012 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, that's interesting that Finnish has it too. What's weird is how today we don't logically see why that might be, but in two very different language families (and maybe more?) there was this notion of negations being "of" something....weird but interesting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4634 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 8 of 13 18 July 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
This is indeed right, but it has a different nuance to it. It's the same as English "We didn't see, what happened", or Spanish "No vimos, que sucedio" Not sure, but I believe it might imply intention. Like you were trying to see, but you couldn't, or it implies that you didn't realize that anything was happening at all. While when you say "we didn't see anything of what happened" you were aware that something happened, but you didn't see anything. And "We didn't see anything that happened", I guess means that there might have been things happening, but you didn't see them, and you were oblivious about them. I might be wrong about those nuances though, just my gut feeling. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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