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French: "Je n’ai qu..." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| panurge Newbie Italy Joined 5828 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English | Message 1 of 13 16 September 2009 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, in my French book there's a sentence:
Je n'ai qu'un billet de 200 francs. Why is there no "pas" after "n'ai"? Is it grammatically right to say: Je n'ai pas qu'un billet de 200 francs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jimmymac Senior Member United Kingdom strange-lands.com/le Joined 6159 days ago 276 posts - 362 votes  Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 2 of 13 16 September 2009 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
Yes it would be right but the person isn't saying 'I do not have a 200 franc note'. They are saying 'I only have a 200 franc note'. I found it a strange construction at first but I suppose it's closest translation might be 'I have but a 200 franc note'. I think you could also say 'j'ai seulement un billet de 200 franc'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 3 of 13 16 September 2009 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Nope. There are several two-part negatives in French. The first one you learn is ne...pas (basic "not") Others include: ne ... rien (nothing/not anything) Non.... rien de rien.... non... je ne regrette rien (I regret nothing/I don't regret anything) ne ... aucun(e) (none/not one (of)/no) je n'ai aucune idée (I have no idea) ne ... personne (no-one/not anyone) ici, je ne connais personne. (I don't know anyone here.) and the one that you mention ne ... que Je ne qu'un billet de 200 francs. Jimmymac's "I have but a 200 franc note" is a pretty reasonable translation. We can expand it to something even more Shakespearean: "I have naught but a 200 franc note" -- and "naught" is just "not" stretched out. So it's "only". You can't add in the pas here, cos suddenly the "que" would become something else : the conjunction "that" je n'ai pas = I don't have qu'un billet de 200 francs = that a 200 franc note. (makes no sense) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| panurge Newbie Italy Joined 5828 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English | Message 4 of 13 16 September 2009 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the replies!
I have always thought of 'pas' as a quantifier (I'm not sure if this is a linguistic term or just a term used in logic) In similar way the examples Cainntear posted seem to have quantifiers like 'rien', 'aucun(e)', 'personne'. So in this quantifier context the 'que' makes no sense to me... I mean I can't find a reasonable translation for it. For example in my mind I've always literally translated sentences like Je n'ai PAS de billet. I not have ANY (of) bill. So when I try to translate the original example this way Je n'ai qu'un billet de 200 francs. I not have than a bill of 200 francs. And to my mind 'than' doesn't feel like a quantifier... this is why I would understand it better as I not have ANYTHING than a bill of 200 francs. It feels like something is missing here. Does anybody know if there has been a quantifier before, but it was dropped off? Or is 'que' really a quantifier by it's own? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spiderkat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5818 days ago 175 posts - 248 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 13 16 September 2009 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
You can't really translate the negation "ne... que" word to word otherwise it may sound ugly or simply weird. You just need to figure out this negation as a whole and then find what fits the best into your language. Je n'ai qu'un (que un) billet de 200 francs means that you only have one bill of this kind but you may also have for instance a 100 franc bill or a 50 franc bill. So this sentence would be translated as I only have one 200 franc bill. You could add "pas" but it would be a different construction and you would have to add more information to the sentence otherwise it would sound incomplete. For instance. Je n'ai pas que un (seul) billet de 200 francs mais trois and would be translated as I have not only one but three 200 franc bills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6278 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 13 16 September 2009 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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In colloquial French, ne is often omitted. You might then hear J'ai pas de billets
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| roncy Pentaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 days ago 105 posts - 112 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Latin | Message 7 of 13 17 September 2009 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
First of all, the "ne .... que" construction is not a negative one, because it means "seulement" (only). Nothing negative about that. "Ne" itself is not a negative, "pas, rien, point, personne etc." are and are usually coupled with "ne" for I don't know what reason. As William has said, ne is often dropped in casual speech. Because it doesn't actually mean anything. So: "Je n'ai qu'un billet de 200 francs" = "J'ai seulement un billet de 200 francs" As for "Je n'ai pas qu'un billet de 200 francs", that is still a "ne .... que" only-construction, nothing "que = conjunction" about it: "Je n'ai pas qu'un billet de 200 francs" is quite correct, meaning "I have not only one 200 frank note [but several]" or "I haven't only got a 200 frank note but [some loose change as well, plenty of smaller notes, lots of coins.....] Another French way of saying this would be: "Je n'ai pas seulement un billet de 200 francs [mais plusieurs]". As Spidercat has said, it would sound strange and incomplete on its own and is usually followed by some more information. Peter's girl-friend isn't very pretty. - Which one? He hasn't got just one, he's got loads. La petite amie de Pierre n'est pas bien jolie. - Laquelle? Il n'en a pas qu'une, il en a plein. In this case "Il n'en a pas qu'une" could of course stand by itself. His car is rather small. - He hasn't just got a car, he's got a motor-bike too. Sa voiture est plutôt petite. - Oui, mais il n'a pas qu'une voiture, il a aussi une moto. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5573 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 8 of 13 17 September 2009 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
The word "pas" means "step", and derives from phrases like "Je n'ai pas marché" ("I didn't walk one step"), but got generalized to all verbs. The reason you don't use the "pas" is because you're not negating the verb itself—you're negating everything except the thing there is only one (or however many) of. I don't know the origin of the "ne...que" construction, but it's something that just has to be memorized as a chunk since the word "que" means something here that it doesn't mean in any other context. If it sounds odd to use a negative for "only", just think of it like saying "not but" or "nothing except". For example, "Je n'ai qu'un euro" is "I haven't but one euro" or "I have nothing except one euro". It sounds a bit stilted in English but I found it helpful when I was starting to wrap my mind around the construction. Does any other Romance language use a similar construction, I wonder? Or is this a uniquely French invention? Edited by Levi on 17 September 2009 at 3:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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