The final nie in Afrikaans negative sentences

  • Johan Oosthuizen Department of Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies, University of Cape Town
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5774/31-0-57

Abstract

An interesting syntactic property of Afrikaans is the use of the so-called double negative in sentences which express a negative proposition by means of a negation word like geen ('no', 'none', 'not (any)'); geeneen ('no one'); geensins ('by no means', 'in no way'); g'n ('never', 'not'); nerens ('nowhe e'); nie ('not'); niemand ('nobody'); niks ('nothing'); nooil ('never'). In terms of this property such a negative sentence contains, as a general rule, a second 'negation word' in final position, viz. the item nie. The phenomenon may be illustrated with the foUowing examples. l

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Issue
Vol. 31 (1998)
Section
Articles
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