Nobody says it, this... but we can also say that 'nobody says it'?

PalmaWhen we say ‘nobody says that’, it seems like we are repeating the same information. ‘Nobody’ already means that no person says it. Why do we add, then, a ‘not’? Wouldn’t it be enough to say ‘nobody says it’?

This kind of repetition, in reality, is not at all strange in Catalan. It suffices to think of a phrase like ‘the angry protesters’: the plural appears in the article (‘the’), in the noun (‘protesters’), and in the adjective (‘angry’). We do not think there are three different plurals, but rather that the elements agree. With negation, something similar happens.

‘Double negation’

This phenomenon has traditionally been called ‘double negation’, although the name can be misleading. It does not mean that the two negations add up or cancel each other out and end up expressing an affirmation. In phrases like ‘ningú no ho diu’ (nobody says it) or ‘no ho diu ningú’ (nobody says it), the two negative markers express a single negation. For this reason, it is also often called ‘negative concord’: several elements in the same sentence contribute to expressing a single negative meaning.

Let us note that this is different from what happens in a phrase like ‘no és impossible’ (it is not impossible): here the negation affects a word that already has a negative meaning and the result is that something is possible, although with a different nuance than if we simply state that it is. In negative concord, on the other hand, the two markers do not contradict each other, but rather go together.

Negative concord is linked, in Catalan, to words such as ‘ningú’ (nobody), ‘res’ (nothing), ‘cap’ (any/no), ‘gens’ (at all/none), ‘mai’ (never) and ‘enlloc’ (nowhere), which can express negation. When they appear after the verb in a negative sentence, they are usually accompanied by ‘no’: ‘no ha vengut ningú’ (nobody has come), ‘no m'ha dit res’ (he/she told me nothing), ‘no hi ha cap problema’ (there is no problem). However, when they go before the verb, they can be enough to give a negative value to the entire sentence. Thus, if we are worried about attendance at an event, we can say for sure that ‘ningú no vendrà’ (nobody will come) or that ‘ningú vendrà’ (nobody will come). And, if we talk about travels, we can state both that ‘mai no hem estat a Austràlia’ (we have never been to Australia) and that ‘mai hi hem estat’ (we have never been there). In these cases, removing the ‘no’ does not change the meaning of the sentence.

This possibility was already noted by Pompeu Fabra in the Gramàtica catalana of 1918 (and also in the seventh edition, of 1933). Fabra observed that it was common to suppress the ‘no’ when words like ‘ningú’, ‘res’, ‘cap’, ‘gens’, ‘mai’ and ‘enlloc’ went before the verb. However, he did not say that it could always be done. He considered the omission tolerable when it could not cause any ambiguity, but he preferred to keep the adverb. For this reason, he proposed examples like ‘ningú ens ha vist’ (nobody has seen us) and ‘cap d’elles vindrà’ (none of them will come), but, immediately afterwards, he recommended not suppressing the adverb in such cases (he preferred, therefore, ‘ningú no ens ha vist’ and ‘cap d’elles no vindrà’).

This caution has an explanation: 'nobody', 'nothing', 'none', and 'never' do not always have the negative meaning that we habitually attribute to them. In some contexts, they can mean 'somebody', 'something', 'some', or 'ever'. We see this very clearly in questions. If we ask 'have you ever been to Australia?' and 'have they told you anything new?', we want to know if the interlocutor has been there at some time or if they have been told something. There is, therefore, no negation.

Something similar happens with conditional sentences, that is, those that we introduce with 'if'. When we say 'if you find out anything, let me know', we mean 'if you find out something'. And, in a phrase like 'if he ever comes to see us, we will already know', 'ever' means 'at some time'. In these contexts, words that often have a negative sense can adopt an affirmative value. These are what we call 'negative polarity items', because the interpretation they have depends on the context in which they appear.

Sometimes, the presence or absence of 'no' can change the meaning of a sentence that includes these words. Thus, it is not the same to say 'if you find any errors, tell me' as 'if you do not find any errors, tell me'. In the first case, we want them to notify us if they find any errors; in the second, if they do not find any. The 'no', therefore, is not a piece that we can always remove: in some contexts, it is precisely what allows us to clarify what we want to say.

Fabra already took this possibility into account and distinguished between cases where it was 'tolerable' to eliminate the adverb and cases where it was essential to keep it. However, this nuance was not always transmitted in the same way. In some later grammars and manuals, the use of 'no' was presented as if it were mandatory in cases like 'nobody says it'. Therefore, a possibility that Fabra had admitted under certain conditions was reduced to a single option.

Two possibilities

The Grammar of the Catalan language by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, published in 2016, clearly admits both possibilities. When words such as ‘ningú’ (nobody), ‘cap’ (none/no), and ‘res’ (nothing) precede the verb and have a negative value, their position is already sufficient to give a negative meaning to the sentence. Therefore, ‘no’ can be kept or omitted (although keeping it is more common in formal registers).

If we return to the initial question, we can say that the ‘no’ in ‘ningú no ho diu’ (nobody says it) is not redundant, but it is not essential in a sentence like this one either. However, in a question or a conditional clause, things may change. Therefore, it is not about removing all the ‘no’s that we find before ‘ningú’, ‘res’, and ‘mai’ (never), but about taking into account what we want to say in each case.