Re: French negation


"*** T. Winter"
"Young Sociolinguist" <spooky.fm@xxxxxxxxxx>

> To me, the French word 'pas' is comparable to the English 'at all' > or
> 'whatsoever', as in: 'Je n'aime pas le vin.' = 'I don't like wine > (at
> all).'

Except that 'Je n'aime pas le vin' doesn't have the emphatic meaning of 'at all', it's the standard way of saying "I don't".

I do not think so. In many cases the 'pas' can be elided. So you can
state 'Je n'aime pas le vin', but also 'Je n'aime le vin'. The second
is a pretty weak form of the first.

Yes gramatically speaking you can virtually always omit 'pas'. So 'Je n'aime le vin' is possible but uncolloquial. It doesn't sound weak but rather quaint. You would have that kind of constructions in literary, written, language.

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