LINGUIST List 4.263

Sat 10 Apr 1993

Disc: Rude negators

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Directory

1. Rich Hilliard, "A Rude Negator"
2. mark, rude negators
3. Michael M T Henderson, Re: 4.262 Qs: Interlingua, discourse & video, negator, transfer
4. , Re: 4.262 Qs: Interlingua, discourse & video, negator, transfer
5. URGENT !! **, "Rude" Negators

Dick Hudson points out "a new English negator: BOLLOCKS" and asks
whether there are any other expressions can be used in a similar
fashion insofar as meaning, position and intonation. In my speech,
such an expression is, "the hell" as in:

 The hell you say!
 The hell he did!

As far as I'm aware, this is not a recent construction; I can remember
it as a child (1960s).

For me, the phenomenon seems restricted to VERY SIMPLE sentences:

 *The hell I did it!
 *The hell Susan knows!
 *The hell you say it's a boy!
 *The hell my mom thinks!

Maybe as simple as: Pronoun-Verb; although perhaps these can be
explained via discourse rules.

Rich Hilliard

PS - "Bollocks" is such a great word; makes me want to go home and
 play the Sex Pistols' album :-)

Richard Hudson asks about rude negators comparable to the
newly-observed "Bollocks he did!", approximately equivalent to
"Rubbish - he didn't!" That looks to me like almost the same
construction as "The {hell/devil} he did!", which can be
translated as either a contradiction, "You're completely wrong:
he did!", or an exclamation of surprise and dismay, "What??!! He
did??"

(For those non-UK subscribers who may not know it, "bollocks"
literally means 'testicles', and I think it's about equivalent in
register to its close kin "balls" in US usage.)

"The {hell/devil}!" ("devil" strikes me as somewhat literary or
old-fashioned, but that may just reflect the usage I'm used to),
without a ... complement? ... is more likely to be dismay than
contradiction. But "Balls!" is definitely a contradiction, or a
refusal to a request or command. (Wasn't there a famous use of
that in WWII, usually euphemized to "Nuts!"?)

"The {h/d} I will!" is a refusal. Can ?"Bollocks I will!" be so
used?

 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : markdragonsys.com

Message 3: Re: 4.262 Qs: Interlingua, discourse & video, negator, transfer

Re Rude Negators:
Dick Hudson's "Bollocks he did", with no intonation break, seems to
match "The **** he did", where **** is "hell" or "fuck" (but not "damn"
or "shit"). Can the fact that it is not "The bollocks" be put down to
syllable count?
==================================================\
| |
| Michael M. T. Henderson \
| Linguistics Department |
| University of Kansas |
| Lawrence, KS 66045-2140 |
| (913)864-3450 |
| BITNET: MMTHUKANVM |
| INTERNET:mmthukanvm.cc.ukans.edu |
=====================================================

Message 4: Re: 4.262 Qs: Interlingua, discourse & video, negator, transfer

"Bollocks he did" seems to be a variant on "The hell he did," also
produced as a single intonational phrase (I think necessarily with
the nuclear accent on "hell").
John Kingston

Just to follow up Dick Hudson's posting about constructions such as
"Bollocks he did" meaning "He didn't", I can safely say that I've been
using that sort of construction for as far back as I can remember using
many swear words at all (I'm 23 now).

Another form that springs to my mind right now is "My arse she did", meaning
"She didn't", although I would not say "My bollocks..." (it sounds strange).

My immediate thoughts are that there are some indeterminate forms which
right now sound a bit odd, but which I can imagine using once in a while.
These are forms such as perhaps "Crap they were" (as before, as opposed
to a OSV regional form, distinguishable by intonation, as Dick Hudson
mentioned) or "Shite it was!".

Quite odd, though, that "Bollocks" and "My arse" (in those precise forms)
are the only ones that I would use or that I can imagine anyone I know using.

Is there a reason (literature-related?) why this might be the case? (I shall
resist the temptation to say "Bollocks there is!" at this point.

Yours, clean of tongue and pure of mind,

Dave

David E Newton
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
University of York
Heslington
York YO1 5DD
(0904) 432650

den1uk.ac.york