LINGUIST List 4.272

Tue 13 Apr 1993

Disc: Rude negators

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Geoffrey S. Nathan, Bollocks|
2. "Tze-wan Kwan, Hongkong", Rude Negators
3. Paul T Kershaw, Bullocks and the hell
4. mark, Rude negator, correction
5. , rude negators

Further to Dick Hudson's question I note that in American English
an equivalent construction has existed for a long time (with the
same contrast depending on whether there are one or two tone
contours). Consider the following:
A: John has a million dollars.
B: Bullshit he has|
compare
A: John doesn't have any money.
B: Bullshit. He DOES|
P.S. Sorry if I have violated an Internet taboo, but this is the
only word that works this way in my dialect.
 Geoff Nathan <ga3662siucvmb.siu.edu>

Richard Hudson's question brings me for the first time to such phenomenon
as rude negators in language. To contribute to the ongoing discussion I
would like to give some examples I find in Chinese.
 Ta hui chang ge pi.
 She can sing (piece) wind from bowels.
And the sentence means literally:
 She cannot sing!
Besides this structure, there are obviously many other variations of
rude negators in Cantonese (a dialect in South China and in Hongkong)
where male and female organs are used to replace "wind".
Tz
Tze-wan Kwan
Department of Philosophy,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

I see I wasn't the only one who's heard "the hell" used in the way Richard
Hudson described "bullocks" being used (I responded, at first, directly to
him). I know of one actual record of the usage, but I don't know the date or
title (I think it's the Quiet Man, 1952), but I know it's a John Wayne movie.
In the movie,Wayne has the dialogue: "I ain't gonna hit 'im. I ain't gonna
hit 'im. THE HELL I AIN'T." (followed by Wayne hitting another character). I
wonder what other examples are out there?
-- Paul Kershaw, Michigan State University

In my recent posting on the "rude negator" "Bollocks he did!", I
made a dumb and possibly confusing mistake. The translation of
"The {hell/devil} he did!" should, of course, have been
 "You're totally wrong: he didn't!"
rather than
 "You're totally wrong: he *did!"
My apologies for the confusion.
 Mark A. Mandel
 Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
 320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : markdragonsys.com

Not only THE HELL but also LIKE HELL works as a negator in
front of a clause, though LIKE FUCK doesn't sound right to me
in the same position. MY ASS tends to come after a clause or
NP rather than before them in the brand of American English I'm
most used to hearing, e.g. IT'S CHEAP MY ASS or NO WATER MY ASS.
MY BALLS could work in this post-position for me as well, though
not in initial position. MY EYE fits in this same syntactic
class, but I guess it wouldn't count as "rude" in Dick Hudson's
sense.
 Neal R. Norrick tb0nrn1niu.bitnet