French negation with only "ne" (not "pas")

[Carmody]

Many thanks to Iverson and everyone for their contributions.

[lysi]

"Je ne sais" is not a complete sentence in modern French whatever the register.

Incorrect. Savoir with ne has a different sense to savoir with ne pas. "Ne pas savoir" is like "to not know" while "ne savoir" is more like "to be uncertain". In every other case it demands the full negation. It's pretty high register though.

In Medieval French the second element was actually seldom "pas", but rather "mie" (crumb) or "goutte"(droplet), but since then "pas" (step) has pushed the others out of existence.

"point" is still in use in my family (jokingly and infrequently) in "je n'sais point" (for additional authenticity, with our accent "je" is pronounced "jeu", and "sais" could be pronounced either sè or sé. Lyon area.)

I've also heard "goutte" in "on n'y voit goutte" said by elderly farmers (who have since passed away).

Iverson is correct when he brings up 'mie' as an auxiliary, which is actually surprisingly still used in some places, apparently. I've never heard it before in the wild though obviously.

There's also 'mot' in phrases like 'ne dire mot' and, probably one of the weirdest things in French, the phrase 'ne pouvoir mais' which means 'ne pouvoir plus' because that's what 'mais' originally signified during the middle ages and I think other romance languages but I don't know exactly.

I'm not sure about 'je ne sais point' because I've only heard of 'je ne sache point', which, contrarily to what the phrase actually says, actually means 'je sais', but that's pretty high register stuff.

One of the effects of negation originally being tied to the 'ne' with the auxiliary 'pas'/'point'/'rien' etc is that the original positive sense of the auxiliary still exists. For example, rien is still used to represent (rarely) 'chose' in a positive sense because it comes from the latin 'res' which just meant 'chose'. The positive sense of 'aucun' is only really used in 'd'aucuns' which means 'certains'. The positive sense of jamais exists only in 'à jamais' which means 'pour toujours', and 'personne' is of course still used with the sense positive very commonly.

Now to talk about where ne by itself exists without any negative auxiliary: In phrases where 'que' means 'pourquoi', ne is used without an auxiliary, so for example 'que ne me disiez-vous'. But this is also possible for any sentence with an interrogative determinant/pronoun. It's also used for any 'si conditional', it's present in 'si je ne me trompe' which is pretty common. You'll also see it in 'je n'ai d'autre desir que' which is not 'ne que' but has a sense of 'my only desire is to'. And you'll also see it after things like 'cela fait 3 mois qu'on ne s'est vu' or with depuis or with il y a. There's also the couple verbs which use ne by itself which I'm sure everybody knows of.

As a side note it's always strange when a French learner uses 'point' (except in point n'est besoin, or point n'ai besoin if you're Hervé Bazin). It's not high register, it's just archaic, use 'nullement' or 'aucunement' instead.

[lysi]

usage of "ne" without a corresponding "pas"?

Thank you so much for posting this question; I am still wrestling with the answer...

I run across it all the time in the French literature that I read.

There are cases where the author will use it just when they want without any real precedent for it in literature. If it's not a 'ne expletif' then it's just a ne without an auxiliary with the sense of full negation. It requires a bit of processing but you get better at it as you do it.

[lysi]

(there's even a section titled "Omission simultanée de « ne » et « pas »" - what are you doing, French?)

This is actually a really weird phenomena but also really cool. The negation can be distinguished by the position of the pronoun. I hope this gets more widespread usage for negative imperatives, like in 't'inquiete'.

[Jinx]

This is one more use of the "ne explétif". I mentioned two other uses of this 'ne' above, and it would take several pages to describe it comprehensibly, but there is a reasonably simple overview here.

Aha, I didn't realize that was the same thing as what you were describing. Thanks, Iversen!

[Sizen]

There's also the couple verbs which use ne by itself which I'm sure everybody knows of.

For those who don't know, and to the best of my knowledge, those verbs are savoir, pouvoir, oser and cesser. You won't often hear them without pas outside of formal registers, however.

[Jinx]

There's also 'mot' in phrases like 'ne dire mot' and, probably one of the weirdest things in French, the phrase 'ne pouvoir mais' which means 'ne pouvoir plus' because that's what 'mais' originally signified during the middle ages and I think other romance languages but I don't know exactly.

This is very cool to learn – my language-nerd soul is happy

It appears that French "mais" and a whole string of other similar Romance-language (and other) words meaning both "more" and "but", as you correctly guessed, are all derived from the Latin word "magis" meaning "more" or "rather".

[Le Baron]

Another very interesting usage of "ne" without a corresponding second part is in sentences such as "J'ai peur qu'il ne soit trop tard"

This sort of construction is a fairly normal construction after 'que'.

Ne used 'alone' without pas/plus/rien etc, appears frequently (as n') in this type of construction: personne n'a compris. Or: aucun d'entre eux n'a apporté de gateau. I say alone, but there's obviously another negative element there (personne, aucun....).

[outcast]

I think all the great posts pretty much explained what I am going to say, but in do have some brief notes on these aspects in my voluminous French grammar notes (which are now 9 years old!).

As everyone agrees, the main negative particle in modern spoken French is "pas", no doubts about that, and so that is the one that should not be eliminated if you need to choose between skipping "ne" or "pas".

There is something called the "ne litteraire", which has many restrictions. It is apparentely specifically with only three common verbs: pouvoir, cesser, oser, where it is acceptable in writing style to omit pas, only in the present tense or simple tenses (one word verb tenses):

"Il ne cesse de parler".

French native speakers can confirm or not whether this is actually so, it seems to be agreed upon that it can be done with "pouvoir".

It seems this "ne litteraire" can also be used with "savoir" in some contexts of uncertainty (including the conditional), and with some verbs if they are used in a "si" clause. And that's all I have written. This "ne litteraire" cannot be used with any other common verb, you always must include pas. It cannot be used with "savoir" when it means "to know", and cannot be employed with any compound tenses like the passé composé.

The "ne éxpletif", unlike the above "ne litteraire" performs no real grammatical function and far as I can see it's just a particle, somewhat like a rhetorical particle.

[Iversen]

Grammatical function ... well, if you give it a name and it obeys certain laws of syntax (unlike coughs and sneezes and superfluous pauses) then it has a grammatical function.

The solitary negative "ne" after certain verbs ("je ne puis.. ", " je saurais ...") is a remnant from a time where the second part of the negation (now mostly "pas") still just was seen as a reinforcement. So this "ne" is the exact same one as the first half of the double negation. But what about the expletive "ne"? From a syntactical point of view it has the same function as the negative "ne", but clearly not the same semantics - and it can usually be dropped without further ado. So why did someone invent it?

My hunch is that it appeared because the subordinates at some deep layer could be derived from sentences with a negation: "Elle a plus de monnaie que je n'aurais cru" - je n'avait pas cru qu'elle avait tellement de monnaie", "je crains qu'il ne vienne sans me prévenir" <--- il ne doit pas venir sans me prévenir" etc. etc. (these examples are not meant as strictly Chomskian transformations). But life would be easier for both foreign learners and French schoolchildren if the expletive "ne" was abolished and disappeared from the surface of the planet. It only lives on because those who don't use it may appear less cultured in the eyes of those who proudly continue to use it.