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A Whole Lot of Nothing

by biguglydave, February 8, 2011

Messages: 5

Language: English

biguglydave (User's profile) February 8, 2011, 4:05:14 AM

Maybe I need to get some new glasses! After more than a few months here at LERNU I just noticed that the dictionary engine responds with "neniuj trafoj" ("no hits" - plural) when nothing was found ("nenio troviĝis”).

Of course, English uses the plural in the case of “no hits”. Spanish, on the other hand, insists that you can't have more than one of “nothing” and restricts this same construct to the singular. Spanish seems to correspond more closely with the preferred definiton in PMEG: “neniu trafo”. PMEG does offer a "neniuj" alternative, but it seems to be fairly limited.

So, is there really a subtle difference in meaning between the two, or can one use neniu/neniuj as functional equivalents? What about other forms of neni- with -aj, oj?

What do you hear when you travel?

sudanglo (User's profile) February 8, 2011, 11:32:14 AM

Yes Dave, neniu trafo would seem better. But perhaps in other European languages you can use the plural, so it might be natural in E.

Of course, in English you would say 'You have no messages' and 'Are there any messages for me?

Would Spanish use a plural in those cases?

Miland (User's profile) February 8, 2011, 11:45:32 AM

In PMEG we have:
..kun posta O-vorto oni normale uzas neniu sen J .. Oni povas tamen uzi neniuj, se oni volas iel montri kontraston kun la ideo “pli ol unu”..

I translate:
"..with a noun following, we usually use neniu without J .. We can, however, use neniuj, if we want in some way to bring out a contrast with the idea "more than one".."

The example used is that of the absence of flowers in a window, which typically occur in groups.

Now with hits from a search engine we might expect one, more than one or none. Therefore, in my view it doesn't matter much whether neniu trafo or neniuj trafoj is used.

T0dd (User's profile) February 8, 2011, 2:13:41 PM

Esperanto, like many but by no means all languages, requires you to mark nouns as singular or plural. When using NENIU(J), you're not dealing with one or more than one, so there's no logical difference between NENIU FLORO and NENIUJ FLOROJ. Either way you say it, the number of flowers is neither singular nor plural; it's zero. But because Esperanto forces you to mark nouns as singular or plural, when you use NENIU or NENIUJ you create an impression of what might have been there, but isn't.

In some languages, there is no requirement to mark singular or plural every time, so the basic noun form means "at least one". We have a few English words that work that way, such as "sheep". As far as I know, there are no words like that in Esperanto.

danielcg (User's profile) February 9, 2011, 4:16:47 AM

Hi Biguglydave.

Spanish is not so straightforwardly consistent as you seem to believe. You can say "ningún acierto" but also "no hay aciertos", with the same meaning. Not to mention the inefable "no hubo ningún acierto", which logically (but not "Spanishtically") means that there indeed was at least one hit.

Regards,

Daniel

biguglydave:Maybe I need to get some new glasses! After more than a few months here at LERNU I just noticed that the dictionary engine responds with "neniuj trafoj" ("no hits" - plural) when nothing was found ("nenio troviĝis”).

Of course, English uses the plural in the case of “no hits”. Spanish, on the other hand, insists that you can't have more than one of “nothing” and restricts this same construct to the singular. Spanish seems to correspond more closely with the preferred definiton in PMEG: “neniu trafo”. PMEG does offer a "neniuj" alternative, but it seems to be fairly limited.

So, is there really a subtle difference in meaning between the two, or can one use neniu/neniuj as functional equivalents? What about other forms of neni- with -aj, oj?

What do you hear when you travel?

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