Ni+verbs

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 2, 2011 at 1:49am

I don't think there's really a separate rule as such: in either case, there are essentially two patterns:

 

1) Make the first negative a 'normal' negative, and then use 'ni' with subsequent negatives;

2) Use 'ni' with all of the negatives in the sentence, with a special observation in cases where the first 'ni' has "nowhere to go".

 

So what do I mean by "nowhere to go"? Well, if you use option (2) with a simple verb, in effect you end up 'missing' out one of the 'ni's. Logically, you would expect your sentence to be:

 

  *Il ni ne mange de viande ni ne boit de lait.

but in practice this isn't generally judged grammatical, and you actually end up with the following, in effect "missing out" the first 'ni':

 

  Il ne mange de viande ni ne boit de lait.

 

But, contrast this with a compound tense, where the first 'ni' has "somewhere to go", then you could end up with e.g.:

 

  Il n'a ni mangé de viande ni bu de lait.

 

One thing to note is that "ni" is really part of formal usage. In everyday, spontaneous speech, it is rarely used. So there is a difficulty when you start thinking about grammaticality judgements of this type of sentence, because part of what you're judging arguably ends up being a matter of linguistic etiquette/preference in formal usage rather than judgements about the underlying language itself as manifest in spontaneous speech.

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Permalink Reply by michael rivers on October 3, 2011 at 1:07am

Thanks for the reply. I think I was overthinking it and your answer makes it a lot simpler.

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