B1 — intermediateNegation

Negative concord

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Negative concord: when the negatives add up

Two things you already know well. The lesson “Basic negation” showed that Serbian negates with the particle ne in front of the verb, and that “there is no…” is nema. The lesson “Indefinite & negative pronouns” went through the words beginning with ni- (niko, “nobody”; ništa, “nothing”; nikad, “never”; nigde, “nowhere”) and warned you that such a word brings a negated verb with it. Both lessons showed that Serbian negatives do not cancel each other out.

Now it is time to pull this into one system. Its name is negative concord: the negatives in a sentence “agree” with each other. In Serbian they do not cancel out as they would in arithmetic; they add up and reinforce one overall “no”. Standard English pulls the other way: “Nobody knows”, one negative, full stop. In this lesson we make the Serbian rule automatic, come back to the pair ni...ni, “neither...nor”, and the particles i / ni, “even” / “not even”, which you met in the lesson “Basic coordination”, look at them more closely, and see where the English habit breaks the sentence.

The compulsory ne: the verb is always negated

The main rule has no exceptions: if the sentence contains a ni- word, the verb must be negated. Even when the ni- word comes before the verb and seems to have said it all already, you cannot leave out ne.

Niko ne zna contains two “minuses”, niko and ne, and that is the norm, not a mistake. Word for word it is “nobody doesn’t know”, a slip in standard English, which is exactly why English speakers are tempted to drop the ne. English, after one negative, switches to any- words (“I can’t see anything”); Serbian stays negative all the way through. There are more ni- words than the four above: nikako, “in no way, not at all”; nijedan, “not a single one”; ničiji, “nobody’s”; nikakav, “no … of any kind”. They all behave alike and pull a ne onto the verb: Nijedan autobus ne ide tamo. Not a single bus goes there. Note that nijedan is written as one word.

And negatives can pile up. Several ni- words call for no extra ne; the verb still has exactly one negation:

The first sentence has five negatives (niko, nikad, nikome, ništa, ne), and every one of them is in its place; in the third, the negation on the verb is the fused nisam. Where English says nobody … ever … anybody … anything, Serbian says niko … nikad … nikome … ništa. A handy rule of thumb: an English any- word in a negative clause is a Serbian ni- word. However many there are, the ne stays.

Deeper sources

Double negatives around the world

The world’s languages fall into two camps according to what they do with two negatives in one sentence. In negative concord languages (Serbian and the other Slavic languages, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) the negatives agree: Niko ništa ne zna has three minuses and one negative meaning. In languages where double negation works like logic (standard English, standard German, Latin) two negatives cancel out: “nobody knows nothing” formally means “everybody knows something”, and a school teacher will correct it.

Logic has little to do with it; these are different grammatical traditions, and English itself was once a concord language. Chaucer, the fourteenth-century poet, says of his Knight, He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde / In al his lyf unto no maner wight, meaning that he never said anything base to anyone; stacked negatives still turn up in Shakespeare. The rule that “two negatives make a positive” was laid down by eighteenth-century grammarians, and it won in writing; in everyday speech, concord never died (“I can’t get no satisfaction”, “I ain’t got nothing”).

If you speak Spanish or Italian, one refinement matters. Serbian concord is strict: the ne stays even when the negative word comes first (Niko ne zna). Spanish and Italian drop it in that position (Nadie sabe, Nessuno lo sa, with no no) and keep it only after the verb (No sé nada). In Serbian, ne is always there.

Cheat sheet

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Negative concord: when the negatives add up

Negative concord: a word in ni- means the verb must be negated (ne, or the fused nisam, nemam, neću). The negatives add up; the verb has just one negation. English any- in a negative clause = Serbian ni-.

The compulsory ne on the verb

Examples

Example	Translation
Niko ne zna.	Nobody knows.
Ništa ne vidim.	I can’t see anything.
Nikad nisam bio tamo.	I’ve never been there.
Nigde je nema.	She’s nowhere to be found.
Niko nikad nikome ništa ne kaže.	Nobody ever tells anybody anything.
Nikad nigde ništa ne nalazim.	I never find anything anywhere.
Nikome ništa nisam rekao.	I didn’t tell anyone anything.

ni- words: niko “nobody”, ništa “nothing”, nikad “never”, nigde “nowhere”, nikako “in no way”, nijedan “not a single one” (one word), ničiji “nobody’s”, nikakav “no … of any kind”. However many there are, ne stays, even when the ni- word comes first.

The exception: a short answer with no verb

No verb, no ne: the ni- word stands alone.

Examples

No verb	With a verb
— Ko zna odgovor? — Niko.	Niko ne zna.
— Koga si video? — Nikoga.	Nikoga nisam video.
— Kad se viđate? — Nikad.	Nikad se ne viđamo.
— Šta ima između njih? — Ništa.	Između njih nema ničega.

Likewise: Nikakvih problema! No problem at all!

The pair ni…ni, “neither…nor”

Examples

Example	Translation
Ni Marko ni Ana nisu došli.	Neither Marko nor Ana came.
Ne pije ni kafu ni čaj.	He drinks neither coffee nor tea.
Nemam ni vremena ni novca.	I have neither time nor money.

The verb is still negated: nisu, not “su”. Once only, before the second item: Ne pije kafu ni čaj.
Bookish niti…niti carries the negation itself, so its verb gets no ne: Niti pije niti puši. He neither drinks nor smokes. Niti sam gladan niti žedan. I’m neither hungry nor thirsty.

The particles i and ni: “even” / “not even”

Examples

Positive, with i	Negative, with ni
I Marko je došao. Even Marko came.	Ni Marko nije došao. Not even Marko came.
Popio je i poslednju kap. He drank every last drop.	Nije popio ni kap. He didn’t drink a single drop.

ni demands ne on the verb and also means “not … either”: Ni ja ne znam. I don’t know either. Before a verb: Nisam ih ni pitao. I didn’t even ask them.

A preposition splits the ni- word

With a preposition: ni sa kim, ni o čemu, ni o kome, ni od koga, ni u šta. Without: nikim, ničemu, nikoga, nikome. Ne verujem nikome. I don’t trust anyone. Ne verujem ni u koga. I don’t believe in anyone.