As those of you who speak French know, French indefinite and partitive articles change to de in the negative:
Je mange souvent *des* biscuits. (I often eat cookies.)
Je ne mange pas souvent *de* biscuits. (I don’t often eat cookies.)
I have been looking around the internet, but I have not been able to find out how this quirk of the language came to be. So, I was wondering if anyone knew. What’s the historical development of this phenomenon?
Here’s a discussion of what happened:
Here’s a French Wikipedia entry on this subject:
Basically what happened is that it became common to use an emphatic version of the negative in many cases. Thus one would say:
Je ne marche pas - I don’t walk a step
Je ne bois goutte - I don’t drink a drop
Je ne mange mie - I don’t eat a crumb
The reason that this became common was that the word “ne” was so quickly spoken that it became hard to hear. So these extended versions became standard for all negatives, not just emphatic ones. Eventually the other words dropped out and it became standard to use “pas” with “ne”.
O.K., the things I discussed in my last post aren’t in fact related to the question you asked, so never mind.
Actually, Wendell, I think you might be onto something. Taken literally, the negative phrases make sense with “de” – “I don’t eat a step of biscuits.”. See what I mean?
I had absolutely no clue that “pas” in negative sentences had any relationship with “pas” meaning “step”. In fact I had no clue about the evolution of this negative form. So, thanks for the explanation and the links.
As for des vs de, since nobody well informed posted yet, I’m going to hazard a guess.
Normally, “des” is used for things that can be counted, and “de” for things that can’t. For instance, “je mange des biscuits” means that I’m eating several (presumably small) cakes, while “je mange du biscuit” means that I’m eating a part of a (presumably large) cake. “Des” refers to a certain (unknown) number of things, while “de” refers to a certain (unkwnon) quantity of substance.
Since the negative sentence means that I’m not eating any cake, it seems logical to use “de”. I’m not not eating 3 cakes, nor 2, nor 1, I’m not eating any quantity of cake at all.
Not sure what I said makes sense, and once again, it’s only a guess.
That’s exactly what my French teacher told us. “Des” is specifically for plurals, and if you’re not eating, then the quantity you’re eating is zero, which is neither plural nor singular. It can’t be counted. Similarly, in English, we say, “I’m eating some cookies,” but we don’t* say, “I’m not eating some cookies.” We say, “I’m not eating any cookies,” or just “I’m not eating cookies.” The difference is that in French, you always need an article.
*Excepting special cases like, “I’m not eating some cookies; I’m eating all the cookies,” or “I’m not eating some cookies, but I am eating others.”
This is an interesting observation. That probably has something to do with it.
You might be interested in John McWhorter’s book, The Power of Babel, which discusses the transformation of Latin into French in some detail. In particular, he discusses how this sentence:
Agnoscite, sorores meae—femina ne canem loquentem quidem vidit!
became this sentence :
Admettez-le, mes sœurs—la femme n’a même pas vu le chien qui parle !
Just to clarify, I’m not asking about what the de in negative constructions means, but how the distinction between the affirmative and negative forms of the indefinite and partitive articles developed over time.
Sounds like an interesting read, but what an odd sentence to use as a basis for analysis - “Face it, my sisters - the woman didn’t even see the talking dog”? Does it come from anywhere?
Wendell Wagner
“Je ne marche pas - I don’t walk a step”.
Correct translation: I don’t go along, count me out, or in another context: je ne marche pas, je coure (I don’t walk, I run). In these cases pas is a negative adverb and has no relation whatsoever with pas “step”
“Je ne bois goutte - I don’t drink a drop”
The correct expression is “je ne vois goutte” (I don’t see a thing)
“Je ne mange mie - I don’t eat a crumb”
Again the real expression is “je ne vois mie” (I don’t see a thing). We never say “je ne mange mie”. Mie in this case means “nothing at all”. Mie isn’t used anymore in the sense of miettes or crumbs, except in the said expression.
Today’s meaning of mie is the soft inner part of a loaf of bread.
A bon entendeur, salut!
Not quite. The relationship between the two pas’s is that the noun is the origin of the adverb. This relationship is well attested. And it’s je cours. 
Yes and no. The French expression “je ne vois goutte” results from goutte having developed a negative meaning, a negative meaning that originates in “je ne bois goutte” and other phrases where not having a single drop of something would be an appropriate thing to say. Later, pas took over almost all of these other negations, leaving only things like “il ne sait que dire” and “je ne vois goutte” without it. A similar thing happened with mie.
McWhorter admits that the sentence is strange. As far as I’m aware, it was chosen to cram as much easy-to-explain language change as possible into a relatively short sentence, for example,
the origin of the French double negation
the elimination of the sounds at the end of Latin words that nonetheless live on in written French
the pronunciation changes that changed the /ε/ (the e of bed) of femina become the /a/ (the a of father) of femme
the origin of the definite article le
the development of the passé composé from a Latin construction that meant something completely different
Gymnopithys, I was talking about the earlier form of those sentences, not the current form. The point is the “pas” comes from the word for “step”. It now expresses the second half of “not”, but that’s what it came from.