negation of 有名

[Guest123]

 

 

does negation always include a syntactic addition, or can it just be a change?

In grammar negation is an operation, which is always clearly expressed, that declares as false an affirmative statement. There are different ways to negate. But it's important to see the difference between negation and antonyme - the opposite meaning.

Compare negations 

去- 不去

来了 - 没来

有人 - 没有人

他是昨天来的吗？- 不是， 他是前天来的。

and antonymes

好 - 坏 （negation would be 不好/不坏）

大 - 小

热 - 冷

[Angelina]

"However, 并不有名 is totally OK. I believe it's because 并 and 不 unite even more tightly than 不+Verb, which now gives 并不|有名 so there is no violation thus everyone is happy.

Hope it helps."

Prosody is important in Mandarin.

[陳德聰]

I don't think it's a prosodic constraint playing the key role so much as the blocking done by 并不 being its own lexical item.

[ZhangJiang]

I think Verb-Object structure doesn't mean 有名 is not an adjective. 

出名 is another example.

出什么名

不出名 is also acceptable.

 

You are right, Divato.

I agree with you that 有名 is both a split-able structure and an adjective. I assumed that 不有名 would be analysed as 不有|名 based on how 不 and other Verb-Object phrases function together. However, despite that they are all V-O structures, how grammatically similar 有名 is with 吃饭 and 做饭 is actually an uncertain thing for me. They have their major differences in that 吃、做、饭 are all independent words while 名 is not. In my last post I made the assumption because it made sense, since if it were 不|有名, the whole problem would have not existed. However, now I see that to segment 不出名 as 不出|名 is quite counter intuitive, which makes me feel I could have been wrong. But once again, how similar is 有名 and 出名?

 

There is a similar Verb-Object structure word 有种

I think 有|种 is not an adjective and it means you have guts.

But If you see 有|名 separately, I think it's totally different meaning.

So I think 有名 is an adjective of 有名气 which is derived from Verb-Object structure.

 

How to tell whether a Chinese compound is a word (and what part of speech) or a phrase is quite complex. Since we can say both 很有种 and 有种的人, I tend to consider it an adjective too. (You can't say *very have guts.)

I don't think to see it as 有|名 gives a totally different meaning. 名 can mean both the name one has others to call and that others to foul. (I made this up but you know what I mean.) 有名 can mean both being famous and having a name as in 有名有姓. And also 大名 can mean both good fame as in 大名鼎鼎 and formal name, as in 你的大名叫什么.

I think that 有名气 is newer than 有名 because in classical Chinese nearly every character is a word by itself, and in this case 名 for fame. I remember seeing 有名 in Japanese but I'm not so sure. If this is true, then maybe to segment in between 有名 is a legacy usage. I don't know when 出名 came into use so I can't compare.

 

 

 

Prosody is important in Mandarin. 

 

Yes, Angelina, this is so true. Consider how you can say 种菜、种蔬菜 and 种植蔬菜 but not 种植菜. Actually I'm now thinking all this 不有X can't appear phenomenon is just because the prosody rule doesn't allow it, regardless of how one cuts his sentences from the grammar aspect. This is a much simpler explanation.

 

Hope my inference is helpful, though may not be so correct.

[ZhangJiang]

 

 

I don't think it's a prosodic constraint playing the key role so much as the blocking done by 并不 being its own lexical item.

 

The fact that 有利 has a negated form (or acronym?) 不利 gets me think that 有利 is definitely an adjective thus 不有利 is so much needed that finally 不利 came into place.

[陳德聰]

I think that might be a tougher example because I see 利 as sometimes noun sometimes adjective.

[ZhangJiang]

Right, I 开了一下脑洞

[Guest123]

I wonder if there are more examples similar to 有利/不利？

Some adjectives with 有 are negated with 没 ：没趣，没意思，没用， 没劲…… 

Another interesting example: 有害/无害，有益/无益，有形/无形。Does it mean that 无 in some cases can be seen as negation of 有?

[Angelina]

陳德聰 , It is 並不+有名 instead of 並+[不+有名]. However, I think there might be some prosodic constraints involved. 

[Divato]

ZhangJiang, you are right, Chinese is complex.

However, I don't think we should see 有名, 有(v)|什么|名(n) as one.

They share same roots. However, it's independent. The first one is an adjective and the second one is just a phrase.

We can interpret the word by its characters separately but the grammar rules should apply on the whole words.

For example, there's 有用 and 没用, 有种 and 没种, why there is not 没名 as an negation of 有名 if you can separate 有 and 名?

I think it's just because the Chinese just didn't define this word.

 

But hey, most of Chinese words are combined by characters.

So if you separate 有|名, yeah, it's not necessarily different meaning because 名 could be name or fame but it wouldn't be the same word because it's not even one word because both 有 and 名 are words here.

有名(adj)

有(v)|名(n)

So, Chinese is flexible.

 

Besides, as an Cantonese speaker, I can tell 有唔(不)有名, 出唔(不)出名 and 有唔(不)有型 are grammatically correct. Since Mandarin and Cantonese is actually a branch of Chinese and I think the grammar structure actually almost the same(the written grammar is the same), I think 不有名 is grammatically correct but it sounds weird so not many people would use it.

[陳德聰]

Divato thanks for your post, but we're trying to get to why it is "weird" despite being grammatically correct. Also Cantonese and Mandarin grammar (spoken) are pretty different, but that's not really the point.

[ZhangJiang]

I wonder if there are more examples similar to 有利/不利？

Not that I can think of. It turned out 不利 was a very ancient word which appeared in the famous "时不利兮驹不逝" from 《史记》. But it means more like not smooth or things going wrong. In 有利/不利 it means unfavorable and is has more to do with 利 as advantageous in 有利.

 

Another interesting example: 有害/无害，有益/无益，有形/无形。Does it mean that 无 in some cases can be seen as negation of 有?

Yes. I'm guessing that 无 is just the ancient form of 没, i.e. there was just one word for the negation of 有 at first. Only the written down version and the spoken version gradually had pronunciation and stylistic difference so people borrowed the character 没 mo4 meaning to sink to represent the new 无. And the Cantonese version 冇 mou and the Sichuan mandarin 莫 mo2 are also the same word. It's all my guess though.

 

 

why there is not 没名 as an negation of 有名 if you can separate 有 and 名?

There is 无名. So I would guess it's a stylistic choice.

[Angelina]

You are right, 无 in 南无 is mo2. This was a transcription from Sanskrit, they had to use a commonly used character for mo. 

[wushucrab20]

I think 不是很有名 is a way I've heard it said casually many times.

[Carl Chen]

I think the negation of 有名 may be 默默無名 since the negation of 有 could be 無.

Or we could say it colloquially, 沒有名氣 compared to 有名(氣).