ASPECTS OF NEGATION IN THE TRANSLATIONS OF ALEXE MARIN

Abstract

The paper addresses the issue of negation in the science popularization texts translated and adapted from French by Alexe Marin (1814–1895), a renowned professor of physics and chemistry whose activity had a significant influence on the modernization of literary Romanian. The texts (in the fields of astronomy, physics, meteorology, geometry, mechanics, technology, and general science) appeared between 1839 and 1864 and hugely impacted the development and functional
diversification of Romanian. The study tackles in detail the codification of negation in these texts. It can be observed that the negative constructions are various: strict double concordance structures, the amplified negation (with the repetitive insertion of the negator nici – not/neither), the use of adverbial and nominal intensifiers, patterns that explicitly express negation, equivalent constructions of clausal negation, constituent negation, and the variety of negative structures with values other than negation: the diverse constructions with expletive negation, false negation, the restrictive pattern nu…decât, or the polemic accumulation with a negative form. We also observe the accidental occurrence of simple negation, that is to be found almost exclusively in his first texts elaborated in 1839 and 1842. Apart this situation, all the other text exhibit strict negative concord.