Several current theories can account for the relation which holds, in French, between such sentences as :

(1) Jean est un fumeur (John is a smoker)
(2) Jean fume (John smokes)
(3) Jean n’est pas un fumeur (John is no smoker)
(4) Jean ne fume pas (John doesn’t smoke)

By this way the same theories easily relate:

(5) Jean ne fume rien (John doesn’t smoke anything)
(6) Jean n’est pas fumeur
(7) Jean ne travaille à rien (John doesn’t work on anything)
(8) Jean n’est pas travailleur (John is no « worker »)

But as far as we know they utterly fail to account for the relations that hold between the four following sentences¹ :

(9) Jean ne branle rien
(10) Jean branle quelque chose
(11) Jean n’est pas un branleur
(13) Jean est un branleur

for, in spite of our theoretical expectations, (10) and (11) are synonymous and mean « John works », (9) and (13) are synonymous and mean « John doesn’t work » : a French « branleur » is a guy who « branle rien ». Much « work » is still needed in semantic theory.²

	What Part of ‘No’ Don’t You Understand?—Strang Burton
	Everything Logicians Need to Know about Linguistics, but are (Posited to be) Afraid to Ask—Keith Slater, Trey Jones, and Two Anonymous Linguists from Omaha
	Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca Contents