Marius Magnus dixit:
Is there any evidence of using "non" + subjuncive in Latin? Perhaps this is what they did pre-nolle.
Non is used with the potential subjunctive as well as combined with
ut to form the negative of result clauses. I doubt
non was ever used for negating the imperative, however. But
ne with the imperative is in fact attested in Classical Latin literature, mirroring the Greek μή + imperative construction. This was likely the original negative imperative in Latin, although it seems to have largely fallen out of favor by the Classical period, being eventually replaced by the more idiomatic
noli + infinitive construction and the polite 2nd person hortatory subjunctive with
ne. It's interesting to note that Greek has a peculiar rule that the direct negative imperative construction is preferred in the present tense, but in the aorist the less direct negative hortatory subjunctive is preferred. (Yes, Greek has more than one tense for the imperative.)
It's important to understand that the earliest particle of negation in Latin was actually
ne.
Non itself developed much later. Because of this the earliest lexically negated words to develop in Latin were formed by the simple prefixing of this particle. For example,
nemo is a contraction of the original
nehomo*, i.e.'no man'. It also holds true for such ubiquitous words as
nullus (ne+ullus),
neuter (ne+uter),
nescio (ne+scio), and even
nolo (ne=volo). In fact
non itself originally was such a word, having the archaic form
noenum, a contraction of
ne and
oenum (an older form of
unum). Also attesting to this is the fact that the negative conjunctions
nec/
neque (obviously ne+que) and
neve/
neu (ne+ve) are almost always used in indicative sentences where one would not expect
ne. Likewise with the ossified phrase 'ne...quidem'. This same sort of thing also happened in Greek, with οὑ/οὑκ usurping the original domain of the negative particle μή (cognate with Latin
ne), leaving it to govern only the irrealis moods.
Furthermore, the interrogative enclitic -
ne is descended from
ne as well, indicating that negation could originally be used to express an interrogative undertone in Latin. This isn't surprising, and in fact Greek often uses μή alone as an interrogative particle. Since
ne was not stressed when used interrogatively, however, it soon underwent vowel-shortening and lost its accent, becoming an enclitic, which alters the normal accent of the word it's appended to. This kind of process, whereby two very syntactically dissimilar words are produced from a single source word through differentiation of stress, is in fact not so uncommon. In English, for example, both the words 'of' and 'off' are derived from the same preposition in Old English.
PS:Sorry to raise such a long-dead thread from out of the realm of shades, but the discussion caught my interest and it didn't seem like it would do too much harm to reanimate it.
