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Is anybody aware of published analysis of this interesting construction, which seems to require what I will loosely term swear words to work? I believe I've only heard it in British English:

A1 - Dave got a job at Roche.
B1 - Fuck off did he! (=No he didn't; I don't believe you)

A2 - Whales are fish, you know.
B2 - Bollocks are they. (=No they aren't)

curiousdannii
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Luke Bradley
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    This is a language-specific question that may find better answers at dedicated sites: English.SE or English Learners.SE – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine Sep 15 '13 at 11:21
  • I'm not a speaker of British English, but surely B2 should be: 'Bollocks they are'. And A1 doesn't seem right either. Can you point to a real life example of them? – Gaston Ümlaut Sep 15 '13 at 12:21
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    The fact that you find the examples surprising is indicative of the interest of the construction, I would say. If you do a quick search for "bollocks is he", you'll see plenty of examples (e.g. "Bollocks did he throw a way an envelope with £2k inside. That's a big envelope and a big coincidence for the first time you've ever taken cash"- you'll have to disregard about half of the results - relevant ones are obvious.) And I disagree with the heavy-handed 'on hold' designation; this is precisely the type of quirky data that drove much work in generative syntax in the sixties and early seventies. – Luke Bradley Sep 15 '13 at 14:37
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    I agree with @LukeBradley - Mods are being unnecessarily heavy-handed here. This clearly isn't a question about whether or not a given construction is correct (which would make this a question about usage), but rather a question about how to give a syntactic analysis of a particular construction, which places it squarely in the remit of linguistics SE. The questioner could've done a better job at explaining why these constructions are surprising from the perspective of English syntax, but otherwise i think the question should be re-opened. – P Elliott Sep 16 '13 at 12:20
  • Also, @GastonÜmlaut, i'm a native speaker of BrE and B2 sounds perfectly normal to me, allbeit rather colloquial. I can also say "are they bollocks!" to mean the same thing. The data is sound. As it stands, i'm not sure how to analyse these, although B1 at least looks like it involves VP-ellipsis, i.e. Fuck off did he . The interesting thing here is that the presence of fuck off seems to trigger subject-auxiliary inversion. I'll have to think about this some more. Someone re-open the question and i'll have a crack at an answer at some point! – P Elliott Sep 16 '13 at 12:27
  • One final point - i don't see any reason to censor the expletives in the question title. They're within inverted commas - use/mention distinction people! I can think of several papers in journals off the top of my head which use uncensored expletives in example sentences. – P Elliott Sep 16 '13 at 12:29
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    I'm not a British English speaker, but I can only interpret the quotes as "Fuck off! Did he?" and "Bollocks! Are they?", making the question of syntax trivial. Perhaps if the OP could give a few examples of exactly the phenomenon they're describing and maybe reword the question to be more about syntax it could get reopened. – acattle Sep 16 '13 at 14:22
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    @acattle I don't think you could interpret the quotes that way if you heard them spoken. Their prosody would be similar to the American equivalent, "Like hell he did". I agree with others above that the question is definitely on-topic as is (it is not a prescriptive grammar or usage question; it's a syntax question and the data just happen to come from a single language) and should be re-opened, but maybe the OP should include a mention of this American English equivalent and note the word order difference as a point of interest. – musicallinguist Sep 16 '13 at 14:56
  • @PElliott it can be a bit dodgy doing linguistic analysis of written material that isn't precisely and narrowly transcribed. Prosody could be crucial here, but we can't tell unless we have some audio examples and/or a good phonemic transcription. – Gaston Ümlaut Sep 17 '13 at 03:26
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    @GastonÜmlaut Transcribed data doesn't hurt, but it's not standard in syntax papers, and probably not necessary here. As a native speaker, I can tell you that the examples sentences don't carry interrogative force. If a non-native speaker of BrE can't interpret them this way, so what? Just to expand the dataset a little, i accept these permutations:
    (i) Bollocks did he! (ii) Bollocks he did! (iii) Did he bollocks! ...BUT... *(iv) *he did bollocks!* The interesting thing here is that fronting of the expletive triggers inversion, just like, e.g. a wh-word, but it is optional.     – P Elliott Sep 17 '13 at 09:10
  • @LukeBradley I just wanted to say this: if you would like a question reopened (this one or in general), the best course of action is to appeal on Meta. I saw your comments by chance, I might have not seen them. :) Please post on Meta about the reopening and explain there briefly why you think it should be reopened. I'm in favor of reopening your question, but that way you'll help your case to be seen by more users. I also have a couple things to say. Thank you. :) – Alenanno Sep 18 '13 at 08:36
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    In fact, I've written a couple of papers on this, and it is not specific to English at all. This is my paper for the Modern Greek instance: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/docserver/15665844/v6n1_s6.pdf?expires=1531887386&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=40C182A32182D15758E997FE6F49D4AE . "Devil negation" and "Rude negators" are the keywords you will find this under. – Nick Nicholas Jul 18 '18 at 04:00
  • Incidentally, when I did online research on this two decades ago, I thought fuck you he did was restricted to Canada. – Nick Nicholas Jul 18 '18 at 06:36
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    @GastonÜmlaut I agree, additionally "The fuck he did." sounds to me much more natural than B1. – iacobo Jul 18 '18 at 10:14

1 Answers1

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This kind of construction occurs in multiple languages (e.g. Irish, Cantonese, Modern Greek); it is called Devil Negation, or Rude Negators. Comments above expressed confusion about the examples from OP; in American English, the usual form is like hell he did or the hell she did.

What is distinctive about it is that the negation is not expressed overtly; it is implied by the presence of an expression of anger or exasperation, as a reaction to the clausal content. Doing some googles,

Nick Nicholas
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