> 「道歩いてんのに人影がまったくね..」

In the manga, the quoted sentence above is shown with an image of deserted
road, and I guess the meaning should be something like this:

> 「 _I'm walking down the road, but **not a single person in sight**.._ 」

But without the picture, I would have mistaken it as:

> 「 _I'm walking down the road, but **so many people in sight**.._ 」

Please help me understand the grammar of the sentence, because to me it seems
like a positive sentence.
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2021-02-21T10:15:46.640
84289
2021-02-21T12:46:02.087
41981
question
grammar
why the まったく in the sentence implies negative, instead of positive
The ね in this sentence context is the short form of ない, and 全く means "at all,
completely", so 全くね means "completely nothing" or "not a single thing there".
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2021-02-21T12:07:12.627
84290
2021-02-21T12:07:12.627
41965
84289
answer
This is because まったく is a [negative polarity
item](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/16060/5010) that implies (い)ない even
without saying it explicitly. The Japanese language has many such phrases.

> Unlike English, Japanese is verb-final, and negation usually comes toward
> the end of a sentence. Many Japanese NPIs appear early, and they're often
> signals that a negative predicate is coming up:
>
> In many cases, this signal is strong enough that you can leave out the
> actual part of the predicate containing the negation (as long as it can be
> inferred from context):
>

>> ​8a. ちっとも変わらない。  
>  ​8b. ちっとも。

So you can say something like this:

> 「寿司は好き？」「まったく。」  
>  "Do you like sushi?" "Not at all".

This ね after まったく is just a [filler meaning
nothing](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/14924/5010) in particular.
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2021-02-21T12:22:44.337
84291
2021-02-21T12:22:44.337
5010
84289
answer