A strange use of のに

I was watching a movie and this sentence showed up: "作家に経験がないのにいい作品は作れないのよ。" Through the context (this line was spoken by an editor talking to an author that had no experience in the subject they were writing about) I know this has to mean "An author who has no experience cannot make a good work".

I felt I had an good grasp on のに meaning something like "although" or "despite", and that a sentence constructed as AのにB meant that despite A being logically expected, B happened. But this sentence does not fit that. I did ask elsewhere about this and was told that you could just "negate" what comes after のに and the sentence will work fine as the "opposite" of. Of course, I know this is natural because it was said by a Japanese person in a Japanese movie but I cannot wrap my head around it. I know I'm not supposed to translate it, but it reads like "Although an author has no experience, he/she cannot make a good work". It just seems like a weird way to phrase it at all; why not use 経験がない作家にはいい作品が作れないのよ, or use a conditional?

Can someone enlighten me? Any help would be good. I cannot find resources explaining this "のに" usage either because most only talk about the "normal" usage of のに.

See the following thread.


In your example, the whole "作家に経験がないのにいい作品は作れる" is negated.

I understand the explanation, though it still reads complex to me. The cr. sentences make sense in my mind right away, however. Is context the only way to recognize the a final ない negating a whole sentence that contains のに like this?

Thank you again!

(sidenote: who would've thought there was such a similar question and so recently? I apologize. I'll be sure to look around before posting next time; I only looked for answers to this in other sites and found nothing)

Yes. It's really confusing, but you need to interpret the meaning from the context. See the following examples found in a corpus.

用もないのに帰ることはできない。
受け持って間もないのに、短時間で内容ある話はできない

首を締められているわけでもないのに、酸素が気管をとおって肺に入ってこない。

The whole preceding part before ない, i.e., 用もないのに帰ることはできる and 受け持って間もないのに、短時間で内容ある話はできる are negated in first two examples, respectively, but only the main verb 入ってくる is negated in the final one. It can be said that if the meaning is really ambiguous, for instance, when the both interpretations are possible, the writer/speaker wouldn't choose this expression, though.

jaspion said:

(sidenote: who would've thought there was such a similar question and so recently? I apologize. I'll be sure to look around before posting next time; I only looked for answers to this in other sites and found nothing)

Click to expand...

There's no need to apologize. I remember questions about this のに were asked repeatedly like the one linked below. It must be really confusing, especially for non-native learners, I think.