The loss of the negative
ne is not just a recent
colloquialism, because the
adverbs may be used as answers (in standard French):
Je ne vois rien. 'I (can) see nothing.'
Qu'est-ce que vous voyez? 'What can you see?'
Rien. 'Nothing.'
This is fine if we think in English terms as rien = 'nothing' and jamais = 'never'. But they began life as emphatic forms:
Je ne marche. 'I'm not walking.'
Je ne marche pas. 'I'm not walking a step.'
Je ne mange mie. 'I'm not eating a crumb.'
Je ne bois goutte. 'I'm not drinking a drop.'
Je ne vois personne. 'I can't see a (single) person.'
Now mie and goutte are absent from modern French, rien and jamais have clearly negative meaning, pas is more commonly the negative than the word 'step'; but personne is still quite plainly the word 'person'. So you get what sounds quite oddly ambiguous to an English learner's ear:
Je ne vois personne. 'I (can) see no-one.'
Qui voyez-vous? 'Whom can you see?'
Personne. 'No-one.' -- or, 'A person'??
(In reality: Une personne. = 'A person')
Of course it presumably doesn't bother the French. But it bothers me.
Disclaimer. I don't know any real French, I know only school and textbook French. Whether there is ever any problem like this in the colloquial language, I have no idea: thbz assures me the distinction between Personne and Une personne is clear.