The morphosyntax of negation in Kiswahili

Journal of West African Languages, 2018

There currently exists extensive literature written on the topic of negation but only recently have studies of negation begun to expand outside of the limited scope of Indo-European languages. Linguists are finding that certain patterns thought to be cross-linguistic occur mainly in this most heavily studied language family. The intent of this article is to provide a succinct survey of the negation strategies in a collection of Kwa (Niger-Congo) languages in order to contribute to the literature on negation. Commonly cited patterns such as Jespersen's cycle (Jespersen 1917) are almost entirely unattested in this language group. There is a consistent pattern of marking negation in Akan, Ewe, and the North Guang languages involving the use of a preverbal nasal morpheme. Interestingly three South Guang languages utilize instead a verbal prefix-. The Ga-Dangme languages stand out from other Kwa languages in their use of verbal suffixes rather than prefixes. The Ghana-Togo Mountain languages of the Kwa group also do not rely on preverbal nasal negation marking.

Final authors'/editors' version; "Negation in Arawak Languages" presents detailed descriptions of negation constructions in nine Arawak languages (Apurinã, Garifuna, Kurripako, Lokono, Mojeño Trinitario, Nanti, Paresi, Tariana, and Wauja), as well as an overview of negation in this major language family. Functional-typological in orientation, each descriptive chapter in the volume is based on fieldwork by authors in the communities in which the languages are spoken. Chapters describe standard negation, prohibitives, existential negation, negative indefinites, and free negation, as well as language-specific negation phenomena such as morphological privatives, the interaction of negation with verbal inflectional categories, and negation in clause-linking constructions.

African Study Monographs, 2005

Negation has recently constituted a fascinating area of study both in descriptive and theoretical linguistics because of the varying positions that the negative morpheme occupies in the world's languages and the need to determine the position of this morpheme at Deep Structure. In addition, while some languages employ a single negative morpheme ubiquitously, some others employ more than three morphemes, with the use of many of the morphemes predicated on the tense of the verb. This paper investigates the structure of negative constructions in Mokpe and two related coastal Bantu languages of Cameroon. Although Mokpe and these other languages employ two or more negative morphemes, these morphemes are not free variants; the use of any of them is constrained by the tense/aspect of the verb under consideration. A "Principles and Parameters Theory" treatment of negation in Mokpe is offered.

Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-Online (AAeO) 1/2016 [https://www.afrikanistik-aegyptologie-online.de/archiv/2016/4479]: This paper aims to summarize the most salient features of Kivu Swahili, the variety of Kiswahili spoken in the Kivu provinces of DR Congo. It addresses the core differences between ECS (Kiswahili as spoken on the Tanzanian coast) and the Swahili from Goma/Bukavu, also taking into consideration contact-induced change and speakers’ free variations. The paper aims to illustrate the complex morphosyntax of the language, and questions the general description of the variety as a ‘pidginized’ or ‘simplified’ form of Kiswahili, due to its divergence from ECS and the peripheral location of the community of speakers. Moreover, the paper aims to address speakers’ acrolectal reference to the standard variety, and discusses the latter against a theoretical background of the ‘constructedness’ of East Coast Swahili. Some concluding remarks summarize the salient features of Kivu Swahili, and suggest perspectives on more in-depth analyses of the language.

2022

This paper explores variation between Kimakunduchi and Standard Swahili with a focus on verbal morphosyntax. With several varieties of Swahili identified and described over the years, here we focus on the Kimakunduchi variety spoken in the southeast of Zanzibar. While Kimakunduchi exhibits a number of features which are similar to those of Standard Swahili, it also has features which are distinct from those of the standard variety. In this paper we explore the variation in these two varieties through an examination of features relating to the TAM domain, negation, verbal finiteness, verb type, auxiliary constructions and relative clauses. These are areas which have not previously received in-depth examination or for which we present new data. The paper furthers the descriptive status of Kimakunduchi, contributes to a better understanding of the difference between the two varieties and deepens our understanding of microvariation in Bantu languages. The present paper also provides new insights which enable the development of updated hypotheses relating to diachronic change through reexamining Kimakunduchi and Standard Swahili morphosyntactic features.

Macrolinguistics, 2008

：Sesotho is one of the African Languages where sentence negation is expressed by means of bound negative morphemes. It has only three negative morphemes which are spread across the Sesotho matrix and subordinate clauses. They are the negative morphemes /ha/, /sa/ and /se/.These morphemes are bound verbal morphemes that negate various predicate forms and only appear in restricted sentence types. The central aim of this paper is to examine sentence constructions that realize negation by means of the negative morpheme /sa/ and its syntactic distribution within copulative verbs, non-copulative verbs, deficient verbs and aspect morphemes over a full range of inflectional categories such as tense, aspect and mood. This morpheme will be examined within the general framework of the Minimalist Programme, which holds that inflectional categories occur as heads of phrasal categories. This paper will further illustrate the morphological representations of these morphemes within Beard's (1995) Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology, which defines morphology as the sum of all the phonological means of expressing the relations of constituents in words, of words in phrases and of phrasal constituents in sentences. It distinguishes lexemes from bound morphemes.

2014

GARIFUNA NEGATIVES b. M-óumuguu-tina. NEG-sleep:N-T1SG 'I didn't sleep.' (23) a. Busíyen-tina dúna. want:B-T1SG water 'I want water.' b. M-abúsiyen-tina 9 dúna. NEG-want:N-T1SG water 'I don't want water.' (24) a. Gúndaa-tina. be.happy-T1SG 'I am happy.' b. M-agúndaa-tina. NEG-be.happy:N-T1SG 'I'm not happy.' (25) a. Dará n-umu-tu gáfu. open:B PR1SG-TRAN-T3F box 'I opened the box.' b. M-adáru n-umu-tu gáfu. NEG-open:N PR1SG-TRAN-T3F box 'I didn't open the box.' Taylor (e.g., 1952a: 150) refers to this "adjectivalizing" prefix as "privative" mA-, 10 and indeed, examples like (23)-(25) suggest that a prefix ma-is added to the basic verb stem. However, the vowel after the prefix is not always a, e.g. in verbs that begin with a vowel other than a, as in (22b), so it seems best to analyze the prefix as simply m-. 2. Negative verb stems 20 GARIFUNA NEGATIVES c. N-ídii ba. PR1SG-go:PS ba 'I will go.' In many of our examples the negative stem (N) is the same as the PS stem, but this is not always the case, as illustrated below: (31) a. N-adúnra bo-u Jena. PR1SG-touch:PS ba-D3F Jena 'I'm going to touch Jena.' b. M-adúnru n-umu-tu Jena. NEG-touch:N PR1SG-TRAN-D3F Jena 'I didn't touch Jena.' (32) a. N-abûrüha ba. PR1SG-write:PS ba 'I'm going to write.' b. M-abûrühaa-tina. NEG-write:N-T1SG 'I didn't write.' (33) a. L-áhuyu yan húya. PR3M-rain:PS INC rain 'It's raining.' b. M-áhuyun-ti húya. NEG-rain:N-T3M rain 'It didn't rain.' Thus, the PS and N stems may be the same, they may end in different vowels (31), they may have a longer final vowel in the N stem (32), 13 or they may have a final nasal vowel in the N stem (33). The appearance of the nasal vowel supports the claim of Suazo (38) a. Hanúfude-tuwa. be.afraid:B-T1PL 'We're afraid.' b. M-anúfude-tuwa. NEG-be.afraid:N-T1PL 'We're not afraid.' 16 We've recorded wuríba, wuíba, and wríba for this verb (as well as variants with ü replacing u). The second and third variants reflect a strong tendency toward deletion of (some, primarily but not only) intervocalic r's and an opposite tendency to drop an unstressed vowel before a stressed syllable starting with r (e.g. in furése / frése 'be fast'). 17 Taylor (1952b: 225) suggests that the h-we discuss here is a "rare alternant" of the gin section B.3.3. Perhaps this was true at one time, but it does not seem to be the case today. G-only occurs on stative verbs, but 'whip' (40) (to cite one example) is neither stative nor apparently derived from a stative verb. (There are certainly other differences as well, not the least of which is that h-initial verbs can freely be prefixed, while g-initial verbs normally cannot, except in the reanalysis cases we discuss in section B.3.4.) 18 We have discovered only a few exceptions to the h-drop rule, among them haláguwa 'break', which has negative forms máhalashagu (transitive) and mahálagashu (intransitive). Note that the h-drop cases cannot be analyzed as involving h-insertion in the B stem, since there are many vowel-initial verbs that never begin with h-, such as abínaha 'dance', éiha 'see', ínyu 'be tall', óumuga 'sleep', úwa 'not exist', and ûhüran 'shoot'. think:B-T1SG 'I think.' b. M-éitagu-tina. NEG-think:N-T1SG 'I don't think.' (40) a. Hóungura l-umu-tina. whip:B PR3M-TRAN-T1SG 'He whipped me.' b. M-óunguru l-umu-tina. NEG-whip:N PR3M-TRAN-T1SG 'He didn't whip me.' 3.3. Affirmative g-/ negative m-alternations A number of stative verbs appear with gin the affirmative (gA-19 "attributive" for Taylor, e.g., 1956a: 5), m-in the negative. The most productive of these are morphological potential forms like those in (41) and possessive verbs derived from nouns, as in (42): 20 (41) a. G-erémuha-dii-tina. AF-sing-POT-T1SG 'I can sing.' b. M-erémuha-dii-tina. NEG-sing-POT-T1SG 'I don't sing; I can't sing.' (42) a. G-abûdügü be-i. AF-POSSED.store ba-D3M 'He will have a store.' b. M-abûdügü be-i. NEG-POSSED.store ba-D3M 'He won't have a store.' (50) Giyára-ti n-erémuha. be.able:B-T3M PR1SG-sing:PS 'I can sing.' 25 (51) Siyán-ti n-erémuha. be.unable:B-T3M PR1SG-sing:PS 'I can't sing.' But siyán can also be negated (as noted by Taylor 1952a: 164): (52) M-ásiyanruu-tina. NEG-be.unable:N-T1SG 'I'm not unable.' This suggests that (for contemporary speakers at any rate) there is a convergence between two paradigms, one defective, rather than simple suppletion. 4.2. Subúsi / Abúdei The two verbs for 'know' are subúsi 'know' and abúdei 'not know': (53) Subúsi-ti úraga n-ún. know:B-T3M story PR1SG-DAT 'I know the story.' 26 (54) Abúdei-ti úraga n-ún. not.know:B-T3M story PR1SG-DAT 'I don't know the story.' In this case, it seems that neither verb can be negated with m-(or in any other way). 5. Verbs that cannot be negated Some auxiliary-like or modal verbs have no negative counterpart and cannot be negated. Diyú 'should' is one example: 25 These two verbs take a clausal complement, which agrees as third person masculine. The same is true of diyú in B.5. 26 These examples illustrate the oblique subject construction described in Munro (2007). Both verbs can also occur in normal transitive constructions. f. M-óumuga tan. NEG-sleep:H PR3F-an 'Don't let her sleep.' g. N-óumugu ba. PR1SG-sleep:PS ba 'I will sleep.' h. M-óumuguu ba-dina. NEG-sleep:N ba-DX1SG 'I won't sleep.' (58) a. Hóu ban ! eat:B PR2SG-an 'Eat!' b. Hóu wa-man. eat:B PR1PL-an 'Let's eat.' c. Hóu tan. eat:B PR3F-an 'Let her eat.' d. M-éiga ban ! NEG-eat:H PR2SG-an 'Don't eat!' e. M-éiga wa-man. NEG-eat:H PR1PL-an 'Let's not eat.' f. M-éiga tan. NEG-eat:H PR3F-an 'Don't let her eat.' g. N-éigi ba. PR1SG-eat:PS ba 'I will eat.' (25) a. ma-shikoa-thi PRIV-home-NL.M 'a homeless man' b. ka-shikoa-thi ATR-home-NL.M 'a man with home'

This paper examines the various morpho-syntactic distributions of negation in sixteen Yorùbá dialects and comes up with some interesting questions, observations and claims. Negation is contextualised in the dialects; it is marked by different elements within the word and within the sentence. Some of the NEG formatives examined are used to negate the indicative expressions, others are used in the imperative mood while some others are mainly used to negate the focus marker. Nearly all the NEG Morphemes examined precede the verb except má/mó̩ [+NEG] which may be used at the end of the VP. This work believes that within the scope of àì [+NEG], it is not a complex negative morpheme; the low-toned "à" is regarded as the negator in the syntax of Yorùbá negation. Following , this work takes the NEG to belong to a category known as the Negative Phrase. It functions as a syntactic Head which projects into a NegP. Here, NEG is taken as an independent category which projects its own X-bar structure NegP; it inhabits a borderline between functional and lexical projections. We observe that the differences between the morphemes of negation in these sixteen Yorùbá dialects are of linguistic change. We also realise in this work that in as much as morphemes of negation in Yorùbá dialects commute with the aspecto-modal marker of negative polarity, they can be placed in the position of the functional category Asp. In essence, negation in the sixteen Yorùbá dialects commutes with the tense/aspecto-modal nuances. The various NEG morphemes of the Yorùbá dialects discussed in this paper have shown that the verbo-aspectual negative polarity subsumes very much as a strong feature.

TONE AND PREFIXATION: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN NEGATION IN ORSU DIALECT OF IGBO, 2021

There are some concepts in linguistics like negation among others, which are a sine-qua-non for everyday human communication. The implication of this existence is its universal nature as all languages of the world adopt a unique negative particle. GHI has been established as the negative particle used in the Igbo language, which is usually a type of affix known to be suffix. Hence, this paper aims at revealing the peculiar strategy used by Orsu dialect of the Igbo language in achieving negation for various constructions. The researchers contracted about five different native speakers for the data using a voice recorder. The native speakers were in the age bracket of 50-70 years comprising of three men and three women, as the young native speakers don't speak the Orsu dialect anymore. The researchers visited the native speakers severally in order to get an authentic equivalent of the sentences written down in Standard Igbo. Having researched on the Orsu dialect of Igbo, we observed that the dialect basically adopts tone variation as a strategy for marking negation. Then, the prefix gla/dri/gri which is usually used only for the formation of the subjunctive sentence is also a sign of consonant cluster, and an unusual situation in Igbo to mark negation. This claim is in line, and can be justified by Obiamalu's (2013) paper on the role of tone in Igbo negation in Nneewi and Onicha lects. The researchers, therefore, register that tone as well as vowel lengthening and prefixation are the paramount strategies for negation in Orsu.