Negation in Bashiic Languages

In the study of negation, two features are often attributed to it: universality and markedness. Negation is generally considered as a universal feature of languages. (Dahl, 1979) All languages have a way of how to express negation. (Horn & Kato, 2000) On the other hand, the markedness of negation is shown through its relationship to its counterpart affirmative statement. (Horn, 1989) This study attempts to investigate the phenomenon of negation in Philippine languages. The term ‘Philippine languages’ is often taken to have three different meanings: geographic, typological, and genetic. (Blust, 1991) The definition of Philippine languages as a genetic subgrouping is the one used in this study. Fifteen languages are investigated and these languages are Ivatan, Ilokano, Itawis, Tuwali Ifugao, Bontok, Pangasinan, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bikol - Naga, Bikol - Oas, Cebuano - Leyte, Hiligaynon, Masbatenyo, Waray and Surigaonon. As a category, negation can be expressed in various ways. To illustrate the diversity in the expression of negation, a typological approach was used to explore parameters associated to negation. The domains of negation included in this study are verbal (standard and prohibitive), non-verbal (nominal, adjectival, and existential) and cleft constructions. Negation strategies are compared and categorized. Through categorization of negation typologies, the relative homogeneity among the expression of negation in Philippine languages is illustrated.

2016

The issue of Philippine voice systems and morphosyntactic alignment is a controversial one and has implications not just for typological descriptions of languages but also for the theories of grammatical relations and voice. I argue that the ergative analysis does not provide an optimal description of grammatical relations in Western Subanon, a less studied Philippine language. By looking at Subanon, I hope to add to the wider debate of Philippine voice. 1. INTRODUCTION. The debate among Austronesianists and general typologists over how to analyze voice systems in Philippine languages is a fierce one, and it has implications not just for typological descriptions of languages but also for the theories of grammatical relations and voice. Inseparable from voice is the question of how to categorize the grammatical relations in these languages: as nominativeaccusative verb alignment, ergative-absolutive, split, or unergative-unaccusative. Recently, some scholars (Foley 2008; Himmelman 2005; Kroeger 1998) have been arguing for a different system entirely, often called symmetrical voice. This issue is far from resolved and there are strong arguments on all sides. Much of the research on voice and grammatical relations in Philippine languages has centered on Tagalog. In this paper, I give a preliminary analysis of case alignment in Western Subanon, first exploring the various analyses that others have proposed for languages such as Tagalog, and then examining parallel structures in Western Subanon. I discuss the evidence for these analyses and explore whether they can account for the data in Western Subanon. Ultimately I argue that the ergative analysis does not provide an adequate explanation of grammatical relations in this language. I briefly outline how symmetrical voice is a better description of the language and show how it can be used to explain two phenomena in Subanon, clefting and relative clauses. My hope is that by analyzing an understudied Philippine language we can find evidence that can sway the debate in one direction or another, or, at the very least, provide interesting insights. This paper does not attempt to refute the ergative analysis for Tagalog or any other Philippine language, only for Subanon. All data for Western Subanon are from Sharon Estioca, a native speaker of the language, taken from a Field Methods course taught in Fall 2015 at University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Iatmul is a Papuan language of the Ndu family, spoken in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. In this language, negation is expressed by an array of morphologically different and etymologically mostly unrelated structures. The choice of relevant structures depends to a large extent on the syntactic context. On the other hand, some of the markers are polysemous and can have different syntactic functions. As an example, the negative proclause ka’i functioning as a one-word reply to polar questions can be used as a negative existential predicate. Main clause predicates, both verbal and non-verbal, are negated by ana, but dependent clauses cannot be directly negated. Instead, a periphrastic construction has to be used: negation is expressed on the dependent verb of the predicate (the lexical verb) by lapman ‘without’ so that the predicate core represented by an auxiliary remains affirmative. The prohibitive is expressed by the preverbal particle ke which is most likely a reduced form of the proclause ka’i. There is a milder version of the prohibitive using a particle wana, which is not used in any other context. Iatmul also has an apprehensive (also functioning as negative optative), which is morphologically unrelated to the affirmative optative. Finally, there is a cleft-like focus construction where the scope of negation can be restricted to NP constituents, leaving the predicate affirmative. In summary, we can observe that negation is not a unified category in this language, but morphosyntactically heterogeneous. The situation in Iatmul will be explored from a typological perspective (cf. Miestamo 2005), and compared to the situation in some other Papuan languages such as Amele (Roberts 1987), Manambu (Aikhenvald 2008), Sentani (Hartzler 1994), Usan (Reesink 1987), and Yimas (Foley 1991).

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2014

The development of negation in the Transeurasian languages. In M. Robbeets (Ed.), Stability and borrowability (pp. 202-222). London [u.a.]: Routledge. The development of negation in the Transeurasian languages Martine Robbeets In this article, the historical development of sentential negation is compared across the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages to make inferences about the expression of negation in the common Transeurasian proto-language. Integrating typological considerations, including grammaticalization theory, into the argumentation, the approach taken here differs from previous studies, which are limited to form-function comparison of individual markers. The historical development of negation in the Transeurasian languages is argued to involve a grammaticalization pathway whereby an independent negative verb developed into a preposed negative auxiliary and then, either transferred its inflection to the lexical verb to become an invariant preposed particle or, else, moved to a postposed position to become a suffix on the lexical verb. Taken together with the form-function correspondences of the negative markers, these correlations lead to the reconstruction of genealogically motivated cycles of grammaticalization in the Transeurasian family.

This paper aims to investigate the manifestation of negative linguistic cycles in Philippine languages. Negative linguistic cycles are diachronic processes that posit the various trajectories markers of negation take when they undergo reanalysis. Simply put, older negative elements are weakened and new negative forms emerge. In this paper, examples and evidences of two of the well-established negative linguistic cycles, Jespersen and Croft cycle, will be provided based on data from several Philippine languages such as Ivatan, Itbayaten, Yami, T'boli, Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Waray, Ifugao, and Sinauna. Other trajectories such as those encountered in SNA typology and aspect restriction will be explored.

silinternational.org

The situation in all three languages reflects what is largely but not exclusively language maintenance with restructuring occurring under intense contact. In Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 50) terms, the changes reflect language borrowing under significant contact; in Ross's terms (2003) the changes reflect metatypy, that is, restructuring under intense language contact. All three are examples of restructuring and borrowing under language maintenance, but the patterns of contact differ as do the consequent changes. Primarily ...

During our fieldwork we found a peculiar linguistic form which occurs in naturally spoken data, but never in elicited data. This small form is in itself semantically empty outside of the discourse, yet in the context, it can be fitted into any syntactic slot and inflected or derived with appropriate morphological affixations accordingly. In other words, when attached with affixation, it can be used as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. In 1996, Rubino also reports a similar phenomenon in Ilocano discourse. He interprets such an empty root with appropriate morphological frame as a means of morphological integrity and thus can be evidence that the planning and production occurs at morphemic level. By investigating narrative and conversation data in both Cebuano and Kavalan, we also found that the distribution and functions of this empty root are far more complicated than what has been reported in Rubino (1996). Also, we attempt to provide a cognitive explanation to such a cross-linguistic phenomenon. Eventually, we hope to demonstrate that meanings are negotiated and thus emergent from actual use.

1999

2. 1.2 Nouns derived with derivational affixes 2.1 .3 Compound nouns 2.1.4 Reduplicated nouns 2.2 Pronouns 2.2.1 Personal pronouns 2.2.2 Isolative pronouns 2.2.3 Emphatic pronouns 19 2.2.4 Possessive pronouns and suffixes 10 2.2.5 Dual and trial forms 2.3 Verbs v vi Ta ble of contents 2.3.1 Verb nucleus 2.3.2 Subject-mode-tense particle 2.3.3 Other verbal clitics, prefixes and suffixes 2.3.4 Compound verbs 2.3.5 The irregular verb 'to say' to, ta, si 2.4 Adjectives 2.4. 1 Qualitative adjectives 2.4.2 Quantitative adjectives 2.5 Adverbs 2.5.1 Adverbs related to the definiteness/indefiniteness of action 2.5.2 Adverbs of manner 2.5.3 Adverbs of time 2.5.4 Adverbs of location 2.6 Intensifiers 2.7 Topicalisers 2.8 Deictics 2.8.1 Demonstrative pronouns 2.8.2 Demonstrative adverbs 2.9 Interrogatives 2.9. 1 The morpheme ai 'LIT ' 2.9.2 Interrogatives consisting of one morpheme 50 2.9.3 The interrogative kara 2.9.4 kara 'what' as second element 2.10 Conjunctions 2. 10.1 Coordinative conjunctions 52 2.10.2 Subordinative conjunctions 2.1 1 Postpositions 2.1 1.1 Postpositions consisting of one morpheme 2. 11.2 Postpositions composed of two morphemes 55 2.1 1.3 Postpositions formed with the possessive pronoun 55 2.1 1.4 Complex locative postpositions 56 2.12 Interjections 56 2. 13 Negation 57 2.13.1 The negation words asi 'not/no' and asigi(na) 'no/not' 57 2.13.2 The negation word dia 'not/no' 57 3 Phrases 59 3.1 Noun phrases 59 3.1.1 Possessives 59 3.1.2 Uses of demonstratives and adjectives 3.1.3 Coordinating the noun phrases 63 3.2 Adverb phrases 64 3.3 Adjective phrases 66 3.4 Verb phrases 67 4 Clauses 69 4.1 Nuclear structure