Negation in Nanti (2014)

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.

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'

Handout of the talk given at 12th Conference on Typology and Grammar for Young Scholars (St. Petersburg, November 2015)

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).

SPARKLE : Journal of Language Education and Culture, 2024

This paper aims at describing double negation in Anakalangu, Central Sumba-Indonesia. Anakalangu is a morphologically-synthetic language in which its wordmorpheme ratio can be 1:3 up to 1:4. It also has SVO order. Data in this research were collected through elicitation and recording processes. Then they were analysed by using Miestamo (2007), Dahl (1979) and Klamer (1998). Results show that negative constructions in Anakalangu clearly involve double negators where NEG1 is located in pre-verbal and NEG2 is found in post-verbal positions. From seven negative structures provided by Miestamo (2007), standard negators in Anakalangu are 'da- ,-ma' ; its imperative negators are 'abu- ,-di' ; its existential are 'da-, ai-mang/-u' ; its nominal and adjectival negators are 'da- ,-ma' ; its temporal negators are 'dhadhi- ,-ma/-e' and its locative negators are 'da-,ai-ma'. Moreover, the presence of negative constructions in Anakalangu verbal and non-verbal phrases in fact make them morphologically denser than the rest of phrases. Interestingly, our observation finds that double negation in Anakalangu probably fills one of Jespersen's stage where NEG2 located in post-verbal situations tends to be omitted without changing the meaning of the sentence although it needs more investigation.

This chapter describes nonverbal predication in the Kotiria-Wa'ikhana sub-branch of the East Tukano family of northwestern Amazonia. It begins with a general overview of use of the copulas hi/ihi in sentences coding the main functional categories of nonverbal predication. Copular sentences with predicate nominals express notions of 'identity' and 'existence'; those with predicate locatives indicate temporary or permanent locational association. ' Adjectival' notions -nominalizations derived from stative verb roots or from nouns by means of the attributive suffix -ti -are also expressed in copular sentences. This general profile also highlights the inflectional properties of copular verbs and their productive use as the head roots in derivations of nominals of various types. The second section presents the predicative alternatives to copular constructions, including productively used 'nonexistence', possessive, and positional-locative predicates. The final section discusses a second copular form, ni, a clear cognate to the general copula (a)ni found in many other East Tukano languages, synchronically used as an auxiliary in the Kotiria/Wa'ikhana progressive constructions. It briefly explores two hypotheses regarding the retention of ni and origin of the innovative hi/ihi copulas in Kotiria and Wa'ikhana.

2025

This chapter is a description and analysis of clausal and non-clausal negation in Nakoda a moribund Siouan language also known as Assiniboine. In Nakoda the enclitics =šį and =ge(n) negate verbs, adverbs, modality particles, and predicative pronouns, while the suffix-ni negates indefinite pronouns and other quantifiers. Conjunctions, postpositions, and nouns (when they are not derived into a stative verb through zero conversion) cannot be negated. The chapter also deals with different topics including the narrow scope of negation, how to reinforce negation, negation in coordination and complex clauses, as well as negative transport. Lastly, synchronic data on negation in Nakoda also help to shed light on the historical development of Proto-Siouan negator *aši and adversative *-š in daughter languages.