Negatives between Chamic and Bahnaric

This paper investigates negative markers in five Sinitic languages: Min-nan, Yue, Wu, Xiang and Northern (Mandarin) with reference to cross-linguistic studies on negation such as Dryer A brief historical sketch is also made of Archaic Chinese (5 th c.-2 nd c. BCE) and in Medieval Chinese in the attempt to trace the origin of these different negative markers. We show that a syntactic, word-order based typology is insufficient to account for these data as Sinitic languages, particularly Min and Yue, possess a large set of semantically distinct negative morphemes, used in what is generally called standard sentence negation as well as in imperatives. These include volitional, perfective, irrealis and imminent kinds of negative markers that provide evidence of the close semantic ties between aspect, modality and negation, as Yue-Hashimoto has observed (1993: 89-92). The main outcome of this analysis is to construct a semantic typology for standard clause negation and imperatives in order to explain these phenomena. Negation has been treated by many linguists and philosophers of language as a symmetrical and logical relation so that for most utterance types such as questions, commands and declaratives, it is understood that corresponding affirmative and negative forms will exist. The following kind of logical analysis is often provided for these: If A means 'not B', then B means'not A'. This proves to be a rather controversial interpretation when applied to real language data, with many linguists reaching the conclusion that it does not and cannot account for all natural language phenomena (cf. Wierzbicka 1972: 203-220, Bybee 1985: 176 and particularly Givón 1979, 1984). Wierzbicka (1972: 204) proposes in fact that 'negation is not a reciprocal relation' but rather an expression of the speaker's judgement or belief about a state of affairs or an event in the real world. In other words, negation is a kind of modality. 2 Palmer (1986) similarly observes certain instances of semantic skewing due to the close relation of negation with the use of the subjunctive mood in certain languages which the affirmative form does not follow; the expression of certain

2013

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.

Jespersen revisited: Negation in Romance and beyond. Special issue in Lingua 147, ed. by Stark, Elisabeth / Meisner, Charlotte / Völker, Harald, 2014

This special issue of LINGUA assembles five selected papers presented at the conference "Negation and Clitics in Romance" (University of Zurich, February 24 th and 25 th 2012) which focus on diachronic variation in the expression of (sentential) negation, widely known as the Jespersen cycle. The volume contains one paper on Italoromance, two on French, and two on Dutch, which ensures a certain comparative aspect. The morphological exponents of sentential negation are one of the most prominent examples of "cycles" in the diachrony of human languages (see e.g. van Gelderen 2009, 2011). Linguistic cycles are defined, in general, as linguistic changes "where a phrase or a word gradually disappears and is replaced by a new linguistic item" (cf. van Gelderen 2009:2). The so called Jespersen cycle, named after the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen 1 (cf. Jespersen 1917, 1924), describes the evolution of sentential negation as it has taken place or is currently taking place in many Indo-European languages such as English, French (cf. Larrivée/Ingham eds. 2011), and German (cf. Jäger 2008) as well as other Romance, Germanic, and Slavic varieties (negative cycles have been described e.g. for Russian, cf. Tsurska 2009, and Afrikaans, cf. Biberauer 2009). The Jespersen cycle involves the phonetic weakening of a preverbal negative marker, which tends to be doubled by a second postverbal element (such as Latin/French PASSUM > pas 'step', MICAM > mie 'crumb', GUTTAM > goutte 'drop' or PUNCTUM > point 'point'). These items, called minimizers, express small quantities and are seen initially as reinforcements of the first negative marker. Later on, they acquire an independent negative meaning and express sentential negation, first in co-occurrence with the former negative, and then alone, as the former negative is first cliticized and then lost in most cases. In light of some recent descriptions of the negative cycle (cf.

Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2019

This study reconstructs the development of a negative existential and a negative pro-sentence in the Arawan language Kulina (Brazil-Peru). We demonstrate that the two elements forming the negative existential construction nowe (hi)ra- are involved in a double polarity swap: an originally neutral lexical item (the dynamic verb nowe ‘show’) has become negative through contamination, and an originally negative element (hi)ra-, which was responsible for the contamination, is bleaching into a semantically neutral auxiliary. This lexeme nowe, with the auxiliary used only optionally, also functions as a negative pro-sentence now. Thus, synchronically we have a negative pro-sentence that has its origin in a semantically-neutral lexical item. Neither the source of the negative pro-sentence nor this diachronic path has surfaced in the literature on negation so far and thus they are instructive from diachronic and typological perspectives. The hypothesis enriches the literature on both the Jespersen Cycle and the Negative Existential Cycle.

Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas

In the Jê languages standard negators tend to take a post-verbal position. This paper asks why this should be the case and therefore discusses earlier accounts relating Jê standard negators to either negative verbs or privative postpositions. We argue that these accounts do not have to exclude each other. In particular, we propose that an existential negator can be reanalyzed as a privative one. We also argue that if the origin of the standard negator is a verb with the meaning ‘finish’, we may be dealing with a scenario that is similar to the ‘Negative Existential Cycle’. In both, the existential negator denies the existence of a state of affairs and then turns into a standard negator. But whereas in the Negative Existential Cycle the non-existence of a state of affairs is modelled on the non-existence of an object, in the ‘new’ scenario the non-existence of a state of affairs derives from the fact that a process or event has come to an end.

Corinne Rossari, Claudia Ricci & Adriana Spiridon, eds., Grammaticalization and Pragmatics: Facts, Approaches, Theoretical Issues, pp. 137-171., 2009

Linguistics, 2016

Negation is a topic that has attracted a lot of attention in grammaticalization literature. This is largely due to the fact that the development of negation in French and many other European languages shows a clear grammaticalization pattern, which has been observed early on by scholars such as Meillet (1912) and. Consequently, a number of monographs and collections of articles have been devoted to the history of negation, but these have mostly focused on European languages (e. g., Larrivée and Ingham 2011;. The present volume is novel in addressing a much wider variety of languages. The book consists of an introduction by the editors and eight chapters looking at the development of different aspects of negation in languages from different families and geographical areas. There is a three-way thematic division: the first two articles take a broad typological perspective based on hundreds of languages, the next three articles address the development of negation in individual non-European languages or language groups, and the last three papers focus on aspects of the history of negation in one language, namely French. The introduction by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti (pp. 1-12) provides a short introduction to cyclical developments within the domain of negation (Jespersen Cycle, Quantifier Cycle) and briefly summarizes the eight chapters. In what follows, I will introduce each chapter very briefly and then take up one or twocentral or more marginalpoints arising from the chapter The first chapter, "On the relation between double clausal negation and negative concord," by Lauren Van Alsenoy and Johan van der Auwera (pp. 13-46) surveys these two related phenomena in an extensive crosslinguistic sample, noting that they co-occur only rarely in a language. This is found in French and in two languages in the sample, Ewe and Karok, which are analyzed in detail in the paper. An important contribution of the chapter is that it puts typological claims made in earlier literature on the basis of only a few languages to the real test against an extensive typological sample. It can be pointed out

Lingua, 2014

This special issue of LINGUA assembles five selected papers presented at the conference "Negation and Clitics in Romance" (University of Zurich, February 24 th and 25 th 2012) which focus on diachronic variation in the expression of (sentential) negation, widely known as the Jespersen cycle. The volume contains one paper on Italoromance, two on French, and two on Dutch, which ensures a certain comparative aspect. The morphological exponents of sentential negation are one of the most prominent examples of "cycles" in the diachrony of human languages (see e.g. van Gelderen 2009, 2011). Linguistic cycles are defined, in general, as linguistic changes "where a phrase or a word gradually disappears and is replaced by a new linguistic item" (cf. van Gelderen 2009:2). The so called Jespersen cycle, named after the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen 1 (cf. Jespersen 1917, 1924), describes the evolution of sentential negation as it has taken place or is currently taking place in many Indo-European languages such as English, French (cf. Larrivée/Ingham eds. 2011), and German (cf. Jäger 2008) as well as other Romance, Germanic, and Slavic varieties (negative cycles have been described e.g. for Russian, cf. Tsurska 2009, and Afrikaans, cf. Biberauer 2009). The Jespersen cycle involves the phonetic weakening of a preverbal negative marker, which tends to be doubled by a second postverbal element (such as Latin/French PASSUM > pas 'step', MICAM > mie 'crumb', GUTTAM > goutte 'drop' or PUNCTUM > point 'point'). These items, called minimizers, express small quantities and are seen initially as reinforcements of the first negative marker. Later on, they acquire an independent negative meaning and express sentential negation, first in co-occurrence with the former negative, and then alone, as the former negative is first cliticized and then lost in most cases. In light of some recent descriptions of the negative cycle (cf.