Standard negation in Chibchan (original) (raw)
Free related PDFsRelated papers
Negation in Tacana (Amazonian Bolivia): synchronic description and diachronic reconstruction
Language Science Press, 2022
The goal of this paper is to provide, for the first time, a synchronic description and diachronic reconstruction of negation in Tacana, a critically endangered language of the small Takanan family in the Amazonian lowlands of Bolivia and Peru. One significant contribution of the paper is the reconstruction, for a standard negation marker, of an etymology (stand-alone negation word ‘no’) and type of Jespersen Cycle (from the right of the verb to the left of the verb) that are not commonly reported in general studies on negation. The proposed reconstruction also contributes to current studies on the interactions between standard negation and the Negative Existential Cycle (the general theme of the volume) in arguing that the Tacana stand-alone negation word ‘no’ originated in a negative existential predicate. In so doing, the paper adds to the diachronic literature on languages where a negative existential breaks into the verbal domain through a stand-alone negation stage.
Free PDF
AbstrAct: We present data on the early forms of negation in three Mayan languages (K'iche', Yucatec and Q'anjob'al). These languages mark different contrasts between discourse, clausal and existential contexts of negation. Negation in these languages also interacts with aspect and modality. Children acquiring K'iche' use an internal form of clausal negation while children acquiring Yucatec and Q'anjob'al use an external form of clausal negation. The K'iche' and Yucatec children successfully mark the contrast between the discourse and clausal forms of negation. The data show that children in each language create their own forms of negation.
Free PDF
Standard negation: the curious case of South America
Linguistic Typology
This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of the world. We show that South American languages not only prefer postverbal negation to preverbal negation and negative morphology to syntax, but postverbal morphological negation to any other negation strategy. The predominance of this strategy makes South America distinct from other macro-areas. The study also considers the areal distribution of negation on the South American continent. It shows that negation strategies each have their own concentration area. Postverbal morphological negation, which is the dominant strategy, turns out to be concentrated in the northwest of the continent, with the highest density around the boundaries between Colombia, Peru and Brazil. We suggest that the preference for postverbal morphological negation in South America is likely to be the result of language-internal mechanisms of negation renewal, coupled with language contact.
Free PDF
Free PDF
Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 2022
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.
Free PDF
Jespersen Cycles in the Mayan, Quechuan and Maipurean languages
2016
This study looks for evidence for the Jespersen Cycle, which is typically the development from one single negator to another one via a strengthening stage in which both are present, in the Mayan, Quechuan and Maipurean languages. For Mayan and Quechuan languages the evidence is solid, and what is particularly interesting is that the strengthening would seem to have happened twice and that in both families an irrealis marker served to make the negation emphatic. In Maipurean languages the most important development is the extension of a prenominal privative marker ('without') to clausal negation, which if it shows up preverbally to a verb that already has postverbal negation, would show us a Jespersen Cycle which, untypically, operates from right to left.
Free PDF
Negation in Kulina: A double polarity swap.
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.
Free PDF
Negation and irrealis in Mojeño Trinitario
This paper draws a sketch of negation in Mojeño Trinitario, an underdescribed South Arawak language spoken in Amazonian Bolivia, and discusses its interaction with irrealis. It starts with presenting the different negation markers and constructions used for each negation type: sentential negation (including the expression of apprehensive, and negation in subordinate clauses), free form answer, constituent negation, existential negation, negative indefinites and privative derivation. The paper then discusses the most interesting point in the expression of negation in Mojeño Trinitario, i.e. its interaction with irrealis. First, irrealis marking is obligatory both in sentential negation and in existential negation. Second, standard negation induces a realis/irrealis coding that is distinct from that occurring in affirmative clauses. This paper argues that standard negation is of the constructional asymmetric type: a negative clause is asymmetric with a corresponding positive clause, on the basis of obligatory irrealis marking and the placement of some TAM and discourse markers on the negative word. In the end, it points to how the encoding of the irrealis may be complex in the languages where the irrealis category covers a wide range of meanings including negation, since irrealis encoding is then redundant with negation encoding.
Free PDF
Ergativity in the northern Cariban languages
L'ergativité en Amazonie, v. 1, ed. by F. Queixalós. Brasília: CNRS, IRD and the Laboratório de Línguas Indígenas, UnB. The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework for organizing the three primary types of ergative main clauses in the Cariban language family, and to briefly characterize what is known about the morphological and syntactic properties of each. I will also discuss briefly the main point of typological interest, which is that the tense-aspect based ergative splits in individual northern Cariban languages do not conform with expected universal patterns (cf. §4). While I will offer brief examples from individual languages to illustrate the claims I make here, in most cases, many more examples and much more detailed argumentation can be found in prior publications (cf. specific citations in various subsections). I encourage the interested (and especially the skeptical) reader to use this brief synopsis as a guide to points of interest that can be found in those works.
Free PDF
Free PDF
