LINGUIST List 21.2481 Sat Jun 05 2010 Review: Morphology; Syntax; Typology: Cyffer et al. (2009) Editor for this issue: Monica Macaulay <monicalinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.    Elly van Gelderen, Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond Message 1: Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond Date: 05-Jun-2010 From: Elly van Gelderen <ellyvangelderenasu.edu> Subject: Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-3125.html EDITORS: Norbert Cyffer, Erwin Ebermann, and Georg Ziegelmeyer TITLE: Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond SERIES TITLE: Typological Studies in Language 87 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2009 Elly van Gelderen, Department of English, Arizona State University SUMMARY This book provides data on negation patterns in African languages from the Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo families (and from a Portuguese-based creole). It consists of 15 chapters, one of which is an introduction by Norbert Cyffer. There are a number of negation patterns in West Africa that the book identifies, namely an incompatibility between negation and focus, the use of the prohibitive and different negation patterns dependent on certain Tense-Aspect-Moods, a lack of negative indefinites, and 'double negation'. The 'Introduction' (pp. 1-6) by Norbert Cyffer presents a very short discussion of the main aims and provides brief summaries of each contribution. There it is emphasized that areal factors were/are important in the development of negation strategies in these languages and that genetic factors were/are less significant. Georg Ziegelmeyer's contribution, entitled 'Negation of non-indicative mood in Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri' (pp. 7-20), discusses non-indicative negation in three, genetically unrelated languages of northern Nigeria. It finds that both the morphology and syntax (position in the sentence) in non-indicatives is very different from that in indicative clauses. This characteristic is typical of many genetically unrelated languages of Nigeria as well as other languages in West Africa. Ziegelmeyer first provides a very complete description of the negation involving five variants of 'ba' and a prohibitive marker not related to 'ba' in Hausa, a Chadic language within Afro-Asiatic. Fulfulde, a language of the Niger-Congo family, has a complex set of negative markers. In Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language, there are a number of ways to mark negation, 'bâ/bâwo' among them. Ekkehard Wolff's 'The impact of clause types and focus control, aspect, modality, and referentiality on negation in Lamang and Hdi (Central Chadic)' (pp. 21-56) argues that negation in these languages is closely connected to focus and clause type, as well as to modality. Lamang and Hdi are closely related but divided by the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. Negation and special mood marking are mutually exclusive, and negatives therefore only appear in the indicative. The chapter starts out with a discussion of the focus system and the connection with aspect in the two languages. The simple clause negations are clearly etymologically related in the two languages, as are the 'doubled' forms in focus constructions and both languages have developed prohibitives (negative imperatives different from negatives in declaratives). In 'Quantification and polarity: Negative adverbial intensifiers in Hausa' (pp. 57-69), Philip Jaggar examines the Hausa adverbs of time frequency and degree. The adverbs discussed can be both positive (e.g. meaning 'always') or negative (e.g. meaning 'never') dependent on their environment and have not received much attention in the literature. The chapter provides a semantic and syntactic account for these adverbs with 48 well-glossed examples of the phenomenon. 'Negation patterns in Kanuri' by Norbert Cyffer (pp. 71-91) and 'Songhay verbal negation in its dialectal and areal context' by Petr Zima (pp. 93-106) emphasize areal factors. Cyffer starts with a short typology and description of negation in Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language. The morphological marker depends on the TMA of the clause; there are negative perfectives, potentials, imperfectives, and there are prohibitives. Cyffer also makes the connection to questions (which is typologically relevant). Zima examines 4 varieties of Southern Songhay, Timbuktu, Gao, Zarma, and Djougou Dendi. These are commonly thought to be Nilo-Sharan as well. The positive and negative perfective paradigms provide interesting contrasts that Zima relates to word order and presence of tone. Anne Storch's 'Negation in Jukun' (pp. 107-120) adds another factor to the negative picture emphasized in this book, namely the 'recapitulative' or 'copy pronoun'. This pronoun copies the subject onto an object position in intransitive constructions and is also used in negatives. The Jukun languages are members of the Niger-Congo family (but some Chadic languages pattern this way too). 'Negation marking in Igbo' by Ozo-mekuri Ndimele (pp. 121-138) shows a wide variety of negative markers, affixes, auxiliaries, tones, and contrastive focus. Igbo is a member of the Niger-Congo family and is spoken in Nigeria. As also observed in the previous chapters, negation interacts with focus and TMA. The paper has 41 excellent examples of positive and negative counterparts in the four types of constructions; it is in many respects the clearest paper making references to typological work. 'Aspects of discontinuous negation in Santome' by Tjerk Hagemeijer (pp. 139-166) provides a description of negation in Santome, a Portuguese-based creole spoken on islands in the Gulf of Guinea. It also addresses the negative cycle in relating Santome to three related creoles: all four show different stages of that cycle. Santome and one other have discontinuous negation, a third has discontinuous negation but with optional single negation, and the fourth one has a single negative. Santome has negative quantifiers as well, as expected, and minimizers. Hagemeijer explains diachronic developments and suggests a generative account with a high NegP above TP and a low NegP between the TP and ASPP. Kerstin Winkelmann and Gudrun Miehe's 'Negation in Gur: Genetic, areal and unique features' (pp. 167-204) examines (an amazing number of) 44 Gur languages to provide an overview of negation strategies in this set of Niger-Congo languages. Their main emphasis is on nominal and verbal predicates. Nominal predicates are divided in presentation, identification, and existence, where the latter two usually have similar negation patterns. Verbal predicates have negatives in pre-verbal, post-verbal, and sentence-final position and may be doubly and triply marked. Negation also interacts with perfectivity and word order. In 'Double negation-marking: A case of contact-induced grammaticalization in West Africa?', Klaus Beyer (pp. 205-222) looks at areal influence on the marking of sentential negation by two markers. In the Gur and the Mande languages in contact with Gur, it is very common, as well as in the Kru and Kwa languages. A map helps the geographically challenged reader. 'Negation in South Mande' by Valentin Vydrine (pp. 223-260) describes various parts of South Mande grammar, in particular the pronouns. Since aspect and person are marked together on a sentence initial word and negatives differ depending on the aspect, this is a crucial area. Useful well-glossed examples abound. Erwin Ebermann's 'From double negation to portmanteau: Comparative sentence negation in Northern Samo' (pp. 261-286) describes extreme variation among these Mande languages in a variety of grammatical areas as probably due to migration patterns. Amina Mettouchi's 'The system of negation in Berber' (pp. 287-306) outlines the varied system of negatives in the Afro-Asiatic Berber languages. Non verbal negation is divided into existential and identificational where invariant negatives precede the copula. Verbal negation shows a reduction of aspect; it is characterized by a preverbal particle (with a negative verb as possible source) and a second negative morpheme that, I think, is a renewal. I missed Ouali (2003) and Heath (2005) in the references. In 'Verb-object-negative order in central Africa' (pp. 307-362), Matthew S. Dryer identifies a typologically unusual pattern of negatives following the verb in VO languages. The languages come from three families, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger Congo but cluster and the negative pattern could be areal. Dryer includes many maps of the 257 languages he cites and makes many typological observations tying negation to word order, question particles, and auxiliaries. EVALUATION The descriptions of negation offered in this volume will be helpful to many linguists, typologists, historical linguists, and formal linguists alike. For instance, the chapter by Jaggar contributes to what we know about polarity items and changes in those systems, e.g. on how negatives are renewed. The chapter by Hagemeijer provides ideas on diachronic developments of negative systems. A number of the chapters, e.g. Cyffer, Zima, Beyer, and Dryer, provide data on language contact. The contributions vary in readability (especially for the non-Africanist who may have trouble, e.g. with the contribution by Wolff, Storch, and Vydrine). Some, e.g. the chapters by Ndimele, Hagemeijer, and Dryer are models of clarity. To help the non-Africanist linguist, the volume might have benefitted from simpler introductions to some of the chapters, more cross-references (to other chapters), and a more complete introductory chapter. Volumes such as these give the editors a chance to present a state-of-the-art of, in this case, negation in West Africa. What I missed in a number of contributions was a connection to typological work on negation, especially since the volume appears in the 'Typological Studies in Language' series. Croft (1991) and Dahl (1979) are each mentioned once (in the index), and Payne (1985) is too (but not in the index). For instance, Jaggar's chapter might have been more helpful had there been a short introduction on 'normal' negation in Hausa with the optional 'doubling' of the clausal negation. The interaction of the two negative markers with the polarity adverbs could then have been better understood (e.g. in (6) on p. 61). I also missed a connection between negation and question particles. The latter are mentioned by Cyffer and Dryer but without making a diachronic connection: negatives are a frequent source of interrogative (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Latin, and Navajo, as shown in van Gelderen 2008). The Hausa sentence-final negative is apparently used that way (Jaggar 2001: 525), so it seems a pattern. REFERENCES Croft, William. 1991. The Evolution of negation. Journal of Linguistics 27: 1-27. Dahl, Osten. 1979. Typology of Sentence Negation. Linguistics 17: 79-106. Gelderen, Elly van. 2008. Cycles of Negation. Linguistic Typology: 195-243. Heath, Jeffrey. 2005. A Grammar of Tamashek (Tuareg of Mali). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jaggar, Philip. 2001. Hausa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ouali, Hamid. 2003. Sentential Negation in Berber: A comparative study. In Mugany, John (ed.), Linguistic Description: Typology and representation of African languages. In: Trends in African linguistics Vol. 8. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Payne, Thomas. 1985. Negation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description I, 197-242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Working in a minimalist framework, Elly van Gelderen is a syntactician interested in historical and typological linguistics. She is a Regents' Professor at Arizona State University. Her current research interests include accounting for the linguistic cycle in a minimalist way. The negative cycle is of course one of the more prominent cycles and that interest has influenced her review. 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