Query Details

Query Subject:	DP as a Phase, Negation/Intonational Marking
Author:	Bert Remijsen
Submitter Email:	click here to access email

Query:	Does anybody know about languages that mark negation by means of intonation? I found no reference to prosodic marking of negation in Dahl's 1997 typology of sentence negation in 'Linguistics'. On the other hand, I have come across two languages for which it is reported - Lindstrom (2002 - PhD diss Univ. of Stockholm) reports that in the Austronesian language Kuot, a segmental marker of negation is invariably accompanied by an utterance-final fall-rise contour. Secondly, Roemer (1991 'Studies in Papiamentu tonology') describes a combination of tone shift and downstep, which accompanies a segmental negation-marking morpheme in the creole Papiamentu. Does anybody know of languages in which negation is marked exclusively by means of prosody, i.e., in the absence of a segmental (morphological or syntactic) encoding? Or do you know other languages showing phenomena where the marking of negation has a secundary prosodic component, like Kuot and Papiamentu? I would be grateful for your any replies, and I will post a summary of them to this list. Dr. Bert Remijsen Leiden University
LL Issue:	13.2045
Date posted:	06-Aug-2002
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