Summary Details
| Query: |
Negation/Affirmation
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| Author: | Matti Miestamo | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
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| Language Family: |
Siouan
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| Summary: |
Dear LINGUISTs, Last month I had a query on the list concerning the relationship between negation and affirmation. My original posting was as follows: I am doing my MA thesis on the relationship between negation and affirmation. Especially I am interested in the way the marking of tense/aspect/mood or other categories is affected by negation. I would be grateful, if you could point out to me languages where for instance a tense/aspect/mood-distinction made in the positive is neutralised in the negative (or vice versa!) or any languages that are interesting as far as the relationship between negation and affirmation is concerned. I am already aware of a number of languages that could be relevant for my study, but any information is welcome. Also, I would appreciate information on books and articles relevant for my study. I will post a summary. I thank the following persons for their responses: Marc Picard, John E. Koontz, David Houghton, Yasuhiko Kato, Pierre Larrivee, Tej Bhatia, Elena Koutsomitopoulou, Miao-Ling Hsieh, Larry Horn, Claus-Dieter Pusch, Kean Kaufmann, Marina Yaguello, Ann Wehmeyer, Oliver Baumann, Carsten Peust, Antoine Lonnet, Isao Honda, Knut Olawsky and Nancy Torres. If you have responded, but your name is not on the list, please re-send me your mail. We had some e-mail problems at the time my query appeared on LINGUIST. ********** Isao Honda: Your topic seems to be similar to the one that I dealt with in my unpublished Ph. D dissertation "Negation: a cross-linguistic study". In this dissertation, I examined the structures of negative sentences in languages around the world (I checked more than 900 languages' reference grammars) , and investigated in what ways they differ from those of the corresponding affirmative sentences. The primary purpose of this study is to study what kinds of linguistic patterns exist in languages of the world, and to find out which patterns are cross-linguistically common and which are not. The outline of the dissertation is as follows. Ch. 1.Introduction Ch. 2. Three types of negative sentences In this Chapter, three types of negative sentences was discussed. This typology is primarily based on Dahl (1979), which uses the notion of 'finite element' as criterial. The three types are: Type I) a negative sentence employs the same finite element as the one in the corresponding affirmative sentence; Type II) in negative sentences an auxiliary verb is introduced as a finite element (e.g., English, Korean, Ainu, Ewondo, Achumawi, Siroi, +Cariban, Awarak, Ika, +Trans-New Guinean, Mparntwe Arrernte, +Tanoan, +Numic, Apalachee, Chukchi, Nanay, Japanese, Bobangi, +Rashad, Nama: + sign indicates language group name, but not language name. It should be noted that by listing these language groups I do not indicate that the pattern mentioned is found in all of the languages belonging to the language group), Type III) a negative morpheme itself is a finite element (e.g., +Tungus, +Uralic, Gilyak, +Nilo-Saharan, +Kru, +Mba, +Kordofanian, +Yuman, +Pomo, +Austronesian, +Salishan) Ch. 3. Changes in the form of the verb In this Chapter, I examined various phenomena where the form of a verb is changed when the sentence is negated. Those phenomena are classified into the following four types according to the nature of the verb form used in negative sentences; 1), transitive verbs appearing in negative sentences are affixed with one of the person markers which in affirmative sentences are used with intransitive verbs (e.g., Yukaghir, +Muskogean), 2) lexical verbs appearing in negative sentences are inflected like nouns (e.g., Hixkaryana, Thompson), 3) lexical verbs appearing in negative sentences are marked with a kind of nominalizer (e.g., +Salishan, +Australian, +Trans-New Guinean, Korean, +Uto-Aztecan), 4) lexical verbs appearing in negative sentences are in a form identical or similar to the form used in passive sentences (e.g., Luwo, Palauan, Japanese). Ch. 4. Tense and aspect in negative sentences Ch. 5. Participants of events described in negative sentences In these 2 Chapters, I discussed various phenomena where certain other categories are modified when sentences are negated. Chapter 4 dealt with languages in which tense and aspect categories are modified when sentences are negated (e.g., +Bantu, +Adamawa-Ubangian, Geleba, Tzotzil, Russian, Copala Trique, +Maipuran Arawakan), and Chapter 5 dealt with languages where person/number category or, more broadly, the way in which participants of the described event are expressed, is modified when sentences are negated (e.g., +Cushitic, +Slavic, Acoma). Ch. 6. Negative sentences with a marker which is also used in sentences expressing irrealis events In this Chapter, I examined languages in which negative sentences differ from the corresponding affirmative sentences in containing a marker that is also used in question sentences, sentences expressing hypothetical events or events in future, etc. (e.g., +Salishan, Tlingit, Blackfoot, Cherokee, Diegueno, +Mayan, Bukiyip, Alamblak, Muna) Ch. 7. Conclusion This dissertation is available through UMI dissertation service. UMI number is 9617870. This includes a reference which lists a number of papers dealing with "negation" (but does not include ones in formal theory), and Appendix, which list the form of the negative morpheme in more than 800 languages. I hope that you will find something interesting in it. Finally, let me mention briefly my opinion about tense/ aspect "neutralization". In my view, it is not appropriate to use the term "neutralization", because this term (and notion) is based on the following assumptions 1.The proposition expressed in a negative sentence is identical to the one expressed in the "corresponding" affirmative sentence. 2."Affirmative" and "negative" form a pair (in other words, there is a universal category "polarity", which consists of "affirmative" and "negative". 3.Domains of tense/aspect are uniform (e.g., "past" expressed in affirmative is identical to the one expressed in negative. I also object to the view that the occurrence of neutralization in tense /aspect in negative sentences is due to the fact that negative is a "marked" category (unless it is further explained what is meant by "marked" and "unmarked"). ********** Marc Picard: Here's something you might be interested in. French has two ways of indicating future tense, i.e. a simple and a periphrastic construction very much equivalent to English WILL and GOING TO, e.g.: (1) Je partirai 'I will leave' (2) Je vais partir 'I'm going to leave' The negative equivalents are: (3) Je (ne) partirai pas (4) Je (ne) vais pas partir In theory, and perhaps historically, all four forms could be used interchangeably as it were. However, in Canadian French, it's now pretty much obligatory to say: (5) Je vais partir (6) Je partirai pas In other words, in practical terms, one can almost star: (7) *Je partirai (8) *Je vais pas partir Only in certain types of constructions would these latter types of structures occur. For example, in the affirmative, you could have a sort of imperative like: (9) - Il va partir si tu t'excuses pas 'he's going to leave if you don't apologize' (10) - Il partira! 'let him leave' while in the negative, you'll hear things like: (11) - Tu vas pas partir tout de suite 'don't tell me you're going to leave right now' where you have a type of rhetorical question (I'm just a lowly phonologist so I don't really know the technical term for this). Anyway, you can get most of the gory details on this in: Emirkanian, Louisette, and David Sankoff (1985) "Le futur simple et le futur periphrastique". In LES TENDANCES DYNAMIQUES DU FRANCAIS PARLE A MONTREAL, Monique Lemieux and Henrietta J. Cedergren, eds. Quebec: Office de la Langue Francaise, pp. 189-201. ********** John E. Koontz: I seem to recollect that negation is a mood or interacts with mood marking in Eskimo languages. It has been a while since I looked at this, so I can't guarantee anything interesting. However, perhaps this is relevant. In Omaha-Ponca and other Dhegiha Siouan languages, negation interacts with the morphology of person marking. Specifically, negation is basically marked by an enclitic (a)z^i. The a vowel is a component that inserted, or, of the final vowel of the verb is e, it replaces the e. This alternation of e and a in final position in stems is called ablaut in SIouan studies. The forms of the negative vary with person, under the following paradigm: positive negative 1s 0 =m=az^i 2s 0 =(a)z^i 3s obv 0 =(a)z^i 3s prox =(b)i =b=az^i 12 =(b)i =b=az^i 2p =(b)i =b=az^i 3p =(b)i =b=az^i The =(b)(i) enclitic here is the plural (or augment) marker, which marks the presence of additional persons over the basic pronominal reference, and also of the third person proximate. The normal personal inflection is prefixal, e.g., for regular agent (transitive subject and active intransitive subject): 1 a 2 dha 3 0 12 aN The source of the m first person marker is an irregular active auxiliary maN 'I am thus; I use', stem aN. First and second forms of this stem regularly follow two other adverbial enclitics, to wit, =xti 'very, real' and =(s^)naN 'to the exclusion of other activies, only, habitually'. For example: 1 =xti=maN 2 =xti=z^aN 3 =xti 12 =xti In the negative the auxiliary precedes, and only the first person is found. The same auxiliary aN also seems to be a fixed part of the enclitic =s^te 'soever', in the variant =s^teaN. I don't know what conditions =s^te vs. =s^teaN. The negative enclitic =(a)z^i seems to be comparable to the =s^(i) adversative (=contrastive) enclitic of Dakotan Siouan: miN=s^ (me, not someone else). The Dakotan negative is =s^niN, uninflected, possibly from *=s^(i)=niN, where *niN looks like the real negative, based on comparison with other Siouan languages. ********** David Houghton: Welsh lacks words equivalent to the English 'yes' and 'no'. The following illustrates the range of possible affirmative and negative answers. I. If the yes/no question has the canonical VSO structure and uses one of a set of auxiliary verbs one responds with a responsive construction consisting of the verb, -- I should have said this concerns the present tense -- preceded by the responsive negative particle 'na(c)', if appropriate, and, occassionally, to indicate emphasis, followed by the appropriate pronoun. Thus, Elli di weld y gath? Can you see the cat? Gallaf/Na allaf yes/No Dych chi wedi gweld y gath? Have you seen the cat? Ydw/Nac ydw Yes/No etc. If the sentence uses an inflected verb outside of this class, one can use a form of 'gwneud' "do/make". Weli di'r gath? Gwnaf/Na wnaf Yes/No If the question preposes some constituent, whatever the form of the verb, one responds with the particles 'ie' or 'nace'. Y gath welsoch chi? Did you see the CAT? Ie/Nace yes/no If the verb in the verb in the question is past tense (and the verb is first), one responds with the particles 'do' or 'naddo'. Welsoch chi'r gath? Did you see the cat? Do/Naddo Yes/No That's a partial exposition of affirmative and negative responses. The best reference grammar by far is Gramadeg y Gymraeg by Peter Wynn Thomas, but I'm not sure whether that has been published in English translation. For literary Welsh, you could consult A Welsh Grammar, by Peter J. Williams. For colloquial Welsh, there's Modern Welsh, by Gareth King. ********** Pierre Larrivee recommends the following book, which "provides a good and fairly extensive crosslinguistic study of elements whose form is modified under negative contexts." Robert Forest. 1993. Negation: essai de syntaxe et de typologie linguistique. Paris: Klincksieck. 158 p. ********** Tej Bhatia: Negation triggers a number of deletion rules in South Asian languages. The result of deletion such as Aux deletion is neutralization in Negitivized structures. Another interesting aspect is the deletion in Serial verbs in these languages leading to neutralization of simple and serial verbs in negatived structures. These phenomena are discussed in detail in my book Bhatia, Tej K. 1995. Negation in South Asian Languages. New Delhi/Patiala: Indian Institute of Language Studies. ********** Elena Koutsomitopoulou: Modern Greek: -[theleis na ertheis sto cinema?] = would you like coming to the cinema? -[Oxi, den thelo] = no, i wouldn't In MG you will never find something like the English 'never found' (a negative word with an affirmative verb); once a negative word is in a sentence you must also have the negative 'den' together with the verb ('den tha to vris pouthena' = *you will not find it nowhere* = you will never find it). ('den' is the negative word like the 'do not' of English) ********** According to Miao-Ling Hsieh Chinese is worth considering. ********** Larry Horn: I've written a bit on these matters, especially in the first part of Chapter 7 of my book A Natural History of Negation (U. of Chicago Press, 1989), but that wasn't really my focus. (Chapter 3, on the psychology of negation, and Chapter 1, on the historical background, also deal extensively with the asymmetry between affirmative and negative statements, thoughts, information, etc.) ********** Claus Dieter Pusch: I would like to point your attention to Gascon, a language forming part of the Occitan diasystem and spoken in Southwestern France. This language has a curious system of affirmative markers called "enunciatives" (a subject which I am actually working on for my PhD dissertation). They normally precede all inflected verbal forms in affirmative mood, but disappear in negative sentecences (except for some local varieties which tolerate enunciatives and negators). Thus the Gascon of "Pierre speaks Gascon well" (= has a good knowledge of...) would be: [1] Peire que parla plan lo gascon. but: [2] Peire non parla (pas) lo gascon. which would be the negative form. (Note that the enunciative "que" in the affirmative sentence is not to be interpreted as a relative pronoun!) The status of enunciatives and especially the question of whether they should be considered part of Gascon verbal morphology was (and still is) object of controversy, but at least one should consider it as an element contributing to finiteness in Gascon. Thus it should be subsumed with TMA markers. In negative form Italian imperatives loose all marks of finiteness and become infinitives. ********* Kean Kaufmann: I don't have data at hand to give examples, but you might want to look at Tamil. Negation is normally expressed by a negative suffix on the infinitive form; this can refer to past, present or future. To express explicit negation of past or present, you use a nominalized form of the tensed verb plus the negative suffix. In the future tense, though, things get really interesting: there's a separate suffix for negative neuter future, as opposed to positive neuter future. It's worth noting that the neuter future is often used for generic statements, cf. English: "A cow will (always) eat grass," "A lawyer will (always) lie." In my own M.A. thesis, I argue that the Infinitive is actually an aspectual suffix -- marking irrealis/imperfective/generic events -- and that all negative and future forms can be analyzed as containing the Infinitive. But this is a controversial claim. However you analyze it, the data are fascinating. ********** Marina Yaguello: Wolof (spoken in Senegal and the Gambia) is such a language. You can find the information in Leopold Diouf and Marina Yaguello ,Damay jang wolof , Paris: Karthala 1991 or in a doctoral dissertation by Stephane Robert: Approche enonciative du systeme verbal wolof , Paris:CNRS ********** Ann Wehmeyer: Korean seems to exhibit some interesting effects in the interaction of negation with the system of tense/aspect/mood. There is a recent dissertation on negation in Korean which you might find useful: Kim, Jinkyoung. 1996. Negation in Korean: A Functional and Discourse Approach. University of Florida PhD dissertation. ********** Oliver Baumann: The first thing I remembered was Lyon's (1968) French example "Je crois qu'il vient" vs. "Je ne crois pas qu'il vienne", where the negation triggers subjunctive in the embedded sentence [Lyons, John (1968): Introduction to Theoretial Linguistics. pp 312ff]. However I'm sure you are aware of this, are'nt you? The same I'm sure you are aware of all the phenomena in Finnish, according to this topic. I mean, first, the nominative/partitive alternation in imperatives, in existential sentences and in the unpersonal passive (all triggered by mood resp. default case assigning mechanism, not by negation), s. among others Milsark, G. (1985): Case Theory and the Grammar of Finnish. Proceedings of 15th NELS. However, what you probably don't know is that there is an analo mechanism in Breton (s. Anderson, S.R. (1982): Where's Morphology? LI 13, 571-612). In Basque the negation triggers absolutive/partitive alternation, for example: (i) ez du gizonak ikusi ikaslea NEG has man-ERG seen student-ABS "the man didn't see the/a student" (ii) ez du gizonak ikusi ikaslerik NEG has man-ERG seen student-PART "the man didn't see any students/student at all" (s. here Levin, B. (1983): Unaccusative Verbs in Basque. Proceedings of 13th NELS. pp. 132ff; or if you are interrested in what triggers negation syntacticaly (Auxiliar shift by negation): Laka, I. (1990): Negation in Syntax). That's the same in Russian where you can mark definiteness by case alternation that is if you choose accusative as direct object case in a sentence with sentential negation, then the object is interpreted definite. Alternatively the genitive denotes indefinite- ness. Remember that there's no determiner (article) in Russian. In Polish you don't have the possibility to change. Always genitive occurs. If you need bibliographic references or examples with respect to Russian, Polish, Czech etc., tell me. Interrestingly enough, Basque doesn't need the negation to trigger this alternation. It use also mood instead as licenser. So you can have partitive in the environments "question" and "desire": (i) ez du etxerik erosi NEG has house-PART bought "she bought no house/didn't buy any house" (ii) *etxerik erosi du (out!) house-PART bought has "she bought a house" (iii) etxerik erosi du? "Did she buy a house?" (iv) etxerik erosiko balu "Would she have bought a house ..." (s. Laka (1990, 37ff). And so forth.) ********** Carsten Peust: You might have a look into "Late Egyptian" (this is the language of around 1000 BC in Egypt). There is only one present tense in affirmative sentences, but two ("neg. present" and "neg. habitual") in negative sentences: tw=i Sm "I am going, I go" bn tw=i Sm "I am not going" bn j.jr-i Sm "I dont (usually) go". In the later periods, Egyptian develops also a positive habitualis, so in Coptic (Egyptian of the Christian period) we have: ti bok "I am going" Saf bok "I use to go" nti bok an "I am not going" mei bok "I dont usually go" The most important reference grammar of Late Egyptian is from J. Cerny and S. Groll. You might also have a look into P. Frandsen "Late Egyptian Verbal System". ********** Antoine Lonnet: I quote you : > Especially I am interested in the way the marking of > tense/aspect/mood or other categories is affected by negation. It is remarkable that Arabic (classical Arabic) shows the reverse : negation is affected by tense/aspect/mood. ********** Knut J. Olawsky: Dagbani is a Gur language of Northern Ghana and has a particle /ku/ which expresses negation + future. Example: 1) o chaN Tamali. (He went to Tamale) 3sg go (place name) 2) o bi chaN Tamali. (He did not go to T.) /bi/ is the negative marker for non-future 3) o ni chaN Tamali. (He will go to T.) /ni/ is the future marker 4) o ku chaN Tamali. (He will not go to T.) ********** Nancy Torres: Pour parler de la negation il faudrait toucher les modes et les temps (subjonctif et futur) les malentendus, des periphrases qui remplissent le sens negatif, il faut toucher aussi la logique et la philosophie. Je vous donne quelque bibliographie pour vous aider: Culioli Antoine, Pour une linguistique de l'enonciation, Ophrys, Paris 1990 (Il y a une grosse partie sur la negation). J.M.Zemb, Les occurrences phematiques, rhematiques et thematiques des archilexemes modaux Aristote, Organon VI, Les refutations sophistiques. Aristote, De la interpretation. Traite des categories Ducrot, Oswald, Dire et ne pas dire, Colection Savoir, Hermann, 1980 Bourdieu, P., Ce que parler veut dire, Paris, Fayard, 1982 J.M.Adam.Borel,Calame, Le discours anthropologique, Klincksieck, Paris 1990 Molho, Maurice, De la interpretation en espagnol, Melanges Marcel Bataillon, Bordeaux Revue L'information Grammaticale No.55.1992,Octobre,Paris Robert Martin, Langage et croyance. Pierre Mardaga editeur, Bruxelles, 1987, ********** Yasuhiko Kato: On your query on Linguists, the following might be relevant: Hasegawa, N. 1991. Affirmative Polarity items and Negation in Japanese. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language. Kluwer, pp.271-285. [H argues that API sensitivity is neutralized in conditionals and questions, which also induces an interesting ambiguity. A critique of H's analysis is found in my paper below.] Kato, Y. 1994. Negative Polarity and Movement. MIT Working papers in Linguistics 24. - Matti Miestamo University of Turku Finland |
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| LL Issue: | 8.289 | |
| Date Posted: | 27-Feb-1997 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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