Date: 07-Jul-2006
From: Oliver Bond <oliver.bondsoas.ac.uk>
Subject: Standard Negation (Typology)
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-74.html
AUTHOR: Miestamo, MattiTITLE: Standard NegationSUBTITLE: The Negation of Declarative Verbal Main Clauses in a TypologicalPerspectiveSERIES: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 31PUBLISHER: Mouton de GruyterYEAR: 2005
Oliver Bond, Department of Linguistics, School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, University of London
INTRODUCTION
''Standard Negation'' by Matti Miestamo is a typology of negation indeclarative verbal main clauses. Based on a stratified core sample of 240languages, this study investigates the form and distribution of negativemarkers in clausal negation. The study comprises a typologicalclassification of standard negation and a functional explanation for thestructural patterns encountered in the languages under examination. Likeother volumes in Mouton de Gruyter's Empirical Approaches to LanguageTypology Series, this book approaches language phenomena from across-linguistic perspective. It will appeal to atypologically/functionally-oriented audience and to those working withinformal frameworks that develop theory on a wide empirical base. Morespecifically, this study will be of particular interest to linguistsworking on negation, morphosyntax and/or paradigmatic asymmetry.
SUMMARY
The book begins in Chapter 1 with an introduction to some of the issuesraised in carrying out a typological study of negation. This is followed inChapter 2 with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues.Chapter 3 contains the classification and Chapter 4 comprises thequantitive analysis. In Chapter 5 some functional motivations are suggestedfor the observations made throughout the study, and conclusions arepresented in Chapter 6.
The introduction comprises an overview of the basic concepts andconventions used throughout the work. This includes the typological goalsof the investigation and establishes the functionally-oriented researchperspective of the author. A number of terms relevant to the study ofnegation are introduced here including 'scope', 'propositional logic' andthe differences between 'clausal', 'standard' and 'sentential' negation. Asa preview to later discussion, examples are provided to illustrate the mostcommon ways of marking clausal negation including the use of negativeparticles, affixes and auxiliaries. The main tenet of the study is thatwhen compared to counterpart affirmatives, the formal marking of negativemain clauses can be subclassified in terms of structural symmetry orasymmetry. Symmetric negative structures differ from their affirmativecounterparts only by the addition of a negative marker(s), while asymmetricnegative structures exhibit further structural differences in addition tothe presence of the negative marker(s). Asymmetric negation is furtherdivided into various subtypes, and a full classification is provided inChapter 3. The introductory chapter also features a short discussion oflanguage internal complexity, including the use of several differentnegative structures within a single language. Finally, an overview ofprevious typological research on negation is provided.
Chapter 2 establishes the theoretical and methodological concerns of thestudy. Following an introduction to the principles of creating a suitablysized stratified sample, Miestamo indicates that the sample devised is agenealogically stratified variety sample compiled for qualitative purposes.He identifies 413 genera among the world's languages (based on Grimes 2000)and compiles a Core Sample (CS) of 240 genera-representative languages. The173 genera not represented in the CS were judged to have insufficient orinadequate sources for inclusion in the study. In addition to the CS, afurther 57 languages were also studied (skewing the representation ofcertain genera) on the grounds that they were already being analysed foranother project. Combined, this set of 297 languages is referred to as theExtended Sample (ES). For the purposes of compiling quantitive data, asubset of the CS, the Restricted Sample (RS), is established comprising 179languages viewed in terms of six macroareas (following Dryer 1992): Africa,Eurasia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Australia and New Guinea, NorthAmerica, and South America. In the RS, each macroarea is proportionallyrepresented, based on the number of genera found in that macroarea. This isundertaken to further stratify the sample on an areal basis.
After delimiting the sample, Miestamo defines the domain of inquiry, namelystandard negation (SN). This is achieved by employing a mixedfunctional/formal (i.e. structural) definition. Miestamo's definition of SN(p.42) restricts the investigation to the negation of declarative mainclauses, where negation is characterised as an operator that changes thetruth value of the affirmative proposition. SN structures are furtherdefined as general and productive means of negation within a language.
The typological classification of SN structures is presented in Chapter 3.Negative structures are classified according to whether they are symmetric(S) or asymmetric (A). Only fully grammaticalized asymmetries are takeninto account and (morpho)phonological phenomena are excluded. Asymmetricnegatives are further divided into instances of constructional vs.paradigmatic asymmetry. Constructional asymmetries are found when anegative structure differs from its corresponding affirmative by one ormore structural changes in addition to the presence of the negativemarker(s), e.g. if in the negative clause an auxiliary is required thatdoes not occur in the affirmative counterpart. Paradigm asymmetry occurswhen a one-to-one correspondence between negative and affirmative paradigmsis not found. For instance, in the affirmative several temporal categoriesmay be distinguished morphologically, while in the negative paradigm, thesame distinctions may be neutralised, creating an asymmetry between anumber of temporally marked paradigms in the affirmative and a singlenegative paradigm.
Asymmetric negation is classified into four major subtypes, all of whichare exemplified and explained throughout the course of Chapter 3. They arelabeled as A/Fin, A/NonReal, A/Emph and A/Cat. The motivation for thisclassification is discussed later in Chapter 5. In A/Fin, asymmetry isfound between the verbal finiteness in affirmative and negative clauses,with negatives exhibiting reduced finiteness. In A/NonReal the negative isobligatorily marked for a category marking non-realized states of affairs,while the affirmative is not. Thirdly, in A/Emph the negative structure ismarked for a category expressing emphasis elsewhere in the language, whilethe affirmative counterpart remains unmarked for this category. Finally inA/Cat, asymmetry is found in the grammatical categories marked inaffirmatives and negatives. Further subcategorization of the typesidentified here are also made in Chapter 3. In this chapter Miestamo alsodemonstrates the grounds on which particular asymmetries are consideredpart of a negative structure or not. Based on the regularity of certaingrammatical asymmetries between affirmative and negative structures,several implicational universals are proposed throughout theclassification. These relate specifically to the subtypes identified in thesample. For instance, with A/NonReal it is suggested that ''if theaffirmative is marked for a category denoting non-realized states ofaffairs, then the corresponding negative (if specified for TAM at all) willalso be.'' (p. 96).
In Chapter 4 quantitive findings are presented for the RS. Note that'quantitive' in this sense means percentages only, and no statisticalanalyses are run on the sample. It is demonstrated that symmetric negationis more common than asymmetric negation overall, and that constructionalasymmetry is more frequently found than paradigmatic asymmetry. Of theasymmetries observed in the RS, A/Cat is the most common (33% of thelanguages examined), followed by A/Fin (25%), A/Non/Real (13%) and A/Emph(2%). A further 2% of languages exhibited asymmetry not covered by any ofthese categories. Miestamo also observes that only one subtype of asymmetryis usually found in a single language: 79% of languages with asymmetryexhibited only one subtype of asymmetric structure. The most common meansof negating declarative main clauses are proposed to be symmetric and A/Finstructures. Miestamo also details the relationship betweensymmetry/asymmetry and free vs. bound negative markers, and providesnumerical data relating type of SN and the position of the negator.Comments on the distribution of symmetrical vs. asymmetrical negationstructures across the six macroareas are also provided in Chapter 4. Forinstance, it is observed that A/NonReal is only common in Australia and NewGuinea.
The general principles underlying the symmetric and asymmetric patternsobserved in negative structures are discussed in Chapter 5. The functionalasymmetry between affirmatives and negatives is examined in light of theirdifferent semantic-pragmatic properties. Analogy is proposed as the centralmechanism of Miestamo's model of explanation. It is argued that symmetricnegation can be explained by analogy from form to form (from the form ofaffirmatives to the form of negatives). Asymmetric negation is explained asthe result of analogy from function to form (functional asymmetry to formalasymmetry). It is argued that asymmetric negatives have formal structuresthat grammaticalize different aspects of the functional asymmetry betweenthe affirmative and negative counterparts. A/Fin asymmetry is proposed toreflect the stative quality of negatives, and encode an asymmetry betweenan action described in an affirmative clause and the state described in anegative clause. Asymmetry of the type A/NonReal is proposed to reflect anasymmetry between realised and unrealised modalities. Discussion ofnegation in a diachronic light is also provided in this chapter.
Concluding remarks are found in Chapter 6. This is followed by foursubstantial appendices containing further examples and data on the samplenot included in the main text.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Overall, this book represents an important and timely contribution tocross-linguistic studies of negation. It proposes links between thestructural form of negatives and their functional properties, withparticular reference to the formal and functional asymmetries commonlyfound between affirmative and negative declarative main clauses. As such,it is a useful reference tool for charting the types of recurrentasymmetries encountered across languages and provides explanations forthese patterns at the semantic-pragmatic level. However, a number of issuesraised by the approach of this work require further comment. In particularthese concern the domain of SN as defined by Miestamo and the way in whichthe quantitive data is employed in the current study to render conclusions.
Negation as a functional domain is vast; therefore the number of parametersthat potentially interact with this grammatical category are legion. WhileMiestamo is clearly sensitive to this fact when delimiting the field ofstudy, an unavoidable consequence is the effect of excluding some of themore interesting phenomena likely to be encountered in a typological surveyof this type. It is clear from Miestamo's definition of SN that he wishesto restrict the survey to declaratives, but in doing so he excludesnon-indicative modalities which are of interest since they may well showdifferent asymmetry patterning to indicative clauses. While it is clearthat negative structures such as those used only for negative imperativesor questions must be excluded on this principle, in Miestamo's methodologythe grounds on which non-indicative declarative categories are excludedappears is language specific, and seems to depend on which other TAMcategories are found in the clause. This strikes me as an opaque andpotentially inconsistent approach to delimiting the contents of the sample(p.43-44). In general, it would have been helpful to be provided with moreinformation on language internal complexity - including the use ofdifferent negative structures within a single language. Unfortunately, thisavenue of investigation is not fully explored in the book.
Some aspects of the definition of SN proposed require furtherclarification, particularly since some of the terminology used iscontentious within the broader field of linguistics. For instance, Miestamofreely refers to verbal negation without ever defining or referring to theproperties of a verb or the limits of 'verbiness'. Clarification of thistype is important for languages where there may be some debate over thestatus of the verbal category (see Croft 1991, and also Hopper and Thompson1984, Stassen 1997). In such instances, guidance maybe needed to helpdecide on what grounds a negative structure is an example of SN, and atwhat point a structure is no longer general enough to be included in thetypology. It seems that in order for a typology of verbal negation to beconstructed, a typologically valid and applicable definition of what isverbal must first be explicitly established. In a similar way, the term'auxiliary' is not defined further than some element that takes inflectionand unfamiliar terminology such as 'connegative' is also used withoutexplanation (p. 82).
The approach to negation taken in this typology builds on earlier work inthe field by expanding the sample size and structure of smaller studies.Understandably, a large-scale work of this kind requires a highlyrestricted domain of study. However, asymmetry is only one facet ofnegation in language and throughout the work the way in which the domain isdelimited sometimes marginalizes the importance of other aspects ofnegative structures which are proclaimed to be independent of negation orsecondary to a principal asymmetry. This is particularly clear when anumber of different asymmetries exist between an affirmative and negativeclause. For instance, in the examples in (33) from Kannada (discussed onpp. 78-79) the negative structure exhibits an asymmetry of the type A/Fin.The negative clause also lacks the person, number and gender agreementfound in the affirmative counterpart. Thus, there is also asymmetry of thetype A/Cat/PNG. Miestamo (p.79) proposes that ''This paradigmatic asymmetryis secondary, derived from the constructional A/Fin asymmetry''. As such,A/Fin asymmetry is the only type of asymmetry noted for these examples inthe quantitive analyses. Furthermore, no discussion is made of the TAMasymmetries also evident between the Kannada affirmative and negativeexamples. Since 'derived asymmetry' of this kind is excluded from thenumerical data in Chapter 3, the figures provided therein are a somewhatskewed representation of data in the sample.
While a functional approach is purported to be held throughout the studythere are often points where evidence of this position is not clear. Onesuch issue relates to the theme running through the study that negatives insome sense 'derive' from affirmatives. While it is tempting to endorse sucha model when looking at symmetric negative structures the same cannot besaid for more complex asymmetric structures involving a differences in wordorder, reduction of finiteness and/or asymmetric grammatical marking. It issurely for this reason that Miestamo proposes at the beginning of the studythat ''rather than seeing the negative marker alone as the 'standardnegation strategy' and the accompanying features as 'secondarymodifications', SN is seen as a construction to which both the negativeelement and the relevant secondary modifications belong'' (p. 21). However,much of the time asymmetries are only accounted for if obligatory at theverbal or clausal level (p. 56-59, e.g. the use of partitive case inFinnish negatives, p. 43) and in addition to the marginalisation of'derived asymmetries' noted above for languages like Kannada, somestructural differences, such as changes in word order are considered to befacets of other functional domains (e.g. information structure or stress)and not negation (p. 67-8). However, it is exactly these sorts ofasymmetries that a functional typology of negation should attempt to address.
In accounting for his observations, Miestamo identifies that merecorrelations in his sample are not explanations in themselves and that eachpattern must be functionally motivated by processing or discourse/pragmaticmeans. However, his explanation that A/Fin asymmetries are linked to thestativity of negatives is not an adequate explanation in itself. This stillleaves the problem of why affirmative statives do not necessarily show thesame degree of reduced finiteness as their negative counterparts e.g. 'Helives in London' vs. 'He doesn't live in London'. Although many of theobservations made regarding the asymmetries encountered in the study raisea number of interesting questions regarding the functional domain ofnegation, the reader is left wondering why certain asymmetries are found incertain languages and not others.
Where complex structural phenomena are being discussed, the absence ofminimal pairs (as is fairly common throughout the study) makes it difficultto see the structure of the argumentation. While this is a reflection ofthe paucity of detailed available sources rather than Miestamo's approachto the topic, it demonstrates that ascertaining typological generalizationsbased on sources of varying qualities is problematic. This is particularlytrue when examples are considered not only in terms of their structure, butalso their discourse function. Although examples provided are sometimesdiscussed in terms of their pragmatics, links between presupposition andnegation are underplayed, presumably due to the nature of the resourcesused. Similarly, discussion of scope is largely absent.
One of the issues identified in the study, yet not addressed in any of theexplanations, is the relationship between negation and tonal phenomena,stress and intonation. While it is clear that Miestamo considers automaticphonological processes to be irrelevant in determining asymmetry, it is nottransparent how suprasegmental phenomena should be treated. Certainly,differences in tone indicate negation in several languages of West Africa,including in Igbo, where certain minimal pairs of affirmative and negativestructures are differentiated by tone alone (p. 119). While the negativestructure exhibits a neutralised aspectual distinction (and is thuscategorised as A/Cat/TAM by Miestamo), the perceptible difference betweensome of the minimal pairs is one of pitch. Importantly, it is not the lackof a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect that indicatesto the hearer that it is a negative structure. However, it appears thatsince tonal morphology does not contribute to 'structural' asymmetry in atraditional sense, this aspect of negation is not deemed to be ofsignificance in this study.
While much of the quantitive data supplied in Chapter 3 is straightforward,the relevance of some of the figures is questionable. In general, since thesample is not statistical, only subjective comments on the significance ofeach numerical correlation are provided and in this respect the study issomewhat lacking. Miestamo misses a number of opportunities to make themost of the data compiled in his sample. For instance, while he points outthat symmetric structures are the most common types of SN marking acrosshis sample, he does not draw attention to the fact that most of thelanguages in the sample have asymmetry in their negative systems. Nonumerical data is provided on the observed types of internal variation. Forinstance, it would have been helpful to know what proportion of languagesin the RS has more than one SN structure and how languages with multiple SNstructures are distributed. Also from a diachronic perspective, includingan analysis of data on those negative structures excluded from the sampleon the grounds of being non-productive/non-general would also have beenenlightening. Such a comparison may have enabled further analysis ofhistorical aspects of this domain. This would not have involved much extrawork since the data would already have been reviewed in order to beexcluded from the existing sample. Additionally, one type of numerical dataabsent from this study are frequency counts. While correlations concerningthis aspect of language use are beyond the scope of Miestamo's study andunlikely to be found in the resources available to the author, it isprobable that data of this kind would reveal much about the asymmetriesfound in the sample, particularly asymmetries in the marking of grammaticalcategories within a historical perspective.
Overall, this study provides an interesting overview of asymmetry innegative declarative main clauses. As the first thorough typology toconsider negation in terms of the structural and functional asymmetriesbetween affirmative and negative clauses it is an important step towardsmore expansive studies of both negation and asymmetry in general.
REFERENCES
Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations: thecognitive organization of information. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language68.81-138.
Grimes, Barbara F. (ed.) 2000. Ethnologue Vol. 1 Languages of the World,Vol. 2 Maps and Indexes. 14th ed. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Hopper, Paul J, and Thompson, Sandra A. 1984. The discourse basis forlexical categories in Universal Grammar. Language 60.703-752.
Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive predication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Oliver Bond is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Endangered LanguagesAcademic Programme (ELAP) at the School of Oriental and African Studies,London. His principal research interests lie in typology, historicallinguistics and language documentation, including fieldwork on Eleme(Ogonoid, Benue-Congo), an under-described language of southeast Nigeria.His current research post involves devising a fieldwork questionnaire forgathering data on negation.
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