Mixtec negative existential cycles, standard negation and negative indefiniteness

Abstract

In Mixtec scholarship one finds hesitant claims that Mixtec standard negators (‘not’) derive from or are related to existential ones (‘there is not’). The data are complex, not least because there are several standard and existential negators. This paper confirms these claims, with reference to current typological theorizing on the “Negative Existential Cycle” and provides as full an account as possible of the effect of this cycle in Mixtec. The study also argues that the Mixtec languages show evidence for introducing a “Negative Existential Indefiniteness Cycle”. This process makes negative indefinite pronouns (like ‘nobody’) out of negative existential constructions (like ‘not exists somebody’), of which each component gets lost at the clausal level and may reappear.