Verbal Negation Research Articles

The morphologization of negation constructions in Nalca (Mek, Tanah Papua), or, how nothing easily moves to the middle of a word

AbstractThe Mek language Nalca has undergone a rapid synthetization of verbal negation by way of two successive stages of asymmetric negation, the first one involving referential zeroing with a verbal noun, the second one reintroducing person marking with an auxiliary in analogy to non-verbal predicates. This development can be traced in texts in the more conservative closely related Mek language Eipo. Referential zeroing originally had the connotation of absolute negation (more than the denial of one specific event). As Nalca negation was integrated into inflectional morphology, it developed some of the hallmarks of autonomous morphology – morphomes and empty morphs. Nalca negation illustrates how grammaticalization and analogy can go hand-in-hand. The fusion of verbal negation is a case of the morphologization of a construction which does not occur in isolation but in concert with other similar processes, together entailing a fragmentation of negation marking. Finally, the Nalca development shows that cases of fusion of verbal negation must be taken into account when dealing with the interplay of existential negation and verbal negation in terms of cyclic processes.

Synchronic and diachronic observations on verbal negation in the Arabic dialects of the Fezzān

Synchronic and diachronic observations on verbal negation in the Arabic dialects of the Fezzān

Studying variation in case marking

This paper examines the phenomenon of the genitive of negation (GenNeg) in the Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian. It is shown that there is areal variation in case marking of an object of a negated verb. West Aukštaitian dialetcs (the Kaunas region) allow innovative accusative marking of an object of a negated verb much more often (although not as often as is claimed in the dialect descriptions) than South and East (the Vilnius region) Aukštaitian dialects where the genitive marking is very consistent. Even though South Aukštaitian has more examples of accusative marking than East Aukštaitian, the percentage is still very small. Different types of negated contexts (local vs distant) are not so relevant for the choice of case marking in South-East Aukštaitian, but play a moderately significant role in West Aukštaitian: the accusative marking is more common in distant negated contexts. In East Aukštaitian, direct objects of infinitives embedded under negated verbs can also be marked by the nominative, i.e. verbal negation does not affect the case marking of the so called nominative objects.

Vizcaínos

What a Vizcaíno is in the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries has always been a puzzle due to the different uses given to the word. The connotation of the term Vizcaíno can go from an insult similar to "thief," "traitor," even "Portuguese," to, in other cases, "stupid," "gregarious," or simply different. In other words, the Vizcaíno is a paradigmatic Other, which seems to have become an insider Other (nothing could be more enervating for some in Spain, or more nostalgic for others than the "insiderness" of this quintessential Other). And unfortunately, in this case, otherness has been the companion of both hate and nostalgia, which seem to be extreme emotional expressions that justify numerous slanders, acts of violence, and overcompensations. "The Vizcaíno effect" has become a systemic mark in the understanding of Spanish and Basque identities in the long process of nation building, probably based on the long term construction of misperceptions, miscommunications, and opportunistic manipulations of all sorts. These misperceptions are not far away from hate speech. Many times comments about Basques pass by as humoristic in our readings of the early modern literature, but perhaps it is pertinent to locate them as a part of the so-called "Triangular Hate Scale" (Sternberg, The Nature 217). First comes the verbal negation of intimacy with the target group, later passions are verbalized; finally there is a commitment to act and propagate the sentiment of hate (Sternberg, The Nature 217). In this article, I aim to make a reflexion about the expression of hate surrounding the basque speaker in the early modern period.

Constraints on the usage of verbal negation in Brazilian portuguese– Evidence from a spoken corpus

The verbal negation system of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) presents three forms: preverbal, double and postverbal negation, as can be seen in the following examples: *MIC: [91] mas / Michael / eunãofalonessesentido // (ii) *DOM: [101] cêsnũlêemissomaisnão // (iii) *RUT: [220] participanão / minhafilha //. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is any kind of prosodic-informational restriction to the distribution and use of the above-mentioned negation forms in BP through the spontaneous speech corpus C-ORAL-BRASIL BRASIL (Raso& Mello, 2012). Through the analysis of the data collected from C-ORAL-BRASIL, we propose that double and postverbal negation can only occur in illocutionary information units (COM, CMM, COB), whereas preverbal negation has free distribution, occurring in both illocutionary and non-illocutionary textual units. This indicates that non-canonical negation forms depend on illocutionary force in order to be fully realized.

The Morphosyntax of Negative Pronouns Constructions in Jordanian Arabic

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the asymmetric distribution of negation strategies in verbless constructions in Jordanian Arabic and similar dialects. In particular, negative pronouns constructions present two major problems for analyses of sentential negation. The first problem lies in the use of the verbal negation strategy in such constructions although they are verbless. The second problem is the merger of subject pronouns that are clear maximal projections with the negative marker occupying the head of the negative projection. To solve these problems, the paper provides an analysis that is based on the morphosyntactic properties of negative pronouns as well as the discourse properties of the constructions in which they occur. To account for the merger between the pronoun and the head of the negative, the study demonstrates that such pronouns belong to the class of weak bound subject pronouns that undergo head movement to Neg to check and delete its uninterpretable [+D] feature. The proposed analysis treats negative pronouns constructions as topic-comment structures that involve a fronted DP followed by a complete string of predication. As such, the paper concludes that the use of the marked negation strategy is a natural outcome given the discourse properties associated with topic-comment constructions to which negative pronouns constructions belong.

Upper bounded and un-bounded ‘no more’

Constituent negation (CN) is commonly thought to be a subtype of natural language negation which does not exhibit substantial differences from the more frequent verbal negation. In this paper, I argue that at least Czech CN is different. I argue that its semantics targets both at-issue meaning and focus alternatives. The evidence will come from differences in interpretations between English and Czech with respect to negated comparatives adjoined to NPs (like no more than two people) and from many other types of negated constituents. I argue that the cross-linguistic variation can be explained if Slavic CN is treated as a focus-oriented particle, unlike English no which targets scalar alternatives.

Negation in Hamar

This study deals with the negation of declarative and interrogative main clauses, imperatives, and non-verbal and existential sentences in Hamar, an Aroid language of the Omotic language family. It describes the ways in which negation is expressed in the language, and positions the discussion in light of cross-linguistic observations made by Dahl (1979, 2010), Payne (1985), Miestamo (2005, 2007), Eriksen (2011) and others. The morpheme -t- is used in Hamar to mark negation in both verbal and non-verbal clauses. This means that Hamar has a morphological or affixal negation (Dahl 2010). The language uses two different sets of subject agreement affixes for the affirmative and negative counterparts. While affirmative sentences employ a shortened pronoun, a set of agreement suffixes is used in the negative. In this study, it is suggested that the negative verbs may have preserved older subject agreement morphemes which are now lost in the affirmative, as negatives are less affected by innovation, cf. Zargulla in Azeb 2009 and Canadian French in Poplack 2001. Moreover, close interaction is reported between negation and TAM (Tense, Aspect and Mood) categories. For example, some of the aspect/tense categories that occur in the affirmative are neutralised in the negative. Negative constructions in Hamar are not only different from their affirmative counterparts due to the presence of the negation morpheme –t-, but also in terms of subject agreement marking and tense/aspect categories. As a result, it is argued that Hamar has an asymmetric negation system, cf. Miestamo 2005.

A Corpus-based Study on the Use of Contractions by EFL Learners in Argumentative Essays

Contraction forms in English are mostly occur in speech and informal writing and they are generally avoided in formal writing types such as academic prose, business reports and journal articles, therefore, most teachers discourage their use in academic essays (Biber, Johansonn, Leech, Conrad and Finegan 1999). Contractions in English have two types; negative contractions (isn’t, haven’t, doesn’t) and verb contractions (I’m, they’ve, that’s). This corpus based study attempts to investigate contraction usage in learner and native English speaker essays. Major goal is to examine whether learners consider essay writing rules in respect of contractions which are accepted inappropriate for academic prose style. Five corpora, three learner and two native English, were utilized in order to analyze verb and not-contraction forms. Frequency calculations of contraction forms in each corpus compared via log-likelihood measurement for statistical significance. Results revealed that learners use considerably more contraction forms, especially negative ones, than native English students in their argumentative essays.Keywords: English for Academic Purposes, learner corpus, contractions

A Comparison of Negative Prepositional Constructions and Negative Serial Verb Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

A Comparison of Negative Prepositional Constructions and Negative Serial Verb Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Negation in Near‐Native French: Variation and Sociolinguistic Competence

This study investigated how adult second language (L2) speakers of French with near‐native proficiency realize verbal negation, a well‐known sociolinguistic variable in contemporary spoken French. Data included 10 spontaneous informal conversations between near‐native speakers of French and native speakers (NSs) closely acquainted with them. Although some near‐native speakers retained ne more frequently than their interlocutors, others produced ne at rates indistinguishable from the NSs. A variationist analysis of 1,877 examples of negation revealed that the near‐native speakers had largely acquired the relevant linguistic and sociostylistic factors that condition NS use, although an important subset of the near‐native speakers did not vary their ne use according to whether the negation appears in a lexicalized or nonlexicalized phrase. The results contribute to understanding L2 near‐nativeness, specifically with respect to sociolinguistic competence in adult learners.

On the Placement of the Reflexive/ Reciprocal Marker –si- in Lithuanian Verbs

Set within the generative syntactic tradition, the present article examines the interchange in the layout of the reflexive/ reciprocal marker (RM) and the verb in prefixed and prefixless Lithuanian verbs, a long-standing historical puzzle. It is first shown that the RM is obligatorily coreferential with the subject of the sentence. Given the generative premise that all subjects are merged within the verb, it is argued that the RM is a physically manifest trace of the subject and forms a binding domain with its antecedent, which stipulates the layout of morphemes within the verb. In addition, the position of the RM also depends on whether its antecedent is an agent, experiencer, or theme, since these have different merging, i.e. original, positions. After the relationship between the RM, the sentence subject and the verb has been defined, prefixes are examined since they form the left boundary of the RM in prefixed verbs. Given their resultative meaning, verbal prefixes are argued to occupy an aspectual position AspP, placed immediately above the verbal complex, i.e. v/VP and the RM within it. Since in non-contrastive contexts, the negative clitic is attached to the verb and consequently affects the position of the RM in otherwise prefixless verbs, inducing change just as the resultative prefixes, the binding domain is determined for the following types of the morphological composition of the verb: prefixed and non-prefixed positive and negative verb forms.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.28.15126

Constraints on the usage of verbal Brazilian portuguese - Evidence from a spoken corpus

The verbal negation system of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) presents three forms: preverbal, double and postverbal negation, as can be seen in following examples: *MIC: [91] mas / Michael / eu não falo nesse sentido // (ii) *DOM: [101] cês nũ lêem isso mais não // (iii) *RUT: [220] participa não / minha filha //. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether there is any kind of prosodic-informational restriction to the distribution and use of the above mentioned negation forms in BP through the spontaneous speech corpus C-ORAL-BRASIL BRASIL (Raso & Mello, 2012). Through the analysis of data from C-ORAL-BRASIL, we propose that double and postverbal negation can only occur in illocutionary information units (COM, CMM, COB); whereas preverbal negation has free distribution, occurring in both illocutionary and non-illocutionary textual units. This indicates that non-canonical negation forms depend on illocutionary force in order to be fully realized.

Subject expression in Spanish

Research on variation demonstrates that analyses of frequency and predictors of use contribute to our understanding of languages. Investigations of subject expression in Spanish in particular have identified differences across person and number of the verb that suggest that linguists should focus their analyses exclusively on a single category of that variable (e.g., Torres-Cacoullos and Travis 2010). The current paper examines the subject-expression forms produced in first- and second-person contexts in separate analyses, exploring the degree to which patterns of use generalize across verbal person categories. Data from 32 sociolinguistic interviews with native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the same speech community were coded for independent linguistic variables, such as switch reference, perseveration, tense, mood and aspect of the verb form, verbal negation, presence of object pronouns, specificity and reference cohesiveness. Separate multivariate analyses for first- and second-person referents show subtle differences between NSs and NNSs.

The dynamic influence of emotional words on sentence comprehension: An ERP study.

In the present study, we explored the influence of emotional words on the semantic integration of their following neutral nouns during sentence comprehension. We manipulated the emotionality of verbs and the semantic congruity of their following (neutral) object nouns in sentences. Event-related potentials were recorded to the verbs, which were either negative or neutral, and to the object nouns, which were either semantically congruent or incongruent relative to the preceding contexts. We found an N400 and a P600 effect in response to the semantic congruity of the nouns when they followed the neutral verbs. However, the P600 (but not the N400) semantic congruity effect may have been attenuated when the nouns followed the negative verbs. Meanwhile, the negative verbs elicited a larger P2 and N400 than did the neutral verbs. The results indicate that the attention captured by emotional words impaired reanalysis of the following incongruent information, demonstrating a dynamic influence of emotional words on the semantic processing of following information during sentence comprehension.

Cycles of negation in Rangi and Mbugwe

The Tanzanian Bantu languages Rangi and Mbugwe both employ a double negation marking strategy. In Rangi, verbal negation is achieved through the presence of a pre-verbal negative marker and a negative marker which appears either post-verbally or in a clause-final position. In Mbugwe, negation is indicated by a prefix that appears on the verb form and an optional post- verbal negative marker. This paper presents a descriptive account of negation in these two closely related languages, as well as exploring possible origins and grammaticalisation pathways involved in the development of the respective negation strategies in each instance. We propose that negation in these two languages shows evidence of the stages of Jespersen’s cycle: with what started out as a single marker of negation giving way to a bipartite negation strategy. We present data exemplifying negation in the two languages, contributing to the discussion of the development of negation in Bantu and the applicability of Jespersen’s cycle in the language family, as well as highlighting the possible role played by language contact in the development of negation in these languages.

Pragmatic accommodation as a catalyst for the development of (non-)finiteness

AbstractA morphological asymmetry is shared by certain Dravidian (and Finnic) languages. The phonological shape of a negation element is dependent on the finiteness of the verb it negates. Pragmatic factors are identified that could motivate the development of this shared asymmetry, using evidence from the grammar of a Dravidian-influenced contact language. I will show that contrastive finiteness marking (finite and non-finite morphology) can facilitate the development of pragmatically-motivated linear reordering of affirmative clauses and negated clauses in order to accommodate new information structure conventions, extending the contrast to negated verbs by expanding the functional range of a negative imperative marker.Radical contact languages resulting from collective adult second language acquisition in naturalistic social contexts are typically presumed to feature reduced functional morphology, in which only highly salient contrasts, such as temporal contrasts, are formally instantiated. If a formal finiteness contrast and other relatively marked properties (“complexity”) could develop in a highly analytic contact language that did not previously have them, this suggests that such a sequence of changes is in fact as plausible among genetically-unrelated languages in a sprachbund as it is over longer periods of time in genetically-related languages. We can observe this by examining grammatical change in a language that previously lacked both a finiteness contrast and a corresponding negation asymmetry, but which developed both the contrast and the asymmetry as a result of contact with a genetically-unrelated language that has analogous properties.Sri Lankan Malay (SLM) has undergone grammatical change due to contact with Dravidian (primarily Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil). Several of these changes involve verb morphology and syntax, and are plausibly motivated by discourse-pragmatic triggers. Consideration of tense and (non-)finiteness phenomena, as well as their reflexes in SLM negation, suggests a discourse-pragmatic motivation for these changes. Two discourse processes could conspire to motivate the development of the new morphology in SLM. The first is a clausal asymmetry, in which the predicate representing the most recent event is ordinarily in focus, indicated by tense morphology and position of the clause relative to clauses referring to subsequent events. The second is the communicative need to reassign focus in certain contexts to a temporally non-primary clause, one referring to an event that did not take place first. In spite of a constraint in Dravidian languages blocking the marking of functional contrasts under negation (so that only a negation morpheme can be prefixed to the verb), negation morphology encodes an obligatory finiteness contrast, optimally supporting these information-structuring processes. The clause describing the most recent event in a sentence remains visibly finite under negation, when a temporally secondary clause is focused.

Negation through reduplication and tone: implications for the Lexical Functional Grammar/Paradigm Function Morphology interface

Morphological marking of negation through verbal reduplication and tone is a typologically rare phenomenon attested in Eleme (Niger-Congo; Nigeria). Using Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) and Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) to model first-hand data, I argue that reduplication is not a direct exponent of negation in Eleme, but an asemantic morphomic process, indirectly associated with the presence of a negative polarity feature in LFG’s m(orphological)-structure. While negative verb forms of this kind are typologically unusual, the data can be explained by independently motivated morphology-internal principles. The empirical facts thereby provide support for an m-structure, characterised by its own principles and rules, which interfaces with a bifurcated lexicon that separates content from form.

The Particular Negative: A Distributional Study on Some Aspects of Meaning Contradicting Logical Equivalence

The main aim of this paper is to reflect upon some aspects of meaning related to two different ways of expressing the same proposition type in English. The proposition type under discussion is the particular negative, and it is accounted for as introduced by either not all or some followed by a verbal negation. Two statements serving as examples of the two expressions are:1- Not all birds can fly;2- Some birds cannot fly.The theoretical assumption underlying this paper is that two logically equivalent quantified expressions might not be equivalent from certain semantic and conversational points of view, and that, conversely, two expressions that are equivalent from a conversational point of view might not be equivalent from a logical one. The research has been carried out by means of a distributional study: by exploring the contexts of occurrence of our two particular negative expressions throughout the ukWaC corpus we have detected some systematic use and aspects of meaning specific to each of them.

A typology of negation in Tungusic

Negation seems to be a universal linguistic category, yet languages differ vastly in how they express it. Tungusic languages show several interesting and typologically rare phenomena. The paper offers a typological description of negation within the whole language family from an onomasiological perspective. But some remarks on the etymology of certain negators are made as well. There are three main patterns of “standard negation”. The historically oldest type (A) employs a negative verb similar to the Uralic languages, the second pattern (B) is a grammaticalized version of the first (possibly influenced by Nivkh) and the third type (C) is an innovation influenced by Mongolian, in which the negative existential replaced the negative verb. Some preliminary proposals are made for the development of a “conceptual space”, which also includes non-standard negation such as negative copulas, negative existentials, and prohibitives. The discussion contains examples from more than 35 languages.