reversative morphemes

[Matthew Dryer]

A student of mine, Scott Paauw, is interested in identifying references to 
reversative morphemes in various languages, grammatical morphemes that 
sometimes translate into English as ?back? and sometimes as ?again? (so 
that when combining with ?He went?, the resulting meaning might be either 
?He went back? or ?He went again?).  In some languages, such as Kutenai, 
the reversative has a use that goes beyond this, that occurs in clauses 
containing a morpheme that is semantically negative, illustrated by the 
following (using <l> to represent the voiceless lateral fricative:

taxa-s    la      lit-uk-s-i.
then-obv  revers  without-water-obv.subj-indic
?Then there was no more water.?

An English translation with ?again? doesn?t work, like ?Then they were 
without water again?, since that implies that they are returning to a state 
without water, when the original sentence appears not to have any such 
implication.  Another Kutenai example:

qapi-l    la      lu?-s-i
all-prvb  revers  not.exist-obv.subj-indic
?All of them were gone ?

Scott tells me that there is a reversative morpheme in Indonesian that 
shares this property with Kutenai.  So he is interested in any other 
information about reversatives, especially any other instances where they 
interact with negative morphemes in this way.

You can reply either to me or to Scott (shpaauw at buffalo.edu).

Thanks,

Matthew Dryer