New Benjamins title: Cyffer et al. - Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond

[Paul Peranteau]

Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond

Edited by Norbert Cyffer, Erwin Ebermann and Georg Ziegelmeyer
University of Vienna

Typological Studies in Language 87
2009. vi, 368 pp.
Hardbound  978 90 272 0668 8 / EUR 105.00 / USD 158.00

This volume deals with issues on negation patterns in languages of 
West Africa and the adjacent north and east. The first aim is to 
provide data on various aspects of negation in African languages. 
Although the topics addressed here reflect a great diversity of 
negation patterns, the following typological features have been 
identified to be prominent in our region: conflict or even 
incompatibility between negation and focus, use of other indirect 
means of negating non-indicative mood (covered under the term 
'Prohibitive'), different negation patterns in different 
Tense-Aspect-Moods (e.g. Imperfective vs. Perfective), lack of 
negative indefinites, and disjunctive negative marking (often 
referred to as 'double negation'). The articles presented here show 
that areal factors have played a significant role in the development 
of negation strategies in the languages of West Africa and beyond. On 
the other hand genetic factors seem to be less prominent.

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Table of contents

Introduction
Norbert Cyffer
Negation of non-indicative mood in Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri
Georg Ziegelmeyer
The impact of clause types and focus control, aspect, modality, and 
referentiality on negation in Lamang and Hdi (Central Chadic)
H. Ekkehard Wolff
Quantification and polarity: Negative adverbial intensifiers ('never 
ever', 'not at all', etc.) in Hausa
Philip J. Jaggar
Negation patterns in Kanuri
Norbert Cyffer
Songhay verbal negation in its dialectal and areal context
Petr Zima
Negation in Jukun
Anne Storch
Negation marking in Igbo
Ozo-mekuri Ndimele
Aspects of discontinuous negation in Santome
Tjerk Hagemeijer
Negation in Gur languages: Genetic, areal and unique features
Kerstin Winkelmann and Gudrun Miehe
Double negation-marking: A case of contact-induced grammaticalization 
in West Africa?
Klaus Beyer
Negation in South Mande
Valentin Vydrine
 From double negation to Portmanteau: Comparative sentence negation 
in Northern Samo
Erwin Ebermann
The system of negation in Berber
Amina Mettouchi
Verb-object-negative order in Central Africa
Matthew S. Dryer
Index

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