nasality and negation

Thu Aug 30 17:10:23 UTC 2007

Dear all
I pointed out this problem in several studies: nasality occasionally seems to be connected somehow with negation in unrelated languages, either in separate markers or in verbal forms (Japanese) but I don'k know of any systematic inquiry. However in many languages nasality is not involved in negation: "ez" in Basque
As regards nasality several hypotheses have been considered:
- phonetic iconism, the threatening character of the nasal resonance and so on
- "facial" iconism: nasalization might be remiscinent of an animal's threatening snarl
- proprioceptive tactile iconism: nasalization = a by-pass, an alternative route for expired and articulated air flow mimicking a semantic diversion.
Is there any testing all this?
In addition in IE languages nasal negative morphemes or "submorphemes" seem to be involved in determiners (Molho 1988), prepositions, verbal endings:
Spanish canta-DO (sing-accomplished), canta-N-DO (sing-not-accomplished)
In Romance language vowel alternations are sometimes considered as semantically relevant in infinitives (-ar, -er, -ir)
I am currently developing a model known as cognematics. The idea is that in some languages there is a marked tendency for grammatical morphemes to appear as clusters of submorphemic units usually forming pairs such as wh- / th- in English (w- / d- in German and so on) so that some markers look like genuine clusters (in English this / that articulates three contrasts: wh/th, i/a and s/t, all of them semantically relevant and well represented other morphological systems). In the case of IE languages it is reasonable to envisage semantic contrasts marked by phonological contrasts that will evolve according to diachronic trends, contacts etc; more disturbing is the case when similar "submorphemes" appear to emerge in unrelated languages (N - and nasals - is one of them) as the question this raises smacks of either phonosymbolism and cratilyan motivation, or monogenetism, if not both. I have come forward with an alternative hypothesis based on processes of embodied cognition anchored in the experience of dialogical exchanges. The second issue of the Public Journal of Semiotics is to publish a paper containing a rough sketch of the model and how it applies to Spanish; and how this relates with the theoretical issues of experience, embodiment, cognition and dialogue is to be found in a forthcoming chapter (2007b)
Obviously such correspondences like nasality <> negation cannot be considered in isolation. N is a good candidate in English because of the number of its occurrences and because other alternations are visible (this, that, thaN; yeS, yeT, no, not). S, t and n are not intrinsically meaningful, but some semantic potential may be activated in linguistic communities by the sheer echoing effects mustered by constrained distributioned in confined morphological environments - a playful example: i/a/u may be interpreted as meaningful in sing, sang, sung and swim, swam, swum by analogy, but not in hit / hat / hut or pin / pan / pun because those sequences do not occur in the speaker's experience in the first place. Are "negative labials" a hapax in Chinese or is this tendency visible with other phonemes or features in other grammatical systems? In Basque initial /b/ is common to most nouns designating body parts (begi "eye", belaunde "knee", belarri "ear" etc) with some exceptions (sudur "nose") but this is not sufficient to hypothesize any analogy-triggered core value. Fortunately there is much more than that. Martinet hypothesized a core value for velars in Basque grammatical morphology in the early sixties (connecting the ergative and the genitive, for example). There is a huge body of scattered research in this domain, recent and old, that could be re-read and expanded in the light of current theories.
References
Bottineau, D. (2002), « Les cognèmes de l’anglais : principes théoriques », LOWE, R. (dir.), en collaboration avec PATTEE, J. et TREMBLAY, R., Le système des parties du discours, Sémantique et syntaxe, Actes du IXe colloque de l’Association internationale de psychomécanique du langage, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, Québec, Canada, 423-437.
Bottineau, D. (2003a), « Les cognèmes de l’anglais et autres langues », Ouattara, A. (éd.), Parcours énonciatifs et parcours interprétatifs, Théories et applications, Actes du Colloque de Tromsø organisé par le Département de Français de l’Université, 26-28 octobre 2000, Ophrys, Gap, France, 185-201.
Bottineau, D. (2004 NEG), « Le problème de la négation et sa solution dans la langue anglaise : le cognème N », DELMAS, C. & ROUX, L., La contradiction en anglais, C.I.E.R.E.C. Travaux 116, Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 27-53.
Bottineau, D. (2007a), "The Cognemes of the Spanish Language: 
towards a Cognitive Modelization of the Submorphemic Units in the Grammatical Words of the Spanish Language", Public Journal of semiotics, 2, http://www.semiotics.ca/ (forthcoming)
Bottineau, D. (2007b), « Language and enaction », Stewart, J., Gapenne, O. & Di Paolo, E. (eds), Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science, MIT, in press.
Molho, M. (1988), « L’hypothèse du « formant » : sur la constitution du signifiant : esp. un/no », Grammaire et histoire de la grammaire, Hommage à la mémoire de Jean Stéfanini, recueil d’études rassemblées par Blanche-Benveniste, C., Chervel, A. & Gross, M., Publications de l’Université de Provence, 291-303.
With best regards,
Didier Bottineau
CNRS, UMR 7114 MoDyCo
Université Paris 10, Nanterre, France


-----Message d'origine-----
De : Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] De la part de Kaoru Horie
Envoyé : jeudi 30 août 2007 00:51
À : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Objet : Re: nasality and negation
Dear Eduardo,
I remember having read a similar statement, possibly in Talmy Givon's 1978 paper.
Horn's book may also provide some relevant information.
Kaoru Horie
**************
*Talmy Givon. (1978) Negation in language: Pragmatics, function, ontology. 
In Peter Cole,
editor, Syntax and Semantics, Volume 9 (Pragmatics), pages 69-112. Academic 
Press, New York.
*Horn, L.R. (1989) A natural history of negation. University of Chicago 
Press, Chicago.
At 18:33 07/08/29 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear colleagues,
>
>I remember having read somewhere, quite a while ago, about a 
>cross-linguistic tendency for negative morphemes to present similar forms 
>(involving nasal phonemes) in unrelated languages. I unfortunately am 
>unable to recall where I read this, and I couldn't find any reference to 
>this subject among my textbooks or class notes.
>
>Could anyone help refresh my memory? Any bibliographical references 
>would be very much appreciated.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Eduardo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20070830/408618ab/attachment.htm>