[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

[David Gil]

Dear Bastian and all,

Something a bit like this can be observed in the domain of 
paralinguistic clicks, specifically, in the case of repeated dental 
clicks (often written as "tut tut tut" or "tsk tsk tsk". In many 
languages around the world, as in English, repeated dental clicks are 
associated with negative affect, expressing feelings such as regret, 
commiseration, admonition, and the like.  However, in some languages of 
western Eurasia (e.g. Russian, Yiddish, Greek, Turkish, Georgian, 
Dargwa, Palestinian Arabic), repeated dental clicks may — for some if 
not all speakers of these languages — also be used to express positive 
affect, the most commonly-cited context being that of men girl-watching, 
reacting to a very beautiful girl walking by.  Speakers who have this 
usage tend to describe it as ironic, derivative from the basic negative 
usage.

(I should add that in what I have elsewhere defined as the 
Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area, e.g. in languages such as Cantonese, 
Kammu, Indonesian, Hatam, Mee and others, repeated dental clicks are 
associated not with negative but rather with positive affect, the core 
meaning being one of amazement.  One could imagine this usage deriving 
from the conventionalization of the ironic positive-affect usage of 
western Eurasia followed by the loss of the negative affect usage, but 
this would be a rather speculative account.)

David


On 24/01/2020 19:12, Bastian Persohn wrote:
>
> Dear group members,
>
> I am posting the below on behalf of a student of mine. Any input will 
> be greatly appreciated, be it on similar conventionalized uses of 
> negation and irony in other languages of the world, general thoughts, 
> or even specific remarks regarding isiXhosa (or the larger Nguni 
> branch of Bantu).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Bastian
>
>
>     I would like some help with finding resources/getting more
>     information on ironic negative constructions, which are a rather
>     frequent device in isiXhosa (Bantu, South Africa). I’m not sure if
>     they go by any other name, I found this term in Oosthuysen’s
>     (2016) Grammar of isiXhosa. He describes it as “The use of a
>     grammatical negative to convey a predicate with an emphatic
>     positive connotation”. So, these constructions read as negative
>     statements but in actual fact mean the opposite. The prosody is
>     different which helps in realising that it’s the ironic negative.
>     Here are some examples (numbers indicate noun classes, FV is the
>     default final vowel morpheme):
>
>
>     /A-ka-se-m-hle lo mntwana/
>     NEG-SBJ.NEG.1-still-1-pretty PROX.1 1.child
>     'This child is so/very beautiful' (lit: 'This child is no longer
>     beautiful')
>
>
>     /A-ni-sa-hlafun-i/
>     NEG-SBJ.2PL-still-chew-NEG
>     'You are chewing so much/so loudly' (lit: 'You are no longer chewing')
>
>
>     /A-ndi-sa-dinw-anga/
>     NEG-SBJ.1SG-still-be(come)_tired-NEG.PFV
>     'I am so/very tired.' (lit: 'I am not tired anymore')
>
>
>     /Be-ndi-nge-minc-e/
>     REC.PST-SBJ.1SG-NEG-tense_up-PFV
>     'I was so very tense' (lit: 'I was not tensed up')
>
>     /A-yi-nints-i imi-buzo ya-m/
>     NEG-COP.4-many 4-question 4-POSS.1SG
>     'My questions are so many' (lit: 'My questions are not many')
>
>     Any input in the form of papers, books, tiny excerpt, noting that
>     it you’ve encountered a similar thing in another language etc
>     would be of great help.
>
>     Thanks!
>
>
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-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

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