[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

David Gil gil at shh.mpg.de
Sat Jan 25 10:28:47 UTC 2020


Dear all,

Mark's "ironic positives" in Tukang Besi would seem to be part and 
parcel of a wider phenomenon present in other Austronesian languages.  
Here are two other cases that I am familiar with:

1. In (many colloquial varieties of) Indonesian, for /tau (/'know'), a 
specific intonation contour involving low-pitch and lengthening of the 
penultimate syllable [a] is a stylistically marked way of saying 'I 
don't know'.

2. In Tagalog, for /maniwala /('believe'), an accooustically similar 
intonation contour on the penultimate [a] can also be understood 
negatively, as in 'I don't believe (you)'.

These two examples resemble the Tukang Besi in that the lengthening of 
the penultimate syllable imposes a negative interpretation limited to a 
first person subject — which is a remarkably quirky sound-meaning 
correspondence pair.  (For Indonesian I am certain about this latter 
fact, whereas for Tagalog it's what I remember as being the most common 
interpretation, though I would need confirmation from native speakers 
that non-first-person interpretations are indeed unavailable.)

However, they differ from the Tukang Besi in the following two 
respects.  First, there would seem to be no significant interaction with 
the morphology.  And secondly, the phenomenon seems to be highly 
restricted lexically.  For Indonesian it works almost exclusively with 
/tau/ 'know', though our corpus also contains a couple of examples with 
the (coincidentally similar-sounding) /mau /'want', which assume the 
meaning 'I don't want to'.  For Tagalog, /maniwala /'believe' is the 
only word I recall this happening to, though again, I would need 
confirmation from native speakers on this point.

A final note on the phonology.  Indonesian dialects tend to be 
penultimate stressed in the east, final stressed in the west. However, 
the lengthening of the penultimate syllable in the ironic positive 
construction is the same in both eastern and western dialects — even 
though, in the western dialects, it "conflicts" with the normal final 
accentuation.  Instead, it represents a phenomenon that I have written 
about elsewhere (for Riau Indonesian), which I refer to as "focus 
intonation", which falls on the penultimate syllable even in otherwise 
finally-stressed dialects.

David


On 25/01/2020 08:28, Mark Donohue wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> A variant of this, in a sense the opposite, is found in Tukang Besi 
> (Austronesian, central Indonesia). We might call an ironic positive, 
> in that the verb is not marked for negation in any normal sense, but 
> the predicate can be taken to be negated.
>
> General non-imperative verbal clauses take agreement, as in (1) and (2).
>
> Normal declarative
> (1) ku-wila-mo
>  1SG-go-PF
>      'I went.'
>
> (2) ku-dahani
>    1SG-know
>    'I know.'
>
> Negation can be symmetrical, with a preverbal negator in this VOS 
> language.
>
> Negative declarative
> (3) mbeaka ku-wila-mo
>    NEG  1SG-go-PF
>    'I didn't go.'
>
> (4) mbeaka ku-dahani
>      NEG      1SG-know
>      'I don't know.'
>
> There is a speech style, that establishes camaraderie between the 
> speaker and the interlocutor, in which the (penultimate) accented 
> syllable is lengthened, and the verb is not affixed for agreement, 
> with a non-overt 1SG subject. (This prosody is not found with other 
> speech acts.)
>
> Ironic positive
> (5) wiíla
>  go<!>
>      'As if I went!'
>      'I certainly didn't go!'
>
> (6) dahaáni
>  know<!>
>  'Like I would know!'
>      'I don't know anything!'
>
> Imperatives (only possible with agentive S or A) are another speech 
> act without agreement, but without the prosody found with the ironic 
> positive.
>
> Imperative
> (7) wila!
>      go
>  'Go!'
>
> (8) * dahani!
> know
> 'Know!'
>
> The ironic positive is rarely found in utterances longer than a single 
> word (the verb), but every now and then it comes up, in which case the 
> marker of ironic positive is on the final foot.
>
> Declarative
> (9) ku-manga te       ndawu  mokaha
> 1SG-eat   CORE pumpkin.soup spicy/salty
>     'I ate spicy pumpkin soup.'
>
> Imperative
> (10) manga te   ndawu       mokaha!
>       eat CORE pumpkin.soup spicy/salty
>      'Eat the spicy pumpkin soup!'
>
> Ironic positive
> (11) manga te   ndawu mokaáha!
>       eat   CORE pumpkin.soup spicy/salty<!>
>      'Like I would eat the spicy pumpkin soup!'
>      'I don't ever eat spicy pumpkin soup!'
>
> Also, unlike imperatives and regular clauses, agreement for P is not 
> possible with this set of speech acts.
>
> Declarative
> (12) ku-manga-'e na      ndawu.
> 1SG-eat-3  NOM pumpkin.soup
>        'I ate the pumpkin soup.'
>
> (13) ku-manga-'e.
> 1SG-eat-3
>        'I ate it.'
>
> Imperative
> (14) manga-'e na   ndawu!
>       eat-3     NOM pumpkin.soup
>       'Eat up the pumpkin soup!'
>
> (15) manga-'e!
>       eat-3
>       'Eat it up!'
>
> Ironic positive
> (16) * ku-manga-'e na     ndaáwu.
>  1SG-eat-3  NOM pumpkin.soup<!>
>        'Like I would eat the pumpkin soup!'
>        'I wouldn't eat the pumpkin soup!'
>
> (17) * mangaá-'e.
> eat-3<!>
> 'Like I would eat it!'
> 'I would never eat it!'
>
> -Mark Donohue
>
> On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 at 04:16, Bastian Persohn 
> <persohn.linguistics at gmail.com <mailto:persohn.linguistics at gmail.com>> 
> 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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>
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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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