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<div>As to the IE negation-nasality connection (and do read
Jespersen's Adversative Conjunctions as well as his Negation in
English and Other Languages), it is perhaps worth noting that it can
be severed without much ado. </div>
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<div>Thus, it is widespread in Alemannic (an Upper High German
dialect) for N-ICHT 'not' to have alternative forms with and without
initial N-, the old IE negator. On some 20 years of first-hand
experience, I believe that in genuine Konstanz speech you in fact
*only* hear<i> i.ta</i> 'nicht' -- with an unstressed low central
vowel added at the end (word minimality), fricative /x/ deleted before
/t/ (sound law), and initial /n/ suppressed (which I don't think is a
regular phonological rule with atonic items). The other
negatives keep their initial nasal: n-it 'nothing' (standard
n-icht), n-ei(n) 'no', n-ie 'never', n-iemad 'no one', n-ierne 'no
where', etc. </div>
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<div>Konstanz is like Africa, then: no nasal in standard
negator. Or indeed worse: Africa can only be blamed for
not innovating nasal negatives; Konstanz's failure is to have
lost one.</div>
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<div>Frans Plank</div>
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