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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Dear all
(who recently discussed the phenomenon of derivational expletive negation),<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I was
informed about this conversation last week and will now add my contribution to
it with a little delay. I couldn’t respond directly to the thread, since I just
joined the list, but I shortly cite here the relevant questions and conclusions
that I will comment from my perspective:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">Bastian
Persohn (<i>Fri Aug 16 11:55) </i>“– – Their closest relatives are probably found in instances like Un-fall
‚accident‘ < Fall ‚case‘, i.e. ‚the undesirable case‘ or Un-tier ‚monster‘,
lit ‚un-animal‘. What all these have in common is a negative element,
albeit in the subjective rather than the material domain.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Tim Zingler
(<i>Fri Aug 16 12:15</i>): „I like the
idea that the function has shifted as part of a subjectification (?) process.
Does that happen with negators cross-linguistically?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">My case is not literally parallel to the lexical negators and lexemes discussed
in the thread so far, but there are similarities on the general level. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In my dissertation (<a href="https://helda.helsinki.fi/items/013d254d-e401-4ffe-ae09-372e60d6ffb6">Salminen 2020</a>),
I studied the Finnish verb <i>epäillä</i> ‘doubt;
suspect, suppose,’ which – as the translations reveal – can have basically two opposite
meanings ‘to think that something is, or is not the case.’ But besides the
material negation or the lack of it (to apply the term from B. Persohn), undesirability
plays a key role in motivating the connection and the diachronic shift from the
negation-inclining to the affirmation-inclining meaning of this verb: very
often <i>epäillä </i>is used to either doubt something desirable or suspect something
undesirable, which both share the tone of undesirability. (I keep the
description of the variation here very short and simplified; it can be read in
English in a nutshell in my <a href="https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/fol.15030.sal">2018 paper</a>, and in more detail in Finnish in other
parts of my dissertation.) <br>
What is perhaps most interesting for the current discussion, is the fact that
the verb <i>epä-illä </i>is derived from a
negator: <i>epä </i>is a present participial
form of the Finnish negative auxiliary, historically also used as a 3SG form of it (cf. <i>ei</i>). (The
same morpheme also functions as a prefix, e. g. <i>epämukava </i>‘unpleasant,’ but in the verb <i>epäillä </i>functions<i> </i>as a derivational base. The possible chain of derivation is:
<i>epä > evätä </i>‘refuse, decline’ >
<i>epäillä </i>(frequentative).) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Since, a notable
part of this verb’s use in present day Finnish lacks the interpretation of
material negation and denotes “only” undesirability or some other aspect of evaluative negativity, it can be seen as one (complex)
example of a diachronic change, where a negator developed more subjective
meaning(s) of negativity (instead or besides the negation proper). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Lastly,
all the mentioned meanings are still available for <i>epäillä, </i>and they are dependent on the clausal, sentential
and wider context of the verb.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Best regards,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Jutta</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br></span></p>
<!--EndFragment--><div id="EmailSignature">_________________<br>
Dr. Jutta Salminen<br>
Postdoktorand / postdoc-tutkija, FT<br>
Lektorin für Finnisch / suomen lehtori<br>
<br>
Institut für Fennistik und Skandinavistik<br>
Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz 3<br>
17489 Greifswald<br>
<a class="normal-link" href="mailto:jutta.salminen@uni-greifswald.de">jutta.salminen@uni-greifswald.de</a><br>
Tel.: +49 (0)3834 420 3601<br>
<br>
www.uni-greifswald.de/fennistik</div><br><gotpl if="salutation"></gotpl><gotpl if="my_work_phone"><br></gotpl></body></html>