grammaticalization of negatives/interrogatives

[Stephane Robert]

Dear Matti,

Wolof (Senegal, Niger-Congo, atlantic) provides direct evidences of the 
links between negative and interrogative markers:
this language makes a wide use of a triplet of spatial morphemes (-i as 
proximal, -a as distal, -u as non located in the space of the speaker) 
across the verbal and nominal systems, in a very consistent way. Thus both 
the negation and the interrogative markers (as well as the indefinite 
relative pronoun) are made with this -u suffix indicating that the referred 
objet/process is not located in the "space" of the speaker:

k-i : the one nearby            (k- class marker for human beings)
k-a: the one overthere
k-u : who ? (interrogative ou indefinite relative marker)

f-i : here
f-a : there
f-u: where ?

dem : to go
dem naa : I went
(go perfect1sg)
dem-u-ma : I did not go
(go-negative conjugation 1sg)
maa dem: I am the one who went
(SubjectFocus-1sg go)
maa dem-ul :  I am the one who did not go
(SubjectFocus-1sg go+negative suffix)

Best

Stéphane Robert


A 14:33 09/03/2005, vous avez écrit :
>Dear List Members,
>
>A possible source for polar interrogative markers is the use of negative
>markers as tag questions, and I'd be interested to hear about any
>attested cases of such developments; Heine & Kuteva briefly mention this
>possibility in their World Lexicon of Grammaticalization but do not
>discuss any attested cases (they do discuss the role of negation in the
>A-not-A interrogative construction, but this is not what I'm after).
>
>I'd also be interested in any other cases of grammaticalization where a
>negative marker has developed into a question marker or vice versa.
>
>Thanks and best wishes,
>Matti
>
>
>--
>
>Matti Miestamo
><http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~matmies/>

_______________

Stéphane ROBERT
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