negative primary verbs

[Paul Hopper]

Dear ALT List,

Charles Ferguson in a 1972 article "Being in Bengali, with a note on
Amharic" (John Verhaar, ed. The Verb 'BE' and Its Synonyms, part 5, 75-114,
pub. D. Reidel) hyothesized the following universals, which may be of
relevance in this exchange (Ex is an Existential "verb", and Cop is a
copular "verb", though of course the term "verb" may not be appropriate):

Hyp. 7 p. 109: If an Ex or Cop is grammatically unique, i.e. lacks
criterial features of any major word class in the language, it will tend to
have a grammatically unique negative, i.e. the negative will not be formed
the way other negatives in the language are formed.

Hyp. 8 p. 110: If Ex and Cop are lexically separate in the present tense,
they tend to share a single past tense.

Hyp. 9 p. 110 The negative of past forms of Ex and/or Cop tends to be more
regular in formation than the present-tense negative.

Paul Hopper

---------------------------
Paul Hopper
Paul Mellon Chair of Humanities
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Telephone (412) 268-7174
Fax (412) 268-7989