nasality and negation

[Östen Dahl]

Otto Jespersen claims in his "Negation in English and other languages"
(1917) that there is a natural tendency for negative words to begin in n-.
When I did research on the typology of negation around 1980 I tried to see
if there were any such tendencies but the claim did not seem to be confirmed
in my materials. I do not know if anyone has done any more systematic count
since.

Östen Dahl


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG]
> On Behalf Of Kaoru Horie
> Sent: den 30 augusti 2007 00:51
> To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: nasality and negation
> 
> Dear Eduardo,
> 
> I remember having read a similar statement, possibly in Talmy Givon's 1978
> paper.
> Horn's book may also provide some relevant information.
> 
> Kaoru Horie
> **************
> *Talmy Givon. (1978) Negation in language: Pragmatics, function, ontology.
> In Peter Cole,
> editor, Syntax and Semantics, Volume 9 (Pragmatics), pages 69-112.
> Academic
> Press, New York.
> 
> *Horn, L.R. (1989) A natural history of negation. University of Chicago
> Press, Chicago.
> 
> At 18:33 07/08/29 -0400, you wrote:
> >Dear colleagues,
> >
> >I remember having read somewhere, quite a while ago, about a
> >cross-linguistic tendency for negative morphemes to present similar forms
> >(involving nasal phonemes) in unrelated languages.  I unfortunately am
> >unable to recall where I read this, and I couldn't find any reference to
> >this subject among my textbooks or class notes.
> >
> >Could anyone help refresh my memory?  Any bibliographical references
> >would be very much appreciated.
> >
> >Thanks in advance,
> >
> >Eduardo