nasality and negation

[Paolo Ramat]

Oesten is right. When studying NEG in the languages of Europe, Giuliano 
Bernini and I did not find any empirical support to Jespersen's claim. 
Someone said that 'm' or 'n' should represent a 'natural' way to express 
NEG, because of the lips occlusion (this would apply to 'm' -but not to 
'n'...). But unfortunately I do not remember who said this.


prof.Paolo Ramat
Università di Pavia
Dipartimento di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata
tel. ##39 0382 984 484
fax ##39 0382 984 487

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Östen Dahl" <oesten at LING.SU.SE>
To: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: nasality and negation


> 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