nasality and negation

[Matti Miestamo]

[I tried to send this yesterday, but it didn't come through; here's another
attempt.]


Dear All,

the claim about nasality is also found in Mayerthaler (1981a,b). I have not
checked it systematically, but having analysed some other aspects of
negative structures in a large number of languages, I would be surprised if
any clear cross-linguistic tendencies for nasality were discovered.
Obviously, this needs to be tested systematically, since the idea pops up in
discussions once in a while. Honda (1996) lists the forms of negative
morphemes for a large number of languages, and in my 2005 book there is also
an appendix where the negative morphemes of the sample languages can be
found. A preliminary count could be quite easily made on the basis of these
lists.

Best wishes,
Matti


References:

Honda, Isao. 1996. Negation: A Cross-Linguistic Study. Ph.D. Dissertation,
State University of New York at Buffalo.

Mayerthaler, Willi. 1981. Morphologische Natürlichkeit. Linguistische
Forschungen 28. Wiesbaden: Athenaion.

Mayerthaler, Willy. 1981. Phonetisch ikonische Kodierung von
Negationspartikeln. Papiere zur Linguistik 23.

Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard Negation: The Negation of Declarative Verbal
Main Clauses in a Typological Perspective. Empirical Approaches to Language
Typology 31. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Lainaus Östen Dahl <oesten at LING.SU.SE>:

> 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
> 
>