Negative participles

[Yvonne Treis]

Dear colleagues,

 

Does anyone know of a language that has negative but no affirmative participles (verbal adjectives)? 

Or a language that has negative relative verbs with adjectival features but affirmative relative verbs without adjectival features?

 

I am working on Kambaata, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia. In this language, affirmative relative verbs have a purely verbal morphology, i.e. they agree with the subject of the relative clause (see 3F agreement with subject 'salt'), they are marked for aspect etc. 

 

(1)        [maxín-it           kot-táa]                                    bun-á

            salt-F.NOM     be_insufficient-3F.IPV.REL      coffee-M.ACC

            'coffee in which the salt is insufficient'

 

However, when relative clauses are negated in Kambaata, a negative participle (glossed "NREL"), which combines verbal and adjectival morphology, has to be used. These negative participles agree with the subject of the relative clause (see 3F marking in ex. (2) and 3M marking in ex. (3)) but they also agree with the head noun in gender and case (see the final inflectional morpheme -ú M.ACC in ex. (2) and -ut in ex. (3))).

 

(2)        [maxín-it           kot-tumb-ú]                                          bun-á

            salt-F.NOM     be_insufficient-3F.NREL-M.ACC        coffee-M.ACC

            'coffee in which the salt is not insufficient (i.e. with enough salt)'

 

(3)        [bobír-u                       qoh-úmb-ut]                                        úull-at

            wind-M.NOM             damage-3M.NREL-F.NOM                land-F.NOM

            '(a plot of) land which the wind has not damaged'

 

The negative relative verbs / participles are clearly verb-adjective hybrids; their argument structure is entirely verbal (they govern nominative subjects, all types of objects and adverbial constituents inside the relative clause) and they agree with their subject in person/gender/number (as any other verb in the language does) but they cannot be marked for aspect and, most importantly, they agree with the head noun that they modify in the same way as an adjective does in a Kambaata NP; see the case- and gender-agreeing adjectives in (4) and compare them with the case- and gender-agreeing negative relative verbs / particles in (2)-(3).

 

(4)        danaam-ú         bun-á

            good-M.ACC  coffee-M.ACC

            'good coffee' (accusative)

 

            muccúr-ut         xénq-ut

            clean-F.NOM  mug-F.NOM

            'clean mug' (nominative)

 

I would appreciate any references to languages whose (relative) verbs acquire adjectival features when they are negated. 

 

Thank you very much for your help.

 

Yvonne

 

 

 

************************************
Dr Yvonne Treis
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086
Australia

Tel. (+61) 3 9479 6421
Fax. (+61) 3 9467 3053
Email y.treis at latrobe.edu.au <mailto:y.treis at latrobe.edu.au>  



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