[Lingtyp] NEG not.know --> know

[André Müller]

Dear Ljuba,

That might have been *Greenlandic*. There is the verb ‘to not know’, which
is negated to express the notion ‘to know’. The following examples are from
West Greenlandic:

*Nalu–ara.*
not.know–1SG>3SG
‘I don't know him.’

*Nalu–nngila–ra.*
not.know–NEG–1SG>3SG
‘I know him.’

I don't know if this also happens in other related Eskimo-Aleut languages,
though.

Best wishes from Zurich,
— André Müller

Am Mi., 11. Sept. 2019 um 12:09 Uhr schrieb Ljuba Veselinova <
ljuba at ling.su.se>:

> Dear All,
>
> At ALT in Leipzig 2013, somebody pointed out to me that there is a
> language where the verb 'not.know' has to be negated in order to get the
> sense 'know'; if I recall it correctly, a positive verb 'know' did not
> exist in that language. Unfortunately, I did not write down neither the
> name of the language, nor the example. If anyone knows of such cases, I
> would appreciate it very much to hear about them.
>
> Thank you in advance for your time and help.
>
> All the best,
> Ljuba
>
>
> --
> ============================================================
> Ljuba Veselinova, Associate Professor
> Dept of Linguistics, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
> Phone: +46-8-16-2332 Fax: +46-8-15 5389
> URL  : http://www.ling.su.se/ljuba.veselinova
>
> "We learn by going where we want to go."
>                                           Julia Cameron
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