[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

[Joseph Brooks]

Dear Bastian,
There is a relevant paper by Ger Reesink. 1986, "Being negative can be
positive". In: Pragmatics in Non-Western Perspective, Huttar G. & Gregersen
K. (eds.) Dallas: SIL. 115-42.
Joseph

On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 1:16 PM Bastian Persohn <
persohn.linguistics at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear group members,
>
> I am posting the below on behalf of a student of mine. Any input will be
> greatly appreciated, be it on similar conventionalized uses of negation and
> irony in other languages of the world, general thoughts, or even specific
> remarks regarding isiXhosa (or the larger Nguni branch of Bantu).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Bastian
>
>
> I would like some help with finding resources/getting more information on
>> ironic negative constructions, which are a rather frequent device in
>> isiXhosa (Bantu, South Africa). I’m not sure if they go by any other name,
>> I found this term in Oosthuysen’s (2016) Grammar of isiXhosa. He describes
>> it as “The use of a grammatical negative to convey a predicate with an
>> emphatic positive connotation”. So, these constructions read as negative
>> statements but in actual fact mean the opposite. The prosody is different
>> which helps in realising that it’s the ironic negative. Here are some
>> examples (numbers indicate noun classes, FV is the default final vowel
>> morpheme):
>>
>>
>> *A-ka-se-m-hle lo mntwana*
>> NEG-SBJ.NEG.1-still-1-pretty PROX.1 1.child
>> 'This child is so/very beautiful' (lit: 'This child is no longer
>> beautiful')
>>
>>
>> *A-ni-sa-hlafun-i*
>> NEG-SBJ.2PL-still-chew-NEG
>> 'You are chewing so much/so loudly' (lit: 'You are no longer chewing')
>>
>>
>> *A-ndi-sa-dinw-anga*
>> NEG-SBJ.1SG-still-be(come)_tired-NEG.PFV
>> 'I am so/very tired.' (lit: 'I am not tired anymore')
>>
>> *Be-ndi-nge-minc-e*
>> REC.PST-SBJ.1SG-NEG-tense_up-PFV
>> 'I was so very tense' (lit: 'I was not tensed up')
>>
>> *A-yi-nints-i imi-buzo ya-m*
>> NEG-COP.4-many 4-question 4-POSS.1SG
>> 'My questions are so many' (lit: 'My questions are not many')
>>
>> Any input in the form of papers, books, tiny excerpt, noting that it
>> you’ve encountered a similar thing in another language etc would be of
>> great help.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
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