[Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses

Wed Jan 12 10:35:51 UTC 2022

 Dear Mohammad,
apart from Bernhard Wälchli's paper mentioned earlier in this thread, there are also quite a few studies on (what is often referred to as) expletive negation in 'until'/'before' clauses in the languages of Europe, often couched in terms of some formal theory. I am mostly familiar with papers focused on Russian that are also written in Russian (would you be interested in those?), but here are some references in English:
Abels K. 2002.Expletive (?) negation. Proceedings of FASL, Vol. 10. 1–20.

IordanskajaL., Mel’čuk I. 2009. Semantics of the Russian сonjunction POKA‘while, before, until’. Von grammatischenKategorien und sprachlichen Weltbildern — Die Slavia von der Sprachgeschichtebis zur Politsprache. Festschrift für Daniel Weiss zum 60. Geburtstag. Wien:Otto Sagner. 233–262.

Krifka M. 2010.How to Interpret “Expletive” Negationunder bevor in German. Language and Logos: Studies in theoreticaland computational linguistics. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010. 214–236.
Best,
Sergey

    On Wednesday, January 12, 2022, 12:49:19 PM GMT+3, Seino van Breugel <seinobreugel at gmail.com> wrote:  

 Hi All,
In Atong (A Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan language, as spoken in Northeast India), there is a postposition <dabat> which limits an event in time, and can thus be translated as 'since' or 'until'. I am not sure if this word is analysable to (all) Atong speakers, but it's internal makeup is the prohibitive morpheme <da> followed by the verbal root <bat> 'cross'. It's literal meaning would  be 'don't cross!'. This is an example of something that was at least historically negative, but, as far as I can tell, synchronically just a temporal specifier. Example (1) illustrates its use. 
Example (1).
|  
nang•
  |  
kheng
  |  
=wa
  |  
dabat
  |  
ang
  |  
thyi
  |  
=cha
  |  
dabat
  |
|  
2sg
  |  
be.alive
  |  
=acc
  |  
limit
  |  
1sg
  |  
die
  |  
=neg
  |  
limit
  |

|  
ang
  |  
=aw
  |  
mu•
  |  
=ai
  |  
sa•
  |  
=na
  |  
hyn•
  |  
=bo”
  |  
no
  |  
=ok
  |  
=no.
  |
|  
1sg
  |  
=acc
  |  
keep
  |  
=adv
  |  
eat
  |  
=goal
  |  
give
  |  
=imp
  |  
say
  |  
=cos
  |  
=quot
  |

 ‘keepgiving me and my wife to eat, for as long as you live, until I die’

 Literally something like: 'don't cross my life, don't cross my not dying'.

Then there is what I called the expletive negative in Atong, as in example (2). Here, the negative =cha really does not express negation, but works with the event specifier suffix -tharap (as soon as) to specify the time of the event dong• 'arrive'. 

Example (2).

|  
dong•
  |  
-ang
  |  
-tharap
  |  
=cha
  |  
=an
  |  
kyryi
  |  
=wa
  |  
ganang
  |
|  
arrive
  |  
-away
  |  
-as.soon.as
  |  
=neg
  |  
=foc
  |  
be.afraid
  |  
=fact
  |  
exist
  |

 ‘as soon as [he]arrived, [he] was afraid’

In conclusion, it seems that in Atong, negative morphemes, historically and synchronically, can be used in certain constructions to help with the temporal specification of events.

Best,

Seino

_________________

Dr. Seino van BreugelAssistant ProfessorUniversity College Roosevelt, Middelburg, The Netherlands
On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 9:55 AM Françoise Rose <francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr> wrote:

Dear Mohammad,

this is a very common phenomenon in (rather formal) French:

avant qu’elle n’arrive, ….

before she arrives (lit. before she does not arrive)

Unfortunately, I don’t have any reading recommendation on the topic!

Best,

Françoise ROSE (fʁɑ̃swɑz ʁoz)

Directrice de Recherches 2ème classe, CNRS

Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage (CNRS/Université Lyon2)

16 avenue Berthelot

69007 Lyon

FRANCE

www.ddl.cnrs.fr/ROSE

De : Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>De la part de mohammad rasekh
Envoyé : mardi 11 janvier 2022 16:18
À : LINGTYP LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Cc : Fariba Sabouri <faribasabouri at gmail.com>
Objet : [Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses

Dear All,

I hope you have started a happy new year.

In the corpus of one of my students in Hamedani Persian (a variety spoken in Hamedan, west of Iran), we have found some adverbial clauses in which the verb is marked by negative prefix, but it does not mean negative. These adverbial clauses mark Time (meaning 'as soon as') and Reason, or both at the same time. Some examples:

1.       i               ke            kur         na-šod, man         diye          ruz-e xoš                 na-didam

        he            that         blind       NEG-become, I    anymore day-EZ happy     NEG-see-1SG

        As soon as he got blind, I had no good times.

2.      das       ke        ne-mi-keš-i                               ru harči,                       xāk-e

       hand     that      NEG-IND-touch-2SG               over     everything,       dirty-BE.3SG

    As you touch everything, it is dirty.

I wonder if there is any other language in which the adverbial clause is negative in form but not in meaning. I searched to find some evidence or some sources which mention this, but I was not successful. I appreciate your comments.

Best regards,

Mohammad 

Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand 

Linguistics Department,

Bu-Ali Sina University, 

Hamedan, Iran.

Postal Code: 6517838695  

https://basu.academia.edu/MohammadRasekhmahand

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