[Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses

David Gil gil at shh.mpg.de
Wed Jan 12 12:22:25 UTC 2022


Dear Mohammad, everyone,

Adding Hebrew to the list: it has expletive negation in until clauses, 
but as far as I can tell not in before clauses.

David



On 12/01/2022 13:31, Bernhard Wälchli wrote:
>
> Dear Mohammad,
>
>
> Dear all
>
> Below there is some selected literature on expletive negation. In 
> temporal clauses, negation is common especially in
>
> =’before’: extremely widespread cross-linguistically, see e.g. 
> Hetterle’s (2015) typological monograph.
>
> =’until’: seems to be very restricted areally, mainly Eastern Europe & 
> Caucasus and South Asia (Indo-Aryan and Indo-sphere Sino-Tibetan), but 
> also Paumarí (maybe due to influence from Portuguese /enquanto...não/ 
> ?). In Eastern Europe and in Indo-Aryan, this seems to be a parallel 
> rather recent development (i.e. not going back to Indo-European). An 
> interesting question is how the possible areal relationship between 
> modern Indo-Aryan and Indo-sphere Sino-Tibetan looks like: “as long as 
> not” for ‘until’ is very common in some Sino-Tibetan languages. I 
> think it is an interesting question as to what extent this may be due 
> to contact with modern Indo-Aryan languages.
>
> =”as soon as”: and there seems to be least typological research about 
> this, but it is probably not at all uncommon with different sorts of 
> constructions with negation strategies in “as soon as”, as e.g. in 
> Turkish the -r -mez converb construction /ben oturur oturmaz telefon 
> //çald//ı/‘as soon as I sat down, the telephone rang’ “I sitting.down 
> not.sitting.down telefon rang” (Lewis 2000: 182).
>
> I think part of the explanation of where expletive negation can be 
> found in temporal clauses is the following:
>
> =Temporal clauses are temporal in two senses: a) related to time and 
> b) not-permanent. A temporal clause cannot express a permanent state, 
> but negation is not compatible with temporal clauses – to the extent 
> it is not semantically phasal (“not yet” or “no longer”; cf. 
> Heinämäki’s 1974: 183 example: /When the lights were not on, we took a 
> nap./ cannot mean that the lights were never on, negation must be 
> interpreted phasally here, that the lights probably were on most for 
> of the time or at least quite often.). Which opens up for negation 
> markers being used for other senses than polarity in temporal clauses.
>
> =Negation expresses non-identity rather than identity. In temporal 
> clauses, simultaneous is identity of events and posterior and anterior 
> is non-identity of events. It would be utterly strange if negation was 
> used in simultaneous temporal clauses (‘when, while’), I do not know 
> of a single example of this and wonder whether there are any. It is, 
> however, very clearly understandable that negation can be deployed for 
> posterior meanings (‘before’ and ‘until’) and for some anterior ones 
> (especially ‘as soon as’) since posterior and anterior is non-identity 
> of times.
>
> Some selected literature on expletive negation:
>
> Abels, Klaus.2005. “Expletive negation” in Russian: a conspiracy 
> theory. /Journal of Slavic Linguistics/ 13.1, 5–74.
>
> Espinal, M. Teresa. 2000. Expletive negation, negative concord and 
> feature checking. /Catalan Working Papers in Linguistics/ 8: 47-69.
>
> Greco, M. 2020. On the syntax of surprise negation sentences: A case 
> study on expletive negation. /Natural Language & Linguistic Theory/ 
> /38/(3), 775–825.
>
> Iordanskaja, L. & I. Mel’čuk. 2009. Semantics of the Russian 
> conjunction /poka/ ‘while, before, until’. In T. Berger, M. Giger, S. 
> Kurt & I. Mendoza, Hg., /Von grammatischen Kategorien und sprachlichen 
> Weltbildern – Die Slavia von der Sprachgeschichte bis zur 
> Politsprache/. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderband 73, 253–262. 
> München.
>
> Jin, Y. and Koenig, J.P., 2020. A cross-linguistic study of expletive 
> negation. Linguistic Typology 2021; 25(1): 39–78.
>
> Wälchli, B. 2018/2019. ‘As long as’,’until’ and ‘before’ clauses. 
> /Baltic Linguistics/ /9/, 141–236. 
> http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1351829/FULLTEXT01.pdf
>
> Further references
>
> Heinämäki, Orvokki Tellervo. 1974. /Semantics of English temporal 
> clauses/. Ph.D. thesis. The University of Texas at Austin.
>
> Hetterle, Katja. 2015. /Adverbial Clauses in Cross-Linguistic 
> Perspective/. Berlin: De Grutyer Mouton.
>
> Lewis, Geoffrey. 2000. /Turkish Grammar/. 2^nd edition. Oxford: Oxford 
> University Press.
>
> Best
>
> Bernhard
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf 
> of ROBERT Stephane <stephane.robert at cnrs.fr>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 12, 2022 12:11 PM
> *To:* Nigel Vincent; Françoise Rose; mohammad rasekh; LINGTYP LINGTYP
> *Cc:* Fariba Sabouri
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses
>
> Dear Mohammad,
>
>
> Nigel is absolutely right about the restriction of the negation to its 
> first part (/ne/) in Françoise French example. However French also has 
> another construction using the complete (discontinuous) negation 
> (/ne...pas/) and using a temporal adverb, which seems to me be to be 
> even closer to your Persian example 1:
>
>
> /Il *n*’a/eut *pas* plus tôt répondu à son supérieur *qu*’il a quitté 
> la salle/
> he *NEG1* has/had *NEG2* more early responded to his superior *COMP* 
> he left the room
> "No sooner had he responded to his superior than he left the room"
> *~*** "as soon as he (had) responded to his superior, he left the room "
>
> Two points seem important to me in this negative construction which 
> emphasizes the immediacy of the second event in relation to the first: 
> the presence of the temporal adverbial in the comparative form /plus 
> tôt/ 'sooner' and the complementizer (/que/). The two (/no sooner E1 
> that E1/) form a correlative structure.
>
>
> Best
>
> Stéphane
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *De :* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> de la part 
> de Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>
> *Envoyé :* mercredi 12 janvier 2022 10:29
> *À :* Françoise Rose; mohammad rasekh; LINGTYP LINGTYP
> *Cc :* Fariba Sabouri
> *Objet :* Re: [Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses
> In relation to the French example it should perhaps be added that in a 
> clause with 'avant' only the first part of the negation marker 
> 'ne…pas' occurs. Contrast 'elle n'arrive pas' and 'avant qu'elle 
> n'arrive', where the first is ungrammatical without 'pas' and the 
> second is ungrammatical with 'pas' (or so I was taught!).
> Perhaps also relevant to Mohammad's question is the use of the Latin 
> negative purposive complementizer /ne/ 'in order that … not' as the 
> marker of the complement of a verb of fearing (cf the volume referred 
> to in an earlier post in this thread).
> Nigel
>
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
> The University of Manchester
>
>
>
> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf 
> of Françoise Rose <francoise.rose at univ-lyon2.fr>
> *Sent:* 12 January 2022 9:53 AM
> *To:* mohammad rasekh <mrasekhmahand at yahoo.com>; LINGTYP LINGTYP 
> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Cc:* Fariba Sabouri <faribasabouri at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses
>
> 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 2^ème 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-ke*/*/š/**/-i/*/                        ru 
> har//č//i,             x//ā//k-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
> <https://basu.academia.edu/MohammadRasekhmahand>
>
>
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-- 
David Gil

Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
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