[Lingtyp] Negation marks adverbial clauses

Wed Jan 12 20:34:18 UTC 2022

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you all for your very helpfulcomments and introducing invaluable sources. Below I give you a summary of thecomments:

-First, it seems that ‘expletivenegative’ is not a rare phenomenon and it could be found at least in some languagesmentioned by you: Turkish, Ayoreo(Zamuco), Mandarin, Hebrew, Italian, French, Atong, Neo-Aramaic, Danish,Japhug, Mongsen Ao, Georgian and maybe many more.

 -Second, as the examples show, this expletive negativeis mainly observed in adverbial clauses of time: ‘before’, ‘(not) as soon as’, ‘until’,‘almost’ and ‘fear verbs’. 

-Third, there is an explanation suggested by David Gil that I quote here:

=Temporal clauses are temporal in two senses: a) related to timeand b) not-permanent. A temporal clause cannot express a permanent state, butnegation is not compatible with temporal clauses – to the extent it is notsemantically phasal (“not yet” or “no longer”; cf. Heinämäki’s 1974: 183example: When the lights were not on, we took a nap. cannotmean 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 quiteoften.). Which opens up for negation markers being used for other senses thanpolarity in temporal clauses.

=Negation expresses non-identityrather than identity. In temporal clauses, simultaneous is identity of eventsand posterior and anterior is non-identity of events. It would be utterlystrange 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. Itis, however, very clearly understandable that negation can be deployed forposterior meanings (‘before’ and ‘until’) and for some anterior ones(especially ‘as soon as’) since posterior and anterior is non-identity oftimes.

-Fourth, Gilles Authier andGeoffrey Khan pointed at the possible language contact effect of thisphenomenon in this variety of Persian, probably influenced by Turkish andNeo-Aramaic.

Thankyou all again,

Mohammad 

Sources:

Abels, Klaus. 2005. “Expletivenegation” in Russian: a conspiracy theory. Journal of SlavicLinguistics 13.1, 5–74.

Dobrushina, Nina. 2020. Negation incomplement clauses of fear-verbs. Functions of Language issn 0929-998x | e‐issn 1569-9765 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Espinal, M. Teresa. 2000. Expletive negation, negative concord andfeature checking. Catalan Working Papersin Linguistics 8: 47-69.

Greco, M. 2020. On the syntax of surprisenegation sentences: A case study on expletive negation. NaturalLanguage & Linguistic Theory 38(3), 775–825.

Heinämäki, Orvokki Tellervo. 1974. Semantics of Englishtemporal clauses. Ph.D. thesis. The University of Texas at Austin.

Hetterle, Katja. 2015. AdverbialClauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: De Grutyer Mouton. 

Holisky, Dee A. 1981. Aspect theory andGeorgian aspect. Syntax and Semantics 14. 127-144.

Hom, Lawrence. 2010. Multiplenegation in English and other languages. In Lawrence Horn (ed.), The expressionof negation, 111-148. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Jin, Yanwei & Jean-PierreKoenig. 2021. A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation. LinguisticTypology 25(1). 39-78.

Jin, Yanwei. 2021. Negation onyour mind: A cross-linguistic and psycholinguistic study of expletivenegation. Buffalo, NY: University at Buffalo dissertation.

Khan,Geoffrey. The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of the Assyrian Christians of Urmi.4 vols. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics 86. Leiden-Boston: Brill,2016. vol. 2, p.499.

Lewis, Geoffrey. 2000. Turkish Grammar. 2nd edition.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Iordanskaja, L. & I. Mel’čuk. 2009. Semantics of the Russianconjunction 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.

Ramat, P. La comparazione negativa, «Archivio Glottologico Italiano»  87/2002: 223-229. 

Wälchli (2018) discusses negationand "before", "until", "as soon as"clauses: 

https://doi.org/10.32798/bl.372

Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand Linguistics Department,Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran.Postal Code: 6517838695  https://basu.academia.edu/MohammadRasekhmahand

    On Wednesday, January 12, 2022, 10:14:22 AM PST, Pier Marco Bertinetto <piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it> wrote:  

 This may be a marginal observation, but not unrelated to the topic.
In Ayoreo (Zamuco), the connector 'before' (as in: Before you came, I was worried) is expressed asuje cama [uhe kama]when not.yet
(uje is a multifunctional connector, also expressing cause, and is also used as relative pronoun).This suggests a possible path for the negation to insinuate in a temporal clause, for there is an obvious connection between 'when not yet' and 'until not'.Best
Pier Marco

Il giorno mer 12 gen 2022 alle ore 16:14 Yanwei Jin <yanweiji at buffalo.edu> ha scritto:

Dear all,
I think someone has already mentioned my work (with my advisor) A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation published in Linguistic Typology last year where we went over 722 languages, studied  5 languages in depth, collected a comprehensive list of expletive negation triggers (e.g., fear, before, prevent, almost, refuse, etc.), and provided a semantic and psycholinguistic account why this might be the case. I further expanded that paper with an investigation of more languages and several psycholinguistic experiments into my dissertation (Negation on your mind: A cross-linguistic and psycholinguistic study of expletive negation) which can be downloaded from Proquest. If anyone is interested in both works but has no access to them, I can send them to you. 
I am very interested to know that "as long as" also seems to trigger expletive negation as I did not notice this one when I was going over more than a thousand grammars in my dissertation. This is a new trigger for me to think about how to fit its semantic analysis into my previous account.
I should also point out that even in English, you can find expletive negation examples that borderline non-standard usage (or maybe dialect) and speech errors in spontaneous speech. Horn (2010) calls such usages "violations in parole".
a. I'll miss not seeing you around.b. Well, really, how do I keep from not worrying?c. It's been ages since I haven't posted anything here.d. I don't know if I can hold myself back from not watching it.
I had lots of these English examples in my published paper and dissertation. What is fascinating here is that the expletive negation triggers found in English are highly similar to those in French, Mandarin, etc where expletive negation exists profusely, suggesting that this phenomenon definitely has some shared cognitive underpinnings across languages. What is truly different across languages is the degree to which expletive negation use is conventionalized.  
ReferenceJin, Yanwei & Jean-Pierre Koenig. 2021. A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation. Linguistic Typology 25(1). 39-78.
Jin, Yanwei. 2021. Negation on your mind: A cross-linguistic and psycholinguistic study of expletive negation. Buffalo, NY: University at Buffalo dissertation.
Hom, Lawrence. 2010. Multiple negation in English and other languages. In Lawrence Horn (ed.), The expression of negation, 111-148. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 10:18 AM mohammad rasekh <mrasekhmahand at yahoo.com> wrote:

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    anymoreday-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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