[Lingtyp] Novel future markers banned from negative contexts

[Naomi Peck]

Omri Amiraz
Dear colleagues, Eitan Grossman and I are writing a paper about newly-grammaticalized future markers that are banned from negative contexts, which results in paradigmatic asymmetry where certain grammatical distinctions (e.g., remoteness) are absent in the negative. We are currently aware of a handful of such cases (Tigre, Coptic, Palestinian Arabic, Quebec French, Tok Pisin), and we’d be happy to know if anyone knows of other relevant cases. Also, Bybee et al. (1994: 271) make the tentative claim that novel future constructions are often immediate futures: “[…] we interpreted primary future grams with immediate future as a use as younger than grams whose future use was simple future; that is, we were in effect suggesting that, for primary futures, the use immediate future is diagnostic of a simple future at an earlier stage of its development. Although we are not aware of strong historical evidence attesting the generalization of an immediate future to a general future gram (but see Fleischman 1983 for a claim that this occurs), there are both formal and semantic indications of the youth of immediate futures.” Does anyone know of a more recent study that tried to test this hypothesis? Omri Amiraz
Hi Omri,

Mark Donohue, Tom Wyatt and I have a paper which might interest you on the paradigmatic asymmetries arising in the negative in Bumthang:

Peck, Naomi, Thomas Wyatt & Mark Donohue. 2020. The asymmetrical categories of negation in Bumthang. Himalayan Linguistics 19(1). https://doi.org/10/ghcg3k.

Best,
Naomi

https://doi.org/10/ghcg3k	https://doi.org/10/ghcg3k	[The asymmetrical categories of negation in Bumthang
Author(s): Peck, Naomi; Wyatt, Thomas; Donohue, Mark | Abstract: Less inflectional categories are found in negated clauses than are found in affirmative clauses in Bumthang, a Tibeto-Burman language of Bhutan. It is common cross-linguistically for languages to make fewer contrasts in negative clauses than in affirmative ones. In this paper we focus on the less expected appearance of the ergative case in certain negated irrealis clauses, where the use of this case would be ungrammatical in the corresponding affirmative clauses. We sketch the aspectual and case-marking systems of the language, and then present data exemplifying the interaction of case, aspect and polarity, including the use of the ergative with arguments of monovalent verbs in negated irrealis clauses. We conclude by offering an account for the behaviour observed in terms of the pragmatics of implicature.](https://doi.org/10/ghcg3k)	https://doi.org/10/ghcg3k

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Naomi Peck (she/her)
PhD Student / Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
General Linguistics Department, University of Freiburg
[naomipeck.com](https://naomipeck.com/) | [@NaomiPeckLing](https://twitter.com/naomipeckling)

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On November 22, 2023 at 8:33 GMT, Omri Amiraz <omri.amiraz at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

Dear colleagues,
Eitan Grossman and I are writing a paper about newly-grammaticalized future markers that are banned from negative contexts, which results in paradigmatic asymmetry where certain grammatical distinctions (e.g., remoteness) are absent in the negative.

We are currently aware of a handful of such cases (Tigre, Coptic, Palestinian Arabic, Quebec French, Tok Pisin), and we’d be happy to know if anyone knows of other relevant cases.

Also, Bybee et al. (1994: 271) make the tentative claim that novel future constructions are often immediate futures: “[…] we interpreted primary future grams with immediate future as a use as younger than grams whose future use was simple future; that is, we were in effect suggesting that, for primary futures, the use immediate future is diagnostic of a simple future at an earlier stage of its development. Although we are not aware of strong historical evidence attesting the generalization of an immediate future to a general future gram (but see Fleischman 1983 for a claim that this occurs), there are both formal and semantic indications of the youth of immediate futures.”

Does anyone know of a more recent study that tried to test this hypothesis?

Omri Amiraz
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