[Lingtyp] Novel future markers banned from negative contexts

Wed Nov 22 17:12:59 UTC 2023

Dear All,
I would like to support the general point made by Timur (at he beginning of his mail, see below). However, I wonder whether you are also interested in scenarios in which a contemporary stage of (near) suppletion as for polarity in future marking reflects an older parallel development of “rivalling” source constructions for the future. If yes, Balkan Slavic (Macedonian, Bulgarian) is probably a case you should consider.
               In general, contemporary Bulgarian and Macedonian mark non-negated future with a verbal proclitic that succeeds on WANT (prs.3sg), while with negation rather a marker is used that results from a fusion of NEG with (prs.3sg) HAVE plus an irrealis marker (also a verbal proclitic). However, forms of either source verb are also used “the other way around”: HAVE (prs.3sg) + irrealis marker for “obligational future” without negation (compare with the type which is widespread among Romance languages), and WANT (prs.3sg) with negation (and possibly plus the irrealis marker) to rather mark weakened epistemic support (in assumptions etc.).

In case you are interested in this, please let me know.

I have a question myself. Shouldn’t we in general expect an (immediate) future developing from a prospective/proximative construction to be restricted to assertive utterances? It seems pragmatically a little bit far-fetched to utter assumptions about what is not going to happen; at least, I guess happens considerably less often in everyday speakers’ life (of whatever language).

Best,
Björn Wiemer.

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> On Behalf Of Timur Maisak
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2023 3:29 PM
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Novel future markers banned from negative contexts

Dear Omri,
it seems that one can distinguish between two situations,
- the presence of a functional equivalent of the future in the negative, which is however not derived from the affirmative future
vs.
- the lack of any negative counterpart of the future, be it a form derived from the future or any other functional equivalent.

Also, I wonder whether it is possible to have an asymmetry of another kind, namely the lack of a (morphologically parallel) negative future for an "old" form?
E.g., in the Kvanada variety of Bagvalal (< Andic < Nakh-Daghestanian) as described by Kibrik et al. 2001<https://drive.google.com/file/d/108H9BjrZ5wPoMmjwUtK2ZVk3JEdEatCn/view?usp=sharing>, there are two main future tenses, a synthetic one in -s: and a periphrastic one "future participle + copula". The future participle is morphologically unrelated to the synthetic future.
The periphrastic form has a structurally parallel negative equivalent, "future participle + negative copula", and probably also a second one, "negative future participle + copula".
The synthetic future in -s: does not have a morphologically parallel negative equivalent. However, there is a negative future in -a:č'e which is a form derived from the imperfective stem and seems to be an "old present" (negative). In particular, some verbs ('know', 'need' etc.) describe a current state in this form ('knows', 'needs'), and not future time reference. Thus, it seems that the synthetic future and the synthetic negative future are two "old" and morphologically unrelated forms, originally from two different subparadigms.

Best,
Timur Maisak

ср, 22 нояб. 2023 г. в 16:35, Eleanor Coghill <eleanor.coghill at lingfil.uu.se<mailto:eleanor.coghill at lingfil.uu.se>>:

Dear Omri and List,

The North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic future with bəd-, b- cannot be combined with a negator - although it's not particulary new, being found already in the earliest texts from 400 years ago. It is most likely grammaticalized from the verb bʔy I to want.

all the best

Eleanor

Prof. Eleanor Coghill
Dept. of Linguistics and Philology
Uppsala University, Sweden.
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>> on behalf of Omri Amiraz <Omri.Amiraz at mail.huji.ac.il<mailto:Omri.Amiraz at mail.huji.ac.il>>
Sent: 22 November 2023 09:32:44
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Novel future markers banned from negative contexts

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

VARNING: Klicka inte på länkar och öppna inte bilagor om du inte känner igen avsändaren och vet att innehållet är säkert.
CAUTION: Do not click on links or open attachments unless you recognise the sender and know the content is safe.

När du har kontakt med oss på Uppsala universitet med e-post så innebär det att vi behandlar dina personuppgifter. För att läsa mer om hur vi gör det kan du läsa här: http://www.uu.se/om-uu/dataskydd-personuppgifter/

E-mailing Uppsala University means that we will process your personal data. For more information on how this is performed, please read here: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/data-protection-policy
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20231122/2f953a85/attachment.htm>