[Lingtyp] Expletive NEG and scalar additive 'until' clauses

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Dear Jesus – Expletive negation has also been noted in mirative contexts recently, in Spanish of all languages:

https://rrg2023.phil.hhu.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/RRG2023-Hasler_Gonzalez_Flores.pdf

I’ve definitely seen this kind of use of negation in other languages as well.

It doesn’t seem hard to think of a connection between mirativity and scalar focus particles, since both may be involved in framing the extent of something as surprising/extreme.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez <olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu>
Date: Wednesday, September 6, 2023 at 23:00
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Expletive NEG and scalar additive 'until' clauses
Dear all,

I was wondering if you know any languages in which expletive negation appears in scalar additive constructions, as in (1).

Huasteca Nahuatl
(1)       huankino         hualah-ki                     kuatochi,
            and.then          come-pfv                      bunny
            ‘The bunny came to the party,

hua      asta      amo   hualah-ki      koxua-li.
and      until     neg      come-pfv       turtle-abs
                and even the turtle.’

The expletive negative marker in (1) seems to have an interesting discourse function in scalar additive 'until' clauses, and it seems that other Mesoamerican languages have developed similar constructions due to language contact.

The fact that temporal ‘until’ markers may develop into scalar additive operators has not gone unnoticed (König 1991; Jasionytė-Mikučionienė 2019: 293). However, to the best of my knowledge, scalar additive ‘until’ clauses with expletive negation seem to be rare cross-linguistically.

Best,

References
Jasionytė-Mikučionienė, Erika. 2019. Subordinating conjunctions as discourse markers in Lithuanian. Corpus Pragmatics 3. 285–301
König, Ekkehard. 1991. The meaning of focus particles: A comparative perspective. London: Routledge.

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Jesús Olguín Martínez
Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Theoretical Linguistics
Illinois State University English Department
Alexander von Humboldt alumnus
Jesús Olguín Martínez | Illinois State University - Academia.edu<https://ilstu.academia.edu/Jes%C3%BAsOlgu%C3%ADnMart%C3%ADnez>

Recent publications:
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2023. Semantically negative clause-linkage: ‘Let alone’ constructions, (expletive) negation, and theoretical implications. Linguistic Typology published online July 2023.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2023. Areality of clause-linkage: The consecutive construction in Mesoamerican languages. Voprosy Jazykoznanija (‘Topics in the Study of Language’) 3. 122-142.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2023. A typological study of tail-head linkage constructions.  In Discourse phenomena in typological perspective,   Alessandra Barotto and Simone Mattiola (eds.), 403-432. John Benjamins: Studies in Language Companian Series.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Manuel Peregrina Llanes. 2022. ‘Without V-ing’ clauses: Clausal negative concomitance in typological perspective. Folia Linguistica. Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae published online December 2022.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Alonso Vásquez. 2022. The contribution of Amazonian languages to the typology of purpose clauses. LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas 22. 1-21
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. Contact-induced language change: The case of Mixtec adverbial clauses. Journal of Language Contact. Evolution of Languages, Contact and Discourse 15. 1-70.

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