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

Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez olguinmartinez at ucsb.edu
Thu Sep 7 10:18:41 UTC 2023


Hi Volker, Pier Marco, Juergen, and Bernhard,

Many thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Yes, I think that mirativity is involved here because of the discourse
contexts in which these examples are found. I have roughly 42 examples
found in different fairy tales.

The fact that the *asta* ‘until’ clause is situated at the most unlikely
point along a pragmatic scale of (un)likelihood with respect to
contextually relevant alternatives may explain why expletive negation
occurs in discourse contexts involving surprise, as in (1). In this
example, it is surprising that the rooster ran away from the coyote because
he is not afraid of him. The presupposition triggered in (1) is that out of
the two animals running away from the coyote (i.e., roadrunner and
rooster), the rooster was the least likely to run away.



Huasteca Nahuatl

(1)        *huankino         peh-ki              hueli    motlaloa
ne        pochakua*,

            and.then          start-pfv          big
run                   det      roadrunner

            ‘And then the roadrunner started running (when he saw the
coyote)



            *huan    asta      amo     motlaloa-k       ne        kuapelech*
.

            and      until     neg      run-pfv            det      rooster

            and even the rooster ran away (when he saw the coyote).’



            *achaka             tla-huel                        pensaro-ki*

            nobody            indef.obj-could          think-pfv

            'Nobody could believe it.’



            *mo-tlan-k-e                 ne        kuapelech
hua      nopa    koyote*.

            rec-fight-pfv-pl         det      rooster             and
det      coyote

            ‘The rooster and the coyote always fight.’


This is also attested in other types of 'until' constructions:


Huasteca Nahuatl

(2)      *mo-chich-k-e*.

            refl-wait-pfv-pl

            ‘They (the milpa workers) were waiting (for their neighbors).’



            *huankino         ach-ki-onkah               fiesta*,

            and.then          neg-3sg.obj-be           party

            ‘So, the festival did not start,



            *asta      amo     ki-asi-k-e*.

            until     neg      3sg.obj-arrive-pfv-pl

            until they (the neighbors) arrived.’



*amo     nelia*.

neg      true

‘No one could believe it.’


Husteca Nahuatl

(3)      *ki-olini-ki                     nopa    tlaka-tl
pehua-yaya     i-cha*

            3sg.obj-move-pfv      det      man-abs          start-ipfv
3sg.poss-house

            ‘The man walked from his house,



            *asta      amo**     ki-olini-ki                     pan
el         mar      iteno*.

            until     neg      3sg.obj-move-pfv      in         the
sea       shore

            to the shore.’



            *pero     pil-huehuen-tsi
pil-huehuen-tsi             pil-huehuen-tsi*.

            but       elder-old-dim              elder-old-dim
elder-old-dim

            ‘The man is very very old.’



            *huankino         achaka             tla-huel
                     pensaro-ki*.

            and.then          nobody            indef.obj-could
think-pfv

            ‘And nobody could believe it (because his house is far away
from the shore).’


'Before' is expressed in Nahuatl by means of *kemah* 'when' and *ayokana* 'not
yet'.






On Thu, Sep 7, 2023 at 4:51 AM Volker Gast <volker.gast at uni-jena.de> wrote:

> Hi Jesús,
> expletive negation in combination with scalar additive operators is not
> uncommon, but only in downward entailing / non-veridical contexts.
>
> The following example from Quebec French, quoted from Labelle (2023, ex.
> [26c]), illustrates expletive negation in a relative clause modifying a
> superlative NP.
>
> 'Sept générations de petits nés dans les pires conditions que tu peux même
> pas imaginer.'
> 'Seven generations of kids born in the worst conditions that you can(not)
> even imagine.'
>
> Expletive negation may certainly generalize from downward entailing to
> upward entailing contexts, specifically if mirativity or exclamation is
> involved (see Jürgen's comment).
>
> I agree with Pier Marco that your example looks strange. Was it taken from
> a (written) narrative? And do you have similar examples of that type? You'd
> have to rule out a temporal interpretation, as Pier Marco wrote, and
> ideally you should have intonational information, to understand any emotive
> meaning conveyed.
>
> It would also be good to have more information about the entire polarity
> system of Huasteca Nahuatl, and the distibution of expletive negation (for
> a typological approach, see for instance Jin & Koenig 2020).
>
> In any case, I do not consider it unlikely that expletive negation is
> found in combination with scalar additive operators in upward entailing
> contexts; but I would predict that in such cases, it will be found in
> downward entailing contexts, too.
>
> Best,
> Volker
>
> References
>
> Labelle, M., (2023) “Apparent expletive negation, silent comparatives, and
> domain widening in Quebec French superlative and universal constructions”, *Glossa:
> a journal of general linguistics* 8(1). doi:
> https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.9549.
>
> Jin, Yanwei and Koenig, Jean-Pierre. "A cross-linguistic study of
> expletive negation" *Linguistic Typology*, vol. 25, no. 1, 2020, pp.
> 39-78. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2053
> Am 07.09.2023 um 00:00 schrieb Jesus Francisco Olguin Martinez:
>
> 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.
>
> --
> 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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-- 
Jesús Olguín Martínez
Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin
Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow
Home - Jesús Olguín (jesusolguinmartinez.com)
<https://www.jesusolguinmartinez.com/?fbclid=IwAR2len8OjCPh6HfiREXrVK56ZMgLrXDUolQdO1G-cG9z2DDl4XM5ZvueVqs>

Dissertation:
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. *Temporal adverbial clauses in the languages
of the world: Clause-linking strategies*. Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California, Santa Barbara.

Recent publications:
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.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Nicholas Lester.  2021. A quantitative analysis of
counterfactual conditionals in the world’s languages. *Italian Journal of
Linguistics 33*. 147-182.
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2021. ‘As if’ constructions in world-wide
perspective. *Journal Linguistic typology at the crossroads* 1. 2-33.
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