Table Of ContentStandard Negation
≥
Empirical Approaches
to Language Typology
31
Editors
Bernard Comrie
Matthew Dryer
Yaron Matras
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Standard Negation
The Negation of Declarative Verbal Main Clauses
in a Typological Perspective
by
Matti Miestamo
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
MoutondeGruyter(formerlyMouton,TheHague)
isaDivisionofWalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin.
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Miestamo,Matti,1973(cid:1)
Standard negation : the negation of declarative verbal main clauses
inatypologicalperspective/byMattiMiestamo.
p.cm.(cid:1)(Empiricalapproachestolanguagetypology;31)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN-13:978-3-11-018579-9(cloth:alk.paper)
ISBN-10:3-11-018579-2(cloth:alk.paper)
1. Grammar, Comparative and general (cid:1) Negatives. 2. Gram-
mar, Comparative and general (cid:1) Clauses. 3. Grammar, Com-
parative and general (cid:1) Verb. 4. Typology (Linguistics) I. Title.
II.Series.
P299.N4.M54 2005
415(cid:1)dc22
2005031142
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ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018579-9
ISBN-10: 3-11-018579-2
ISSN 0933-761X
Copyright2005byWalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,D-10785Berlin.
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Preface and acknowledgements
What initially aroused my interest in negation was perhaps the idea of
contradiction and controversy that negation involves. Now, after many years
of research, I can really say what is intriguing about negation: It is much
more than simply stating that a proposition is not true. Turning an affirmative
sentence into a negative one can have interesting effects on many levels of
language: The semanticist tells us that the meanings of various elements of
the sentence can be affected by negation, and the pragmaticist says negatives
are used differently and in different contexts than affirmatives. Effects of
negation on the level of linguistic form are also familiar to linguists, but the
extent to which the structure of the negative can differ from the structure of
the affirmative in the languages of the world will certainly surprise anyone
acquainted with the most well-known Indo-European languages only.
This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation (University of
Helsinki, 2003). The most important changes are the following: A lot of
material has been moved from Appendix II to the main text, and the appendix
now contains only those examples and analyses not found elsewhere in the
book. Sampling methodology has been further developed and the quantitative
generalizations are now based on an areally and genealogically more
balanced set of languages. I have also tried to express my arguments more
clearly and explicitly, and I have sharpened the definitions of the types of
negation. Some details of analysis have also been revised.
My research could not have been realized without the help of various
people. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Fred Karlsson for
his invaluable advice and support over the years. I am grateful to Jouko
Lindstedt for his insightful views on various aspects of my work, and I would
also like to thank Urho Määttä for his comments on the manuscript. To Esa
Itkonen I owe thanks for introducing me to language typology and for his
highly useful comments when I was beginning my work on negation. The
valuable advice by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo, Jan-Ola Östman, and Anneli
Pajunen at early stages of my research is also gratefully acknowledged.
The external reviewers of my dissertation were Martin Haspelmath and
Leon Stassen, and the latter also acted as the opponent at the defence of the
dissertation. I am grateful for their comments and suggestions which have
been extremely useful in revising the dissertation for publication. I would
also like to thank Yaron Matras for the comments he has given on the
vi Preface and acknowledgements
manuscript as an editor of the EALT series. Naturally, thanks are also due to
all anonymous reviewers at different stages of my work on negation.
In 2000 I spent a very productive autumn semester at the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and I would like to
express my gratitude to Bernard Comrie for making this visit possible. For
advice in sampling methodology, I owe thanks to Matthew Dryer. Being able
to take part in the World Atlas of Language Structures project was extremely
beneficial for my research; I thank the editors of the Atlas for this oppor-
tunity as well as for their comments on my work.
I would like to thank the audiences of various workshops and
conferences, especially the participants of ALT V in Cagliari in 2003, for
their comments that have helped me to improve the text at different points.
Thanks to Antti Arppe for reading parts of the manuscript before I submitted
it to the publisher and to Graham Wilcock for providing his native-speaker
views on my translations of the quotes in section (1.3). I would also like to
express my gratitude to all friends and colleagues who have contributed to
the realization of the book in various ways – unfortunately there is too little
space to mention them all here.
Additional thanks to those who have kindly answered my questions
concerning negation in the languages of their expertise: Anders Ahlqvist,
Helma van den Berg, Kenneth Claesson, Bernard Comrie, Matthew
Davidson, Matthew Dryer, David Gil, Kimmo Granqvist, Ekaterina
Gruzdeva, Arja Hamari, George Hewitt, José Hualde, Richard Hudson,
Magdolna Kovács, Elena Maslova, Stephen Matthews, Ger Reesink, John
Rennison, David Rood, Carl Rubino, Noel Rude, Jeanette Sakel, Uri Tadmor,
Gracious Temsen, Angela Terril, Pilar Valenzuela, Hein van der Voort, and
Suzanne Wash.
I am grateful to the people at Mouton, especially Ursula Kleinhenz and
Wolfgang Konwitschny, for making this book a reality.
For financial support I owe thanks to the graduate schools Langnet and
Linguistic Meaning and its Processing, to the Academy of Finland, to the
Alfred Kordelin Foundation, to the Oskar Öflund Foundation, to the
University of Helsinki, and to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for support, especially my wife
Milla for her endless patience and understanding. This book is dedicated to
her.
Helsinki, October 5, 2005
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements ................................. v
List of abbreviations ......................................... x
Chapter 1. Introduction ....................................... 1
1.1. Preliminaries ......................................... 1
1.2. A preview of negation in language and in languages .......... 3
1.3. Earlier typologies of standard negation .................... 18
Chapter 2. Theoretical and methodological issues ................. 26
2.1. Outline of methodology ................................ 26
2.2. Sampling ........................................... 27
2.3. Defining standard negation ............................. 39
2.4. Cross-linguistic patterns: Classification and correlations ...... 45
2.5. Functional motivations ................................ 48
2.6. Conclusion .......................................... 50
Chapter 3. Classification ..................................... 51
3.1. Introduction ......................................... 51
3.1.1. Symmetric and asymmetric negation: Constructional
and paradigmatic ................................. 51
3.1.2. Further delimitations to the object of study............. 56
3.2. Symmetric negation ................................... 61
3.2.1. Symmetric constructions ........................... 61
3.2.2. Symmetric paradigms ............................. 63
3.2.3. Further examples and discussion of symmetric negation .. 67
3.2.4. Conclusion ...................................... 72
3.3. Asymmetric negation .................................. 72
3.3.1. Asymmetry in the finiteness of verbal elements:
Type A/Fin ..................................... 73
3.3.1.1. A/Fin/Neg-LV ............................... 75
3.3.1.2. A/Fin/Neg-FE ............................... 80
3.3.1.3. A/Fin/Neg-Cl ................................ 81
3.3.1.4. A/Fin/NegVerb .............................. 81
3.3.1.5. Further examples and discussion of type A/Fin ..... 87
viii Contents
3.3.2. Asymmetry in the marking of reality status:
Type A/NonReal ................................. 96
3.3.3. Asymmetry in the marking of emphasis: Type A/Emph .. 109
3.3.4. Asymmetry in the marking of grammatical categories:
Type A/Cat .................................... 112
3.3.4.1. A/Cat/TAM ................................ 116
3.3.4.2. A/Cat/PNG ................................ 128
3.3.4.3. A/Cat asymmetry affecting other grammatical
categories ................................. 134
3.3.4.4. Further examples and discussion of type A/Cat .... 138
3.3.5. Asymmetric negation: A few residual cases ........... 153
3.3.6. Multiple asymmetries: Derived vs. independent ........ 156
3.3.7. Further remarks on asymmetric negation ............. 161
3.4. Comparison with some earlier studies .................... 162
3.5. Conclusion ......................................... 165
Chapter 4. Quantitative data ................................. 167
4.1. Introduction ........................................ 167
4.2. Frequencies ........................................ 169
4.2.1. Symmetric and asymmetric negation ................. 170
4.2.2. The subtypes of asymmetric negation ................ 172
4.2.3. Combinations of the subtypes of asymmetric negation ... 176
4.2.4. The contexts of the different types .................. 177
4.2.5. Paradigmatic asymmetry and neutralization of
grammatical categories ........................... 178
4.2.6. Conclusions .................................... 181
4.3. Correlations ........................................ 182
4.3.1. Correlations with other aspects of negation ........... 182
4.3.2. Word order correlations ........................... 186
4.3.3. Some conclusions ............................... 189
4.4. Geographical distributions ............................. 190
4.5. Conclusion ......................................... 194
Chapter 5. Functional motivations ............................. 195
5.1. Introduction: General principles ........................ 195
5.1.1. Functional asymmetry between affirmation and
negation ....................................... 195
5.1.2. Language-internal and language-external analogy ...... 200
5.1.3. Some remarks on the role of diachrony ............... 203
Contents ix
5.2. Motivations for the typological findings .................. 204
5.2.1. Symmetric and asymmetric negation: Constructional
and paradigmatic ................................ 204
5.2.2. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Fin .................. 206
5.2.3. Asymmetric negation: Type A/NonReal .............. 208
5.2.4. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Emph ................ 209
5.2.5. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Cat .................. 210
5.2.6. Some general issues and concluding remarks .......... 215
5.3. Diachronic developments ............................. 217
5.3.1. Symmetric and asymmetric negation: Constructional
and paradigmatic ................................ 218
5.3.2. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Fin .................. 221
5.3.3. Asymmetric negation: Type A/NonReal .............. 224
5.3.4. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Emph ................ 225
5.3.5. Asymmetric negation: Type A/Cat .................. 227
5.3.6. Diachronic developments: Conclusion ............... 231
5.4. Some further issues .................................. 232
5.5. Conclusion ......................................... 235
Chapter 6. Conclusions ..................................... 236
Appendix I Sample languages................................ 241
Appendix II Examples and analyses ........................... 255
Appendix III Data table..................................... 370
Appendix IV Lists of languages in each type .................... 409
Notes ................................................... 412
References ............................................... 432
Index of languages ......................................... 470
Index of authors ........................................... 477
Index of subjects .......................................... 484
List of abbreviations
Abbreviations used in the glosses
> agent>patient / CL class/classifier
subject>object relation CLT clitic
in transitive clauses CMPL completive
1 first person CNG connegative
2 second person CNTR contrastive
3 third person COMIT comitative
A transitive subject/ COMM common
agent COMP complementizer
ABE abessive COND conditional
ABL ablative CONF confirmative
ABS absolutive CONN connector
ABSTR abstractive CONT continuative
ACC accusative COP copula
ACN action particle CTF counterfactual
ACT actual CTPT centripetal
ADE adessive CV character vowel
ADEL adelative DAT dative
ADV adverb(ial) DECL declarative
AFF affirmative DEF definite
AGR agreement DEM demonstrative
AGT agent DEP dependent
ALL allative DES desiderative
AOR aorist DET determiner
ART article DFLT default form
ASP aspect DIM diminutive
ASS assertive DIR directional
ATEL atelic DIST distal, distance
ATMP atemporal DLMT delimitative
ATT attributive DMT demoted
AUG augment DS different subject
AUX auxiliary DU dual
CERT certitive DUR durative
CIRC circumstantial EMPH emphatic
