Typological Studies in Negation

396 Pages·1994·14.18 MB·Typological Studies in Language 29

by  Peter Kahrel (Ed.), René van den Berg (Ed.)

TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN NEGATION
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE (TSL)
A companion series to the journal "STUDIES IN LANGUAGE"
Honorary Editor: Joseph H. Greenberg
General Editor: T. Givón
Editorial Board:
Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Charles Li (Santa Barbara)
Bernard Comrie (Los Angeles) Johanna Nichols (Berkeley)
R.M.W. Dixon (Canberra) Andrew Pawley (Canberra)
Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) Doris Payne (Oregon)
John Haiman (St Paul) Frans Plank (Konstanz)
Kenneth Hale (Cambridge, Mass.) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago)
Bernd Heine (Köln) Gillian Sankoff (Philadelphia)
Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Dan Slobin (Berkeley)
Ronald Langacker (San Diego) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara)
Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, cove­
ring specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide vari­
ety of languages and language typologies. The orientation of the volumes
will be substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigating univer­
sals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, lean­
ing toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse
data. The series is, in spirit as well as in fact, a continuation of the tradition
initiated by  Li (Word Order and Word Order Change, Subject and Topic,
Mechanisms for Syntactic Change) and continued by T. Givón (Discourse
and Syntax) and P. Hopper (Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragma­
tics).
Volume 29
Peter Kahrel & René van den Berg (eds)
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN NEGATION
TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES
IN NEGATION
Edited by
PETER KAHREL
RENÉ VAN DEN BERG
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam/Philadelphia
1994
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Typological studies in negation / edited by Peter Kahrel, René van den Berg.
p. cm. -- (Typological studies in language, ISSN 0167-7373; v. 29)
Contributions on aspects of negation of sixteen languages.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Negatives. 2. Typology (Linguistics) I. Kahrel,
Peter. II. Berg, René van den. III. Series.
P299.N4T97 1993
415--dc20 93-5763
ISBN 90 272 2919 8 (hb.) / 90 272 2920 1 (pb.) (European; alk. paper) CIP
ISBN 1-55619-422-6 (hb.) /1-55619-423-4 (pb.) (U.S.; alk. paper)
© Copyright 1994 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · 821 Bethlehem Pike · Philadelphia, PA 19118 · USA
Contents
Introduction vii
1 Evenki 1
Igor Nedyalkov
2 Turkish 35
Gerjan van Schaaik
3 Sentani 51
Margaret Hartzler
4 Lewo 65
Robert Early
5 Standard Mandarin 93
Jeroen Wiedenhof
6 Zazaki 125
Marie Sandonato
7 Hungarian 143
Casper de Groot
8 Kresh 163
D. Richard Brown
9 Babole 190
Miles Leitch
Ί0 Bafut 211
Beban S. Chumbow and Pius N. Tamanji
11 Berbice Dutch 237
Sylvia Kouwenberg
12 Waorani 267
Catherine Peeke
13 Nadëb 291
E. M. Helen Weir
14 Tuyuca 325
Janet Barnes
15 Wayampi 343
Allen A. Jensen
16 Maya-Mam 365
Wesley M. Collins
Genetic affiliations of the languages 383
Regions and number of speakers of the languages 383
Addresses of authors and editors 385

Introduction
Peter Kahrel
This book is a collection of studies of negation in sixteen languages. It offers
detailed descriptions of aspects of negation and relates the encountered
features and properties of negative utterances to previous cross-linguistic
characterizations of this phenomenon.
To date, the five most important typological treatments of aspects of nega­
tion are Dahl (1979), Payne (1985), Dryer (1989), Croft (1991) and Bernini
and Ramat (1992). Dahl gives a statistical analysis of the expression of
sentential negation on the basis of a sample of 240 languages. Payne (1985)
presents an overview of the various forms used to express negation across
languages. Although his study is not based on an explicit sample of lan­
guages, he manages to cover an impressive array of negative constructions.
Dryer's (1989) study of negation is in many ways comparable with Dahl's
in that it investigates the position of the verbal negative element with
respect to major syntactic constituents in the clause (verb, subject, direct and
indirect object). Croft, provides an interesting analysis of a process by which
negative elements in a language appear to cycle from verbal negators to
existential negative constructions. (Croft's study appeared when this book
was in its final stages of completion. Therefore his observations are not
reviewed by any of the authors.) Finally, Bernini and Ramat (1992) present
a detailed overview of various aspects of negation in the languages of Europe.
This book adds to our knowledge of negation in two significant ways.
Firstly, it broadens our knowledge of syntactic and semantic aspects of
negation by providing data on some languages that were hitherto unde-
scribed or hardly described. Secondly, it deepens our understanding of a
number of semantic and pragmatic characterizations of negation. The
typological studies mentioned above all deal with syntactic aspects of
negation. Dahl and Dryer for example, discuss the categorical status and the
position of negative morphemes. By contrast, the articles in this book treat
issues such as the expression of negative indefinites; the interaction of
negation and quantifiers; matters pertaining to scope of negation; and the
pragmatic or semantic factors that play a role in the use of one form of
negation as opposed to another if a language has several forms of negation
at its disposal.
viii Introduction
The articles in this book were prepared on the basis of a questionnaire that
was by the editors. While working with the questionnaire, the authors were
of course at liberty - and have taken that liberty - to dismiss questions that
were not relevant for their language, or conversely to elaborate on points of
special interest. Some of the questions, especially those pertainong to com­
plex semantic issues, have been dealt with by only a subset of the authors.
For example, the questions concerning the interaction of negation and
specific/non-specific indefinites remained unanswered in a number of cases.
The issue can be illustrated with the aid of the following English examples:
(1) a. He did not buy a book.
b. He did not buy any book.
Many native speakers of English or languages that show similar phenomena
(such as Dutch and German) find it difficult to interpret sentences like (la).
And indeed in the literature there is no consensus about the status of such
sentences, nor about their interpretation; see for example the discussions in
Givón (1984) and Horn (1989, Chapter 6). When dealing with issues such as
these, field workers will often be confronted by speakers who flatly deny that
sentences like (la) occur in their language, or by conflicting judgements.
Most of the languages included in this volume have not featured prominent­
ly in the linguistic literature: Waorani, Nadëb, Tuyuca, Wayampi, Lewo,
Zazaki, Sentani, Berbice Dutch and Babole. The four languages that are better
known are Hungarian, Mandarin Chinese, Turkish and Evenki. We feel jus­
tified in including these languages in the present collection since only the
standard forms of negation that they manifest, of the type John is not ill, are
well-known, while more complicated issues such as the interaction of negation
and quantifiers are treated in much less detail. In fact, in the case of Hungarian
and Turkish, the negation system has never been adeqautely described.
Though the same cannot be said of Mandarin Chinese, Wiedehof offers a
number of new insights; what is of special interest is that all his examples are
taken from live recordings. And finally, Evenki, though well known in the
former Soviet Union, is almost entirely unknown outside of it.
The languages included in this volume cover a large part of the globe and
represent nine language phyla. A full list of languages with genetic affili­
ations is included in the appendix. As can be seen, some phyla are not repre­
sented at all, while other phyla, most notably the Amerindian languages, are
represented by more than one language. This situation is mainly due to the
response we received to calls for a paper. While the original set of manu-
Introduction ix
scripts included a wider variety of languages, the current list is the result of
cancellations and a selection procedure.
The editors wish to thank the series editor, T. Givón, and Barbara Wiese-
mann for reading the manuscript and making suggestions that led to
improvements in the final text.
References
Bernini, G. and P. Ramat (1992). La frase negativa nelle lingue d'Europa. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Croft, W. (1991). 'The evolution of negation.' Journal of Linguistics 27, 1-27.
Dahl, Ö. (1979). Typology of sentence negation.' Linguistics 17, 1/2, 79-106.
Dryer, M. S. (1989). Universals of negative position. In: E. Moravcsik, J. Wirth and M. Ham­
mond (eds), Studies in syntactic typology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 93-124.
Givón, T. (1984). Syntax. A functional typological introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Horn, L. (1989). A natural history of negation. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press.
Payne, J. R. (1985). 'Negation.'In: T. Shopen ed., Language typology and syntactic description,
Vol. I (Clause structure), 197-242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.