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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2020
Edited by Elena Tribushinina and Mark Dingemanse
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 37] 2020
► pp. 71–89

Tense and sentential negation

A typological perspective

| Ghent University/FWO

The association between sentential negation and tense has solid foundations in the literature. It has even been argued that sentential negative markers consist of a Tense feature (De Clercq 2018, 2020). This paper adduces the first results from a typological study and data from Bambara in support of this claim. In addition, the Bambara data also point to the morphological realisation of present or default tense, to a hierarchy for tense and to a position for sentential negation in that hierarchy.

Keywords: negation, tam , Bambara, typology, nanosyntax
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Negation and tam
  • 3.Typological investigation
  • 4.Towards an analysis
    • 4.1Interpreting the typological data
    • 4.2Negative markers and tense: Support from Bambara
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 27 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00038.cle
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