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Article published In:
Identity and Communication in Asian Contexts
Edited by Asmah Haji Omar and Michael Dimitrios Hadzantonis
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 32:1] 2022
► pp. 25–51

Negation during communication in Amele

A morphological analysis

| Shiga University

The Amele language of Papua New Guinea is one of many Trans-New Guinea languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. Amele has a negator ‘qee’ (‘q’ represents a voiced dorso-labiovelar plosive), which follows the element negated. Yet, while having verb conjugations for persons and numbers, Amele has no negative conjugation in the present tense. Typologically, some other languages, for example, Finnish, also exhibit negative conjugations of verbs, but these behaviors of the negations differ in interesting ways. This contrastive study investigates the negation of grammars in Amele (Papua New Guinea) and Finnish (Finland, Uralic), by comparing negative particles and negative verb conjugations in both of these languages, while clarifying their morphological behaviors. As such, the study describes Amele’s and Finnish’s positive-negative and present/past distinctions through their verbal morphologies and through their functional markedness in past tenses, ultimately observing these functional points in the languages.

Keywords: negation, morphology, Amele, Papua New Guinea, Finnish, Uralic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Negation and the Amele language
    • 2.1In general
    • 2.2The structure of Amele
  • 3.Methodical framework
  • 4.Data
    • 4.1Negation in the Amele Huar dialect
    • 4.2Larger expressions in Amele
    • 4.3Further analysis
  • 5.Sociolinguistic implications
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 4 August 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00083.nos
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