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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 9:3 (2019) ► pp.340–377

A privative derivational source for standard negation in Lokono (Arawakan)

| Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
| University of California, Berkeley

It has recently been argued that Arawakan languages of South America provide evidence for a novel historical source for standard negation, a privative derivational affix. This hypothesis posits that the prefixal standard negation found in some languages of the family developed from a privative prefix, ma-, present in Proto-Arawakan, that originally derived privative stative verbs from nouns. According to this account, the function of this prefix extended, in many languages of the family, to negating nominalized verbs in subordinate clauses, and then, via insubordination, to standard main clause negation, in a smaller subset of languages. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate this hypothetical trajectory in detail in a particular Arawakan language: Lokono, a highly endangered language of the Guianas. On the basis of modern linguistic fieldwork and colonial-era language materials, we show that 18th-century Lokono exhibited a standard negation construction based on the privative, and that this construction exhibits clear signs of its subordinate clause origin. We show that Lokono also exhibits the full range of functions for the privative ma- that are predicted to be historical precursors to the standard negation function, substantiating the historical trajectory from privative derivation to standard negation. We conclude by observing that the prefixal standard negation strategy has lost ground since the 18th century to a standard negation particle that originally expressed constituent negation, possibly due to contact with colonial languages that employ similar strategies.

Keywords: privative, negation, insubordination, Lokono, Arawakan
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Lokono ma- evolution in broader Arawakan context
  • 2.Lokono grammatical background
    • 2.1Alignment in verbal person marking
    • 2.2Main clause types
      • 2.2.1Stative main clauses
      • 2.2.2Active main clauses
      • 2.2.3Copular main clauses
    • 2.3Nominalized verbs in subordinate clauses
    • 2.4Nominalized verbs in main clauses in the 18th century
    • 2.5The empty verb construction
    • 2.6Privative denominal stative verbs
    • 2.7Constituent negation
  • 3.Standard negation in 18th- and 21st-century Lokono
    • 3.1Negation in 18th-century Lokono
      • 3.1.1Copular clauses
      • 3.1.2Negative stative clauses
      • 3.1.3Negative active clauses
    • 3.2Negation in 21st-century Lokono
      • 3.2.1Negative copular clauses
      • 3.2.2Negative stative clauses
      • 3.2.3Negative active clauses
  • 4.Diachronic trajectory of the privative ma-
    • 4.1SN before the development of ma- as SN
    • 4.2Nominalized active verbs appear in subordinate and insubordinated main clauses
    • 4.3Denominal ma- extends to SN of nominalized intransitive verbs (ma-V-n=SO)
    • 4.4SN ma- extends to nominalized transitive verbs (ma-V-n A-ev-O)
    • 4.5SN ma- extends to non-nominalized verbs
    • 4.6Further changes in the general architecture of the language affecting SN ma-
    • 4.7The expansion of kho(ro)
  • 5.Counter-arguments against the stative extension route
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.18020.ryb
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