Jespersen cycles in the Mayan, Quechuan and Maipurean languages*

Johan van der Auwera | University of Antwerp

Frens Vossen | University of Antwerp

This study looks for evidence for the Jespersen Cycle, which is typically the development from one single negator to another one via a strengthening stage in which both are present, in the Mayan, Quechuan and Maipurean languages. For Mayan and Quechuan languages the evidence is solid, and what is particularly interesting is that the strengthening would seem to have happened twice and that in both families an irrealis marker served to make the negation emphatic. In Maipurean languages the most important development is the extension of a prenominal privative marker (‘without’) to clausal negation, which if it shows up preverbally to a verb that already has postverbal negation, would show us a Jespersen Cycle which, untypically, operates from right to left.

Published online: 09 March 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.227.07auw

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Rybka, Konrad & Lev Michael

2019. A privative derivational source for standard negation in Lokono (Arawakan). Journal of Historical Linguistics 9:3 ► pp. 340 ff.

Schwegler, Armin

2018. In Negation and Negative Concord [Contact Language Library, 55], ► pp. 257 ff.

Sessarego, Sandro

2017. Chocó Spanish double negation and the genesis of the Afro-Hispanic dialects of the Americas. Diachronica 34:2 ► pp. 219 ff.

van der Auwera, Johan & Lauren Van Alsenoy

2016. On the typology of negative concord. Studies in Language 40:3 ► pp. 473 ff.

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