Introduction
Postverbal negation
Typology, diachrony, areality
The paper sketches the state of affairs of our understanding of postverbal negation. It departs from the
typological finding that there is a cross-linguistic preference for a negator to precede the verb. Nevertheless, a sizable
proportion of the world’s languages adhere to a pattern with a negator following the verb, and such negators are typically
morphologically bound. The existence of this pattern, unfavorable from a functional perspective, calls for a diachronic
explanation. The paper takes stock of diachronic processes that can lead to postverbal negation, in general, and suffixal
negation, in particular. Furthermore, a language may acquire a pattern with postverbal negation through language contact, and this
is yet another perspective that the paper addresses. Finally, we introduce the contributions to this volume, highlighting the new
insights.
Keywords: postverbal negation, typology, diachrony, language contact, standard negation, prohibitive negation, existential negation, Jespersen Cycle, Negative Existential Cycle, Givón Cycle, negative verb
Article outline
- 1.Setting the scene: Typological considerations
- 2.Growing postverbal negators: Diachronic paths
- 3.From syntactic to morphological negation?
- 4.Acquiring postverbal negation through language contact
- 5.The present volume: New insights
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
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References