Negation in South Saami
Standard negation in South Saami utilizes a negative auxiliary, which has two tenses (present and preterite), and connegative forms of the lexical verb. The negative auxiliary has a full personal paradigm in the imperative (except for the third person dual), whilst normal verbs only have a second person singular in the imperative. In predicative, locative, existential and possession clauses a combination of the negative auxiliary and the verb ‘to be’ is used. The present third person singular of the negative auxiliary serves as a negative reply. There are no specifically negative indefinites, and interrogative pronouns are also used as indefinites. Negative adjectives are mainly formed with suffixes, though borrowed prefixes also occur.