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Part of
Negation in Uralic Languages
Edited by Matti Miestamo, Anne Tamm and Beáta Wagner-Nagy
[Typological Studies in Language 108] 2015
► pp. 399–432

Negation in Estonian

| Central European University and Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church

Standard Estonian has a particle-like non-inflected negative preverbal auxiliary ei ‘not’ that appears with a special connegative present form or a connegative past form (the active past participle), while South Estonian has also postverbal negative auxiliaries inflected for person and tense. Both variants have cross-categorial abessive -ta ‘without’ and an inflected prohibitive auxiliary ära ‘don’t’. The specifics of paradigms, negative conjunctions, question particles (ega), the partitive of negation, negative replies, the scope of negation, negative affixes, and reinforcing negation are addressed as well as variation: optionality in the use of the negator mitte ‘not’, developed from an indefinite pronoun, and the deficient paradigm of pole ‘is not’, a contracted form developed from an inflected negative auxiliary and the connegative form of olema ‘be’, ep neg.aux.3sg and ole be.cng.

Published online: 24 June 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.108.15tam
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