Negation in contemporary Votic
Fedor Rozhanskiy | University of Tartu and Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
Elena Markus | University of Tartu and Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
This paper describes negation in contemporary Votic – a near-extinct Finnic language. All the data come from fieldwork carried out in the last decade. We analyse different aspects of the negation system, including such typologically important features as expression of the person and number of the negative construction by the negative auxiliary verb, while the main verb expresses the tense and mood characteristics; the formation of the Votic prohibitive and its classification in the World Atlas of Language Structures; a specific system of negative pronouns; the use of the abessive suffix only in verbal forms; negative conjunctions that can conjugate. The paper also includes a short overview of the changes in the system of negation in contemporary Votic as compared to previous descriptions.