The impact of clause types and focus control, aspect, modality, and referentiality on negation in Lamang and Hdi (Central Chadic)

Negation in two closely related Central Chadic languages (Lamang, Hdi) is deeply intertwined with focus and clause types. Marked modality and morphologically marked negation are mutually exclusive; in senso strictu, the negation domain is restricted to the indicative mood. Negation interacts in a systematic way with aspectuality through the intrinsic focus characteristics of some of the aspectual forms. Indirectly, therefore, negation interacts also with referentiality, since referentiality links up again with apectuality and modality. The languages have developed several negation strategies (e.g. general/simple negation, a focus negation frame, a non-focus negation frame, dependent clause negation) and use negative tagging. Lamang has developed a special contrastive term focus negation strategy. The languages differ remarkably, however, with regard to the compatibility of inflexional formatives with negative markers.