Feature GB139: Is there a difference between imperative (prohibitive) and declarative negation constructions?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

Is the negative construction for declarative negation (e.g. I don't drink.) different from the negative imperative (e.g. don't drink!). This feature covers more than only different negators: a different order, loss of finiteness or the addition of new elements also count as differences. If a language-specific analysis indicates two different constructions for negative imperative and prohibitive, then we are only concerned with the construction that negates the traditional imperative function here.

Procedure

  1. Find the section in the available descriptive literature that deals with negation.
  2. Find the section that deals with imperatives.
  3. If there is no source that describes negative imperatives (or prohibitives), code ? for this feature.
  4. If there are two different negators, code 1.
  5. If negative imperatives and declarative constructions contain the same markers, but in a systematically different order, code 1.
  6. If negative imperatives contain any other negative elements that are not found in negative declaratives, or if negative imperatives require any other modification (e.g. loss of finiteness), code 1.
  7. If negative imperatives and declarative negation constructions are expressed with the same elements in the same general order, code 0.

Examples

Finnish (ISO 639-3: fin, Glottolog: finn1318)

Standard negation in Finnish is expressed with a negative auxiliary followed by the inflectional stem of the main verb. The form of the auxiliary varies according to the person and number of the subject (Karlsson 1999: 69–70).

(a) he  lukevat
3PL read:3PL
‘They read.’ (Karlsson 1999: 70)

(b) he  eivät   lue
3PL NEG.3PL read
‘They do not read.’ (Karlsson 1999: 70)

The negative imperative contains a different negator, älä, which occurs before the imperative affirmative form (Karlsson 1999: 168).

(c) lue!
read
‘Read!’ (Karlsson 1999: 168)

(d) älä     lue!
NEG.IMP read
‘Don't read!’ (Karlsson 1999: 168)

Finnish is coded as 1 for this feature.

Further reading

Croft, William. 1991. The evolution of negation. Journal of Linguistics 27(1). 1–27.

Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17. 79–106.

Dahl, Östen. 2010. Typology of negation. In Laurence R. Horn (ed.), The expression of negation, 9–38. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Negative morphemes. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Position of negative morpheme with respect to subject, object, and verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Dryer, Matthew S. 2013. Order of negative morpheme and verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Miestamo, Matti. 2013. Symmetric and asymmetric standard negation. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Payne, John R. 1985. Negation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

Karlsson, Fred. 1999. Finnish: An essential grammar. (Routledge Grammars.) London: Routledge.


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0 absent 522
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Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment