Negation. Negation is expressed with the particle ti which precedes the negated constituent. If the negation has sentence-wide scope, it occurs in the topic slot in sentence-initial position and the verb is topicalized. If the negation has scope over one constituent it occurs before that constituent, either in the topic or in the comment position. A negated constituent occurring in the topic slot has more emphasis than a negated constituent occurring in the comment slot; in general, the topic slot is preferred for negated constituents. The negative particle can occur in 'verbal' and 'non-verbal' sentences, though such a distinction is difficult to make in Proto-Southern.
Code: Select all
(1) ti pap a Irinoxo
NEG hit 1s Irinoxo
‘I didn’t hit Irinoxo.’
ti a pap Irinoxo / pap ti a Irinoxo
NEG 1s hit Irinoxo
‘I didn’t hit Irinoxo.’
ti Irinoxo-tsi a pap
NEG Irinoxo-OBJ 1s hit
‘I didn’t hit Irinoxo.’
ti a tirx-u
NEG 1s sleep-HS
‘I wasn’t sleeping (they say).’
Did I miss anything on negation? I see little reason to add more, unless I am missing something? I was thinking about negative questions, but then what are the semantics of those really; they are usually things like 'didn't you do that?' which is just a normal question which implies a certain response (here affirmative), I think it's better to handle those kinds of questions with other particles in this language.
And for those of us who cannot handle non-perfect BBCode:
