Abstract :
[en] This study compares standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America to the rest of the world. We show that South American languages not only prefer postverbal negation to preverbal negation and negative morphology to syntax, but postverbal morphological negation to any other negation strategy. The predominance of this strategy makes South America distinct from other macro-areas. The study also considers the areal distribution of negation on the South American continent. It shows that negation strategies each have their own concentration area. Postverbal morphological negation, which is the dominant strategy, turns out to be concentrated in the northwest of the continent, with the highest density around the boundaries between Colombia, Peru and Brazil. We suggest that the preference for postverbal morphological negation in South America is likely to be the result of language-internal mechanisms of negation renewal, coupled with language contact.
Funding text :
Funding: Olga Krasnoukhova would like to acknowledge funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 895548. Johan van der Auwera would like to thank the Research Foundation-Flanders for its financial support of the project on the typology of negation in South American languages. Sietze Norder would like to acknowledge financial support by the European Research Council under the EU H2020 and Research and Innovation Program (SAPPHIRE grant 818854).
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