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Shinagawa, Daisuke and Marten, Lutz (2021) 'Micro-typological Covariation of Negation and Focus Marking Morphology in Bantu Languages.' 言語研究 = Gengo kenkyu (Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan), 160. pp. 215-248.

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Abstract

This paper investigates the typological correlation between negation marking and focus marking based on the ‘Bantu Morphosyntactic Variation Database’ (Marten et al. 2018) compiling linguistic data obtained through 142 parameters to capture morphosyntactic microvariation in Bantu languages. Based on the inter-parametric analysis on the correlation between four parameters related to main clause negation marking and one parameter related to morphological focus marking, two typologically significant correlation are established: 1) languages with a postverbal strategy for main clause negation highly tend to have a morphological focus marker, and 2) languages lacking a morphological means of focus marking tend to adopt the preinitial strategy for main clause negation. These two tendencies can be explained from three perspectives, namely, 1) focus as inherent nature of (pragmatic) negation and the incompatibility of preinitial negation with an additional morphological focus marker, 2) the grammaticalisation path from a locative as a focus marking element to postverbal negation particle, and 3) ‘focus contrast’ as a structural requirement in the postverbal negative particle constructions.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Regional Centres and Institutes > Centre of African Studies
Regional Centres and Institutes > SOAS World Languages Institute
Departments and Subunits > School of Languages, Cultures & Linguistics
Departments and Subunits > School of Languages, Cultures & Linguistics > Department of Linguistics
ISSN: 21856710
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.11435/gengo.160.0_215
Date Deposited: 27 Jun 2022 09:53
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/37589
Funders: Leverhulme Trust

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