LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Negation in Sambalpuri: A Typological Study

Gurudev Kushal

Abstract

The present study attempts to provide a descriptive analysis of negation in Sambalpuri language. Since Sambalpuri is a lesser-known language, the prime purpose of the current investigation is to document and analyse the linguistic properties of negation and its function in different environments. Sambalpuri is an unscheduled Indo-Aryan language with SOV typology. It is spoken in the western part of Indian state of Odisha. It is interesting to note that Sambalpuri has more than one variant of negative markers. However, the variants are used in different parts of western Odisha, but one that is used for non-clausal negation is different from the clausal negation. The position of the negative marker in this language is preverbal. Moreover, the language shows partial loss of some grammatical features as tense marker, person, number and agreement. So, this paper undertakes to illicit the data on negation in different syntactic areas namely, standard negation, negation in imperative, negation and honorific, agreement features, negation in question, and issues of negative polarity items (NPIs), deletion of different categories and scope of negation etc. and later on it provides an exhaustive description.

Keywords: Negation, Sambalpuri language, Odisha, Indo-Aryan language, SOV typology, clausal negation, non-clausal negation, NPIs.

1. Introduction

Negation, as perceived by many linguists, is a universal linguistic feature among the world languages. It can be defined as an aspect to oppose the sense of affirmation. Miestamo (2017) defines negation as “in propositional logic, negation can be defined as an operator changing the truth value of a proposition p to its opposite ¬p. In natural languages, things do not look quite so simple as negation is marked in a multitude of ways and enters into intricate interaction with various other functional domains; this interaction may result in complicated semantic and pragmatic effects that make the analysis of the meaning of negation quite a bit harder than simply noting the difference in truth value.” Payne (1997), Drayer et.al (2005) and Miestamo (2013) studied different language samples and established the fact that there are two types of negation found in a language: clausal negation and non-clausal negation. Being a universal property of natural language, it is present in all languages. However, they differ in form and structure while expressing negation. Some languages have different negative particles for different linguistic environment, but some other have only one to express all types of negation. In Sambalpuri language, there are three negative particles used to negate the sentences: ‘ne/nei/n?i/ni’, ‘nihe/nuhe’, ‘bin/bin?’. The last two negative particles are context sensitive. The negative particle ‘nihe/nuhe’ is used in the non-verbal clauses whereas ‘bin/bin?’ is used only in the context of conjunct participle constructions. The standard negator has four different variants which can be used interchangeably. Further, these are dialectal variations of negative particle in Sambalpuri. Like most Indo-Aryan languages, the negative particle in Sambalpuri is used in preverbal position. Hence, the present research work undertakes to examine the negation in Sambalpuri language.

The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 gives an introduction with language overview, methodology and literature review on the typology of negation. Section 2 discusses clausal negation in Sambalpuri language focusing on standard negation, negation in tense, aspect and mood; negation in non-declaratives: imperatives, questions; negation in non-verbal clauses and non-main clauses. It broadly explains the nature of negation with respect to symmetric and asymmetric dichotomy in all cases as well as negative marker and its position in the sentence whether preverbal or post-verbal. It also examines how a dedicated negative marker is used especially in the negation of non-verbal clauses. Section 3 includes non-clausal negation which discusses negative replies to polar interrogatives, negative indefinite pronouns and quantifiers. It mainly concentrates on how the polar interrogatives are replied in negative whether with a single negative morpheme like English or it uses more than that. Section 4 deals with other aspect of negation like the scope of negation, negative plarity items (NPIs), negation in coordination, negation in conditional clauses, double negation. The main focus of the section is on the scope of negation and negative polarity items.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Gurudev Kushal
Centre for Linguistics, JNU, New Delhi
Email: gurujnu56@gmail.com (Mob. 8895929865)
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