Re: Uralic Negative Verbs (was RE: "to be" and not to be...)

> >>Can the Finnish negative verb stand alone?  How about the Estonian one?
> >>As far as I know, they can't, but I could be wrong.
> >
> >It's always an auxiliary, but the main verb can be dropped when making a
> >yes/no statement (as juxtaposition or an answer)
>
>Right, you can say "Ei" when you mean "No" or "It's not".
And also as in "This plate broke but that didn't". In spoken language you
hear "Not good" sort of constructions too.
(Huh, seems surprizingly easily analogizable with English.)


> >>Speaking of which, why does the Finnish negative verb have a weird vowel
> >>quality in the 3rd person (_ei_ '(s)he is/does not', _eivät_ 'they
>are/do
> >>not')?  Did there use to be a consonant between the /e/ and the /i/?
> >
> >Might be related to the archaic form of the 3SG suffix /v\i/. But where
> >frex both "soutavi" and "soutaa" are still recognizeable for 3SG of "to
> >row", the negative verb only allows "ei". If I'm guessing right, that got
> >levelled earlier.
>
>I'm guessing "frex" is a shortening of "for example"? :P
>
>I had heard that the 3sg verb ending used to be _-:pi_ in Old Finnish
>(where
>the ":" means lengthening of the preceding vowel), but not _-vi_.  Are
>these
>just dialectal differences?
Yep to both. I think "-vi" is the eastern form and "-:pi". the western. The
former sounds less marked to me.


>Also, are you saying that the older version of
>_ei_ was _evi_ vel. sim.?
>- Rob
Guessing. I do expect it to have inflected regularily at least when the verb
conjugation first developed.

-From Joe:
>I'm afraid I don't know the first person singular imperative.  I guess it
>doesn't come up often.
Better yet, it doesn't even exist. (I think a few of the Sami languages at
least have theoretical forms for it, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any
actual usage for an 1SG imperative.)

John Vertical

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