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

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 00:18:07 +0300, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
wrote:

>It just occurs to me that the negative verb of Uralic languages sort of
>counters this argument, but I don't know if any of them get by without a
>neutral copula. Since they're fairly inflecting & I think mostly pro-drop
>too, I'd however suspect not.
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.

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/?

Also, can either language's negative verb inflect for tense?

- Rob

Replies