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

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 14:05:55 +0300, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
wrote:

>>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".

>>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?  Also, are you saying that the older version of
_ei_ was _evi_ vel. sim.?

On another note, both the _-:pi_ and _-vi_ suffixes seem cognate to the
Estonian 3sg ending _-b_.

>>Also, can either language's negative verb inflect for tense?
>>
>>- Rob
>
>I don't know much details about Estonian grammar, but Finnish only marks it
>for person and either indicative or imperative mood.
That's what I thought.  A form like *esin, as if to mean "I would not
be/do", would be ungrammatical.

>But anyway,  my point was more that the concept of a negative verb could
>counter the "there must be a copula to attach negation to" argument.
Oh, I understand that.  It just raised some other questions in my mind. :)

- Rob

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