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Re: OT: Negation as the indicative standard

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Monday, January 19, 2004, 4:01
Doug Dee wrote:
> I seem to recall reading somewhere that no natural language does this, but > one comes close, in that a negative sentence needs a negative particle and a > positive sentence needs a positive particle, so that both are equally marked. > > Now, if only I could recall where I read that and what language was alleged > to have that feature . . .
I could see that evolving from phonetic mergers with auxiliaries. For example, a partial example is in English, where we have /wont/ vs. /wIl/, /h&v/ vs. /h&v@nt/ (which might become /h&nt/ in a future dialect), /du/ vs. /dont/, /dId/ vs. /dIdn=t/ (future /dInt/?), etc. Then, you'd have to analyze the affirmative and negative as equally marked. -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42