Re: OT: Negation as the indicative standard

Quoting Axiem <axiem@...>:

>     My Symbolic Logic professor wondered something to those of us in the
> class interested in linguistics the other day. He notes that English, along
> with a lot of other languages, states indicative sentences in the
> affirmative "I went to the store" "It is red", and that to negate a
> sentence, an extra particle (morpheme?) must be added. In English, it's
> not:: "I did not go to the store" "it is not red" (forgiving change in
> conjugation).
>
> What he was curious about is if there's a language that does it the other
> way around. That is, a standard indicative sentence is normally negative,
> and an extra word/morpheme/something must be added to make it an
> affirmative.
>
> So a literal translation of the indicative might be "It is raining", but it
> actually means "It is not raining".
>
> He was just wondering idly, and I figured this would be a good place to
> wonder if there are any languages that are like that? Natlangs, conlangs,
> any...just a language in general?
>
> Anyone know of any?
Never, heard of any, and would be surprised to learn there is one, but one
should never underestimate ALF.

                                                               Andreas

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