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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2020
Edited by Elena Tribushinina and Mark Dingemanse
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 37] 2020
► pp. 71–89

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Tense and sentential negation

A typological perspective

 | Ghent University/FWO
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 27 October 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00038.cle
Abstract
The association between sentential negation and tense has solid foundations in the literature. It has even been argued that sentential negative markers consist of a Tense feature (De Clercq, Karen. 2018. “Syncretisms and the morphosyntax of negation.” Exploring Nano-syntax, ed. by Lena Baunaz, Karen De Clercq, Liliane Haegeman & Eric Lander. 180–204. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2020. The Morphosyntax of Negative Markers. A Nanosyntactic Account. Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This paper adduces the first results from a typological study and data from Bambara in support of this claim. In addition, the Bambara data also point to the morphological realisation of present or default tense, to a hierarchy for tense and to a position for sentential negation in that hierarchy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Negation and tam
  • 3.Typological investigation
  • 4.Towards an analysis
    • 4.1Interpreting the typological data
    • 4.2Negative markers and tense: Support from Bambara
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (26)
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