Cover not available

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 48:4 (2024) ► pp.753–780

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

‘Until’ constructions and expletive negation in Huasteca Nahuatl

ORCiD logo with link | Illinois State University
Published online: 3 January 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.22064.olg
Abstract
A number of works have explored expletive negation in clause-linkage constructions. Most of them have shown that this type of negative marker can be omitted from the adverbial clause without affecting the interpretation holding between clauses. The study shows, based on the analysis of natural discourse data, that expletive negation has developed an intriguing discourse function in three types of ‘until’ constructions in Huasteca Nahuatl: ‘not…until’ constructions, scalar additive ‘until’ constructions, and beginning-to-end constructions. When the negative marker amo appears in the ‘until’ clause, the proposition should be characterized as expressing surprise. When it is absent from the ‘until’ clause, the proposition does not express surprise. This function of the expletive negative marker amo does not appear in elicited sentences, but only in spontaneous speech. It is proposed that Huasteca Nahuatl developed expletive negation in ‘not…until’ constructions due to contact with Spanish. However, the development of expletive negation in scalar additive ‘until’ constructions and beginning-to-end constructions is an internally motivated development in Huasteca Nahuatl that cannot be attributed to Spanish.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphosyntactic properties of Huasteca Nahuatl
  • 3.‘Until’ constructions and expletive negation in Huasteca Nahuatl
    • 3.1‘Not…until’ constructions
    • 3.2Scalar additive ‘until’ constructions
    • 3.3Beginning-to-end constructions
    • 3.4Discussion
  • 4.‘Until’ constructions and expletive negation in other Mesoamerican languages
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (59)
References
Abels, Klaus. 2005. Expletive negation in Russian: A conspiracy theory. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 13(1). 5–74.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ambrazas, Vytautas. 1997. Lithuanian grammar. Vilnius: Baltos LankosGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aschmann, Herman P. & Elisa Dawson de Aschmann. 1973. Diccionario totonaco de Papantla, Veracruz: totonaco-español, español-totonaco. México: Instituto Linguistico de Verano.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beller, Richard & Patricia Beller. 1979. Huasteca Nahuatl. In Ronald W. Langacker (ed.), Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar 2: Modern Aztec grammatical sketches, 199–306. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bond, Oliver. 2011. Negation in clause linkages. In Julia Sallabank (ed.), Language documentation and description, 77–120. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borderia, Salvador Pons & Scott A. Schwenter. 2005. Polar meaning and “expletive” negation in approximative adverbs: Spanish por poco (no). Journal of Historical Pragmatics 61. 262–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 1980. Sobre la negación. Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cépeda, Paola. 2017. Against expletive negation: The case of Spanish hasta-clauses. In Jessica Kantarovich, Tran Truong, Orest Xherija (eds.), Proceedings of Chicago Linguistics Society 521, 101–115. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, Barbara. 1998. Conditionals and prediction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Delfitto, Denis. 2020. Expletive negation. In Viviane Déprez & Maria Teresa Espinal (eds.), The Oxford handbook of negation, 255–268. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donati, Caterina. 2000. A note on negation in comparison. Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica–Università di Firenze 101. 55–68.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Espinal, Maria Teresa. 1992. Expletive negation and logical absorption. The Linguistic Review 9(4). 333–358. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. Expletive negation, negative concord and feature checking. Working Papers in Linguistics 81. 47–69.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Etxeberria, Urtzi & Aritz Irurtzun. 2015. The emergence of scalar meanings. Frontiers in Psychology 61. 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flores Farfán, José Antonio. 2010. Sociolinguistics in Mexico. In Martin Ball (ed.), The Routledge handbook of sociolinguistics around the world, 34–41. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forker, Diana. 2016. Toward a typology for additive markers. Lingua 1801. 69–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gast, Volker & Johan van der Auwera. 2011. Scalar additive operators in the languages of Europe. Language 871. 2–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Scalar additive operators in Transeurasian languages: A comparison with Europe. In Martine Robbeets & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), Shared grammaticalization. With special focus on the Transeurasian languages, 113–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gast, Volker & Christoph Rzymsk. 2015. Towards a corpus-based analysis of evaluative scales associated with even. Linguistik online 711. 153–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition and logical form. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2007. The landscape of EVEN. Natural Language and Linguist Theory 251. 39–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. From space to time: Temporal adverbials in the world’s languages. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hetterle, Katja. 2015. Adverbial clauses in cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jasionytė-Mikučionienė, Erika. 2019. Subordinating conjunctions as discourse markers in Lithuanian. Corpus Pragmatics 31. 285–301. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jin, Yanwei & Jean-Pierre Koenig. 2019. Expletive negation in English, French, and Mandarin: A semantic and language production model. In Christopher Piñón (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 121, 157–186. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation. Linguistic Typology 25(1). 39–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johanson, Lars. 2008. Remodeling grammar: Copying, conventionalization, grammaticalization. In Peter Siemund & Noemi Kintana (eds.), Hamburg studies on multilingualism, 61–79. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian. 2003. Evidentials: Summation, questions, prospects. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), Studies in evidentiality, 307–327. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1974. Until. Chicago Linguistic Society 101. 283–297.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri & Stanley Peters. 1979. Conventional implicature. In Choon Kyu Oh & David A. Dinneen (eds.), Syntax and semantics 11: Presupposition, 1–56. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kay, Paul. 1990. Even. Linguistics and Philosophy 81. 59–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kim, Min-Joo & Nathan Jahnke. 2011. The meaning of utterance-final even. Journal of English Linguistics 391. 36–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
König, Ekkehard. 1991. The meaning of focus particles: A comparative perspective. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. 1997. Adverbial subordination: A typology and history of adverbial. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 1999. Additive particles under stress. Proceedings of SALT 81. 111–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meibauer, Joerg. 1990. Sentence mood, lexical category filling, and non-propositional nicht in German. Linguistische Berichte 1301. 441–463.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard negation: The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in typological perspective. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miestamo, Matti, Ksenia Shagal & Olli O. Silvennoinen. 2022. Typology and usage: The case of negation. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 2(1). 121–154.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2020. Context and consciousness: Documenting evidentials. Folia Linguistica 54(2): 317–342. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mittwoch, Anita. 1977. Negative sentences with until. Chicago Linguistic Society 131. 410–417.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olguín Martínez, Jesús. 2022. Contact-induced language contact: The case of Mixtec adverbial clauses. Journal of Language Contact. Evolution of Languages, Contact and Discourse 151. 1–70.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2023. Semantically negative clause-linkage: ‘Let alone’ constructions, expletive negation, and theoretical implications. Linguistic Typology published online July 2023. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Manuel Peregrina Llanes. 2023. ‘Without V-ing’ clauses: Clausal negative concomitance in typological perspective. Folia Linguistica 571. 37–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peregrina, Llanes Manuel. 2015. Cuentos en Náhuatl Huasteca Veracruzana. México: Universidad de Sonora.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Portner, Paul & Raffaella Zanuttini. 2000. The characterization of exclamative clauses in Paduan. Language 76(1). 123–132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Ayanat, Ivy Sichel & Avigail Tsirkin-Sadan. 2015. Superfluous negation in modern Hebrew and its origins. Journal of Jewish Languages 3 (1). 165–182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. 1999. Two types of scalar particles: Evidence from Spanish. In Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach & Fernando Martínez-Gil (eds.), Advances in hispanic linguistics, 546–561. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000. Lo relativo y lo absoluto de las partículas escalares “incluso” y “hasta”. Oralia análisis del discurso oral 31. 169–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2002. Additive particles and scalar endpoint marking. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 161. 119–133. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. & Shravan Vasishth. 2000. Absolute and relative scalar particles in Spanish and Hindi. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 261. 225–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swart, Henriëtte de, Jos Tellings & Bernhard Wälchli. 2022. Not…until across European languages: A parallel corpus study. Languages 71: 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra. 1972. Instead of and rather than clauses in English. Journal of Linguistics 8(2): 237–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra, Robert Longacre & Shin Hwang. 2007. Adverbial clauses. In Timothy Shopen, (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 2: Complex constructions, 2nd edn, 237–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan & Sepideh Koohkan. 2022. Extending the typology: Negative concord and connective negation in Persian. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 2(1). 1–36.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Italian Journal of Linguistics 25(1). 107–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wälchli, Bernhard. 2018. ‘As long as’, ‘until’ and ‘before’ clauses: Zooming in on linguistic diversity. Baltic Linguistics 91. 141–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winterstein, Grégoire, Regine Lai, Daniel Tsz-hin Lee, & Zoe Pei-sui Luk. 2018. From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle tim1. Glossa: A journal of general linguistics 31. 881. 1–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yoon, Suwon. 2011. ‘Not’ in the mood: The syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of evaluative negation. Chicago: University of Chicago doctoral dissertation.
Zeevat, Henk. 2009. Only as a mirative particle. Sprache und Datenverarbeitung 31. 179–196.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Olguín Martínez, Jesús
2025. Exceptive constructions in Huasteca Nahuatl. Studies in Language DOI logo
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries
2025. Similative-pretence constructions in language contact situations. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12:2 ► pp. 292 ff. DOI logo
Porrini, Anna Teresa, Veronica D’Alesio & Matteo Greco
2025. Expletive negation in Italian temporal clauses: an acceptability judgement and a self-paced reading study. Linguistics Vanguard DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue