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In:The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations
Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig
[Studies in Language Companion Series 240] 2026
► pp. 866–897

Chapter 31
On the origins of Javanese negators

ORCiD logo with link | Palacký University Olomouc | The University of Melbourne
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This paper investigates the origins of Old and Modern Javanese negators.
Modern Javanese distinguishes four negators.
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Predicative ora (‘no(t)’) derives from Old Javanese tan+wwara ‘there is not’ and its high register counterpart botən from tan+wontən.
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Prohibitive aja (‘don’t’) and its Old Javanese predecessor haywa must derive from Old Javanese hayu ‘beauty, goodness, rightness; beautiful, good, right’ + subjunctive -a: hayu-a was used in desiderative and hortative phrases (‘it would be good if…’), and, with tan, in prohibitives. After loss of tan, hayu-a became lexicalised as haywa, a prohibitive. Its high counterpart sampun is basically an aspect marker (‘already’), which acquired a cessative and prohibitive function.
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Contrastive dudu (‘no [+noun]; not this [but another]’) originally meant ‘other’.
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The origin of Phasal duruŋ ‘not yet’ needs further investigation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Old Javanese and Modern Javanese
  • 3.Speech registers
  • 4.The negators: Forms and meanings
  • 5.Arguments for the selection of the negators under investigation
  • 6.Predicative negators
    • 6.1The Ngoko predicative negator ora
    • 6.2The Krama predicative negator botən
    • 6.3Some remaining questions
  • 7.Prohibitive markers
    • 7.1Modern Javanese Ngoko aja and Old Javanese haywa
    • 7.2BTS’s explanation of the origin of aja
    • 7.3The Modern Javanese Krama prohibitive marker sampun
  • 8.Phasal negators
  • 9.Nominal/contrastive negators
  • 10.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
References (45)
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