Abstract
Tibeto-Burman languages in and around North East India tend to show innovative negation constructions. Most other languages in the family retain the negative prefix *ma- which is reconstructed for Proto-Tibeto-Burman, but in North East India the negative morpheme is usually post-verbal. In the Kuki-Chin languages we see several innovative negators: *mak, *law, #kay, and *no, all occurring following the lexical verb. The ngeator *mak appears to reflect an old auxiliary negated with the original prefix. The other forms all represent recent grammaticalizations of negative existentials or other semantically negative lexical verbs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | North East Indian Linguistics 7 (NEIL 7) |
| Editors | Linda Konnerth, Stephen Morey, Priyankoo Sarmah, Amos Teo |
| Place of Publication | Canberra, Australia |
| Publisher | Asia-Pacific Linguistics |
| Pages | 203-212 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781922185273 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Language, Communication and Culture
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