Tag Archives: negation

Indefinite Pronouns in Ayeri

I think it was Miekko who pointed this out to me a whole while ago. There’s a long-decommissioned page by Apollo Hogan on which he summarizes bits on the typology of indefinite pronouns from the book Indefinite Pronouns by Martin Haspelmath.[1. My university’s Linguistics department library has a copy of the book, however, I don’t have it at hand now, so I’ll maybe add proper page references later. For the time being, I’ll rely on the information on Hogan’s page.]

Some Theoretical Underpinnings

According to Haspelmath’s classification, there are 9 groups of indefinite pronouns:[1. This table copied from Hogan’s page, linked above.]

Specific Known to speaker SK (1)
Unknown to speaker SU (2)
Non-specific Irrealis context I/NS (3)
Negative polarity Conditional protasis COND (5)
Polar question QU (4)
Standard of comparison COMP (8)
Indirect negation IN (6)
Direct negation DN (7)
Free choice FC (9)

What is interesting here is that languages form contiguous groups from these elements according to the item indices above. For example, English is indicated as 12345 (some-), 456789 (any-), 7 (no-); German is indicated as 123456 (etwas), 23456+89 (irgend-), 456+8 (je-), 6+89 (jemand-), 7 (n-):[1. This table, too, is lifted from Hogan’s page.]

(7) DN
(1) SK (2) SU (3) I/NS (4) QU (6) IN
(5) COND (8) COMP
(9) FC

A Little Survey of Ayeri

Let us now see how this translates into Ayeri. In the following, I will more or less faithfully translate and adapt some of the example sentences given on the website linked above, which are probably quoted straight from Haspelmath:

  1. Specific, known to speaker (SK):
    1. Ang no naraya arilinya vaya – leku sinyāng!
      [gloss]Ang no nara-ya arilinya.Ø vaya – lek-u sinya-ang!
      AT want talk-3SG.M someone.TOP you.LOC – guess-IMP who-A[/gloss]
      ‘Somebody wanted to talk to you – guess who!’
    2. Le rua ningyang arilinya vayam.
      [gloss]Le rua ning-yang arilinya.Ø vayam.
      PT.INAN must tell-1SG.A something.TOP you.DAT[/gloss]
      ‘I must tell you something.’
  2. Specific, unknown to speaker (SK):
    1. Le tangyang arilinya, nārya ming naroyyang, adareng sinyaley.
      [gloss]Le tang-yang arilinya.Ø, nārya ming nara-oy-yang, ada-reng sinya-ley.
      PT.INAN hear-1SG.A something.TOP, but can say-NEG-1SG.A, that-A.INAN what-P.INAN[/gloss]
      ‘I heard something, but I can’t say what it was.’
    2. Ang pegaya arilinya pangisley nā!
      [gloss]Ang pega-ya arilinya.Ø pangis-ley nā
      AT steal-3SG.M steal.TOP money-P.INAN my[/gloss]
      ‘Somebody stole my money!’
  3. Irrealis, non-specific (I/NS):
    1. Pinyan, prantu yāril palung.
      [gloss]Pinyan, prant-u yāril palung.
      Please, ask-IMP somewhere different[/gloss]
      ‘Please ask somewhere else.’
    2. Intu arilinyaley kondanyam yām![1. Not quite sure about the kondanyam part here, maybe better: Intu arilinyaley yām siley ming konjang ‘… which I can eat.’ (… REL-P.INAN can eat-1SG.A).]
      [gloss]Int-u arilinya-ley kond-an-yam yām!
      Buy-IMP something-P.INAN eat-NMLZ-DAT me.DAT[/gloss]
      ‘Buy me something to eat!’
  4. Polar question (QU):
    1. Ang ningya arilinya vayam arilinyaley adanyana?
      [gloss]Ang ning-ya arilinya.Ø vayam arilinya-ley adanya-na?
      AT tell-3SG.M anybody.TOP you.DAT anything-P.INAN that.one-GEN[/gloss]
      ‘Did anybody tell you anything about it?’
    2. Ang koronva arilinyaley edanyana?
      [gloss]Ang koron-va.Ø arilinya-ley edanya-na
      AT know-you.TOP something-P.INAN this.one-GEN[/gloss]
      ‘Do you know something/anything about this?’
  5. Conditional protasis (COND):
    Le silvvāng arilinya, ningu yām adanyana!
    [gloss]Le silv-vāng arilinya.Ø, ning-u yām adanya-na
    PT.INAN see-2SG.A something.TOP, tell-IMP me.DAT that.one-GEN[/gloss]
    ‘If you see something/someone, tell me about it!’
  6. Indirect negation (IN):
    Paronoyyang, ang koronya arilinya guratanley.
    [gloss]Parona-oy-yang, ang koron-ya arilinya.Ø guratan-ley
    Believe-NEG-1SG.A, AT know-3SG.M anybody.TOP answer-P.INAN[/gloss]
    ‘I don’t think that anybody knows the answer.’
  7. Direct negation (DN):
    1. Ang koronya ranya guratanley.
      [gloss]Ang koron-ya ranya.Ø guratan-ley
      AT know-3SG.M nobody.TOP answer-P.INAN[/gloss]
      ‘Nobody knows the answer.’
    2. Le koronyang ranya.
      [gloss]Le koron-yang ranya.Ø
      PT.INAN know-1SG.A nothing.Ø[/gloss]
      ‘I know nothing/I don’t know anything.’
  8. Standard of comparison (COMP):
    1. Engara simingreng edaya ban yanen palung.
      [gloss]Eng-ara siming-reng edaya ban yanen palung
      be.more-3SG.INAN weather here good anywhere else[/gloss]
      ‘The weather here is better than anywhere else.’
    2. Engyeng larau enyās palung.
      [gloss]Eng-yeng larau enya-as palung
      be.more-she.A nice everyone-P else[/gloss]
      ‘She is nicer than anyone else.’
  9. Free choice (FC):
    Ang ming guraca enya eda-prantanley.
    [gloss]Ang ming gurat-ya enya.Ø eda=prantan-ley
    AT can answer-3SG.M anyone.TOP this=question-P.INAN[/gloss]
    ‘Anyone can answer this question.’

It turns out that Ayeri merges all of (1) through (6) as arilinya ‘somebody, something’, has a separate (7) ranya ‘nobody, nothing’, and then also merges (8) and (9) as enya ‘anyone, everyone’. Among the dozen or so of natural languages cited as example types, Ayeri is thus closest to Catalan, given as 123456 (algun), 45678 (cap), 89 (qualsevol). What Ayeri doesn’t have, however, is an indefinite negative pronoun in the fashion of French personne or Catalan cap, since ranya can only be used for direct negation and arilinya is inspecific as to affirmative or negative expectation or reference. Comparing the results to the first table above, it should be clear that Ayeri lacks a polarity distinction in that negative polarity is not a distinct category but pronouns overlap with both negative and positive (or non-negative?) categories.

“To be, or not to be …”

Quoth Peter Bleackley on Twitter:

See the message on Twitter.

Indeed, besides Peter’s joke (that took me a while to recognize …), it would be interesting to compare how various languages with a zero copula translate Shakespeare’s probably most famous line (yellow marking mine):

To be, or not to be, that is the queſtion
“To be, or not to be, that is the queſtion” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, III.1 — Shakespeare Quartos Archive, CC-BY-NC; original image cropped and yellow marking added)

Since Ayeri is a language with a zero copula – that is, the copula, “be,” does not have a phonetic realization – I was wondering how to translate this quotation. However, I would rather expect from context that the way “be” is used in English here refers to existence: the verb “be” is used as a full, content verb rather than the copula as a function. That is, the way Hamlet uses “be” does not suggest that he is assigning a quality to the subject, as in “The king is dead,” or “I am suicidal.”

In spite of possessing a zero copula, Ayeri nonetheless has an overt verb for “be” in the meaning of ‘exist’: yoma-. However, what Ayeri still lacks is a proper infinitive – the only non-finite form there is, is the participle, but you can’t usually use this as a nouny standalone thing as in English.[1. I’m not sure if there’s something in the Grammar about this. If the Grammar allows participles to stand on their own, my usage has changed meanwhile.] A possible solution to this problem is to use the noun, yomān ‘existence’. This raises another question, though: how do you negate that, that is, what do you get for ‘inexistence’? Searching the dictionary for nouns in in-/ir-/il-, dis-, un- doesn’t reveal any obviously negated nouns.[1. A possible candidate would be tenyan ‘death’, though, since ‘life’ is ten‘; -ya is one of the allomorphs of -arya (cf. below). Ayeri quite loves -ya as a morpheme!]

Besides verbs, the only other category that can be negated are adjectives, which are rather noun-like in Ayeri. Adjectives may be negated by -oy and -arya (which has a variety of allomorphs), and since the negation of ‘existence’ we need here is categorical rather than transitory, I would choose -arya. This results in yomāryān as a possible negation:

[gloss]yoma- -arya -an
exist -NEG -NMLZ[/gloss]
‘inexistence’

On the other hand, since yomān is already derived from a verb and verbs get negated with -oy, another possible derivation could be yomoyan:[1. With the transitory adjective negation -oy, the outcome would indeed have been the same, so it really doesn’t matter here.]

[gloss]yoma- -oy -an
exist -NEG -NMLZ[/gloss]
‘inexistence’

I think the latter case is more succinct, so I’d translate the famous line from Hamlet as:

Yomān soyang yomoyan – adareng prantānley.
[gloss]Yomān soyang yomoyan – ada-reng prantān-ley
existence or inexistence – that-A.INAN question-P.INAN[/gloss]
‘Existence or inexistence, that is the question.’

Note that in the first half of the sentence, the nouns are not case marked. I chose not to mark them for case since as far as I can tell, they do not fit into the case frame of any verb here, besides the fact that the sentence above does not include any overt verb.

Of course, using less enigmatic language while it still being a bit of a pun, I could also simply translate:

Ten soyang tenyan – adareng prantānley.
[gloss]Ten soyang tenyan …
Life or death …[/gloss]
‘Life or death – that is the question.’

But that would’ve been boring.

  • Shakespeare, William. The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. London, 1604. [​27.] The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke: An Electronic Edition. The Shakespeare Quartos Archive. Shakespeare Quartos Archive. Mar. 2009. Web. 8 May 2013. ‹http://www.quartos.org›. (The image the presented excerpt is taken from was published under CC-BY-NC; original image cropped and yellow marking added.)
  • David J. Peterson informs that the “[u]sual route is ‘to live or not to live’.” Phrasing it exactly that way doesn’t work in Ayeri either, though.