Amazonicas VI – Leticia, Colombia May 24-28, 2016
Syntax Symposium
Negation in Amazonian Languages
Organizers: Mily Crevels and Hein van der Voort
The past two decades have seen many new publications on Amazonian languages, but few deep treatments of negation. A notable exception is Michael & Granadillo (2014) with case studies of negation in nine Arawakan languages, describing standard negation, prohibitives, existential negation, negative indefinites, and free negation, as well as language-specific negation phenomena such as morphological privatives, the interaction of negation with verbal inflectional categories, and negation in clause-linking constructions. In addition there are some typological volumes on negation, such as Kahrel & Van den Berg (1993) and Miestamo (2005) in which several Amazonian languages are featured.
From these sources, as well as from the general discussion in language descriptions and a few independent articles on the topic, it becomes clear that the expression of negation is manifold and that it may entail unexpected ramifications in the Amazonian languages with regard to syntax, morpheme ordering, TAM, etc.
The focus of this symposium will lie on the issue of negation in an attempt to bring together linguists working on different Amazonian languages and language families, who can make a special contribution on the topic. In order to improve comparability and enhance discussion, we will provide a questionnaire to the participants of the symposium.
References
- Kahrel, Peter, and René van den Berg (1993). Typological studies on negation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Michael, Lev, and Tania Granadillo (2014). Negation in Arawak languages [Brill’s Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas 6]. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
- Miestamo, Matti (2005). Standard negation. The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in a typological perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Instructions for the submission of abstracts:
Abstracts (excl. references): | between 200 and 400 words |
Formatting (Word and PDF): | Times New Roman 12, single space |
Language: | Spanish, Portuguese, or English |
Deadline for submission: | 1 December 2015 |
Notification of acceptance: | 15 December 2015 |
The abstract should be submitted as an anonymous email attachment to:
amazonicas.negation@gmail.com
In the accompanying email, the title of the presentation should be specified, along with the name and the institution of the author.
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Syntax Symposium: Negation in Amazonian Languages |