Understudied aspects of negation
Negation is among the few demonstrably universal features of human languages. As such it has been widely studied in various branches of linguistics. Still, there remain a number of aspects that require further research, especially from a cross-linguistic perspective. Here I focus on two: (i) negation of states as opposed to negation of events and (ii) lexical expressions of negation. I have done extensive work on these topics based on large datasets. Preliminary classifications suggest that negation of states tends to be split between negation of availability and negation of identity. Lexical expressions of negation cluster around a limited number of categories that have to with basic human experience: not knowing, not wanting, not having, to name some. However, typology is not a single-researcher enterprise. In fact, in order to produce plausible classifications and informed accounts, consultation with specialists on specific families is indispensable. To this end, I seek collaboration with Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université Lumière–Lyon 2, France. This department is currently one of the most vibrant research venues in Europe as regards language documentation, historical linguistics, typology and neurolinguistics. The collaboration I plan includes data analyses, discussion of diachronic hypotheses, and finally, verifying and consolidating the typologies suggested so far. The project outlined here will result in two scholarly articles in high profile journals
Final report
1 Time and place for the stays abroad
During my sabbatical, I spent 5 months at Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage (DDL), Université Lumière – Lyon 2, France. Due to the availability of the researchers and my daughter’s schooling, the stay was split into two parts, one in June 2025 and the other fall of 2025, September through December. The stay was very highly rewarding and very productive. I was able to work together with a number of scholars who focus on specific areas: Maïa Ponsonnet who specializes in Australian languages, Denis Creissels who is a leading expert on non-verbal predications as well as Atlantic languages, Alice Vittrant whose focus is on Tibeto-Burman, Françoise Rose, Antoine Guillaume and Antonio Ramirez who work on specific Arawakan languages.
In addition to the contacts with senior faculty, I was able to partake of the work of a number of graduate students, share my experience with them and obtain information on emerging ideas and topics in linguistic field work and typology. The technical expertise of several research assistants was of great value to me as they shared search techniques, experience with typesetting tools as well as statistical methods in linguistics.
DDL is a vibrant academic environment, with regular seminars in several subdisciplines of linguistics: typology, field work, neurolinguistics and language acquisition. I participated in the typology seminar with a talk on my work and received valuable feedback. I was also able to start initial interviews and have discussions on a topic that I plan on developing in the future. Specifically, the lexicalization of temporal concepts and the divisions of the 24-hour period in different cultures. It is a largely unexplored territory with a great potential for further research. However, it cannot be
The department takes part in outreach activities that I was able to join. For instance, every year, a Science Festival is organized in the city of Lyon. During this even institutions of higher education invite school children to the campus either for popular lecture or to take part in games with academic orientation and similar activities. For this event, Maïa Ponsonnet and myself set a translation game of positive and negative sentence in about 20 different languages for a group of six-graders. It was highly appreciated and will be included in future science festivals.
My own work could proceed as outlined in the research plan, see sections 3 and 4 below. I was also able to do the finishing touches together with Matti Miestamo on a three volume work on negation in the world languages, see Miestamo & Veselinova (eds.) (2025a, b, c, d). Likewise, I finished several other articles, see Veselinova & Panova (2025), Veselinova (2025), Veselinova (In Print). Finally, I laid the ground work and interviews on a new research topic, see section 5 below.
2 General outline of the research question and the significance of RJ sabbatical
Negation is one of the few demonstrably universal features of human languages. As such it has been widely studied in various branches of linguistics and there is an extensive body of literature devoted to it. Within linguistic typology, there are a number of large-scale cross-linguistic studies devoted to negation in simple declarative sentences with an overt lexical verb, so called Standard negation (hereafter SN), see for instance, (Dahl 1979; Miestamo 2005), Dryer (1988; 2013a; 2013b; 2013c) on the morpho-syntactic properties of negation markers, Haspelmath (2013) on negative indefinite pronouns and predicate negation. Nevertheless, there remain a number of aspects which still require further research, especially from a cross-linguistic perspective. For this study I focus on negation in non-verbal and stative predications, section 5, and lexicalization of negation, section 6. I have done extensive work on these topics and collected large datasets. However, typology is not a single-researcher enterprise. In fact, in order to produce plausible classifications and informed accounts, consultation with specialists on specific families is indispensable. To this end, I sought collaboration with scholars at DDL. This research center is currently one of the most vibrant research venues in Europe as regards language documentation, historical linguistics, typology and neurolinguistics. It houses specialists on the languages of West Africa, South America, Caucasus, Siberia and Australia, to name the main ones. Being able to work there, present the analyses I have done so far, receive feedback and partake of the work of the scholars there is has been highly enriching and came to improve the quality of my own research significantly.
3 Typology of negation in non-verbal predications
As stated above, many cross-linguistic studies on negation tend to focus on negation in intransitive declarative sentences with an overt verb predicate such as (i) Mary does not sing. There is still demand for large scale cross-linguistic studies on negation strategies in various kinds of stative predications, see (ii) through (v) below for some examples. The purpose of this study is to address this gap.
Consequently, I focus on the negation strategies in sentences such as (ii) This is not Mary, (iii) Mary is not a nurse (non-verbal predications), (iv) Mary is not at home (locative) (v) There are no green lions (existential). The negation markers in these sentences are collectively referred to as special negators when different from (SN). Relevant cross-linguistic work includes Eriksen (2011) on negation strategies in sentences with a nominal predicate and Veselinova (2013) on negative existentials. Special negators are also mentioned briefly in general overviews of negation, see (Miestamo 2017; Auwera & Krasnoukhova 2020), without any further specification about their cross-linguistic spread and semantic, morpho-syntactic or distributional properties. It has to be pointed out too that not all grammars provide information on them so elicitation and work with language experts is highly important for this inquiry. This work produced a typology of special negators with a reasonable outline of their areal and genealogical distribution. Furthermore, I outlined ways they interact with other parts of grammar, present hypotheses for their evolution and ultimately, and suggest an account for the observed distribution. In addition, raising awareness for the different subdomains sentence negation contributes also to future descriptive work in that grammar writers will be on a lookout for the distinctions outlined here.
I have collected data on negation strategies in stative predications as shown in (i) through (v) from genealogically and geographically stratified sample of 149 languages (hereafter world sample, WS). In addition, I use data from a family-based sample which includes families from Eurasia and Africa (Slavic, Iranian, Uralic, Dravidian, Turkic, Berber) Oceania (Polynesian) and South America (Tucanoan and Awarakan). During my stay at the DDL, I expanded my dataset with genera such as Atlantic, (West Africa), Chibcha, (Meso-America) and Gunwinyguan, (Northern Australia) by working with specialists on these areas, Denis Creissel, Colette Grinevald, Maïa Ponsonet. My entire dataset now includes 299 languages.
I was also able to learn and use statistical tools to produce semantic maps and thus achieved a more accurate descriptions of the negators under study. Equally importantly, I was able to discuss my family-based data and coding together with hypotheses on various historical developments with scholars such as Antoine Guillaume and Françoise Rose who specialize in language documentation and description and also in historical linguistics and language reconstruction.
I was able to establish two main types of special negators based on their functions: negative existentials and equative-attributive negators (the use of this label follows (Mettouchi 2009). Negative existentials, (1c), come in two subtypes, defined by their semantic range and structural characteristics: (i) negative existentials-proper, which are used for non-existence, negation of predicative possession and frequently, though not always, for negating location; they also show a number of other semantic, morphosyntactic and diachronic cross-linguistic similarities and (ii) extended negative existentials, (2), are used more broadly for the negation of non-verbal predications, stating the lack of X, where X can be an object, property or a relation of identity.
(1) Eastern Mari (Uralic) (Glottocode: east2328)
a. ok tol
NEG.3SG come.CONN
‘s/he does not come’ (Wagner-Nagy and Viola 2009: 135)
b. Tudo yoca og?l’
3SG child NEG
‘s/he is not a child’ (Riese et al. 2010: 91)
c. Port uke
house not.exist
‘There is no house’ (Jeremy Bradley, p.c.)
(2) Persian (Indo-European) (Glottocode: west2369)
a. na-mi-xar-am
NEG-DUR-buy-1SG
‘I am not buying’ (Lazard 1992: 163)
b. hâzer nist-am
ready not.be-1SG
‘I am not ready’l, (Lazard 1992: 164)
c. tu-ye hæyat doxtær nist
in-EZ courtyard girl not.be
‘There are no girls in the courtyard’ (Don Stilo p.c.)
In the current data set, extended negative existentials appear particularly common in the languages of the Middle East and also in some languages of Papua New Guinea. Otherwise, they seem relatively rare and are also diachronically unstable. The latter is reflected by the fact that they tend to split into separate negators, one for negative existence, and another for the remaining non-verbal predications.
The non-verbal negation types identified here show different cross-linguistic frequencies, areal distribution as well as formal, semantic and syntactic characteristics. For instance, negative existentials typically used to negate existential, possessive and sometimes also locative predications are spread all over the world, they are multifunctional lexical items with interact with other sub-domains of negation in a variety of ways. Conversely, equative-attributive negators used to negate identity and class inclusion (i) and (ii) above and sometimes also location appear to be more localized to specific areas of the world, such as Africa and South East Asia. Equative-attributive negators often evolve into negators with a narrow scope and tend to evolve into constituent negators but also SN negators specifically for the future. This latter development is widely attested but a proper account for it is yet to be suggested, see also Baranova & Mishchenko (2022).
In broad lines, within the general domain of negation, there appears to be a functional pressure for further domain differentiation. Specifically, negation of actions is commonly set apart from negation of availability; another commonly distinguished domain is negation of identity and class inclusion, closely linked to contrast and focus.
An abstract of this study was accepted for presentation at the upcoming conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, ALT 16 to be held in Lyon, France in July 2026. The conference is one of the most prestigious venues for presentation of typological work. This year’s edition has been the biggest one so far, with 400 submissions to be considered for presentation. Out of them only 52% were accepted. An article on this topic is currently under revision for the journal Linguistic Typology.
4 Lexicalization of negation
The goal of this inquiry is to identify which negated concepts, connected mainly to states and events, are expressed lexically across languages, cf. (i) English dunno < I don’t know or (ii) Tundra Nenets jexerasj’not know’. Both (i) and (ii) can be semantically decomposed into a negative component and a positive sense. Following (Brinton & Traugott 2005; Moreno-Cabrera 1998), such forms are considered instances of lexicalization. The term is used here in a synchronic sense. Specific lexicalizations of negation are mentioned in numerous works, for instance, Jespersen (1917: 13), Croft (1991), Payne (1985), van Gelderen (2009). De Haan (1997), Palmer (1995), van der Auwera (2001), Eriksen (2011), Veselinova (2013). However, a systematic cross-linguistic survey of lexicalized negative senses is missing both in the literature on negation as well as in work on lexical typology, see (Evans 2010; Goddard 2001; Koch 2001; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2008). Zeshan (2004), on the other hand, offers a detailed discussion of irregular negative senses in sign languages. These expressions can be also viewed as lexicalizations and are compared with the results of the current study.
Similarly to the study on negation in non-verbal predications, I use two kinds of samples: a genealogically and geographically stratified sample with world coverage that includes 105 different languages and a family-based sample that includes Slavic, Uralic and Polynesian. Collaboration with the scholars at DDL will help me expand my dataset to represent each major macro-area, cf. (Dryer 1992, Hammarström & Donohue 2014). However, what is of greatest importance for this study is the possibility to discuss my semantic analyses with specialists on specific languages. While lexicalizations of negation are typically described as exceptions to SN and tend to be listed in grammars, it is very difficult to obtain information about their semantics. As has been noted repeatedly in the literature on lexical typology, the comparative study of meaning presupposes joint work with specialists as the translational equivalents provided in descriptive materials are typically insufficient and often misleading. This is why work with experts has been indispensable for further specification and description of their content and functions.
My database contains lexical expressions for 65 negative senses encoded by single lexical expressions which can be grouped into broader semantic domains. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of the semantic and grammatical domains identified by Zeshan (2004: 50) as being coded by irregular negatives in sign languages are also observed as lexicalizations in spoken languages. These domains are: COGNITION (not know, not understand), EMOTIONAL ATTITUDE (not want, not like), MODALS (cannot, need not), POSSESSION/EXISTENTIAL (not have, not exist), TENSE/ASPECT (did not, not finished), EVALUATIVE JUDGEMENT (not right, not enough). One domain that tends to be lexicalized in spoken languages but is not reported by Zeshan for sign languages is labeled here NON-UTTERANCE; it is represented by senses such as ‘not talk’, ‘not tell’ as in Mele-Fila kaiipunu ‘not speak’ vs. vanaga ‘speak’ (Clark 2002: 692).
It is clear that negative lexicalizations cluster around a limited number of concepts. As Zeshan (2004: 51) points out “events and states such as not liking, not knowing, not having are all identifiable human experiences”. This is why they are often encoded by lexicalized expressions cross-linguistically regardless of language medium. The study thus highlights the fact that human vocabularies tend to be structured around cognitively salient categories and lexicalizations of negation highlight this very clearly. By identifying the concepts they encode as well as the functions of these expressions, we get more insight about how speakers construe meaning and how different semantic domains are related to each other. I am currently finishing a manuscript on this that will be submitted to Linguistics.
5 Looking ahead: splitting up the day in different cultures.
Being able to focus on one’s research and interact with other researchers is the dream opportunity for any scholar. During this year, I was not only able to round up topics on which I have been working for a long time. I was also able to think about a new direction in my research, namely conceptualization of time and ways to split up the day in different cultures. Anyone who has taken to learn a foreign language will have encountered the problem of the non-translatability of terms related to time. This is briefly illustrated by Swedish and Indonesian.
In Swedish, there are two terms day and night that divide the 24-hour period (day) into two periods: one of light and one of darkness. The light period, day, is further divided into smaller periods such as morning ‘dawn to approx. 10-11 am’, forenoon ‘approx. 9-12 pm’, afternoon ‘approx. 12 pm to approx. 5 pm/sunset’ and evening ‘after 5 pm/sunset’. There are also terms that can be interpreted either as periods or as times such as grynning 'dawn', soluppgång 'sunrise', skymning 'dusk', solnedgång 'sunset', midnatt 'midnight'. As indicated above, there is also a term for the entire 24 hour period, dygn.
In Indonesian, we observe two terms where the 24-hour period is divided into a period of light and a period of darkness, hari ‘day’ and malam ‘evening, night’. The light period is divided into three periods pagi ‘6 a.m.- approx. 10 a.m.’, siang ‘approx. 10 a.m.- 3 p.m.’ and sore ‘3 p.m.- 6 p.m.’. There is no term that covers the 24 hour period. It is clear that the Indonesian and the Swedish split of the 24 hour period differ. Note that most of Indonesia is close to the equator so the sun rises and sets at approximately or exactly 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively. It should be noted too that in most standard dictionaries both siang and sore are translated as ‘afternoon’ which is clearly wrong.
Splitting up the day is obviously connected to geography but also to ways people organize their daily life, meals, work, rest. Thus the topic is very much related to social anthropology. In many, though not all cultures, the terms of the day are also used in greetings, cf. Swedish godmorgon 'good morning'. One the one hand, the terms for splitting up the 24 hour period might appear as part of lexicon that belongs to basic vocabulary; however, in situations of intense language contact, these terms appear to be easily borrowed. Collecting data on them is a complicated matter. They are not regularly listed in grammatical descriptions and dictionary data are not reliable because of the different in reference. Being able to discuss different aspects of this topic with the researchers at DDL has been extremely useful for my continued work on it.
References
Auwera, J. van der & O. Krasnoukhova. 2020. The typology of negation. In Veronica Déprez & Maria Teresa Espinal (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Negation, 91–116. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198830528.013.3.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2001. On the typology of negative modals. In Jack Hoeksema, Hotze Rullmann, Victor Sanchez-Valencia & Ton van der Wouden (eds.), Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items, 23–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2009. The Jespersen Cycles. In Elly van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical Change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: JOhn Benjamins Publishing Company.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2010. On the diachrony of negation. In Laurence R. Horn (ed.), Expression of Negation, 73–101. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Auwera, Johan van der, Olga Krashnoukhova & Frens Vossen. 2022. Intertwining the negative cycles. In Ljuba Veselinova & Arja Hamari (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle from a Comparative Perspective. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Auwera, Johan van der, Ludo Lejeune & Valentin) (with Goussev. 2013. The Prohibitive. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structures. München: Max Planck Digital Library. http://wals.info/feature/71.
Baranova, Vlada & Daria Mishchenko. 2022. Non-verbal negation markers and the Negative Existential Cycle in Bashkir and Kalmyk with some typological parallels. In Ljuba Veselinova & Arja Hamari (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle, 403–439. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/307.
Brinton, Laurel J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615962.002.
Cysouw, Michael. 2005. Quantitative Methods in Typology. In Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann & Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.), Quantitative Linguistics: An International Handbook, 554–578. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cysouw, Michael. 2007. Investigating Transition Probabilities in the World Atlas of Language Structures. In. Paris. http://web.mac.com/cysouw/presentations/index_files/cysouwALT7TRANSITION_slides.pdf.
Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17. 79–106.
Dryer, Matthew. 1988. Universals of negative position. In Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik & Jessica Wirth (eds.), Studies in Syntactic Typology, 93–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989. Large Linguistic Areas and Language Sampling. Studies in Language 13–2. 257–292.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations. Language 68(1). 81–138.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013a. Negative Morphemes. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/112. (12 June, 2020).
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013b. Position of Negative Morpheme With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb (v2020.3). (Ed.) Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013c. Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/143. (12 June, 2020).
Eriksen, Pål Kristian. 2011. “To Not Be” or not “to not be”: The typology of negation of non-verbal predicates. Studies in Language 35(2). 275–310.
Evans, Nicholas D. 2010. Semantic Typology. In Jae-Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology, 504–533. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gelderen, Elly van (ed.). 2009. Cyclical change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Goddard, Cliff. 2001. Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology 5. 1–65.
Haan, Ferdinand de. 1997. The Interaction of Negation and Modality: A Typological Study (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series). Garland Publishers.
Hammarström, Harald & Mark Donohue. 2014. Some principles on the use of macro-areas in typological comparison. Language Dynamics and Change 4(1). 167–187. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-00401001.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation. (Ed.) Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533.
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. København: Hovedkommissionær: Andr, Fred, Høst & Søn, KGL. Hof-boghandel, Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri.
Koch, Peter. 2001. Lexical typology. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals, vol. 2, 1142–1179. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2008. Approaching lexical typology. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), From Polysemy to Semantic Change, 3–52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lazard, Gilbert. 1992. A Grammar of Contemporary Persian. Costa Meca, California: Mazda Publishers in association with Bibliotheca Persica.
Mettouchi, Amina. 2021. Negation in Kabyle (Berber). Journal of African Languages and Literatures (2). 30–79. https://doi.org/10.6092/jalalit.v2i2.8059.
Miestamo, Matti. 2003. Clausal Negation: A Typological Study. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Ph.D. A revised version of this work was published by Mouton de Gruyter /Berlin.
Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard Negation: The Negation of Declarative Verbal Main Clauses in a Typological Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Miestamo, Matti. 2014. Partitives and negation: A cross-linguistic survey. In Silvia Luraghi & Tuomas Huumo (eds.), Partitive cases and related categories (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 54), 63–86. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Miestamo, Matti. 2017. Negation. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology, 405–439. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moreno-Cabrera, Juan C. 1998. On the relationships between grammaticalization and lexicalization. In Anna Giacalone Ramat & Paul Hopper (eds.), The Limits of Grammaticalization (TSL: 37), 211–227. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Palmer, F. R. 1995. Negation and the Modals of Possibility and Necessity. In J. Bybee & S. Fleischman (eds.), Modality in Grammar and Discourse (Typological Studies in Language), 453–471. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Payne, John R. 1985. Negation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol I: Clause Structure, vol. 1, 197–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riese, Timothy, Bradley, Jeremy, Yakimova, Emma, and Krylova, Galina. 2010. ???? ????? ?????:: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language. Vienna: Department of Finno-Ugric Studies, University of Vienna.
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta, and Viola, Márta Sarolta. 2009. Typology of affirmative and negative non-verbal predicates in the Ugric and Samoyedic languages. FUF 60:117-159.
Zeshan, Ulrike. 2004. Hand, head, and face: Negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 8(1). 1–58.
During my sabbatical, I spent 5 months at Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage (DDL), Université Lumière – Lyon 2, France. Due to the availability of the researchers and my daughter’s schooling, the stay was split into two parts, one in June 2025 and the other fall of 2025, September through December. The stay was very highly rewarding and very productive. I was able to work together with a number of scholars who focus on specific areas: Maïa Ponsonnet who specializes in Australian languages, Denis Creissels who is a leading expert on non-verbal predications as well as Atlantic languages, Alice Vittrant whose focus is on Tibeto-Burman, Françoise Rose, Antoine Guillaume and Antonio Ramirez who work on specific Arawakan languages.
In addition to the contacts with senior faculty, I was able to partake of the work of a number of graduate students, share my experience with them and obtain information on emerging ideas and topics in linguistic field work and typology. The technical expertise of several research assistants was of great value to me as they shared search techniques, experience with typesetting tools as well as statistical methods in linguistics.
DDL is a vibrant academic environment, with regular seminars in several subdisciplines of linguistics: typology, field work, neurolinguistics and language acquisition. I participated in the typology seminar with a talk on my work and received valuable feedback. I was also able to start initial interviews and have discussions on a topic that I plan on developing in the future. Specifically, the lexicalization of temporal concepts and the divisions of the 24-hour period in different cultures. It is a largely unexplored territory with a great potential for further research. However, it cannot be
The department takes part in outreach activities that I was able to join. For instance, every year, a Science Festival is organized in the city of Lyon. During this even institutions of higher education invite school children to the campus either for popular lecture or to take part in games with academic orientation and similar activities. For this event, Maïa Ponsonnet and myself set a translation game of positive and negative sentence in about 20 different languages for a group of six-graders. It was highly appreciated and will be included in future science festivals.
My own work could proceed as outlined in the research plan, see sections 3 and 4 below. I was also able to do the finishing touches together with Matti Miestamo on a three volume work on negation in the world languages, see Miestamo & Veselinova (eds.) (2025a, b, c, d). Likewise, I finished several other articles, see Veselinova & Panova (2025), Veselinova (2025), Veselinova (In Print). Finally, I laid the ground work and interviews on a new research topic, see section 5 below.
2 General outline of the research question and the significance of RJ sabbatical
Negation is one of the few demonstrably universal features of human languages. As such it has been widely studied in various branches of linguistics and there is an extensive body of literature devoted to it. Within linguistic typology, there are a number of large-scale cross-linguistic studies devoted to negation in simple declarative sentences with an overt lexical verb, so called Standard negation (hereafter SN), see for instance, (Dahl 1979; Miestamo 2005), Dryer (1988; 2013a; 2013b; 2013c) on the morpho-syntactic properties of negation markers, Haspelmath (2013) on negative indefinite pronouns and predicate negation. Nevertheless, there remain a number of aspects which still require further research, especially from a cross-linguistic perspective. For this study I focus on negation in non-verbal and stative predications, section 5, and lexicalization of negation, section 6. I have done extensive work on these topics and collected large datasets. However, typology is not a single-researcher enterprise. In fact, in order to produce plausible classifications and informed accounts, consultation with specialists on specific families is indispensable. To this end, I sought collaboration with scholars at DDL. This research center is currently one of the most vibrant research venues in Europe as regards language documentation, historical linguistics, typology and neurolinguistics. It houses specialists on the languages of West Africa, South America, Caucasus, Siberia and Australia, to name the main ones. Being able to work there, present the analyses I have done so far, receive feedback and partake of the work of the scholars there is has been highly enriching and came to improve the quality of my own research significantly.
3 Typology of negation in non-verbal predications
As stated above, many cross-linguistic studies on negation tend to focus on negation in intransitive declarative sentences with an overt verb predicate such as (i) Mary does not sing. There is still demand for large scale cross-linguistic studies on negation strategies in various kinds of stative predications, see (ii) through (v) below for some examples. The purpose of this study is to address this gap.
Consequently, I focus on the negation strategies in sentences such as (ii) This is not Mary, (iii) Mary is not a nurse (non-verbal predications), (iv) Mary is not at home (locative) (v) There are no green lions (existential). The negation markers in these sentences are collectively referred to as special negators when different from (SN). Relevant cross-linguistic work includes Eriksen (2011) on negation strategies in sentences with a nominal predicate and Veselinova (2013) on negative existentials. Special negators are also mentioned briefly in general overviews of negation, see (Miestamo 2017; Auwera & Krasnoukhova 2020), without any further specification about their cross-linguistic spread and semantic, morpho-syntactic or distributional properties. It has to be pointed out too that not all grammars provide information on them so elicitation and work with language experts is highly important for this inquiry. This work produced a typology of special negators with a reasonable outline of their areal and genealogical distribution. Furthermore, I outlined ways they interact with other parts of grammar, present hypotheses for their evolution and ultimately, and suggest an account for the observed distribution. In addition, raising awareness for the different subdomains sentence negation contributes also to future descriptive work in that grammar writers will be on a lookout for the distinctions outlined here.
I have collected data on negation strategies in stative predications as shown in (i) through (v) from genealogically and geographically stratified sample of 149 languages (hereafter world sample, WS). In addition, I use data from a family-based sample which includes families from Eurasia and Africa (Slavic, Iranian, Uralic, Dravidian, Turkic, Berber) Oceania (Polynesian) and South America (Tucanoan and Awarakan). During my stay at the DDL, I expanded my dataset with genera such as Atlantic, (West Africa), Chibcha, (Meso-America) and Gunwinyguan, (Northern Australia) by working with specialists on these areas, Denis Creissel, Colette Grinevald, Maïa Ponsonet. My entire dataset now includes 299 languages.
I was also able to learn and use statistical tools to produce semantic maps and thus achieved a more accurate descriptions of the negators under study. Equally importantly, I was able to discuss my family-based data and coding together with hypotheses on various historical developments with scholars such as Antoine Guillaume and Françoise Rose who specialize in language documentation and description and also in historical linguistics and language reconstruction.
I was able to establish two main types of special negators based on their functions: negative existentials and equative-attributive negators (the use of this label follows (Mettouchi 2009). Negative existentials, (1c), come in two subtypes, defined by their semantic range and structural characteristics: (i) negative existentials-proper, which are used for non-existence, negation of predicative possession and frequently, though not always, for negating location; they also show a number of other semantic, morphosyntactic and diachronic cross-linguistic similarities and (ii) extended negative existentials, (2), are used more broadly for the negation of non-verbal predications, stating the lack of X, where X can be an object, property or a relation of identity.
(1) Eastern Mari (Uralic) (Glottocode: east2328)
a. ok tol
NEG.3SG come.CONN
‘s/he does not come’ (Wagner-Nagy and Viola 2009: 135)
b. Tudo yoca og?l’
3SG child NEG
‘s/he is not a child’ (Riese et al. 2010: 91)
c. Port uke
house not.exist
‘There is no house’ (Jeremy Bradley, p.c.)
(2) Persian (Indo-European) (Glottocode: west2369)
a. na-mi-xar-am
NEG-DUR-buy-1SG
‘I am not buying’ (Lazard 1992: 163)
b. hâzer nist-am
ready not.be-1SG
‘I am not ready’l, (Lazard 1992: 164)
c. tu-ye hæyat doxtær nist
in-EZ courtyard girl not.be
‘There are no girls in the courtyard’ (Don Stilo p.c.)
In the current data set, extended negative existentials appear particularly common in the languages of the Middle East and also in some languages of Papua New Guinea. Otherwise, they seem relatively rare and are also diachronically unstable. The latter is reflected by the fact that they tend to split into separate negators, one for negative existence, and another for the remaining non-verbal predications.
The non-verbal negation types identified here show different cross-linguistic frequencies, areal distribution as well as formal, semantic and syntactic characteristics. For instance, negative existentials typically used to negate existential, possessive and sometimes also locative predications are spread all over the world, they are multifunctional lexical items with interact with other sub-domains of negation in a variety of ways. Conversely, equative-attributive negators used to negate identity and class inclusion (i) and (ii) above and sometimes also location appear to be more localized to specific areas of the world, such as Africa and South East Asia. Equative-attributive negators often evolve into negators with a narrow scope and tend to evolve into constituent negators but also SN negators specifically for the future. This latter development is widely attested but a proper account for it is yet to be suggested, see also Baranova & Mishchenko (2022).
In broad lines, within the general domain of negation, there appears to be a functional pressure for further domain differentiation. Specifically, negation of actions is commonly set apart from negation of availability; another commonly distinguished domain is negation of identity and class inclusion, closely linked to contrast and focus.
An abstract of this study was accepted for presentation at the upcoming conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, ALT 16 to be held in Lyon, France in July 2026. The conference is one of the most prestigious venues for presentation of typological work. This year’s edition has been the biggest one so far, with 400 submissions to be considered for presentation. Out of them only 52% were accepted. An article on this topic is currently under revision for the journal Linguistic Typology.
4 Lexicalization of negation
The goal of this inquiry is to identify which negated concepts, connected mainly to states and events, are expressed lexically across languages, cf. (i) English dunno < I don’t know or (ii) Tundra Nenets jexerasj’not know’. Both (i) and (ii) can be semantically decomposed into a negative component and a positive sense. Following (Brinton & Traugott 2005; Moreno-Cabrera 1998), such forms are considered instances of lexicalization. The term is used here in a synchronic sense. Specific lexicalizations of negation are mentioned in numerous works, for instance, Jespersen (1917: 13), Croft (1991), Payne (1985), van Gelderen (2009). De Haan (1997), Palmer (1995), van der Auwera (2001), Eriksen (2011), Veselinova (2013). However, a systematic cross-linguistic survey of lexicalized negative senses is missing both in the literature on negation as well as in work on lexical typology, see (Evans 2010; Goddard 2001; Koch 2001; Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2008). Zeshan (2004), on the other hand, offers a detailed discussion of irregular negative senses in sign languages. These expressions can be also viewed as lexicalizations and are compared with the results of the current study.
Similarly to the study on negation in non-verbal predications, I use two kinds of samples: a genealogically and geographically stratified sample with world coverage that includes 105 different languages and a family-based sample that includes Slavic, Uralic and Polynesian. Collaboration with the scholars at DDL will help me expand my dataset to represent each major macro-area, cf. (Dryer 1992, Hammarström & Donohue 2014). However, what is of greatest importance for this study is the possibility to discuss my semantic analyses with specialists on specific languages. While lexicalizations of negation are typically described as exceptions to SN and tend to be listed in grammars, it is very difficult to obtain information about their semantics. As has been noted repeatedly in the literature on lexical typology, the comparative study of meaning presupposes joint work with specialists as the translational equivalents provided in descriptive materials are typically insufficient and often misleading. This is why work with experts has been indispensable for further specification and description of their content and functions.
My database contains lexical expressions for 65 negative senses encoded by single lexical expressions which can be grouped into broader semantic domains. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of the semantic and grammatical domains identified by Zeshan (2004: 50) as being coded by irregular negatives in sign languages are also observed as lexicalizations in spoken languages. These domains are: COGNITION (not know, not understand), EMOTIONAL ATTITUDE (not want, not like), MODALS (cannot, need not), POSSESSION/EXISTENTIAL (not have, not exist), TENSE/ASPECT (did not, not finished), EVALUATIVE JUDGEMENT (not right, not enough). One domain that tends to be lexicalized in spoken languages but is not reported by Zeshan for sign languages is labeled here NON-UTTERANCE; it is represented by senses such as ‘not talk’, ‘not tell’ as in Mele-Fila kaiipunu ‘not speak’ vs. vanaga ‘speak’ (Clark 2002: 692).
It is clear that negative lexicalizations cluster around a limited number of concepts. As Zeshan (2004: 51) points out “events and states such as not liking, not knowing, not having are all identifiable human experiences”. This is why they are often encoded by lexicalized expressions cross-linguistically regardless of language medium. The study thus highlights the fact that human vocabularies tend to be structured around cognitively salient categories and lexicalizations of negation highlight this very clearly. By identifying the concepts they encode as well as the functions of these expressions, we get more insight about how speakers construe meaning and how different semantic domains are related to each other. I am currently finishing a manuscript on this that will be submitted to Linguistics.
5 Looking ahead: splitting up the day in different cultures.
Being able to focus on one’s research and interact with other researchers is the dream opportunity for any scholar. During this year, I was not only able to round up topics on which I have been working for a long time. I was also able to think about a new direction in my research, namely conceptualization of time and ways to split up the day in different cultures. Anyone who has taken to learn a foreign language will have encountered the problem of the non-translatability of terms related to time. This is briefly illustrated by Swedish and Indonesian.
In Swedish, there are two terms day and night that divide the 24-hour period (day) into two periods: one of light and one of darkness. The light period, day, is further divided into smaller periods such as morning ‘dawn to approx. 10-11 am’, forenoon ‘approx. 9-12 pm’, afternoon ‘approx. 12 pm to approx. 5 pm/sunset’ and evening ‘after 5 pm/sunset’. There are also terms that can be interpreted either as periods or as times such as grynning 'dawn', soluppgång 'sunrise', skymning 'dusk', solnedgång 'sunset', midnatt 'midnight'. As indicated above, there is also a term for the entire 24 hour period, dygn.
In Indonesian, we observe two terms where the 24-hour period is divided into a period of light and a period of darkness, hari ‘day’ and malam ‘evening, night’. The light period is divided into three periods pagi ‘6 a.m.- approx. 10 a.m.’, siang ‘approx. 10 a.m.- 3 p.m.’ and sore ‘3 p.m.- 6 p.m.’. There is no term that covers the 24 hour period. It is clear that the Indonesian and the Swedish split of the 24 hour period differ. Note that most of Indonesia is close to the equator so the sun rises and sets at approximately or exactly 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., respectively. It should be noted too that in most standard dictionaries both siang and sore are translated as ‘afternoon’ which is clearly wrong.
Splitting up the day is obviously connected to geography but also to ways people organize their daily life, meals, work, rest. Thus the topic is very much related to social anthropology. In many, though not all cultures, the terms of the day are also used in greetings, cf. Swedish godmorgon 'good morning'. One the one hand, the terms for splitting up the 24 hour period might appear as part of lexicon that belongs to basic vocabulary; however, in situations of intense language contact, these terms appear to be easily borrowed. Collecting data on them is a complicated matter. They are not regularly listed in grammatical descriptions and dictionary data are not reliable because of the different in reference. Being able to discuss different aspects of this topic with the researchers at DDL has been extremely useful for my continued work on it.
References
Auwera, J. van der & O. Krasnoukhova. 2020. The typology of negation. In Veronica Déprez & Maria Teresa Espinal (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Negation, 91–116. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198830528.013.3.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2001. On the typology of negative modals. In Jack Hoeksema, Hotze Rullmann, Victor Sanchez-Valencia & Ton van der Wouden (eds.), Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items, 23–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2009. The Jespersen Cycles. In Elly van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical Change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: JOhn Benjamins Publishing Company.
Auwera, Johan van der. 2010. On the diachrony of negation. In Laurence R. Horn (ed.), Expression of Negation, 73–101. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Auwera, Johan van der, Olga Krashnoukhova & Frens Vossen. 2022. Intertwining the negative cycles. In Ljuba Veselinova & Arja Hamari (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle from a Comparative Perspective. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Auwera, Johan van der, Ludo Lejeune & Valentin) (with Goussev. 2013. The Prohibitive. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structures. München: Max Planck Digital Library. http://wals.info/feature/71.
Baranova, Vlada & Daria Mishchenko. 2022. Non-verbal negation markers and the Negative Existential Cycle in Bashkir and Kalmyk with some typological parallels. In Ljuba Veselinova & Arja Hamari (eds.), The Negative Existential Cycle, 403–439. Berlin: Language Science Press. https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/307.
Brinton, Laurel J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615962.002.
Cysouw, Michael. 2005. Quantitative Methods in Typology. In Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann & Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.), Quantitative Linguistics: An International Handbook, 554–578. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Cysouw, Michael. 2007. Investigating Transition Probabilities in the World Atlas of Language Structures. In. Paris. http://web.mac.com/cysouw/presentations/index_files/cysouwALT7TRANSITION_slides.pdf.
Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17. 79–106.
Dryer, Matthew. 1988. Universals of negative position. In Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik & Jessica Wirth (eds.), Studies in Syntactic Typology, 93–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1989. Large Linguistic Areas and Language Sampling. Studies in Language 13–2. 257–292.
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations. Language 68(1). 81–138.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013a. Negative Morphemes. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/112. (12 June, 2020).
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013b. Position of Negative Morpheme With Respect to Subject, Object, and Verb (v2020.3). (Ed.) Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013c. Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://wals.info/chapter/143. (12 June, 2020).
Eriksen, Pål Kristian. 2011. “To Not Be” or not “to not be”: The typology of negation of non-verbal predicates. Studies in Language 35(2). 275–310.
Evans, Nicholas D. 2010. Semantic Typology. In Jae-Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology, 504–533. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gelderen, Elly van (ed.). 2009. Cyclical change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Goddard, Cliff. 2001. Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typology 5. 1–65.
Haan, Ferdinand de. 1997. The Interaction of Negation and Modality: A Typological Study (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Series). Garland Publishers.
Hammarström, Harald & Mark Donohue. 2014. Some principles on the use of macro-areas in typological comparison. Language Dynamics and Change 4(1). 167–187. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-00401001.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation. (Ed.) Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533.
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. København: Hovedkommissionær: Andr, Fred, Høst & Søn, KGL. Hof-boghandel, Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri.
Koch, Peter. 2001. Lexical typology. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals, vol. 2, 1142–1179. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2008. Approaching lexical typology. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), From Polysemy to Semantic Change, 3–52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lazard, Gilbert. 1992. A Grammar of Contemporary Persian. Costa Meca, California: Mazda Publishers in association with Bibliotheca Persica.
Mettouchi, Amina. 2021. Negation in Kabyle (Berber). Journal of African Languages and Literatures (2). 30–79. https://doi.org/10.6092/jalalit.v2i2.8059.
Miestamo, Matti. 2003. Clausal Negation: A Typological Study. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Ph.D. A revised version of this work was published by Mouton de Gruyter /Berlin.
Miestamo, Matti. 2005. Standard Negation: The Negation of Declarative Verbal Main Clauses in a Typological Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Miestamo, Matti. 2014. Partitives and negation: A cross-linguistic survey. In Silvia Luraghi & Tuomas Huumo (eds.), Partitive cases and related categories (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 54), 63–86. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Miestamo, Matti. 2017. Negation. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon (eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology, 405–439. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moreno-Cabrera, Juan C. 1998. On the relationships between grammaticalization and lexicalization. In Anna Giacalone Ramat & Paul Hopper (eds.), The Limits of Grammaticalization (TSL: 37), 211–227. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Palmer, F. R. 1995. Negation and the Modals of Possibility and Necessity. In J. Bybee & S. Fleischman (eds.), Modality in Grammar and Discourse (Typological Studies in Language), 453–471. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Payne, John R. 1985. Negation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol I: Clause Structure, vol. 1, 197–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riese, Timothy, Bradley, Jeremy, Yakimova, Emma, and Krylova, Galina. 2010. ???? ????? ?????:: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Mari Language. Vienna: Department of Finno-Ugric Studies, University of Vienna.
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta, and Viola, Márta Sarolta. 2009. Typology of affirmative and negative non-verbal predicates in the Ugric and Samoyedic languages. FUF 60:117-159.
Zeshan, Ulrike. 2004. Hand, head, and face: Negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 8(1). 1–58.