Negation in Dime

Abstract

"Every language has mechanisms to express negation. Variant forms of negatives in different languages may be expressed through the position of negativemarkers, their form, interpretation, and theway inwhich they are used. Formally, negative morphemes can appear as verbal affixes, free morphemes, or even verb forms (Payne 1985). For instance, Hamar negative imperatives are formed by way of the verb gärä ‘leave, stop’ following the negated lexical verb as in, kumä ‘eat!’ vs. kuman gärä ‘don’t eat!’ (Lydall 1976: 427), while in some other languages such as in Maale there are portmanteau morphemes indicating both negation and aspect (Amha 2001: 223)"