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A sketch of the typological characterization of negation in Romanian

Articles

• Dominte, Constantin

This sketch, a corrolary of research in contrastive linguistics andwhich is of special interest for the linguistic typology —from themorpho-syntactic perspective— is based on the stratificational principleof language. Following this principle, the author distinguishes three maintypes of negation: 1) Prophrastic negation (cf. rom. Nu,\ engl. No); 2)Verbal or morphological negation (cf. rom. nuy, engl. [do/does] not)·, 3)Lexematic negation (cf. rom. nimeni, nicäieri etc.; engl. nobody, nowhereetc.) —defined and illustred through examples in various languages.Taking into account the paradigmatic inventory of the «assertiveadverbs» too (cf. Pohl 1972), the author concludes that, as regards theexpression of negation, Romanian is a language with tautophonic(homonymie) prophrastic and verbal negations, with an inventory ofthree assertive adverbs (da; nu; ba da) and allowing for the coexistenceof both the verbal and the lexematic negations in the same sentence.The closing lines of the sketch include some remarks of historical orderwith reference to the romance character of the above linguistic subtypeand to the possibility of the substratum influence over its formation.

• Languages and Literature

• Γλωσσολογία

Τυπολογικός χαρακτηρισμός, Ρουμάνικη άρνηση