Language contact and negation in indigenous South America

Negation is a universal feature of a human language. Each language has the linguistic means to express the denial (negation) of a proposition.

While specific realizations differ to a certain extent, languages show a very clear cross-linguistic tendency in the position (and nature) of a negative marker: it tends to be a free-standing element and occur before the verbal predicate.

Different from most languages, indigenous languages of the South American continent show a typologically unusual – as yet unexplained – behaviour, in that a negative marker tends to occur after the verbal predicate and often as a suffixal element.

The scientific aim of this project is to provide an informed answer on the role of language contact behind the continent-wide presence of the postverbal pattern, which distinguishes South American (SA) languages from most others.

With reaching this aim, the action will make an impact in two ways: (i) it will bring in a piece of linguistic evidence contributing to a better understanding of SA prehistory, which still has many open questions, and (ii) it will enrich theoretical models of language evolution by providing an account as to how a functionally dispreferred pattern gets maintained in a language.

I plan to carry out this project under supervision and in collaboration with Rik van Gijn, whose ERC Consolidator project on ‘South American Population History Revisited: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon’ (SAPHIRE), hosted at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), is of key relevance to the proposed action.

Thus, I will enrich my research profile, which combines typology and diachrony of morpho-syntax with a solid expertise in contact linguistics and experience in interdisciplinary approach to linguistic data.

From the professional career perspective, the Fellowship will help me gain academic independence and will ultimately serve as a springboard for a tenured research position.