Sesotho is one of the African Languages where sentence negation is expressed by means of bound negative morphemes. It has only three negative morphemes which arespread across the Sesotho matrix and subordinate clauses...Sesotho is one of the African Languages where sentence negation is expressed by means of bound negative morphemes. It has only three negative morphemes which arespread across the Sesotho matrix and subordinate clauses. They are the negative morphemes /ha/, /sa/ and /se/.These morphemes are bound verbal morphemes that negate various predicate forms and only appear in restricted sentence types. The central aim of this paper is to examine sentence constructions that realize negation by means of the negative morpheme /sa/ and its syntactic distribution within copulative verbs, non - copulative verbs, deficient verbs and aspect morphemes over a full range of inflectional categories such as tense, aspect and mood. This morpheme will be examined within the general framework of the Minimalist Programme, which holds that inflectional categories occur as heads of phrasal categories. This paper will further illustrate the morphological representations of these morphemes within Beard’s (1995) Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology, which defines morphology as the sum of all the phonological means of expressing the relations of constituents in words, of words in phrases and of phrasal constituents in sentences. It distinguishes lexemes from bound morphemes.展开更多
This article examines constituent negation in Sesotho. It investigates negation of the object argument in clauses with non-copulative verbs. In the case of non-copulative verbs, transitive and di-transitive constructi...This article examines constituent negation in Sesotho. It investigates negation of the object argument in clauses with non-copulative verbs. In the case of non-copulative verbs, transitive and di-transitive constructions will be considered. The article argues that Sesotho does not have a direct means of negating clausal constituents but employs clauses such as cleft sentences and clauses with AGRS [ho] as well as contrastive clauses to effect negation. It further examines negation in terms of Haegeman5s (1995) Neg-Criterion, the well-formedness condition that determines the distribution and interpretation of negative elements. It gives a brief overview of grammatical concepts regarding negation and the notion object argument in its focus and post verbal positions, and explains how constituent negation, [the object argument] is realized in Sesotho.展开更多
文摘Sesotho is one of the African Languages where sentence negation is expressed by means of bound negative morphemes. It has only three negative morphemes which arespread across the Sesotho matrix and subordinate clauses. They are the negative morphemes /ha/, /sa/ and /se/.These morphemes are bound verbal morphemes that negate various predicate forms and only appear in restricted sentence types. The central aim of this paper is to examine sentence constructions that realize negation by means of the negative morpheme /sa/ and its syntactic distribution within copulative verbs, non - copulative verbs, deficient verbs and aspect morphemes over a full range of inflectional categories such as tense, aspect and mood. This morpheme will be examined within the general framework of the Minimalist Programme, which holds that inflectional categories occur as heads of phrasal categories. This paper will further illustrate the morphological representations of these morphemes within Beard’s (1995) Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology, which defines morphology as the sum of all the phonological means of expressing the relations of constituents in words, of words in phrases and of phrasal constituents in sentences. It distinguishes lexemes from bound morphemes.
文摘This article examines constituent negation in Sesotho. It investigates negation of the object argument in clauses with non-copulative verbs. In the case of non-copulative verbs, transitive and di-transitive constructions will be considered. The article argues that Sesotho does not have a direct means of negating clausal constituents but employs clauses such as cleft sentences and clauses with AGRS [ho] as well as contrastive clauses to effect negation. It further examines negation in terms of Haegeman5s (1995) Neg-Criterion, the well-formedness condition that determines the distribution and interpretation of negative elements. It gives a brief overview of grammatical concepts regarding negation and the notion object argument in its focus and post verbal positions, and explains how constituent negation, [the object argument] is realized in Sesotho.
