Typology of Negation in Ob-Ugric
and Samoyedic Languages (NOS)

Enets

Forest Enets will be marked with F on this page, Tundra Enets with T.

Standard Negation 

• Negative auxiliary (ńi-) + main verb in connegative form [bu ńi pujaðir ‘(s)he doesn’t sneeze’]
• Main verb is marked for mode
• Future tense: the main verb still contains the -do suffix
  • Word order: Neg.Aux + V
  • Inverse word order: emphatic statement

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

Existential Negation 

	Negative Predicate Locative	Negative Existential
	T L Cop	L T Cop
Feature of Theme	[+definite]	[-definite]
Negative Element	ďago- (F) ďigo- (T)	ďago- (F) ďigo- (T)

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

Negation of the Imperative

Special prohibitive verb (i-) with normal suffixes + main verb in connegative form [aba, šij cikon i-d kai ‘Sister, don’t leave me here!’]. This special verb appears in the 2SG forms but not in other forms of the imperative paradigm. This verb stem does not merely appear in the imperative form but some other mood categories use it for the negated form, for instance, the probabilitive (-tta/-tte) and the superprobabilitive (-toba) mood [i-toba-ðoɁ ďoxu-Ɂ ‘I have certainly not lost my way’].

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

Other Types of Non-Standard Negation 

1. Semantically not empty negative auxiliaries

   	Forest Enets		Tundra Enets
   	Verb	Word Order	Verb	Word Order
   cannot	loðeš	VerbInf + Neg.Aux	leɁið-	Neg.Aux + VerbKn
   cannot	ďama-	VerbInf + Neg.Aux	no data	no data
   nearly	keťiś	Neg.Aux + VerbKn	koťi-	Neg.Aux + VerbKn
   emphatic	iŋa-	Neg.Aux + VerbKn	iiŋə-	no data

2. Lexical negative verb: ďoxoraś (F), ďaxaraś ~ ďoxaraś (T) ‘not know’

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

Negation of Predicate Possession 

Type A3: Enets has at least two negating elements. The negation of predicative possession uses the existential verb. The neg.ex verb is also used in the standard negation.

	Forest Enets
Type		Construction
Nominative Poss.	affirm.	PoRNom + PoMPx + tone- PoRNom + PoMPx
	negativ	PoRNom + PoMPx + ďagu-
Locative Poss./Adjectiv.	affirm.	PoRLoc + PoMPx + oka PoR + PpLoc + PoMPx + oka
	negativ	no data

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

Non-Verbal Predicate Negation 

	Forest Enets
	First Way		Second Way
	Standard	Non-Verbal	Existential	Locational	Possessive
Present	ńeš + Lexical Verb	ńeš + N-V.Pred + Copula	Subject/Theme + ďaguš	Location + ďaguš	Possessum + ďaguš
Past	ńeš + Lexical Verb	ńeš + N-V.Pred + Copula	Subject/Theme + ďaguš	Location + ďaguš	Possessum + ďaguš

Forest Enets example sentences are available both in html and in pdf format.

A list of abbreviations used can be found here.