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Are there any languages with only one of "yes" or "no"?
Finnish has particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo", "juu", "jep" (very colloquial), but no such words for "no".
However, one ...
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why in Polish we change ją to jej when negating the phrase?
Yes, you do understand correctly what those sentences mean.
In the Slavic languages in general and in Polish in particular, the direct object of a verb is in the Accusative case when the verb is ...
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How do languages with negative concord express the actual negation of negative polarity items?
First off, let's take a broader look at multiple negation. Van der Wouden (1994a) describes four different classes of how multiple negation can be interpreted:
double negation (DN), e.g. Standard ...
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Why does Thai have no words for "yes" or "no"?
Short answer: Because Thai language has other tools for expressing polarity (affirmation and negation).
Polarity is a grammatical category for expressing the speaker's assertion that a certain clause ...
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What makes "can't get any" a double-negative, according to Steven Pinker?
Yeah, it's not. This isn't the first time Pinker beat this particular drum; an earlier instance is this article, where he elaborates a little bit:
What do "any," "even" and "...
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Name of assertions in sentences where negation of the whole sentence doesn't negate the assertion
Technically speaking, these are not assertions. The technical term is presupposition.
Assertions are propositions that one can negate, like
The moon is made of green cheese.
whose negation is
The ...
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Name of assertions in sentences where negation of the whole sentence doesn't negate the assertion
What you are looking for is presupposition:
Sentence A presupposes sentence B iff both A entails B and the negation of A entails B.
An alternative definition is that
A presupposition is a ...
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Is there any modern language that is currently shifting from one stage to the next in Jespersen's cycle?
Welsh is around the same point as French, or maybe slightly further. Literary Welsh retains the original negative particle.
Ni chafodd ef ddim syndod
Not received he not surprise
but everyday Welsh ...
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3
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Is there any similar verb negation in other Indo-European languages?
Basically what you are saying is that for this one verb the negative form changes the vowel of the prefix from /ɜ/ to /æ/. Is that right? These correspond to classical Persian bi-tawānad بتواند ...
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Name for tendency of negative morphemes to climb to "outermost" position
Yes. The phenomenon is known as NEG-raising.
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Written languages that acquired negative concord?
I believe that the ne...pas construction of French is post-Old French so that would be an example. Arabic (not all dialects) developed the negative concord element -š subsequent to earlier written ...
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'What one didn't see was anything' is weird. So why has it persisted?
I think McWhorter is exaggerating his point a bit to try to make English speakers who are used to prescription against "double negatives" rethink their possible prejudices. As far as I know, the use ...
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Does Jespersen's Cycle apply to languages without negative concord?
I think there are two answers that may be helpful here, but before we get to them let's clear up a few things. Negative Concord is not the same thing as Redundant Negation. Negative Concord is a ...
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Are there languages with a third term describing the relationship between opposites?
For 'this' and 'that' specifically—that is, in the sphere of spatial deixis—there are a lot of languages that have a three-way (or more) distinction instead of the two-way distinction most modern ...
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Are there languages with a third term describing the relationship between opposites?
An example from English first: black, grey, white. There is a continuum of color terms where black and white define the endpoints, and grey is between the two. Numerous Bantu languages have ...
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1
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Why are negative verbs/sentences commonly used in invitations and suggestions?
I can not comment due to my low reputation, so I am going to write an answer even though I do not really have one, just remarks. In my native Czech language, you can use positive and negative ...
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Are there any languages with only one of "yes" or "no"?
Mandarin has an unambiguous simplex 不 bù which means ‘no’ on its own, but no equivalent simplex that means ‘yes’.
不 does double duty as the negating particle for non-past verbs, so it’s not only used ...
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Negation and Pronouns in Finnish
Native Finnish speaker here.
Your recap of the use of the negation verb is correct, as far as it goes. It's also well documented at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ei#Verb_2
(1) & (3) Both ...
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Negation and Pronouns in Finnish
There's a list of publications on the 'pro-drop'-ness of Finnish (though it's not 'true pro-drop', but that's part of the conclusion), long story short:
Using the subject - when it's grammatically ...
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Are negative comparative operators like "less" typologically rarer than their positive counterparts?
This is to the now edited question:
It maybe surprising for speakers of Standard Average European languages that so-called "particle comparatives" are rare among the languages of the world, most of ...
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What is the reason for the double negation found in some languages?
Interestingly, in Russian, we never call it "double negation" (at least I never heard it), although Russian is often listed in English-language sources as an example of a language with "double ...
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Is "double positive meaning negative" a common phenomenon?
It was Sidney Morgenbesser, and the linguist (actually, philosopher of language) he was responding to was J.L. Austin. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser)
The importance of prosody to ...
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