An Overview of Negation in the Yi Languages --Geolinguistic analysis of Yi character maps and a preliminary report on negation in Sani Yi--

Abstract

This paper consists of an outline of negation in the languages of the Yi ethnic group in China and a preliminary report on negation in Sani Yi (ISO 639-3ysn), classified as one of the subdialects of the Southeastern dialect by the official classification in China. In the former part, a general overview of negation in the Yi languages is shown along with results of an analysis of maps of Yi characters with respect to negatives. Based on these results, first, negative words of the Yi languages in China phonetically divided into two groups: the MA group and the A group. Second, prohibitive words, however, converge into one group, the THA group. In one group, both negative and prohibitive words seem to be infixal, while that is not the case in another group (there are some exceptions). Third, maps of Yi characters denoting negation and their geolinguistic analysis will be shown. On the one hand, with regard to negative words expressing “not”, there is a clear difference between the MA and A groups in the character shapes. Nevertheless, a few characters in the Mojiang area of the MA group demonstrate a notable similarity to those of group A. This may indicate two possibilities: 1. All the characters used for the negation “not” were logographic and their pronunciations may have changed according to dialect or context; or 2. Within the Yi languages, the negative words might have been freely pronounced either as *a or *ma, and their pronunciation gradually changed. On the other hand, there are three groups of Yi characters used for prohibition: Groups 1, 2, and 3. Their geographic distribution and possibilities of phonetic loan will be mentioned. In the latter part, negation in Sani Yi based on both previous studies and the author's on-site data will be discussed as a case study. The author's data have revealed several features of negation in Sani Yi, such as the neutralisation of tense in negative sentences and morpho-syntactic change in negative forms owing to influences from Chinese.