Negation patterns in Meche

Abstract

This paper discusses the negation structure of Meche, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the southeastern part of Nepal. The negation marker in Meche is not cognate with the Proto-Tibeto-Burman negation prefix *ma-, but is suffixal, as observed in other TB languages of North East India. The Meche negation suffixes are not simple negation markers attached to the verb in affirmative clauses, but rather constitute a paradigm contrasting with affirmative suffixes with respect to tense-aspect-modality (habitual -ə vs. -a, future -nai vs. -a, past -ɑʔ vs. -yi, recent past/perfect -bai vs. -akəi, continuous/perfect -dəŋ vs. -akəi). In negative clauses, negation suffixes occur instead of corresponding affirmative verbal suffixes. There is, however, one negative prefix: the prohibitive marker da-, which is cognate with the PTB-negative imperative marker *da/ta. Meche has a negation suffix that signals a change of situation into a negative state, -le. The negation in subordinate clauses is based on finite negation markers, but the patterns are slightly different. The nominalized clause is formed by one of the two nominalizers, -gra and -nai, for affirmative nominalized clauses. However, there is only one negative nominalizer -yi. For temporal- conditional adverbial clauses, the finite negative suffixes are used, while for other types of adverbial clauses, which are based on nominalization, the negative nominalizer -yi is always used. Finally, the paper speculates regarding a possible origin of one of the negative suffixes in Meche based on Wood (2008) and a piece of data from Tani (Post 2015). The negative suffix -a might have originated from the Proto-Bodo-Garo prohibitive *ta, which is cognate with PTB *da/ta, and which for some reason might have been employed as a regular negative marker. A possible phonological change would be ta > ca > ja > ya > a in Boro and Meche.