User:LaLedda/sandbox

Negation
In Buru, a speaker's perspective or evaluation of one or several utterances often appear at the end. Even whole stories may be concluded with a sentence or two expressing the speaker's attitude to what was just said, where or who they heard it from, or similar judgements. This is reflected at both the sentence and even clause level by means of auxiliaries, parts of the TAM (Tense-aspect-mood) system, tags, and other such modifiers. Grimes classifies these items as "external to the clause proper". This comes to include speaker evaluation of the truth value of what is said, marked by moo, the main negative adverbial in Buru.

All page references refer to Grimes (1991).

[Sira hapu lafa-t la yako langina] moo.

3.PL.A tie food-NOM for 1.SG earlier NEG

'They didn't tie up trailfood for me earlier.'

Such clause-final negation is atypical of Austronesian languages, in which the negative almost exclusively appears before the verb or predicate. This feature appears to have crossed the linguistic boundary between neighbouring Papuan languages and Buru, as well as other languages of the Moluccas. This is substantiated by the fact that "historical records indicate long-term and extensive interactions between Austronesians and Non-Austronesians in Halmahera and the Moluccas”. Consequently, Klamer concludes that it is “reasonable to analyze … final negation in … Buru … as having a [non-Austronesian (i.e. Papuan)] origin for which there is substantial historical and linguistic evidence”.

By combining with moo, other negative adverbials have been derived throughout the language's history, giving rise to mohede ("not yet") and tehuk moo ("no longer"). Mohede is a frozen polymorpheme comprising of moo + hede, where hede is an adverbial with a continuative aspect (translated as "still", i.e. mohede = "still not", c.f. German "noch nicht" or Italian "ancora no(n)"). Unlike other negative adverbials and auxiliaries, the segment tehuk may appear in the both the "nucleus" (directly following the verb) or clause-final, as well as (rather uniquely) in both positions at once.

Da kaa mohede.

3.SG eat {not yet}

'He hasn't eaten yet.'

Da kaa gehu-t tehuk moo

3.SG eat taro-NOM longer NEG

'She doesn't eat taro anymore.'

Da kaa tehuk gehu-t tehuk moo.

3.SG eat longer taro-NOM longer NEG

'She doesn't eat taro anymore.'

The deictic element sa can be combined with moo (or any of the other aforementioned negative elements) to mean "nothing, no(ne), nobody”. Sa is related to the quantifier sia (“some”), and, as such, constructions involving sa … moo may be glossed as “not one”. Where exactly a speaker places this element sa indicates the intended scope of the negation, whilst the negative, as is mandatory for Buru, remains clause final. The negative polarity items “anyone” and “anything” are represented consistently in Buru as ii sa ("one thing") and geba sa ("one person") respectively.

example geba sa moo example ii sa moo one with mohede too

Lea tau-n dii, da dufa sa moo, da oli hama saa.

sun full-GEN DIST 3.SG get one NEG, 3.SG return search one

'All that day, if he gets nothing, he goes home hunting for something.'

Geba sa kaa ii sa mohede.

person one eat thing one {not yet}

'Nobody has eaten anything yet.'

Geba sa kaa ii sa tehuk moo.

person one eat thing one longer NEG

'Nobody is eating anything anymore.'

Moo may also be employed to add stronger emphasis to prohibitive clauses that are introduced by the prohibitive marker bara ("don't").

Bara iko ego pala moo!

don't go get rice NEG

'Do not, by any means, go get rice!'

In the event that moo directly follows a verb, the cliticised object marker -h, if present, will attach to it in the form of mohe.

Ya te puna mo.he.

1.SG CAP do NEG.it

'I don't know how to make it.'

'I can't do it.'