Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Simoncsics, Péter: Linguistic gestures: On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 151
154 SlMONCSICS, PÉTER may be marked, in most cases, by a suffix identical/homophonic with that of imperative SG2, which can also be a zero. In both Permian languages the paradigms of the negative auxiliaries are of the latter type. The negative auxiliary appears together with the connegative, which as a rule it precedes. For the sake of brevity and clarity of presentation here only VXSG1 (and in one case also VXSG2) forms will be cited. For the same reason, the future paradigms of Komi and Udmurt, as well as the imperfect and pluperfect paradigms of Komi are omitted, as they are but slightly modified variants of various present and past tenses. As to the missing counterpart of the narrative past VXSG1 in Komi it is worth noting that in this respect Komi is more „logical” than Udmurt: it is evident that, when the narrator, i.e. the first person in grammatical terms, describes a scene or tells a story that happened in the past in which (s)he was not a participant and was informed about only through hearsay, (s)he cannot be represented linguistically as someone - moreover, the grammatical first person at that - on the scene. Thus in the case of the Komi narrative past we have chosen the other representative of the axis of speech, SG2, to demonstrate our point. Samples of the negated forms of Udmurt and Komi verbs, mini- ’to walk’ and set- ’to give’: indicative Present Sg 1 Udmurt и-g min=iski T don’t walk’ Komi о-g set T don’t give’ Testimonial Past Sg 1 Udmurt éj mini T didn't walk’ Komi e-g set T didn’t give’ Narrative Past Sgl Udmurt éAvél min=iske-m ~ min=iski=mte(je) T didn’t walk’ Komi-Narrative Past Sg2 Udmurt é'vél minem(e-d) ~ mini=mteje-d ’You didn’t walk’ Komi ab=u seté=m-id ’You didn’t give’ Conditional Sgl Udmurt éj mini-sal ’1 wouldn’t walk’ Komi —
