Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Simoncsics, Péter: Linguistic gestures: On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 151
162 SlMONCSICS, PÉTER where the negative stem Ee-~M i- (and also as- of different, as yet unknown, origin) is followed by past tense marker and the respective person marker and the stem of the main verb. A similar archaism occurs dialectally also in Estonian, e.g. esin anna ’I didn’t give’, Hakulinen (1941: 226). At this point and instead of a summary, let me cite Austerlitz: “The idea of a Permian Centre can also be expanded and grafted on a larger set of coordinates. It could serve as a model or framework for thinking about the original dispersion and the subsequent history of the earliest groups of speakers of the Fennie and the Fenno-Ugric languages. Is it an accident that, in terms of geographical reality, the Finno-Ugric Centre was, grosso modo, identical with the Permian Centre?” Austerlitz (1985: 108). 4. The problem of Komi abu and Udmurt ével Negative particles, Komi abu and Udmurt évéi, are used in so-called existential phrases where (1) a quality of the subject is negated, as for instance, Udmurt ton pici ével ni ’you are not [a] little [child] any more’ Csúcs (1990: 100); Komi bogafires ne-kodi vermis abu véléma ’there was nobody capable of defeating the knights’, Rédei (1978:109) or (2) the fact of possessing something is denied, as for instance Udmurt кәИеп bez eval ’the tongue doesn’t have a bone’ Csúcs (1990: 75); Komi eni рё пе-кёп ni-пёт abu ’now, he says, there is nothing nowhere’ Rédei (1978: 102). And (3) last, but not least, these forms serve as general negative particles, usually in initial position. It should be pointed out at once that there are two basic occurrences of negation: general negation, on the one hand, and as the question-tag part of general question on the other. They are quite clearly distributed in the Permian languages too: general negation as a rule is in the initial position of the utterance, while the question-tag usually follows the part of speech (verbal or nominal predicate) with which it forms a unit, so it is in final - or at least in non-initial - position. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the initial and final position of the negative stem, i.e. general negation vs. question tag, in Komi and Udmurt. The Udmurt centre is „conservative” with respect to general negation by retaining the „original” compound with illabial vocalism (é'Avé7) and „innovative” with respect to the vocalism of the question-tag (-a), while the (more) peripheral Komi is „innovative” with respect to the general negation by employing an a- stem (aAbu) and „conservative” in the vocalism of the question-tag (-e). While the various occurrences of these negating forms seem disparate at first glance, below the surface they have more in common. First of all there is the differentiation between the two types of negation, between general negation and question-tag: in Udmurt we have évéi and -a, in Komi abu and -ё in the respec
