Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Simoncsics, Péter: Linguistic gestures: On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 151
On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 167 (xxiv) pinal-jos-se sudo=no э-vol bdgate=m “child-PL-3ACC feed=lNF NEG.AUX1LLABSTEM-be able=PASTPRT” ’she couldn’t feed her children’ (xix) mon tod-isko u -dke-no vera “I know-VXSGl NEG.AUXlab-SG2 if-PART say” ’I know it even if you don’t say’ (Wichmann JSFOu 19/1: 125; cited by Csúcs 1990:77) (xxv) van-a pinal-e eAvd l-a? “is-NEGAPART child-PXSGl NEG.AUXILLABSTEM-be-NEGAPART?” ’Is there a child to me, or is there not? (Wichmann JSFOu 19/1: 149-150; cited by Csúcs 1990: 78) (xxvi) so-os-len mitmi-zi no bubi'-zi no éj val “(s)he-PL-GEN mother-PXPL3 and father-PXPL3 NEGILLABPART be-PAST” ’they had neither mother nor father’ (Kelmakov OUR 64; cited by Csúcs 1990: 80) 6. Summary Linguistic negation is undoubtedly part of the logical foundation of language and the most elementary process of cognition whereby we classify (identify and differentiate) parts of our symbolic world. Therefore it is understandable that studies concentrate on the means of expressing the logical aspect of negation, suffice to mention only two recent major works: Hamari (2007 and Wagner-Nagy (2011). Much less attention has been paid to the circumstances where and effects by means of which negation takes place. The accompanying circumstances and effects are more prominent and marked in Uralic than, for instance, in most Indo-European and Turkic languages, to mentioning the two major language families between which Uralic is as it were “sandwiched”. In contradistinction to Uralic, negation in these two major language families usually lacks any personal marking. Generally speaking, Uralic negation takes place in a linguistically marked personal space by using negative auxiliaries. In the present paper we have focused on Permian languages and have identified how they distinguish present tense forms of negative auxiliaries by extra- or supralinguistic gestures of recoil, distancing oneself by means of labialization and the use of an a- stem. In Permian we were able to identify a peripheral area, Komi to the north and Mari to the south, where we can witness the first step of this innovation as labialization. The labialization of the illabial negative auxiliary stem of mid e- (ё-)
