Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Simoncsics, Péter: Linguistic gestures: On negation, with special reference to the Permian languages 151
168 SlMONCSICS, PÉTER took place in present tense forms, resulting in a similarly mid, o- stem. This ostem, in a further wave of innovation, developed to u- in Udmurt, the possible centre where the whole process of this innovation began. The process is absolutely regular, i.e. there are no exceptions. The extralinguistic gesture of labialization thus became grammaticalized and part and parcel of the present tense paradigms. Yet another innovation took place in Permian, strangely enough not in the centre, but in the periphery, i. e. in Komi, where the initial of the negative particle for general negation is a- and, similarly to the labialization of present tense forms of negative auxiliary, it is explained by extra- or supralinguistic factors, namely the coordination or simultaneity of sound production with the bodily gesture of recoil. Both of these innovations are seen as interplay, and consequently also as a complementary distribution of various forms of negation. The well-established distinction in comparative linguistics between initial finaland non-initial (final) positions is fruitfully exploited also at the syntacticsyntagmatic level of Permian negation. By virtue of the various innovations in negation Permian seems to be also a central area of the Proto-Finno-Ugric language community whereto means of negation of outer areas can be compared. 7. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the following friends and colleagues who took their time to read my manuscript and thus helped me to make my points clearer and more convergent with the standards of the profession: Márta Csepregi (Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary), Sándor Csúcs (Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Piliscsaba, Hungary), Attila Dobó (University of Pécs, Hungary), László Honti (Universitá di Udine, Italy and Gáspár Károli Calvinist University, Budapest, Hungary), Gábor Zaicz (Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Piliscsaba, Hungary). I owe special thanks to Peter Sherwood (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) for his deep insight of the problem treated here and for his invaluable help in finalizing the text of this paper. Any remaining errors, of course, are my own. During my work on this paper Erik Vaszolyi-Vasse, a great scholar of Komi language and folklore passed away in Perth (Australia) at the age of 80. To his memory I dedicate this paper.
