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 163 tive functions. Regarding vowel frequency in Udmurt ё- and -a represent the two extremes of vocalism: ё is the least frequent and a the most frequent vowel (Csúcs 1980: 25). In initial position, i.e. in general negation, it is the least frequent initial vowel - the ё of évéi - that makes negation conspicuous. As to final -a as question-tag let us consider again the overall distributional tendency that in Udmurt -ё does not in practice occur in final position, in other words, it must be substituted by a more marked vowel: a both as regards frequency and also as regards height (low). In short: in Udmurt the counterpart of mid ё is a low a when there is need to make a function more emphatic. The tendency is identifiable also in the reconstruction of two negative stems, *e- and * a- for Pre-Permian, i.e. Proto-Finno-Ugric (Bereczki 1996: 55). (Note that it is well known that in Udmurt there is no vowel harmony that could be exploited had such a need arisen. It is therefore more than interesting that a plays a similarly prominent role in deixis in opposition to the mid vowel o, cf. ta, taiz ... vs. so, soiz ... ’this, just this ... ’ vs. ’that, just that ...’ charged with the informational plus of ’proximity’.) In Komi the situation is the inverse of Udmurt: the question tag -ё is conservative and the a- of general negation abu is an innovation, together with the overall shape of the word with its final и which is a rather rare final vowel and occurs mainly in affective words. Initial a- is an innovation also from the viewpoint of gesture: the manner of production of initial a- is usually associated with a slight movement of the head backward as if the speaker were recoiling from something: it is the so-called „Turkic gesture” of no, Jakobson (1987: 474- 478). The gesture is co-ordinated with or rather superimposed on the physiological automatism of sound production resulting - as Roman Jakobson puts it - in a as a „motor sign” of no. It is translinguistic and used widely as a concomitant or non-canonical way of negating, as, for instance, in Hungarian where there are two variants: an extra short a with a so-called „fester Ansatz” [’э], with an annoying connotation, and an extra long a [ä] with a connotation of understanding and forgiveness, Simoncsics (2004: 372-377). 5. Examples For the convenience of the reader here follow a number of examples morphologically analysed and selected from authentic texts to demonstrate the main points of my paper: e-, ё-, i- ~ o-, u-, i. e. the alternation of illabial-labial vowels as a secondary distinction between past and present in negation; the use of general negation Komi abu ’there isn’t’ and Udmurt évéi ’id.’; the use of questiontags -ё and -a in Komi and Udmurt, respectively.
