Negation in Pashto

In this paper, we explore negation in Pashto – an Eastern Iranian language
 spoken mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Based on the Yousafzai dialect of Pashto,
with the questionnaire provided by the editors as our main instrument, we
investigate such phenomena as standard negation, negation in non-declaratives, stative
predications, and negation in non-main clauses. Standard negation in Pashto is
expressed with a single negative particle nə, typically added pre-verbally. For
imperatives, there is a dedicated negative particle mə, also added pre-verbally, constituting
the only formal contrast between imperatives and corresponding prohibitives. No
structural differences between negation in main clauses and negation in non-main
clauses of simplex verbs, or in non-periphrastic categories, have been observed,
whereas there are instances of structural asymmetry in some periphrastically
expressed verbal categories. Pashto displays paradigmatic asymmetry in that positive
imperatives can make an aspectual distinction between perfective and
imperfective, whereas negative imperatives are aspectually neutralized. Negation in Pashto
can be further reinforced by changing the position of the negative element to occur
post-verbally. Clauses with negated pronouns or adverbs always display negative
concord.