Negation in Mohawk

The patterns of negation in individual languages are often not unrelated to other
structural characteristics. Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of northeastern North
America, is polysynthetic, with a high proportion of verbs in spontaneous speech.
This trait has implications for its inventory of negative constructions. Most of the
kinds of non-verbal clauses mentioned in the Questionnaire for Describing the
Negation System of a Language by Miestamo (2025 [this volume]) are expressed
in verbal predications in Mohawk, and are accordingly negated like other verbal
clauses, with a construction that has evolved via a Jespersen cycle. There are no
non-finite clauses, so most dependent clauses are negated in the same way as main
clauses. There is no nominal case, so negation does not affect case marking, and
negation has no effect on determiners. There is no negative nominal derivation.
The language does offer features of interest in the interplay between negation and
tense, aspect, and modality.