Negation in Aguaruna

The chapter describes negation in Aguaruna (Chicham). Verbal negation, including standard negation, makes use of inflectional verbal suffixes, part of a rich system of verbal morphology in the language. Two suffixed negators are selected according to aspect and finiteness of the verb, and a third suffix appears only in some nondeclarative clause types. The verbal paradigms are largely symmetrical, and the only category that is completely neutralized under negation is a distinction between plain and familiar imperative. Nominals can be derivationally negated, and this strategy is the basis for negating clauses with nominal predicates. When marked on the predicate, negation has clausal scope, and this is true both of verbal and nominal predicates. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the diachronic relation between the negative existential verb and one of the verbal negative suffixes, and suggests that the former is the source of the latter.