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In the northern part of Iran, in Mazandaran, we negate like this (this is the only verb being used like this as far as I'm aware of):
bɜtʊ̈ndɜ: he/she can
bætʊ̈ndɜ: he/she can't
is there anything like it in other Indo-European languages?
edit: another example can be:
bænʃɜnɜ --> Persian: nɜmɪʃævæd meaning "it is not possible (to happen)"
bɜnʃɜnɜ --> Persian: mɪʃævæd meaning "it is possible (to happen)"
indo-european negation indo-aryan
asked 11 hours ago
shetalshetal
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1Apophonic morphology is common. – amegnunsen 9 hours ago
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1i thought in most indoeuropian languages "n" sound or a variation of it indicates negation. – shetal 9 hours ago
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@amegnunsen: This is not apophony (alias Ablaut), at least not in the sense of that word in IE studies. – fdb 8 hours ago
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1@shetal If your question is restricted to negation, so I am not aware of that. But, apophony, as a morphological process, is very common in IE. In Riffian, there is smth like this, but it is in combination with other markers (e.g. icca/he ate >>> ur icci ci/he didn't eat). – amegnunsen 8 hours ago
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@fdb Can you enlighten me? – amegnunsen 8 hours ago
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Basically what you are saying is that for this one verb the negative form changes the vowel of the prefix from /ɜ/ to /æ/. Is that right? These correspond to classical Persian bi-tawānad بتواند and na-bi-tawānad نبتواند respectively. I am not familiar with this construction in any other language.
answered 8 hours ago
fdbfdb
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yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.and what I'm curious is how this kind of grammar came to being. is it an evolved form of Iranian grammar or it dates back before the Aryans intermingled with northern people. – shetal 7 hours ago
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2@shetal: One could imagine a proto-form with *na-bi-, then assimilation of the second vowel to the first, giving *na-ba-, and then loss of the negative particle, giving ba-, contrasting with the unassimilated bi- of the positive form. – fdb 6 hours ago
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