Field Methods in Linguistics
Negation in Somali Language
Research Paper
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Student Name: Asma Al Nuaimi
ID: 201005708
Section: 51
Spring 2015
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Instructor: Tommi Leung
Introduction:
Somali language is considered as the national language of Somalia. Somali verbs consist of a stem to which suffixes are added. (wikipedia.org). One category of Somali verbs is negative marked as the category of polarity.
Negation can happen in a number of ways when someone want to say that something is not true or is not the case, he can use negative words such as; no, not, never, nothing, etc. Somali language has an essential emphasis marking system considered as an auxiliary verb for the subject pronoun. Whereas, every declarative clause must have at least one constituent marked for focus. This marking is approved by means of a set of particles called "indicators". Also, negation which is one of the main syntactic processes that affects a clause can be represented as a dependent component on it.
This paper aims to explain the different methods of…show more content… In addition, the negative clauses are shown in (5.2.a) and (5.2.b) show the same formation of negation as compared with examples (3.2.a) and (4.2.b). Accordingly, in comparison with examples in (5.2) and (5.3), there is a similarity between the two forms of negation. However, the first form uses ma as in an ordinary negative verbal clauses as in examples (5.2.a) and (5.2.b). While the second form uses ha to indicate the negative imperative clauses as shown in examples (5.3.a) and (5.3.b). Also, show that the subject in the negative clause is obligatory but it can be dropped in the negative imperative