Lovick, Olga2024-06-132024-06-132020Lovick, Olga. 2020. “Existential and standard negation in Northern Dene.” International Journal of American Linguistics 86(4):485–525.https://hdl.handle.net/10388/15763This paper is a comparative analysis of existential and standard negation across Northern Dene. There are two strategies for existential negation: some languages use a negative verb, while others use a negative morpheme reconstructed as *də-weˑ. Standard negation involves negative inflection in some languages; most of them require additional preverbal or postverbal negative particles. The languages without negative inflection also fall into two groups. Some use a preverbal morpheme reconstructed as *də-weˑ, while the others use a postverbal negative auxiliary related to the negative verb used in existential negation. The data surveyed here demonstrates that standard negation with *də-weˑ is widespread in the Northern Dene languages, suggesting that it is an older negation strategy than has been assumed in the literature. The author also shows that the postverbal auxiliary is the result of the negative existential cycle and demonstrates that Dene languages share typological tendencies for the placement of negative particles.enNorthern Dene languages, negation, comparative morphosyntax, inflection, particlesArticlehttps://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/710008