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- Language Family: Bantu
- Topic #1: Negation
- Topic #2: Syntax
The structure of negative constructions in Nfaw
This paper investigates the structure of the negative construction in Nfaw, a coastal Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. It submits that although Nfaw makes use of many nagative morphemes, all which translate to the single English negative morpheme ‘not’ these morphemes are not free variants. The use of the negative morphemes in Nfaw is shown to be predicated on the tense and sentence type. The distribution of the negative morphemes is, further, shown not to be symmetrical in the sense that while some of them may only occur at the preverbal position, some others are restricted to the post verbal position.
La présente étude analyse la structure de la construction de la négation en nfaw, langue Bantu de la région côtière parlée au Cameroun. Elle part du postulat que bien que la langue nfaw utilise plusieurs morphèmes de la négation qui se traduisent tous en anglais par ‘not’, ces morphèmes ne sont pas des variantes libres. L’usage de chacun de ces morphèmes négatifs en nfaw dépend du temps verbal et du type de phrase. En outre, la distribution des morphèmes de la négation n’est pas symétrique, en ce que certains ne s’emploient qu’en position préverbale tandis que d’autres ne sont employés qu’en position post-verbale.