Negation in Persian Language

Languages use different strategies for representing the concept of negation. According to the typological approach of Payne (1985), we can classify negation into two categories: sentential negation and non-sentential negation. The sentential negation that has scope over the whole clause contains various possibilities like using affixes, negation particles, negative auxiliary verbs, higher negative verbs, negative nouns, negative adverbs, and negative quantifiers. Non-sentential negation is divided into two subdivisions, including derivational negation and negation in subordinate clauses. This descriptive study attempted to introduce the concept of negation in the Persian language according to the natural language data using the Persian Proposition Bank and different examples in web pages. The findings showed that the dominant pattern of negation in Persian is affixation, but other strategies of the sentential negating introduced by the Payne can also be found in Persian. The particle na ‘not’, main verbs such as xoddɑɹi kardan ‘avoid’, the auxiliary verb nakaɹdan ‘do not’, adverbs such as abadan ‘not at all’ and the negative quantifier hič ‘no’ are some examples of negation possibilities in Persian. This study also showed that the occurrence of a negative verb or quantifier does not necessarily lead to a negative verb.