156 Chapter 6 Clause types
(40) Adha' oreng namen.
not.exist person AV.plant
‘Nobody plants it.’
(41) Adha' nyambit.
not.exist AV.answer
‘Nobody answered.’
In each of these sentences, the lack of something is asserted, be it inanimate,
(38) and (39), or animate, adha' oreng ‘there is no person/nobody’ (40). Ad-
ha'/Tadha' on its own can be freely translated as ‘nothing’ or ‘nobody’, depend-
ing on the discourse context. In (41), ‘nobody’ is a felicitous translations as here
it is asserted that there exists nothing that answered, and as answering requires a
human (or at least animate) agent, the ‘nothing here’ is ‘nobody’. As with bad-
ha, the negative existential can take a definite NP in its scope, and like badha, it
is clearly verbal.
(42) Engko' bi' ba'eng kabbi gi' tadha'.
I and you all yet not.exist
‘You and I did not exist yet.’
(43) Sateya kraton-na la adha' kare.
now palace-DEF already not.exist remain
‘Now the palace does not exist.’
The verbal nature of (t)adha' is underscored by the adverbial particles gi' ‘yet’
and la ‘already’ (here a marker of perfectivity), which occur almost exclusively
in preverbal position. (See Chapter 9 section 4 for discussion of these and other
auxiliary like elements.)
Though less frequent in use, non-existence can also be asserted by negat-
ing the positive existential, as in (44).
(44) Lo' badha juko' ngakan tang panceng.
not exist fish AV.eat my fishing.rod
‘There were no fish taking my bait.’
Here the existential badha is negated with the negative particle lo' ‘not’.