A Reader in Sociophonetics

152 Malcah Yaeger-Dror, Tania Granadillo, Shoji Takano, and Lauren Hall-Lew

Analysis of reading passages or isolated sentences has demonstrated that

nai’s position within the sentence inÀ uences the probability that it will receive

focal prominence; prosodic prominence on nai is closely linked to syntac-

tic dislocation (the movement of linguistic elements to the post-predicate

position). Takano (2002, 2008) found that postposed elements supplant the

unmarked position for nai, shifting it forward and creating a prosodic envi-

ronment theoretically more favorable to pitch prominence on nai. However, as

in English, the likelihood of occurrence of these more complex structures is

low. Language speci¿ c constraints interact with communicative requirements

of speci¿ c social situations. At the moment, although the verbal af¿ x is most

common and is similar to NEG in other languages, the small number of phone

calls analyzed to date led us to code all nai for the analysis.

Table 5.4j Morphology: Japanese

CODE GRAMMATICAL FORM SAMPLE SENTENCES GLOSS

X Auxiliary Verb Verbs + nai Eigo wa hanasa-nai.

English TOP speak-NEG

(I) do not speak

English.

N Nominal- Nominals + nai Suru koto ga nai

do things SUB NEG

(I) do not have

anything to do.

A Adjective- Adjectives + nai Oishiku (wa) nai.

delicious TOP NEG

(It) is not

delicious.

D Adjectival-noun- Adjectival

Nouns +nai

Kirei de wa nai.

Pretty COP TOP NEG

(It) is not pretty.

—Af¿ xal negation pre¿ x hi-, hu-,

mu-, bu-

hi-kooshiki; hu-ben, etc. Unof¿ cial;

inconvenience,

etc.

—Conjunct

negation

Placed before

nai

Zenzen okashiku nai. (It’s) not funny

at all.

TOP = topic marker

SUB = subject marker

COP = copula

Spanish: Table 5.4s demonstrates that there are also various ways to express

negation in Spanish. By far the most common is “No-Negation.” Again because

it is the most common form, the simplest, and most similar to the NEG form

analyzed for English, we will analyze here only No-Negation in full declarative

sentences, so no coding for morphology is needed for the Spanish corpus.