WW #37: Getting Negative

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I’m lingering on Kharulian for another week, because I finally worked out how Kharulian marks negation. Here’s a sentence to demonstrate:

Vurílim alnelíaraa madzárar majezh.

[βuˈɹ̠ʲi.lʲim
Vuríli-m
Vurili-DAT
alʲ.ɲeˈlʲi.a.raː
alnelíara-a
fall-ACC
maˈdza.rar
madz-arar
1p-travel
maˈdʒɛʒ]
maj-e-zh
1pNEGEXP
We’ve never been to Vurili in the fall.

The key element (and new word for this week) is the last word, majezh. This is a form of the (highly irregular) verb ar, which on its own could best be translated as “to not do”.

To negate a clause, you fully conjugate ar, then precede it by the main verb without any tense/aspect/mood suffixes. In the sentence above, we conjugate ar into the experiential aspect (-ezh, “to not have done, to never have done”), then apply the first person plural agreement mad- to both it and the main verb árar “to travel”. As is typical for Kharulian multiple-verb constructions, person and number are redundantly marked on both verbs.

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