Precedence clauses in the world’s languages: negative markers need not be expletive

Abstract

Large-scale typological work on negation has so far ignored negation in adverbial clause-linkage. The present work makes inroads into this territory by analyzing the world-wide cross-linguistic variation in the expression of negation in precedence clauses (e.g. ‘before he arrived, we had already gone home’) in a variety sample of 155 languages. The research demonstrates that even when languages employ a clause-linking marker for conveying temporal precedence, negative markers may play an important role in that they may be obligatory, optional, or forbidden in the precedence clause. It is proposed that whether the clause-linking marker is semantically monofunctional or polyfunctional is the key to this puzzle. As for precedence clauses containing polyfunctional clause-linking markers and negative markers, it is shown that negation must not be considered expletive. With respect to precedence clauses occurring with monofunctional markers, it is proposed that the precedence clause tends not to license a negative marker. Moreover, it is shown that optional negative markers in precedence clauses may have an evaluative sense, which reflects the epistemic stance of the speaker. The paper also explores whether the analysis of precedence clauses put forward in the present research can be generalized to other adverbial clause-linkage constructions: negative concomitance clauses (e.g. ‘I cooked the soup without stirring it even once’).