Polarity: whether the word can be or is negated
| Values: | Neg | Pos |
In Middle Armenian, negation is mostly expressed using the bound morpheme չ-/č-. Words that can take the morpheme of negation have the feature Polarity.
It applies to verbs, auxiliaries and some particles. See also the related feature Connegative.
Note that Polarity=Neg is not the same thing as PronType =Neg. For pronouns and other pronominal parts of speech there is no such binary opposition as for verbs and auxiliaries. (There
is no such thing as “affirmative pronoun”.)
A set of non-productive prefixes, ան-/an-, ապ-/ap-, դժ-/dž-, տ-/t-, չ-/č- can be used for negating a lexicalized set of adjectives, e.g. անալի/anali “unsalted”, ապամորթ/apamort’ “skinless”,
դժպատահութիւն/džpatahowt’iwn “irrelevance”, տխօս/txòs “taciturn”, չնման/čnman “matchless”. We do not mark adjectives for the Polarity feature.
Pos: positive, affirmative
Examples
- ասաց/asac’ “he said”
- են/en “they are”
- պիտի աւտալ/piti awtal “one should believe”
Neg: negative
Examples
- չասաց/časac’ “he did not say”
- չեն/čen “they are not”
- չպիտի աւտալ/čpiti awtal “one should not believe”
Polarity in other languages: [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [el] [en] [es] [et] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gd] [gub] [hy] [jaa] [ky] [naq] [oge] [pal] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urj] [xcl]