Polarity: whether the word can be or is negated
| Values: | Neg | Pos |
In Armenian, negation is mostly done using the bound morpheme չ-, and an independent negating particle (equivalent to English “not”) is rarely seen. Words that can take the morpheme of negation have the feature of polarity.
It applies to verbs, auxilaries 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 auxilaries. (There
is no such thing as “affirmative pronoun”.)
Note that in Armenian adjectives, sometimes also adverbs can be negated by adding the negating particle ոչ , denote the complement of the original adjective or adverb: e.g. պաշտոնական “official” vs. ոչ պաշտոնական “unofficial” (lit: “not official (something)”).
A set of non-productive prefixes, ան-, ապ-, դժ-, տ-, չ-, can be used for negating a lexicalized set of adjectives, e.g. անբախտ, ապաշնորհ, դժբախտ, տգեղ, չտես “unlucky, dull, unfortunate, ugly, covetous”. We do not mark adjectives for the Polarity feature.
Negating nouns are usually limited to those derived from verbs (չունեցողի, չգրվածները). We (currently) do not mark them with Polarity=Neg.
Pos: positive, affirmative
Examples
- եկավ “he came”
- են “they are”
- պիտի (պետք է) գրեն “they must write”
Neg: negative
Examples
- չեկավ “he did not come”
- չեն “they are not”
- չպիտի (չպետք է) գրեն “they mustn’t write”
Polarity in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [el] [es] [et] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gd] [gub] [hy] [jaa] [ky] [pcm] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urj]