Polarity: whether the word can be or is negated
| Values: | Neg | Pos |
In 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”.)
Note that in Armenian adjectives, sometimes also adverbs can be negated by adding the negating particle ոչ, expressing the negation of the original adjective or adverb։ e.g. պաշտոնական “official” vs. ոչ պաշտոնական/oč paštonakan “unofficial” (lit: “not official (something)”).
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. անբախտ/anbaxt “unlucky”, ապաշնորհ/apašnorh“dull”, դժբախտ/džbaxt “unfortunate”, տգեղ/tgeġ “ugly”, չտես/čtes “covetous”. We do not mark adjectives for the Polarity feature.
Negated nouns are usually limited to those derived from verbs (չունեցողի/čownecʼoġi “of the one who doesn’t have (smth.)”, չգրվածները/čgrvaçnerë “the unwritten (things)”). We (currently) do not mark them with Polarity=Neg.
Pos: positive, affirmative
Examples
- եկավ/ekav “he came”
- են/en “they are”
- պիտի (պետք է) գրեն/piti (petkʼ ē) gren “they must write”
Neg: negative
Examples
- չեկավ/čekav “he did not come”
- չեն/čen “they are not”
- չպիտի (չպետք է) գրեն/čpiti (čpetkʼ ē) gren “they mustn’t write”
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]