Polarity: whether the word can be or is negated
| Values: | Neg | Pos |
In Western Armenian, negation is mostly expressed using the bound morpheme չ-/č-.
Words that can take the morpheme of negation are annotated with 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. պաշտօնական/paštònakan “official” vs. ոչ պաշտօնական/oč paštònakan “unofficial” (lit. “not official”).
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. անտուն/antown “homeless”, ապաշնորհ/apašnorh“ungrateful”, 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 (չունեցողներուն/čownecʼoġnerown “(for) those who doesn’t have (smth.)”, չհարցուցածը/čharcʼowcʼaçë “what wasn’t asked, the unasked question”). We do not mark them with Polarity=Neg.
Pos: positive, affirmative
Examples
- եկաւ/ekaw “he came”
- են/en “they are”
- պիտի (պէտք է) գրեն/piti (pētkʼ ē) gren “they must write”
Neg: negative
Examples
- չեկաւ/čekaw “he did not come”
- չեն/čen “they are not”
- չպիտի (չպէտք է) գրեն/čpiti (čpētkʼ 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] [hyw] [jaa] [ky] [naq] [oge] [pal] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urj] [xcl]