Negation in Persian Language

Languages use different strategies for representing the concept of negation. According to the typological approach of Payne (1985), we can classify negation into two categories: sentential negation and non-sentential negation. The sentential negation that has scope over the whole clause contains various possibilities like using affixes, negation particles, negative auxiliary verbs, higher negative verbs, negative nouns, negative adverbs, and negative quantifiers. Non-sentential negation is divided into two subdivisions, including derivational negation and negation in subordinate clauses. This descriptive study attempted to introduce the concept of negation in the Persian language according to the natural language data using the Persian Proposition Bank and different examples in web pages. The findings showed that the dominant pattern of negation in Persian is affixation, but other strategies of the sentential negating introduced by the Payne can also be found in Persian. The particle na ‘not’, main verbs such as xoddɑɹi kardan ‘avoid’, the auxiliary verb nakaɹdan ‘do not’, adverbs such as abadan ‘not at all’ and the negative quantifier hič  ‘no’ are some examples of negation possibilities in Persian. This study also showed that the occurrence of a negative verb or quantifier does not necessarily lead to a negative verb.
 
1. Introduction
There are various possibilities for expressing the concept of negation in different languages. Typological studies show that each language usually has a dominant way to negate the sentence and its component parts, but at the same time, it uses other possibilities. This study examines the concept of negation in the Persian language according to the typological approach of Payne (1985) and attempts to find out what strategies we can use in the Persian language.
 
2. Theoretical framework
According to the typological approach of Payne (1985), negation is classified into two categories: sentential negation and non-sentential negation. The sentential negation has scope over the whole clause contains various possibilities like using affixes, negation particles, negative auxiliary verbs, higher negative verbs, negative nouns, negative adverbs, and negative quantifiers. Non-sentential negation is divided into two subdivisions, including derivational negation and negation in subordinate clauses.
 
3. Methodology
This descriptive study attempts to introduce the concept of negation and examines how this concept is represented in the Persian language. This study is based on the natural language data using the Persian Proposition Bank (Mirzaei and Moloodi, 2016) and different examples on the web pages. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the typological approach of Payne (1985) to the concept of negation. According to Payne (1985), there are various possibilities for negation like using affixes, negation particles, negative auxiliary verbs, higher negative verbs, negative nouns, negative adverbs, negative quantifiers, and also derivational negation and negation in subordinate clauses as the non-sentential negation. This study examines the natural language data to find these different possibilities of negation in the Persian language.
 
4. Results & Discussion
Persian Language as an analytic language uses specific grammatical words and function words, or particles, rather than inflection to express syntactic relations like modality, tense, aspect, voice, etc., within the sentences. But it seems that the dominant strategy to negate the verb is the use of the prefix na-, and conversely, the use of negation particles is not very common in modern Persian. Moreover, intuitively, it seems that negative auxiliary verbs, negative verbs, and negative nouns as the different strategies to express the concept of negation do not exist in the Persian language.
Contrary to popular belief, this study shows that the Persian language like an analytic language uses some grammatical words to express the concept of negation. In other words, the findings show that the common pattern of negation in Persian is affixation, but the other strategies of the sentential negating introduced by Payne (1985) can also be found in the Persian language. The particle na ‘not’, negative verbs such as xoddɑɹi kaɹdan, paɹhiz kaɹdan, ɂemtenɑ kaɹdan ‘avoid’, etc., the auxiliary verb nakaɹdan ‘do not’, adverbs such as abadan, haɹgez, ɂomɹan, ɂaslan ‘not at all’, etc., and the negative quantifier hič ‘no’ are some examples of negation possibilities in Persian.
There are some points to note here.

When the concepts of tense, aspect, mood, and voice are expressed using modal and auxiliary verbs, the negative prefix na- ‘not’ has a definite pattern when negating the verb. The negative prefix na- is added to the future tense auxiliary verb xɑstan ‘want’ and the voice auxiliary verb šodan ‘become’. It also added to the verb itself when there is the past tense auxiliary verb bud ‘was’ in the sentence. When there are Modal auxiliary verbs like tavɑnestan ‘could’, bɑyestan ‘should’ in the sentence, the negative prefix na- can be added to the modal verb or main verb.
The use of particle na ‘not’ belongs to colloquial and spoken language.
There are at least two types of the particle na ‘not’; one which has scope over the whole sentence and the other one which has scope over the verb.
In addition to negation, the higher negative verbs also carry any inflections, indicating tense, mood, and aspect. The main predicate of the sentence appears as the complement of the higher negative verb.
If a declarative and imperative sentence contains the negative quantifier hič ‘no’, we negate the verb by adding the prefix na- too, but in interrogative sentences, the verb can be in negative or positive form.

 
5. Conclusions & Suggestions
The findings showed that there are three strategies to negate the verb or the whole sentence in the Persian language: 1. inflectional negation, 2. analytical negation, and 3. derivational negation. These different strategies allow the language users to use diverse constructions based on different contexts and discoursal purposes. This correlation can be considered in future studies.
 
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