Abstract
In Low Katu (or Western Katu; ISO 639-3: kuf) there are five common words used to mark negation: kah, məʔ, jɨəʔ, ˀɛh and ˀɔːʔ. This variety in negators hints at differential syntactic or semantic uses. In this paper I illustrate the syntactic properties of these negators and, where possible, describe what semantic or pragmatic backgrounds they might have. I do this by comparing negative sentences from Katu folk tales and stories and investigating how they behave with respect to the typology of negation. Understanding the negation of Low Katu can unveil aspects on the scarcely researched syntactic behavior of this language, for instance on the position of verbs. This paper is intended to be the groundwork for further, more corpus-based research on negation or other grammatical aspects of Low Katu.
Huber, Thomas C