durative marker turning into a negation marker
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I'm working on the Typology of the Jespersen cycle. Stumbled upon a durative marker that lost its durative meaning in negative sentences. This means that it is turning into a negation marker. The language is Takia, an Austronesian (Oceanic) language spoken on a small Island in the Bismarck Sea. This is the only durative marker that is doing that in a lot of languages. Why would such a marker grammaticalize into a negative? Has anyone an idea?
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You seem to be talking about semantics. Semantics is a decidedly different field from the field of general semantics, which is what we typically talk about in our forums.
As benhauck says in another post:
Semantics is a field that deals with classification of words; general semantics is a field that deals with sanity, specifically by teaching modern scientific thinking. While there does happen to be an interest in language and words in general semantics, it is more in language revision than in classifications of words like what you're asking. It's a common mistake to confuse semantics and general semantics. It doesn't help that some people in the field of general semantics have labeled it simply "semantics"!
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