Nor Jnl Ling 34.2, 83–104 C Nordic Association of Linguists 2011 doi:10.1017/S0332586511000126 Miestamo, Matti. 2011. A typological perspective on negation in Finnish dialects. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 34(2), 83–104. A typological perspective on negation in Finnish dialects Matti Miestamo This paper looks at negation in Finnish dialects from a typological perspective. The focus is on standard negation, i.e. the negation of declarative verbal main clauses. The dialectal variation that Finnish shows in its negative construction is examined in the light of current typological knowledge of the expression of negation. Developmental trends connected to the micro-typological variation are also discussed, Finnish dialects are compared with related and neighbouring languages, and relevant theoretical and methodological issues relating to the meeting point of typology and dialectology are addressed. Keywords dialectology, Finnish, negation, typology Matti Miestamo, Institutionen for¨ lingvistik, Stockholms universitet, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
[email protected] 1. INTRODUCTION This paper will look at negation in Finnish dialects from a typological perspective. Focus will be on standard negation, i.e. the negation of declarative main clauses with a verbal predicate. The data will be mainly drawn from Savijarvi’s¨ (1977a) work on the dialectal variation Finnish shows in its negative construction. In recent years, the relationship between typology and dialectology, two mutually independent subdisciplines of linguistics, has received a fair amount of attention. The contributions in Kortmann (2004) and also some authors in Nevalainen, Klemola & Laitinen (2006) address the points of contact between these disciplines and how bringing them closer together could benefit each of them.