The goal of this paper is to provide an account of the syntactic expression of sentential negation in Dagbani, a Mabia, Niger-Congo language of West Africa. I show that Dagbani employs two strategies for the marking of sentential negation: negative markers/particles and negative verbs. The overtly expressed negative markers are kù/bì and dì, used for negating declaratives and imperatives, respectively. Besides, the inherently negative verb ká is used to negate possessive-locative-existential constructions. The paper further demonstrates that there is an incompatibility between the negative marker and the imperative morpheme in Dagbani and attempts to account for this empirical fact. In line with recent probe-based Minimalist account of negation, I assume that the negative markers (heads) carry a [iNeg] feature, which is interpretable, and its interpretation triggers a negative polarity of the clause. I further offer a formal account for the incompatibility between the imperative negation marker dì and the imperative morpheme.

中文翻译：

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Dagbani 句子否定的结构*

本文的目的是描述达格巴尼语中句子否定的句法表达，达格巴尼语是西非尼日尔-刚果马比亚语的一种语言。我表明达格巴尼采用两种策略来标记句子否定：否定标记/助词和否定动词。公开表达的否定标记是kù / bì和dì，分别用于否定陈述句和祈使句。此外，本质上否定的动词ká用于否定所有格-处所-存在结构。该论文进一步证明了 Dagbani 中的否定标记和祈使语素之间存在不相容性，并试图解释这一经验事实。根据最近基于探针的极简主义否定解释，我假设否定标记（头部）带有 [iNeg] 特征，该特征是可解释的，并且其解释触发了该子句的负极性。我进一步对祈使否定标记dì和祈使语素之间的不兼容性进行了正式解释。