Kildin Saami negation is not where you would expect it

Ural-Altaic Studies. 2026. Vol. 62. No. 3. P. 62–81.

Поцелуев В. А.

In recent years, the researchers working on Uralic languages within Minimalism seem to have built a consensus on how to define the
position of negation in any language with a negative verb. The main and usually the only argument is based on the work [Mitchell 2006].
The argument is as follows: if the negative verb expresses tense, NegP is below TP; if the lexical verb expresses tense, NegP is above
TP. Thus, there are two types of languages. The first type (NegP below TP) includes Komi, Udmurt and some others. The second type
(NegP above TP) includes Finnish and some of the Saami languages.
In the current paper, I argue, based on the Kildin Saami (< Saamic < Uralic) data, that this argument cannot be universally applied to
all of the Uralic languages with negative verbs. According to [Mitchell 2006]’s diagnostic, Kildin Saami is a language with NegP above
TP, since the tense morpheme in this language is adjoined to the lexical and not to the negative verb. I argue that this diagnostic cannot
be applied to languages like Kildin Saami. Independent evidence shows that the structure of negative clauses in Kildin Saami differs significantly
from the structure of positive clauses. Specifically, the two modifications to the underlying syntactic base structure I propose
are: a) negation (negative head) has its own agreement probe; b) the alleged tense morpheme is, in fact, better analyzed as an aspectual
marker.
Since [Mitchell 2006]’s diagnostic cannot be used as a reliable test, I explore the facts about negation’s low scope with respect to the
subject and inchoatives. These facts are better compatible with the hypothesis that in Kildin Saami NegP is below TP.

Keywords: past tense, прошедшее время, negation, отрицание, уральские языки, инхоатив, Uralic, саамские языки, Saami, anteriority aspect, φ-agreement, inchoative, аспект предшествования, φ-согласование