Les négations non-verbales en kabyle (berbère)

The aim of this article is to show that in Taqbaylit Berber (Afroasiatic), verbless predications are privileged contexts for the marking of fundamental abstract linguistic operations. Working on the case of non-verbal negations, we demonstrate that they oppose thetic and categorical judgements. The comparison with their verbal counterparts shows that existential negation and the negation of the perfective aspect share locative-thetic dimensions, whereas attributive (or equative) negation and the negation of the imperfective share categorical-evaluative features. But whereas this thetic-categorical opposition is very clearcut in verbless predications, it is only perceptible in the interaction of aspect and negation in verbal ones.