Negation and negative copulas in Bantu

Abstract The main aim of this work is to further speculate on the many syntactic similarities, already discussed in previous work, which may be observed in Bantu and Romance languages. In particular, this work analyses the expression of negation in Bantu, a phenomenon which involves different elements and multiple positions. Crucially, Bantu negation is generally encoded in a specialized prefix, which shows up at the left edge of the complex verbal form; however, negation may also interfere either with tense feature – at least in languages, like Swahili, which exhibit morphologically different tense/aspect infixes in affirmative and negative clauses – or with modality, encoded in the final inflection. This recalls the situation observed also in Romance varieties and especially in Northern Italian dialects.