The negative existential cycle in Chadic

Chadic languages, like languages of West and Central Africa more generally, are
known to make use of typologically rare negation strategies. Not only do many
Chadic languages exhibit bi-partite negation, there is also a tendency for the
second of these two verbal negators to occur after the verb, in contrast to a
cross-linguistic preference for pre-verbal negation. This particular study examines the
extent to which Croft’s (1991) Negative Existential Cycle (NEC) may be
demonstrated across Chadic languages. Furthermore, the study explores the use of the
NEC as an explanatory framework in determining sources and pathways of verbal
negation in Chadic languages. An important implication of this study is that
identification of the B~C stage of the NEC elucidates the relationship between verbal
negation and negative existential predication, as well as the relationship between
these domains and other domains of the grammar such as aspect.