Tense and sentential negation

Abstract The association between sentential negation and tense has solid foundations in the literature. It has even been argued that sentential negative markers consist of a Tense feature ( De Clercq 2018 , 2020 ). This paper adduces the first results from a typological study and data from Bambara in support of this claim. In addition, the Bambara data also point to the morphological realisation of present or default tense, to a hierarchy for tense and to a position for sentential negation in that hierarchy.