SUFFIX NEGATIVES OF BANJARA LANGUAGE

This paper presents an overview of negation and how negation works in Banjara language. It is noted that negatives in Banjara are sufxes and they cannot occur independently. Negative particle, identied as ni in Banjara, always occurs with a verb/verb complex as an afx. In this study, the negation in Banjara has been tested with all the paradigms such as tense, phi-features (person, number, and gender), interrogatives etc. with both afrmative and negative sentences. Yes-No interrogative test in Banjara also shows that there is no occurrence of any independent negative form as an answer and a verb must occur with the negation. This behavior is different, compared to the languages of the same family. Banjara belongs to Indo-Aryan language family and though negatives in most languages from this family can occur independently without the support of the verbs/auxiliaries, Banjara is an exception as negation cannot occur independently in it. Types of negatives and negative principles are discussed in details. Standard principles of negation have also been applied and thoroughly tested to nd out the negation system in Banjara language for the rst time.