Privation and Negation: Semantic change in the negative domains of three Australian (Pama-Nyungan) language groups

On the basis of comparative data in three Pama-Nyungan subfamilies (Thura-Yura, Yolŋu Matha and Arandic), this chapter brings comparative data from the Aboriginal languages of Australia to bear on the Negative Existential Cycle (NEC, see Croft 1991, Veselinova this volume a.o.). I propose a formal semantic analysis of the Cycle, where the, a grammatical category described in many Australian languages (e.g. Dixon 2002), is taken to realise the semantics of a negative existential. Diachronically, I show that erstwhile privatives generalise into sentential negators: an instantiation of the NEC