Position-dependent polarity in the Alor-Pantar languages and its origins

Abstract Multiple members of the Alor-Pantar group of Papuan languages display a cross-linguistically unusual pattern whereby certain grammatical words in the domain of phasal polarity yield an affirmative statement when standing before the predicate, whereas the occurrence of the same items after the predicate vests the clause with negative polarity. In this article, we describe this phenomenon in its different manifestations and compare it to negation and phasal polarity constructions reconstructable to Proto-Alor-Pantar. While position-dependent polarity in the domain of phasal polarity is typologically unusual, we show that it is the outcome of processes of cyclical change that are well known with respect to negation: the notion of ‘not yet’ came to be expressed by a construction in which an originally pre-predicative ‘still’ marker also occupies a post-predicate position. Erosion of the initial element of this construction then left the post-predicate ‘still’ marker as the sole exponent of ‘not yet’. Analogy with embracing constructions for standard negation and structural calquing across languages in the group can be seen to have led to the innovative patterns for expressing ‘not yet’ being shared across languages.