Himalayan Linguistics

This research paper investigates the negative particles in the Pagro variety of Mising, a synthetic and agglutinative language with a subject-object-verb (SOV) word order. Similar to other Tani languages within the Tibeto-Burman (Trans-Himalayan) language family, Mising utilizes post-verbal negative particles. The study specifically examines the negative markers /-ma/ and /-jɔ/ across various sentence structures to provide a detailed understanding of negation in Mising. The analysis includes a range of sentence types, highlighting the distinct functions of the standard negation marker /-ma/ and the prohibitive negation marker /-jɔ/. While previous research by Prasad (1991) and KC Talukdar (1992) focused on the negative particles /-ma/ and /-yo/, this paper addresses existing research gaps by exploring negation in different sentence constructions, including declarative, interrogative, and imperative forms. Additionally, the paper discusses the presence of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in Mising, a topic that has not been previously studied in this language.