Lombard language course
Morphology of Lombard language

Articles
Nouns
AdjectivesAdjective degrees
PronounsSubject personal pronouns •• Object and term personal pronouns •• Pronominal and adverbial particles - Demonstrative pronouns •• Possessive pronouns •• Indefinite pronouns
VerbsMoods and tenses •• Infinitive •• Gerund and gerundial complements •• Participle - Present Indicative •• Past Indicative (Perfect Indicative) •• Imperfect Indicative •• Past Perfect Indicative •• Simple Future Indicative •• Compound Future Indicative •• Present Subjunctive •• Past Subjunctive (Perfect Subjunctive) •• Imperfect Subjunctive •• Past Perfect Subjunctive •• Present Conditional •• Past Conditional •• Present Imperative •• Future Imperative •• Continuous construction ••• Irregular verbs
••• Auxiliary verbs
••• Modal verbs
••• Phrasal verbs
Prepositions and prepositional locutions
Adverbs and adverbial locutions
Pronominal and adverbial particles
Negation
Other constructions replacing the adverbs "easily" and "hardly"
Conjunctions and conjunctive locutions


Lombard The reference orthography for this page of Lombard course is New Lombard orthography

In modern Lombard the negation is always post-verbal (the only exceptions are the Bregaglia valley, some areas of Trentino and, in the recent past, some valleys of Canton Ticino and Ossola). This means that the negative particle must be placed always after the verb.

  • es.: mì parli minga = I don’t speak.

Negative forms

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Negative sentences are those constructed with the negating adverb minga- or its dialectal variants or "". The construction of these sentences has been described in the module about the construction of the sentence while on the page Lombard/Adverbs#Negating adverbs are found the dialectal variants of the negating adverbs

Negative sentences are also those constructed with indefinite pronouns nagot or nothing - or its dialectal variants thereof - (nothing) and nissun - or dialect variants thereof - (no one, nobody).

Negating adverb/pronoun
in lombard
Negating adverb/pronoun
in English
Example Translation
minga / nò not Mì el vedi minga I don’t see him
mai never Mì l'hoo mai vist I have never seen him
nanca not even Mì l'hoo nanca vist i didn’t even seen him
nananmò not…yet Mì l'hoo nananmò vist I havn’t seen him yet
never…again Mì l'hoo pu vist I never seen him again
nagot / nient nothing, not anything Mì vedi nagot I see nothing
I don’t see anything
nissun nobody/noone, not…anybody/anyone Mì hoo vist nissun I didn’t see anyone

For variants of negating adverbs of negation and of negating indefinite pronouns, go to see the Wiktionary in Lombard.

Use of the negative form

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  • As will be described in the module about sentence construction, except for rare exceptions, negative particles (“minga” and “nò”) always occur after the verb. In compound tenses, they are placed between the auxiliary and the past participle (except for the negating pronouns i.e. nissun and negott, which are placed ''after the past participle).
    • hoo minga podud, not hoo podud minga (in English I could not).
    • l'hoo mai sentud, not l'hoo sentud mai (in English I have never seen it).

Preverbal negative form

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Cases of pre-verbal negation can be found in ancient literature and in some Alpine dialects.

  • mi no l'hoo mai vist

Adjectives in negative form

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The particle minga can also be used, if placed before the adjective, to make it negative.

  • bell → minga bell (in English: beautiful → not beautiful)