Datapoint Sri Lankan Malay/Negation and tense, aspect, and mood marking

In negated contexts, tense and mood contrasts are not explicitly marked on the lexical
verb. It is possible to use a predicate adjective (with lexical infinitive) in order to circumvent this constraint, and there is a negative future marker (tuma) that is frequently used with (negative) habitual interpretation in present tense (but never past tense) contexts. If the lexical verb is marked as negative though, this prevents the appearance of tense markers or mood markers in the same position.

Examples:
ta-kelaatan 'did not see'
su-kelaatan 'see'
bole-kelaatan 'can/could see'

Values

Reduced TAM marking in negated clauses

Example 66-54:
Apana pintuyang tərətutup?
Apa-na
what-dat
pintu-yang
door-acc.def
tərə-tutup?
neg.fin-close
Why (=for what) didn’t she close the door?
Example 66-55:
Go attule takelaatan.
Go
1sg
attu=le
one=quant
ta-kelaatan.
neg.fin-see
I didn’t see anything.
Confidence:
Very certain