Negation in the dialects of Vratnica and Skopska Crna Gora - a comparison with the dialect of Gornja Morava -

The vernacular of Vratnica and that of Skopska Crna Gora have distinctive syntactic features defined by their being partly a continuation of the Western Macedonian dialect group, and partly of the dialects of Prizren and Juzna Morava within the Serbian dialect continuum. This is confirmed by our comparison of instances found in the villages of Klokot and Binac, within the region of Vitina, as well as a restricted number of instances from Sirinicka Zupa and Presevo. In this paper we analyze the linearization of the particle ne: a) its position in predicates with complex verb phrases, and b) the expression of the prohibitive. The utterances with a surface indicator of negation of the linguistic message, i.e., grammatical negation, are in the focus of this research. The comparison of these dialects shows that the dialect continuum abounds with data on the extent of the Balkan infl uence, but also on the continuation of the Slavic linguistic features.