Negation and Modal Verbs

Original question text:

> Kaltxì ma Pawl!
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> We have never seen anything from you like “**pefya tsun nga ke stivawm aylì’uti oeyä**?”, but I wonder, is it possible?
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> Similarly, as a parallel to **zenke**, does **tsunke** exist?
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> More generally, in a modal construction, is it possible to negate the second verb, or are we only allowed to negate the modal verb?
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> I ask this because I suspect that there might be a difference between **ke tsun yivom** and **tsun ke yivom**:  Not able to eat [lack of food, physical inability?] vs. able to not eat [willpowered fasting during a feast?]
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> **Irayo nìli**, I hope all is well!
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 Original correspondence text:

> When you have a modal and a negative together, the question is, which one has the wider scope? Take “must,” for example. Using the verb “go,” there are two possibilities:
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> 1. NEG  [MUST go]   To use clumsy English, this means we’re negating the idea of obligatory going. So MUST falls within the scope of NEG. In other words, you don’t have to go, it’s not necessary to go, it’s not obligatory to go.
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> In Na’vi, of course, that’s **ke zene kivä**.
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> 2. MUST  [NEG go]  Here we’re saying the idea of not going is obligatory. So NEG falls within the scope of MUST. In other words, it’s obligatory that you not go: you must not go.
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> In Na’vi, this was originally \*zene ke kivä, but since this construction occurs so frequently (people are always saying, “You must not do this”!), **zene** and the immediately following **ke** have coalesced over time into **zenke**.
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> As you’ve noted, though, the wider issue is, what happens with the other modals like **tsun**, **new**, and **var**?
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> **Tsun**
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> 3. **Po ke tsun yivom**.
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> 4. **Po tsun ke yivom**.
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> You’re right that we haven’t seen 4 yet. I have to admit that when I first looked at it, and also at your “**Pefya tsun nga ke stivawm aylì’uti oeyä?**” sentence, they seemed wrong. But the more I think about it, the more I feel that that structure should be OK. After all, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t have \*zene ke kivä as the source of **zenke kivä**, right?
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> The next question is, is there a semantic difference between 3 and 4? Yes, there is, as your examples show very clearly.
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> The final question is, would **tsun ke** in 4 coalesce into \*tsunke? I think the answer here is no, since **tsun ke** occurs much less frequently than **zene ke**. (How often do people say, “I’m able not to do X”?)
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> **New**
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> 5. **Po ke new kivä**.
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> 6. **Po new ke kivä**.
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> As before, we should consider 6 OK grammatically.
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> The semantic difference between 5 and 6, though, isn’t as clear. Is there a distinction between “He doesn’t want to go” and “He wants not to go”? (I know the second sentence sounds awkward, but the structure is perfectly possible. If you google “wants not to,” you’ll find things like “What if Britain wants not to change?” and “She wants not to be herself.”) Do you see a difference in meaning between 5 and 6? I confess I tried to pin down a difference just now but wound up deleting what I had written, since I didn’t find it completely convincing.
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> I’d be interested in any thoughts you might have about this.
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> In any event, we should allow both 5 and 6 grammatically. And I doubt **new ke** would have developed into \*newke.
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> **Var**
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> 7. **Po ke var yivom**.
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> 8. **Po var ke yivom**.
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> Again, both are grammatical. Here, I think, there’s more of a clear semantic distinction. In 7, she was eating, but she stopped: She didn’t continue to eat. In 8, she hasn’t been eating, and she’s kept it up: She continues not to eat. As before, I wouldn’t expect **var ke** to have developed into \*varke.
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 *Originally received on July 23rd, 2019*