Viviane Déprez and Fabiola Henri (eds) 2018. Negation and Negative Concord: The view from creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pp. x + 325. $US 158.

AbstractThis article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

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Negative concord in Quebec French

Probus ◽

10.1515/probus-2016-0018 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Marie Labelle

Keyword(s):

Negative Concord ◽

Dependency Relation ◽

Quebec French

AbstractIt is argued that there are two types of asymmetric negative concord languages: in languages like Spanish and Italian, negative concord results from a purely formal agreement relation between the negation and a negative concord item. In Quebec French, in addition to this purely formal licensing, there is a negative dependency relation between both items, which form two segments of a discontinuous negative quantifier. This accounts for the following differences. While Spanish, Italian and Quebec French reject negative concord between a subject negative expression and the negation, in Quebec French, negative concord with the negation becomes possible when the clause contains a postverbal negative expression in addition to a preverbal one. Moreover, in Quebec French, but not in Spanish or Italian, negative concord is blocked across a quantifier meaning

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Exploring negation in Awing

Journal of Translation and Language Studies ◽

10.48185/jtls.v1i1.24 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 94-107

Author(s):

NYOMY Cyrine Cyrine

Keyword(s):

Negative Polarity ◽

Negative Concord ◽

Negative Polarity Items ◽

Polarity Items ◽

North West ◽

The North ◽

West Region ◽

Sentential Negation ◽

Universal Category ◽

Negative Marker

Negation is a universal category and languages differ in many respects in the way they express the latter (see Klima 1964). In this regards, some languages express sentential negation (a subcategorization of negation) with one marker (Dutch, German, English, etc.) while others like French uses two markers. Alongside markers used to express sentential negation, other items, among which Negative Polarity Items, mark negation and tight a particular element within its domain. In this paper, I aim at providing a picture of the expression of negation in Awing (a Bantu Grassfield langue of the Ngemba Group spoken in the North West region of Cameroon). Accordingly, sentential negation is expressed with two discontinuous markers kě…pô. One fact important to the presence of this negative marker is the movement of postverbal elements to a preverbal position turning the SVO structure in non-negative clause to an SOV pattern in negative clauses. In addition, the study describes other negative elements and negation subcategories. In last, the study of negative concord reveals that Awing belongs to the group of Strict Negative Concord (SNC) languages in which n-words must co-occur with negative marker to yield negation.

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Fragment answers and double negation in strict negative concord languages

Semantics and Linguistic Theory ◽

10.3765/salt.v26i0.3813 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

pp. 584 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Anamaria Fălăuș ◽

Andreea Nicolae

Keyword(s):

Negative Concord ◽

Double Negation ◽

Polarity Item ◽

Polarity Sensitivity ◽

Fragment Answers ◽

Explanatory Account ◽

The Difference ◽

Two Parameters ◽

Polarity Sensitive ◽

Shed Light

This paper revisits the phenomenon of negative concord (NC) as an instance of polarity sensitivity. We shed light on a new set of data regarding n-words as fragment answers to negative questions and show that we find unexpected double negation (DN) readings for fragment n-words in view of their behavior in non-elliptical constructions. To account for this pattern, we offer an updated version of the hypothesis that n-words are strong NPIs, making use of an alternative and exhaustification approach. We argue that the difference between n-words and other NPIs should be seen as the result of two parameters: (i) whether reconstruction of the polarity item is allowed, and (ii) whether the polarity item has the ability to license a covert negation operator. The result is an explanatory account of NC and DN readings in both non-elliptical and elliptical environments, which allows for an easier integration of n-words in the broader typology of polarity sensitive items.

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Ouk ´Ismen Oudén: Negative Concord and Negative Polarity in the History of Greek

Journal of Greek Linguistics ◽

10.1163/15699846-01401003 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 43-83 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Geoffrey Horrocks

Keyword(s):

Negative Polarity ◽

Left Periphery ◽

Negative Concord ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

Polarity Items ◽

Before And After ◽

History Of ◽

Negative Marker ◽

Existential Quantification ◽

Single Set

In Ancient Greek a single set of indefinite enclitic pronouns was used indifferently in both negative/affective environments (i.e. like negative polarity items (NPI)) and in positive ones (i.e. like positive polarity items (PPI)). At the same time the negative pronouns used as negative quantifiers (NQ) were also employed as emphatic NPIs, with negative concord. The two functions of each class (i.e. PPI-like vs NPI-like, NQ vs NPI) were determined by syntactic distribution. In the specific case of negative sentences, an indefinite before a sentential negative marker (NM) functioned like a PPI but after a NM like an NPI, while a negative pronoun before a NM was an NQ but after an NM an NPI. This pattern was at odds with the canonical VSO clause structure that evolved in later antiquity, in which focal constituents were contrastively stressed and fronted to the left periphery: neither indefinite nor negative pronouns could be focalised because of the prosodic and/or semantic restrictions on their distribution. This deficiency was eventually remedied by formal/prosodic recharacterisation, the loss of NQs and the generalisation of NPIs to all syntactic positions available to DPs, including the focus position, a process that triggered their reinterpretation as involving universal quantification over negation rather than, as before, existential quantification under negation. The Modern Greek PPI kápjos and NPI kanís are traced from their origins in Ancient Greek and their role in the evolution of the system is explored. The final outcome is typologically to be expected in so far as NQs are redundant in a system in which NPIs appear freely both before and after NMs.

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Sentential negation in early child English

Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0022226712000382 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 367-411 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

ROSALIND THORNTON ◽

GRACIELA TESAN

Keyword(s):

Negative Concord ◽

Auxiliary Verbs ◽

Sentential Negation ◽

Longitudinal Pattern ◽

English Speaking ◽

Negative Marker ◽

Pass Through ◽

Children First ◽

Positive Input ◽

Economical Parameter

Starting with the seminal work of Klima & Bellugi (1966) and Bellugi (1967), young English-speaking children have been observed to pass through a stage at which their negative utterances differ from those of adults. Children initially use not or no, whereas adults use negative auxiliary verbs (don't, can't, etc.). To explain the observed mismatches between child and adult language, the present study adopts Zeijlstra's (2004, 2007, 2008a, b) Negative Concord Parameter, which divides languages according to whether they interpret negation directly in the semantics with an adverb, or license it in the syntactic component, in which case the negative marker is a head and the language is a negative concord language. Our proposal is that children first hypothesize that negation is expressed with an adverb, in keeping with the more economical parameter value. Because English is exceptional in having both an adverb and a head form of negation, children must also add a negative head (i.e. n't) to their grammar. This takes considerable time as the positive input that triggers syntactic negation and negative concord is absent in the input for standard English, and children must find alternative evidence. The Negative Concord Parameter accounts for an intricate longitudinal pattern of development in child English, as non-adult structures are eliminated and a new range of structures are licensed by the grammar.

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