scholarly journals Negative Concord in Russian

Author(s):  
Jacopo Garzonio

In this article I will describe the general properties of Negative Concord in Russian, which is a strict Negative Concord language, where all negative indefinites must co-occur with sentential negation. However, there are several cases where the negation marker can be absent (like in fragment answers) or can appear in a non-standard position (like at the left of an embedded infinitival). I will take into consideration all these specific cases described by the literature on the negation system of Russian and analyse them according to current approaches to Negative Concord.

Author(s):  
Agnes Jäger

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to give a syntactic analysis of sentential negation in the history of German with special emphasis on Old High German. This analysis attributes the main changes in the syntax of negation not to a change in syntactic structure but to changes in the lexical filling of the head and specifier of NegP. In addition, the more specific question of negative indefinites and negative concord (NC) in Old High German is discussed. It is argued that negative indefinites should be analysed as semantically non-negative but simply formally neg-marked. It is assumed that there is no obligatory movement of n-indefinites to SpecNegP, neither overtly nor covertly.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
NYOMY Cyrine Cyrine

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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamaria Fălăuș ◽  
Andreea Nicolae

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. 


2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSALIND THORNTON ◽  
GRACIELA TESAN

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.


Author(s):  
Chiara Gianollo

This chapter is dedicated to the morpho-syntactic properties of markers of sentential negation, and to the relation between such properties and other aspects of the syntax of negation. It reviews the results of cross-linguistic research and describes the different forms of negative markers (affixes, particles, auxiliary verbs, complementizers). It also discusses a number of correlations between the form of the sentential negative marker and more general structural aspects (doubling, pre- vs. postverbal negation, presence of Negative Concord).


Author(s):  
Gianina Iordăchioaia ◽  
Frank Richter

In this paper we develop an HPSG syntax-semantics of negative concord in Romanian. We show that n-words in Romanian can best be treated as negative quantifiers which may combine by resumption to form polyadic negative quantifiers. Optionality of resumption explains the existence of simple sentential negation readings alongside double negation readings. We solve the well-known problem of defining general semantic composition rules for translations of natural language expressions in a logical language with polyadic quantifiers by integrating our higher-order logic in Lexical Resource Semantics, whose constraint-based composition mechanisms directly support a systematic syntax-semantics for negative concord with polyadic quantification.


Author(s):  
Julian Form

This paper presents a study of so-called neg-phrases in Eton, a negative concord language spoken in Cameroon. These phrases strongly resemble negated noun phrases that consist of a negative determiner and a noun, however, I will show that Eton neg-phrases are built differently. Reconciling the non-negative approach to negative indefinites by Penka & Zeijlstra (2005) and the negative approach by Richter & Sailer (2004a,b, 2006), I will argue that Eton neg-phrases consist of an inherently negative modifier and a non-negative indefinite derived from a noun. Embedding the analysis in Lexical Resource Semantics, I will reveal the inherent negativity of Eton neg-phrases and account for their composition by using a lexical rule based on the semantic approach to noun phrases by Beavers (2003).


Author(s):  
Josep Quer

Negation systems in sign languages have been shown to display the core grammatical properties attested for natural language negation. Negative manual signs realize clausal negation in much the same way as in spoken languages. However, the visual-gestural modality affords the possibility to encode negative marking non-manually, and sign languages vary as to whether such markers can convey negation on their own or not. Negative concord can be argued to exist between manual and non-negative markers of negation, but we also find cases of negative concord among manual signs. Negation interacts in interesting ways with other grammatical categories, and it can be encoded in irregular and affixal forms that still have sentential scope. At the same time, negation is attested in lexical morphology leading to forms that do not express sentential negation.


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