scholarly journals Exploring negation in Awing

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.

scholarly journals AN OVERVIEW OF NEGATIVE MARKERS IN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1677-1682
Author(s):  
Arta Bekteshi
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Negative Particle ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Subjunctive Conditional ◽  
Negative Marker ◽  
Imperative Mood

Negative sentences are the opposite of positive ones; they negate the action expressed in positive clauses by using negative markers and/or negative words. English and Albanian are two languages in which negation is structured and expressed in different ways, although the negative markers are more or less the same. However, even though they may seem similar and corresponding to each other in both languages, they are used in different structures and have different scope. This paper gives a description and comparison of negative markers in English and Albanian. Their use and structure is illustrated by various examples to support the description. Based on this overview, it can be concluded that both English and Albanian have negative particles functioning as negative markers, as well as negative words. However, these negative markers and negative words do not express negation in the same way in these two languages. The simplest difference is that English has only one negative marker of verbal negation – not; while Albanian has several negative markers: nuk/s’ to mark primary as well as secondary verbal negation, mos to mark verbal negation in the indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative mood; jo is used to mark both sentential and constituent negation; as- as a negative particle marks both sentential and constituent negation and can be accompanied by one of the verbal negative markers nuk /s’. Even though there is a correspondence of not and nuk /s’ to mark verbal negation, there is a misbalance of negative markers and their uses in both languages. A further difference, and a greater one is the use of n-words or negative polarity items (NPIs). English as a single negation language forms negation by using negative verbs with NPI, or by using n-words as absolute negators. For instance, (1) Ben didn’t see anybody vs. (2) Ben saw nobody. In sentence (1) there is a negative verb which cannot be followed or preceded by an n-word, therefore the NPI anybody is used, while in sentence (2) there is a positive verb which allows the use of an n-word such as nobody. On the other hand, in Albanian, n-words such as negative adverbs and negative pronouns are only used accompanied by the verbal marker nuk/s’, thus creating negative concord as in the example: Askush nuk tha asgjë. In this sentence there are three negative words – askush, nuk, asgjë- which contribute to one semantic meaning. As far as conjunctions are concerned, most of them correspond in both languages in both structure and meaning. Similarly, prefixes share similar properties in English and Albanian, they are attached to adjectives, verbs or nouns to express negation, opposition, reversative or removing ideas. English also has a negative suffix –less, while Albanian has no negative suffixes, which could be considered as a slight difference.

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

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-83 ◽  
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.

Modern-Hebrew lama-še Interrogatives and Their Judeo-Spanish Origins

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 104-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itamar Francez
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Opposite Polarity ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Probable Source ◽  
Modern Hebrew

This article describes a Modern Hebrew interrogative construction, not found in earlier varieties of the language, in which awh-word is followed by a clause headed by the complementizerše‘that.’ When that clause contains negation, the resulting sentence has the illocutionary force of a suggestion, with the opposite polarity to that of the complementizer clause. In this case, negation fails to license negative concord and negative polarity items. The main properties of the construction are described, an analysis is sketched, and evidence is given indicating Judeo-Spanish as the probable source for the construction.

Minimizers and Maximizers as Different Types of Polarity Items

2020 ◽  
pp. 406-425
Author(s):  
Susagna Tubau
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Positive Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Taboo Word ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Negative Quantifiers ◽  
Maximal Extent

This chapter examines the properties of minimizers and maximizers (i.e. minimal and maximal extent- or quantity-denoting expressions) in English, Catalan, and Spanish. Special emphasis is put on (i) establishing which type of polarity item these expressions align with, and (ii) identifying connections between them and other elements of the polarity landscape such as negative quantifiers and Negative Concord Items. It is shown that different minimizers and maximizers pattern with Affective Polarity Items, Negative Polarity Items, or Positive Polarity Items in the three studied languages, and that English minimizers behave similarly to negative quantifiers when negation is adjacent to them, while in Catalan and Spanish they behave like Negative Concord Items when headed by the particle ni ‘not even’. Vulgar (taboo word) minimizers, which have been argued to carry an incorporated zero numeral in the literature, are claimed to be lexically ambiguous between zero-incorporated structures and Affective Polarity Items.

scholarly journals How speakers interpret the negative markers no and no…pas in Catalan

Probus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susagna Tubau ◽  
Viviane Déprez ◽  
Joan Borràs-Comes ◽  
M.Teresa Espinal
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Metalinguistic Negation ◽  
The Status

AbstractThis paper reports the results of an experimental investigation designed to test the interpretation of the optional doubling of the negative markersnoandpasin Expletive Negation (EN) contexts and in preverbal Negative Concord Items (NCI) contexts in Catalan. We show that in EN contexts a negative interpretation ofnois preferred to an expletive one, with non-negative readings being less widespread than expected from what is described in traditional grammars. In NCI contexts the overt presence ofnobasically contributes to a single negation interpretation, thus confirming the status of Catalan as a Negative Concord language. We also show that, in the absence of discourse environments,pasin both EN and NCI contexts shows a variable interpretation, a characteristic of negative polarity items. Our results indicate thatpasdoes not increase the amount of negative interpretation ofnoin EN contexts, or of double negation in NCI contexts, but is an item dependent on the interpretation ofno. We conclude that the strengthening role of Catalanpas(at stage two of Jespersen’s cycle), while associated with the expression of metalinguistic negation, does not reverse the truth or falsity of a proposition.

scholarly journals Minimizers in Azerbaijani from a comparative perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venera Suleymanova ◽  
Jack Hoeksema
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Western European ◽  
Polarity Sensitive

Abstract Azerbaijani, like many other languages, has a class of negative polarity items denoting minimal measures (along dimensions such as size, length, duration, value, weight etc.), called minimizers. This paper presents an overview of this group of expressions, compares them to minimizers in the western European languages, in particular English and Dutch, identifies the various domains in which these minimizers may be used, and discusses their distribution across polarity-sensitive contexts such as negation, conditional clauses, questions, etc. The distribution we found, on the basis of both corpus data and native speaker judgments, is very similar to that of minimizers in English or Dutch, especially when differences are factored out which are due to the fact that Azerbaijani has strict negative concord, whereas English and Dutch do not. To this end, we distinguish two types of minimizers for Azerbaijani, negated minimizers preceded by heç bir ‘not one’, and minimizers preceded by bir only.

Negative Concord and the Nature of Negative Concord Items

2020 ◽  
pp. 457-478
Author(s):  
Anastasia Giannakidou
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
The Past ◽  
Neutral Term

This chapter discusses the expressions often referred to as n-words. While this term has been used extensively in the literature, we use here the more neutral term ‘negative concord items’ (NCI) since these expressions do not always contain negation. NCIs behave largely as negative polarity items (NPIs) in requiring negation for grammaticality; and questions arise about whether or not they are semantically negative, and whether they are uniform across languages. The chapter shows that NCIs exhibit variation in their distribution and interpretation. Main aspects of variation are whether NCIs always require negation (strict negative concord), or not (non-strict), and whether they can appear with non-negative meanings. The chapter assesses research of the past twenty years, and proposes a new, more synthesized, understanding of the attested variation.

Negative Polarity Items

2020 ◽  
pp. 390-406
Author(s):  
Lucia M. Tovena
Keyword(s):  
Special Form ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Sensitivity ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
Semantic Notion ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter investigates the phenomenon of negative polarity sensitivity. The term negative polarity items (NPIs) has been introduced in the literature to refer to forms whose distribution was observed to polarize in negative contexts. NPIs can vary from indefinites that take a special form when they occur in the scope of negation, e.g. any in English, to DPs functioning as minimizers, e.g. a drop, verbal idiomatic expressions such as lift a finger, and more. NPIs are often characterized indirectly by analyzing their distribution in terms of licensing contexts. Sentential negation is a typical licensor that is required to c-command an NPI. A weaker but more inclusive semantic notion of negativity shared by many licensing environments is provided by downward monotonicity. Distributional patterns also led to distinguishing between weak NPIs and stronger NPIs, the latter being restricted to a subset of contexts from the broad selection of licensing environments.

scholarly journals On the Syntax of Sentential Negation in Yemeni Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 331
Author(s):  
Abdulrahman Alqurashi ◽  
Mukarram Abduljalil
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Arabic Dialects ◽  
Modern Arabic

In this paper we explore the system of negation in modern Arabic dialects with a particular focus on Yemeni Arabic (Raymi dialect). The data observed in this dialect incorporate important and novel facts related to the syntax of sentential negation in Arabic. This includes the distribution of negation patterns and the interaction between negation and negative polarity items, which challenges the two widely adopted analyses for sentential negation in Arabic: The Spec-NegP analysis and the discontinuous Neg analysis. In this paper we argue that neither analysis can provide an adequate account of Raymi Arabic facts. Instead, a more recent analysis, the Spilt-Neg analysis, can accommodate them. In addition, in the study we provide empirical evidence in support of the Higher-Neg analysis, wherein Neg is projected higher than T in the derivation.

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