Classification of PSIs and Their Lexical Categories

In chapter 2, the author lays out a classification of polarity-sensitive items (PSIs) and their lexical categories. PSIs include negative polarity items (NPIs), free-choice items (FCIs), positive polarity items (PPIs), and negative concord items (NCIs). General indefinites display different distributions than do NPIs. Indefinite nouns like ħada and iši function as NPIs, and they are distinct from indefinite nouns (general indefinites) that occur in the context of negation. This chapter discusses the distinctive features of NPIs and PPIs, such as scope widening. Two different types of PSIs interact with negation in interesting ways: NPIs and NCIs. One key difference between the two is that NPIs cannot function as fragment answers without negation and can occur in nonnegative contexts, such as interrogative and conditional contexts. NCIs display the opposite behavior. This chapter describes the distribution of the disjunctive particles walla/willa/ʔam ‘or’ and the negative counterpart wala ‘nor’ in polarity contexts and their status as structures for coordinate complexes in Arabic.

Deriving enclisis in ‘V1’ clauses

The chapter deals with the syntax of early Romance clauses exhibiting enclisis, which usually occurs when the verb occupies the first position in the clause (V1) or is immediately preceded by topics. This chapter accounts for enclisis/V1 within languages that exhibit properties of V2 systems. The analysis is based on two hypotheses: (i) V2 results from a Criterion that triggers fronting of an XP to the Operator/Focus position; and (ii) V1 and enclisis result when no XP is fronted and, instead, the inflected verb is merged in the Operator/Focus position via Long Head Movement (Lema and Rivero’s 1991). When the verb performs Long Head Movement, clitics cannot undergo incorporationd into the verb and enclisis results. Besides enclisis, the above analysis provides a better account of other phenomena such as the syntax of focus expletives, Stylistic Fronting, mesoclisis, and fragment answers.

Ellipsis in Languages of the Caucasus

This chapter deals with ellipsis, a phenomenon whereby some expected material goes missing in an utterance. The chapter overviews types of ellipsis frequently addressed in the literature: ellipsis in the noun phrase; argument omission; VP ellipsis; modal complement ellipsis; ellipsis in complex predicates; gapping, pseudogapping, and right node raising; ellipsis in comparative constructions, stripping; and ellipsis involving negation, sluicing and its generalizations, and fragment answers. It proceeds to review the occurrence of, and peculiarities exhibited by, these ellipsis varieties in a sample of the languages of the Caucasus. A number of ellipsis varieties that have not been earlier discussed in the literature but are present in some languages of the Caucasus are addressed as well. The data show that the languages of the Caucasus do not show a uniform typological profile as far as ellipsis is concerned. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the relevance of the presented data for theories of ellipsis.

On the Nonexistence of Asymmetric DOM in Spanish

Kalin and Weisser (2019) observe that Spanish, among other differential-object-marking (DOM) languages, allows for what they call asymmetric DOM in coordination, that is, a DP coordinate structure in which an unmarked DP and a marked DP are conjoined. Given that coordinate structures are islands, asymmetric DOM challenges movement analyses for DOM. Yet we show that alleged cases of asymmetric DOM in Spanish do not involve DP-coordination; rather, they involve coordination of a larger structure plus TP-ellipsis. Evidence involves binding, extraction, fragment answers, and association with focus. We conclude that asymmetric DOM does not exist in Spanish, a fact consonant with movement analyses.

Negative Fragment Answers

This chapter discusses the interaction of negation with fragment answers. The ability to use negative concord items as fragment answers has been taken as evidence of their having an inherent negative force; this chapter considers positions for and against this view, and what kind of assumptions (for the licensing of NCIs and/or for the interpretation of elliptical structure in fragments) would be required on each view, as well as considering the implications of double-negation readings for NCI fragments, and the availability of NPI fragments. The chapter also investigates the cooccurrence of a negator with a fragment answer (as in Who ate the cake?—Not John, anyway), exploring what ramifications such structures have for the syntax of fragments, and in particular for the choice between sententialist (elliptical) and non-sententialist analyses of fragments.

Negative Concord in Russian

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.

Negative concord as a marker of empty discourse referents

Negative concord items are restricted to a narrow set of negative environments: roughly, those that are anti-additive or anti-veridical. These environments share the property that they prevent discourse referents from being introduced.Here, I propose that this is the explanatory property of NC items. NC items are indefinites that flag the fact (in their lexical semantics) that they will fail to introduce a discourse referent. After spelling this out using dynamic semantics, I show that it has number of advantages: (i) It correctly predicts that NC items must appear under a local anti-veridical operator. (ii) If the presupposition that the DR set is empty is made at-issue, we predict negative uses of NC items: exactly what's attested in fragment answers and non-strict concord languages. (iii) It perfectly unites negative concord with recent analyses of other concord phenomena.

Regular and copular fragments in Basaá

The aim of this Article is to propose that fragment answers in Basaá (Bantu) derive from two different sources, namely, a regular source and a copular source. Regular fragments are those that are derived by movement of a Negative Polarity Item (NPI) or a CP complement to the left periphery of the clause followed by clausal ellipsis (Merchant 2004 and related work). Conversely, copular fragments involve a biclausal structure whereby the focalized fragment, no matter the syntactic function it fulfills in clause structure, finally ends up being the subject of the null verbal copula of the main clause. The fragment is initially selected as the external argument of the null verbal copula within the matrix VP along the lines of the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (Koopman and Sportiche 1991). From Spec-VP it raises to Spec-TP to satisfy the EPP requirements. The internal argument of the null copula is a headless relative in which a relative operator (covert/overt) moves to Spec-CP, a position above FocP the target of ellipsis. This gives rise to a structure whereby the fragment answer in the matrix clause and the relative operator in the embedded clause resist ellipsis. The analysis also provides semantic evidence that copular fragments are not clefts. The ellipsis approach is supported by a range of grammatical properties such as connectivity effects, locality constraints and subcategorization requirements. This paper is not only a contribution to Merchant’s (2004) ellipsis approach but it also provides new evidence for our understanding of the crosslinguistic variation of ellipsis.