A case of apparently unlicensed NCIs in Slovenian

Abstract

Slovenian is considered a strict negative-concord (NC) language (Ilc 2008, Giannakidou & Zeijlstra 2017), its NCIs are only licensed in full-fledged sentences in the presence of a clausemate negator ne, (1) (Ilc 2019: 134). Gregorčič et al. (2024: 146-7) report that the claim is also generally confirmed by the data in the Gigafida 2.0 corpus, noting that what looks like the only cases with NCIs not in the scope of an anti-veridical operator, (2), actually contain independent lexical items. Other than this, NCIs not in the scope of an anti-veridical operator are only found in elliptical structures also missing a finite verb, e.g., fragment answers, (3) (Ilc 2019: 127). (1) * (Ne) govori z nikomer. (2) V glavi imam čisti nič. neg speaks with noone in head have complete nothing ‘He/she speaks with noone.’ ‘There is a complete void in my head.’ (based on Gregorčič et al 2024: 146) (Gregorčič et al 2024: 147) (3) Koga si videl? Nikogar. who aux see noone ‘Who did you see? Nobody.’ (Ilc 2019: 127) However, (4) shows an abundantly attested construction that contains a finite verb, an NCI and no negator. As we find no other evidence suggesting that Slovenian is not a strict NCI language, we look at what else might set this construction apart from canonical cases of NCI-containing clauses, and how one could analyze it. (4) Vsi vidijo, kaj se dogaja, ukrepa pa nihče. (Gigafida 2.0) all see what refl happens acts but noone ‘Everyone sees what’s going on, but noone acts.’ Besides the presence of the NCI in (4), the construction also supports other hallmarks of the presence of Slovenian clausal negation, e.g., the genitive of negation, (5), and strong NPIs. (5) Zareza je zgolj tam in zavzema prostor, daje pa ničesar. (www) notch aux just there and takes space.acc gives but nothing.gen ‘The notch is just there and takes up space, but it gives nothing.’ This suggests that despite appearances, the structure nevertheless contains negation. The presence of an elided negator has also been suggested for coordinate structures, comparisons and fragment answers (Ilc 2019). One difference between these and (4)-(5) is that the former show no restrictions regarding the presence of a future/past/conditional-forming auxiliary. The absence of the negator in (4)-(5), though, is possible only when there is no auxiliary, either with a present finite verb, as in (4), or with a participle without an auxiliary, (6). (6) Jedli so/bojo vsi, plačal pa (*je/*bo) noben. eaten are/will all paid but is/will noone ‘Everyone ate/will eat, but noone paid/will pay.’ Another difference is that constructions like fragment answers are known from all NC languages while the construction from (4)-(5) is absent in NC languages like Czech, Russian, BCMS, Greek. We will argue that our construction results from the preposing of the VP to the left periphery, preceded by the extraction of ‘noone’/‘nothing’ in (4)-(5), and followed by post-VP-preposing deletion of ne. We will also discuss the blocking of ne-deletion by auxiliaries, optionality of/cross-speaker variation in ne deletion, etc