On the syntactically complex status of negative indefinites

Negative Indefinites (NIs) in languages such as Dutch and German may give rise to split-scope readings. Sentences like German Du must keine Krawatte anziehen (‘you must wear no tie’) have a reading where the modal takes scope in between the negation and the indefinite. In this paper I argue that West Germanic NIs are not negative quantifiers (in the Montegovian sense), but complex syntactic structures that consist of an abstract negative operator and an indefinite that are spelled out as a single word. Split-scope effects result from application of the copy theory of movement. I argue that in split-scope constructions, though they are spelled out as a single word, after Quantifier Raising the negative operator is interpreted in a higher copy and the indefinite in a lower copy of the NI. Furthermore I demonstrate that alternative analyses that take NIs in Dutch and German to be negative quantifiers, n-words, or the result of amalgamation or incorporation processes face problems that the analysis presented in this paper does not encounter

A Typological Approach to the Split Scope Readings of Negative Indefinites

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Indefinites, negation and Jespersen's Cycle in the history of Low German

This paper offers a formal account of the diachronic changes in the interaction between indefinites in the scope of negation and the expression of sentential negation in the history of Low German. Different types of negative concord develop at the different historical stages. Parallel to that, the language underwent Jespersen's Cycle. In addition, I argue that, against common belief, Jespersen's Cycle is at best indirectly related to the type of interaction between indefinites and negation. Changes in the type of indefinites used in the scope of negation arise due to changes in the lexical properties of the indefinites involved, not as a result of changes in the expression of negation. Conversely, changes in the type of indefinites do not trigger changes in the expression of negation

Strict and non-strict negative concord in Hungarian: A unified analysis

Surányi (2006) observed that Hungarian has a hybrid (strict + non-strict) negative concord system. This paper proposes a uniform analysis of that system within the general framework of Zeijlstra (2004, 2008) and, especially, Chierchia (2013), with the following new ingredients. Sentential negation NEM is the same full negation in the presence of both strict and non-strict concord items. Preverbal SENKI `n-one’ type negative concord items occupy the specifier position of either NEM `not' or SEM `nor'. The latter, SEM spells out IS `too, even’ in the immediate scope of negation; it is a focus-sensitive head on the clausal spine. SEM can be seen as an overt counterpart of the phonetically null head that Chierchia dubs NEG; it is capable of invoking an abstract (disembodied) negation at the edge of its projection

Grammatical properties of pronouns and their representation : an exposition

This volume brings together a cross-section of recent research on the grammar and representation of pronouns, centering around the typology of pronominal paradigms, the generation of syntactic and semantic representations for constructions containing pronouns, and the neurological underpinnings for linguistic distinctions that are relevant for the production and interpretation of these constructions. In this introductory chapter we first give an exposition of our topic (section 2). Taking the interpretation of pronouns as a starting point, we discuss the basic parameters of pronominal representations, and draw a general picture of how morphological, semantic, discourse-pragmatic and syntactic aspects come together. In section 3, we sketch the different domains of research that are concerned with these phenomena, and the particular questions they are interested in, and show how the papers in the present volume fit into the picture. Section 4 gives summaries of the individual papers, and a short synopsis of their main points of convergence

A crosslinguistic perspective on n-words

The semantic status of so-called n-words in Negative Concord languages has been under considerable debate. This paper takes a new perspective on this problem by bringing Negative Concord together with two different phenomena that n-words give rise to in non-Negative Concord languages, namely scope splitting in German and distributional restrictions in the Scandinavian languages. I argue that all this taken together reveals the common nature of n-words across languages. These phenomena suggest that n-words should not be analysed as negative quantifiers. Rather, n-words are morpho-syntactic markers of sentential negation. I present a cross-linguistic analysis of n-words and show how the three phenomena discussed follow from it. This analysis is based on the assumption that n-words are semantically non-negative and must be licensed by a (possibly abstract) negation. It is proposed that n-words cross-linguistically are of essentially the same nature and that differences between languages regarding their behaviour are due to parametric variation

Negative Concord without Agree: Insights from German, Dutch and English Child Language

Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children’s non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided.European Research Council (ERC)Peer Reviewe

A crosslinguistic perspective on n-words

The semantic status of so-called n-words in Negative Concord languages has been under considerable debate. This paper takes a new perspective on this problem by bringing Negative Concord together with two different phenomena that n-words give rise to in non-Negative Concord languages, namely scope splitting in German and distributional restrictions in the Scandinavian languages. I argue that all this taken together reveals the common nature of n-words across languages. These phenomena suggest that n-words should not be analysed as negative quantifiers. Rather, n-words are morpho-syntactic markers of sentential negation. I present a cross-linguistic analysis of n-words and show how the three phenomena discussed follow from it. This analysis is based on the assumption that n-words are semantically non-negative and must be licensed by a (possibly abstract) negation. It is proposed that n-words cross-linguistically are of essentially the same nature and that differences between languages regarding their behaviour are due to parametric variation