De l'interaction entre structure informationnelle et syntaxe: quelques réflexions sur la double négation en français

Dans cet article, nous nous proposons d'examiner la double négation en considérant le rôle de la structure informationnelle qu'elle contribue, de la composante sémantique qu'elle invoque et de la structure syntaxique à laquelle elle a recours pour y parvenir. En partant de l'hypothèse que la structure informationnelle est pertinente à l'analyse syntaxique, nous montrons que la contribution de l'élément négatif pas en tant que négation supplémentaire est possible si le marqueur est focalisé. La contribution syntaxique est que l'élément pas porte ainsi sur toute la phrase et permet de la nier dans son ensemble. Dans le cas, plus complexe, de DN mettant en jeu plusieurs quantificateurs, nous proposons que le même mécanisme de focalisation permet sémantiquement d'introduire un Verum Focus, une instance de focalisation polaire

Negation in Finno-Ugric: an introduction

The study of negation has seen recent developments in various directions, which shed a new light on the problem. From all sides, that is the syntactic, the semantic and pragmatic points of view, recent proposals come to challenge the by now standard views on negation in natural languages that developed within the last two decades of linguistic study. Syntactically, the study of negation has experienced an impressive blossoming in the 1990s, with important contributions such as Pollock (1989), Laka (1990), Zanuttini (1991), Progovac (1994), Haegeman (1995). As a consequence of this, the existence of a NegP in the syntactic structure of negative sentences is by now widely accepted. On the other hand, the full measure of its syntactic import has not yet been taken. NegP hosts some "sentential negative marker", but it is not always clear what the sentential negative marker is. In the line of the Affect criteria, it is also claimed to host, overtly or covertly, n-expressions (i.e. elements that have been assumed to contribute to the negative meaning of the sentence). But here again, recent proposals (see e.g. Giannakidou 2000) have questioned the grounds on which n-expressions contribute to the negative - rather than the pure quantificational - content of the sentence

On the Neg-criterion in Hungarian

This paper discusses several aspects of Hungarian sentential negation. On the premises that the NEG-criterion applies at S-structure in Hungarian, I show that the NEG-criterion does represent a coherent and adequate explanatory tool to understand Hungarian negation. After establishing the motivation for a functional projection FP outside the predicational part of the sentence, as a component of CP, I show that instances of the Affect criterion, like the Focus criterion and the WH-criterion also apply at S-structure in Hungarian and account very adequately for the behaviour of non-negative quantificational elements. I propose a structure which integrates the functional projection NegP and I show that the structure I adopt has the advantage of taking into account, in addition to Hungarian adult data, acquisition data. I also show that the NEG-criterion applies at S-structure in Hungarian. The paper also discusses negative phrases. I argue that they are not negative polarity items, but intrinsically negative elements, and that the NEG-criterion applies fully at S-structure in these cases as well

Some Notes on Floating Quantifiers

The paper proposes to re-examine some of the aspects of floating quantification, on the basis of some new data in French. The research questions that the paper intends to address are essentially questions about the motivation for Quantifier float. I will propose that FQs move overtly to a dedicated quantifier position, and that QR is motivated by an interpretive requirement and subject to feature-checking mechanisms. I argue that the relevant interpretive property is distributivity. Both the intervention effects and the apparent focusing of FQs can be accounted for under this approach

Double negation and information structure: somewhere between topic and focus

This paper examines the properties of double negation. Starting form the observation that despite the differences in the syntactic realisation of negation, languages such as Hungarian, French and English resort to the same strategies for marking double negation. Namely, a negative quantifier which contributes double negation systematically occurs with a fall-rise intonation, and triggers the implicature of contrastive, weak alternatives to the sentence. These properties are shown to correspond to that of contrastive topics. It is therefore argued that negative constituents which contribute a double negation reading are contrastive topics

On negative licensing contexts and the role of n-words

This paper discusses some of the consequences of the assumption that Hungarian negative elements - or n-words - are not inherently negative. On the one hand, this assumption seems to raise potential problems, which I will argue can be solved under an analysis which resorts to ellipsis. On the other hand, given the restrictions on the licensing of n-words in Hungarian, namely the fact that despite the assumption just mentioned, they seem to depend somehow on strict negative contexts for their licensing, I propose an analysis of n-words which discriminates between licensing, interpretation and surface position

Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages

The paper proposes a syntactic and semantic analysis of Double Negation (DN). It is shown that there are two types of DN. Strong DN is the result of a Focus construction that involves a polar reading triggered by a Verum Focus; Weak DN, on the other hand, arises when the corresponding n-word is marked as a Contrastive Topic and introduces weak (i.e. non exclusive) alternatives. The paper discusses the occurrence of these two kinds of DN in two types of languages, which feature different negative strategies. While Hungarian is a strict NC language with non-negative n-words and an obligatory negative marker, English and German are non-NC languages, with negative n-words that can function on their own. It is shown that both strong DN and weak DN occur in each of these languages. However, the mechanisms that license n-words contributing the DN reading are different, due to the differences in the nature of the n-words and in the discourse-functional behavior of the languages in question