Negation and negative dependencies / Hedde Zeijlstra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zeijlstra, Hedzer Hugo, 1975- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 80.

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 80

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Negatives.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (497 pages)

Place of Publication:

New York, New York : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"A universal property of natural language is that every language is able to express negation. However, languages may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation. Not only do languages vary with respect to the form of negative elements, the position of negative elements is also subject to cross-linguistic variation. Moreover, languages differ in terms of the number of manifestations of negative morphemes too: in some languages negation is realized by a single word or morpheme, in other languages by multiple morphemes, a phenomenon known as Negative Concord. Moreover, the syntax and semantics of negation is indissolubly connected to the phenomenon of negative and positive polarity. Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are items, like English ever, whose distribution is limited to a number of contexts, which in some sense all count as negative. Positive Polarity Items (PPIs) form the mirror image of NPIs. These are elements, such as English rather, that are banned from appearing in negative sentences. In this book I present an overarching perspective on negation and negative dependencies, based on novel data from language variation, language acquisition and language change. In this book I develop and explore the hypothesis that, to the extent that they are applicable to the domain of negation, all known syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and lexical ways of encoding dependencies should be attestable in the domain of negation as well, unless they are ruled out independently (e.g. on functional, formal or learnability grounds). This hypothesis predicts a pluriform landscape of all kinds of negative dependencies and markers of negation, a prediction that I will show is born out"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgements

General Preface

List of Abbreviations

I INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE

1 Introduction: Negation and negative dependencies

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The syntax of sentential negation

1.2.1 Sentential and constituent negation

1.2.2 Ways of expressing sentential negation

1.2.3 On the syntactic status of negative markers

1.2.4 On the syntactic position of negative markers

1.3 Polarity-sensitivity

1.3.1 The licenser question

1.3.2 The licensee question

1.3.3 The licensing question

1.4 The landscape of negative dependencies

1.4.1 Negative Concord

1.4.2 Positive Polarity-sensitivity

1.5 Conclusions

2 Outline: The pluriform landscape of negative dependencies

2.1 The pluriform landscape of negative dependencies

2.2 Outline

2.3 Relation to earlier work

II NEGATIVE CONCORD AND NEGATIVE QUANTIFIERS

3 Negative Concord is syntactic agreement

3.1 Introduction: Negative Concord and neg-words

3.2 The negative-quantifier approach

3.2.1 Proposal

3.2.2 Problems for the negative-quantifier approach

3.2.3 Concluding remarks

3.3 The Negative Polarity Item approach

3.3.1 Proposal

3.3.2 Challenges for the Negative Polarity Item approach

3.3.3 Concluding remarks

3.4 Negative Concord is syntactic agreement

3.4.1 Proposal

3.4.2 Application

3.4.3 Challenges for the syntactic-agreement approach

3.5 Conclusions

4 Types of Negative Concord systems

4.1 Variation on the domain of Negative Concord

4.2 Strict vs Non-strict Negative Concord languages

4.2.1 Strict vs Non-strict Negative Concord

4.2.2 Obligatoriness and optionality of Negative Concord

4.3 In search of a missing language: A closer look at Afrikaans

4.4 Partial and/or invisible Negative Concord.

4.4.1 Negative Concord in French: Partial Negative Concord

4.4.2 Negative Concord in English: Invisible Negative Concord

4.4.3 Other invisible Negative Concord languages: Hindi and Punjabi

4.5 Conclusions

5 The flexibility of negative features

5.1 The nature of negative features

5.2 The Flexible Formal Feature Hypothesis

5.2.1 A universal set of formal features?

5.2.2 The algorithm

5.2.3 Consequences

5.3 Acquiring types of Negative Concord systems

5.3.1 Double Negation: Dutch

5.3.2 Non-strict Negative Concord: Italian

5.3.3 Strict Negative Concord: Czech

5.3.4 Negative Concord in Afrikaans Variety A

5.3.5 Optional Negative Concord: Catalan and West Flemish

5.3.6 Partial Negative Concord: French

5.3.7 Invisible Negative Concord: English and Hindi/Punjabi

5.3.8 Non-negative licensers of neg-words

5.4 Consequences in the domain of language variation, acquisition, and change

5.4.1 Types of Negative Concord systems: Language variation

5.4.2 Types of Negative Concord systems: Language acquisition

5.4.3 Consequences for language change

5.5 Conclusions

6 Diachronic developments in the domain of negation and Negative Concord

6.1 The nature of negative features

6.2 Jespersen's Cycle

6.3 The emergence of Negative Concord

6.3.1 The emergence of French Negative Concord

6.3.2 From Strict to Non-strict Negative Concord

6.3.3 The emergence of the Negative Concord system of Afrikaans A

6.3.4 The emergence of French partial Negative Concord

6.3.5 The emergence of English invisible Negative Concord

6.4 The disappearance of Negative Concord and the emergence of double negatives

6.4.1 En/ne-deletion in Dutch

6.4.2 Emphatic Multiple Negative Expressions in Dutch and German

6.5 Possible and impossible changes: The NALL-problem.

6.5.1 Emerging negative indefinites

6.5.2 The NALL-problem

6.5.3 A diachronic solution

6.6 Conclusions

7 Negative indefinites and split-scope readings

7.1 The problem

7.2 The phenomenon

7.2.1 Modal verbs

7.2.2 Object-intensional verbs

7.2.3 Idiomatic expressions

7.2.4 Concluding remarks

7.3 Proposal

7.3.1 Negative indefinites as pieces of syntactic structure

7.3.2 Deriving the split-scope readings: Modal verbs

7.3.3 Deriving the split-scope readings: Object-intensional verbs

7.3.4 Deriving the split-scope readings: Idiomatic expressions

7.3.5 Concluding remarks

7.4 Comparison with other accounts

7.4.1 Amalgamation and incorporation (Jacobs/Rullmann)

7.4.2 Quantification over abstract individuals (Geurts)

7.4.3 Higher-order quantification (De Swart)

7.4.4 Negative Indefinites and choice-functions (Abels and Marti)

7.4.5 Negative Indefinites are neg-words (Penka)

7.5 Conclusions

8 Neg-raising

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Arguments in favour of the syntactic approach

8.2.1 Neg-raising and strict Negative Polarity Items

8.2.2 Neg-raising and Horn-clauses

8.2.3 Neg-raising and negative parentheticals

8.2.4 Summing up

8.3 Problems for CP14

8.3.1 Horn-clauses and Cloud-of-Unknowing predicates

8.3.2 Phonologically deleted negations

8.3.3 Islands and Neg-raising

8.3.4 Summing up

8.4 Reinstalling the standard, pragma-semantic approach

8.5 Conclusions

9 Intermezzo: The landscape of polarity-sensitive elements: Convergence vs divergence

9.1 Neg-words and/or (other) Negative Polarity Items

9.2 Convergence vs divergence

9.3 Outline

III POLARITY-SENSITIVITY

10 Strong vs weak Negative Polarity Items

10.1 Introduction: Strong and weak Negative Polarity Items

10.2 Exhaustification approaches to NPI-hood and the strong-weak distinction.

10.2.1 Exhaustification approaches to NPI-hood

10.2.2 The strong-weak distinction among Negative Polarity Items

10.2.3 Preliminary evidence for this treatment of the strong-weak distinction

10.3 Problems for the exhaustification approach and the strong-weak Negative Polarity Item distinction

10.3.1 Encoding weak and strong NPI-hood

10.3.2 Syntactic locality and the exhaustification approach

10.4 Syntactic vs pragmatic exhaustification

10.5 Negative Polarity Items and domain-wideners: A re-appreciation

10.6 Conclusions

11 Other types of NPIs

11.1 Introduction: Superstrong, strong/weak, and superweak Negative Polarity Items

11.2 Strong/weak Negative Polarity Items

11.2.1 Distribution

11.2.2 Strong/weak Negative Polarity Items and split-scope constructions

11.2.3 The source of need/hoeven/brauchen's NPI-hood

11.2.4 Acquiring hoeven

11.3 Superweak Negative Polarity Items

11.3.1 Non-veridicality

11.3.2 Negative Polarity Items and Free Choice Items

11.3.3 Chinese shenme: A superweak Negative Polarity Item

11.3.4 The Non-Entailment-of-Existence Condition and non-veridicality

11.3.5 Acquiring shenme

11.4 Acquiring weak Negative Polarity Items

11.5 Conclusions

12 Not a light negation

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Light negation (Schwarz and Bhatt)

12.3 Proposal

12.3.1 Negated indefinites

12.3.2 Negated definites

12.3.3 Negated disjunctions

12.4 Conclusions

13 Universal Quantifier PPIs

13.1 Introduction

13.1.1 Exhaustification approaches to Negative Polarity Items

13.1.2 Question: Universal Positive Polarity Items

13.1.3 Outline

13.2 Modal Positive Polarity Items

13.2.1 Modal auxiliaries and their scope with respect to negation

13.2.2 Metalinguistic/contrastive negation

13.2.3 Intervention effects

13.2.4 Clause-external negation.

13.2.5 Variation among Positive Polarity Items

13.3 Why Positive Polarity Items?

13.3.1 Universal modal Positive Polarity Items as the mirror image of existential Negative Polarity Items

13.3.2 Universal Positive Polarity Items as self-interveners

13.4 Positive Polarity Items in the domain of universal quantifiers over individuals

13.5 Conclusions

14 The landscape of PPIs

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Strong vs weak Positive Polarity Items

14.3 Hybrid Polarity Items

14.3.1 Durative vs punctual until

14.3.2 Durative until is punctual until

14.3.3 Deriving the inferences

14.4 Existential Polarity Items

14.4.1 Existential Negative Polarity Items and Positive Polarity Items

14.4.2 Modal existential Positive Polarity Items

14.5 Conclusions

15 Negation and clause types

15.1 Introduction: Two phenomena

15.1.1 The ban on True Negative Imperatives

15.1.2 The ban on single negative markers in sentence-initial position in V2 languages

15.1.3 Outline

15.2 The ban on True Negative Imperatives

15.2.1 Previous analyses

15.2.2 Explaining the ban on True Negative Imperatives

15.2.3 Additional evidence

15.3 The ban on single negative markers in sentence-initial position in V-to-C languages

15.3.1 Previous analysis: Barbiers (2002)

15.3.2 Account

15.4 Conclusions

IV CONCLUSIONS, OPEN QUESTIONS, AND AVENUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

16 Conclusions and open questions

16.1 Outline

16.2 Conclusions concerning Negative Concord, and negative quantifiers and their internal complexity

16.2.1 Negative Concord

16.2.2 Negative quantifiers and their internal complexity

16.3 Conclusions and open questions concerning the landscapes of Negative Polarity Items and Positive Polarity Items

16.3.1 The landscape of Negative Polarity Items

16.3.2 The landscape of Positive Polarity Items.

16.4 Open questions.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Zeijlstra, Hedde Negation and Negative Dependencies

ISBN:

9780192569677

9780191871450