On the relation between double clausal negation and negative concord

2014 ◽  
pp. 13-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Van Alsenoy ◽  
Johan van der Auwera
Keyword(s):  
Negative Concord ◽  
Clausal Negation

The Expression of Negation in Sign Languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-196
Author(s):  
Josep Quer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
The Core ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Manual Signs ◽  
Clausal Negation

Negation systems in sign languages have been shown to display the core grammatical properties attested for natural language negation. Negative manual signs realize clausal negation in much the same way as in spoken languages. However, the visual-gestural modality affords the possibility to encode negative marking non-manually, and sign languages vary as to whether such markers can convey negation on their own or not. Negative concord can be argued to exist between manual and non-negative markers of negation, but we also find cases of negative concord among manual signs. Negation interacts in interesting ways with other grammatical categories, and it can be encoded in irregular and affixal forms that still have sentential scope. At the same time, negation is attested in lexical morphology leading to forms that do not express sentential negation.

scholarly journals Cumbersome paths to indefiniteness. Evidence from an Old Occitan customary

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 245-275
Author(s):  
Mikolaj Nkollo
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Old Occitan ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Clausal Negation ◽  
Syntactic Properties

The central problem of this paper is the evolution of common nouns assumed to have turned into indefinite pronouns. The linguistic data have been retrieved from the Costuma d’Agen, a 13th-century Occitan Customary. The choice of this text is warranted by multiple relations obtaining between the architecture of legal codices and the presence of indefinite expressions. In this text, the contexts in which re (< Lat. acc. rem), ‘anything’ or ‘nothing’ occurs have been identified. This word is shown to be pervasive in Negative Concord (NC; under the scope of no(n), the expression of clausal negation), thereby meeting the requirements imposed upon negative polarity items (NPIs). Outside NC, re appears in conditional protases and temporal clauses introduced by ‘before’. Irrespective of the context in which it appears, Old Occitan re turns out to be fairly advanced on the grammaticalization scale: unlike its etymon, it no longer inflects for number, it does not take determiners and fails to function as a subject in the Costuma d’Agen. Comparative evidence from Gascon 13th century texts proves that, although the descendants of rem of that period occur in the same structural environments (all of them are, by then, free-choice items, FCIs), they do not evolve at the same pace as their Occitan cognate. In other words, even in neighboring linguistic zones, these expressions differ with respect to the degree of persistence of syntactic properties inherent to Latin common nouns. Finally, re is matched against other FCIs, such as hom or home ‘anybody’ or ‘nobody’ and autrui ‘someone else’ or ‘someone else’s’. Compared to re, the medieval developments of these items are far more diversified and retain more original features of their etymons. The difference is traced back to the greater conceptual salience of the animate domain.

scholarly journals On the typology of negative concord

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan van der Auwera ◽  
Lauren Van Alsenoy
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Relative Rarity ◽  
Clausal Negation ◽  
The One

This paper has three main points. First, contrary to what is often stated, negative concord is not all that frequent and certainly not the most frequent strategy to express single clausal negation in a clause with an indefinite noun phrase or adverbial in the scope of the negation. Second, the subtype of negative concord called ‘strict negative concord’ is much more frequent than the subtype of ‘non-strict negative concord’. These two claims are based on a worldwide sample of 179 languages. Third, it is argued that non-strict negative concord shows too much variation for it to be seen as the one choice of a two-way split between strict and non-strict negative concord. Given the relative rarity of non-strict negative concord, this claim is not based on the worldwide sample, but on a survey of the research literature.

scholarly journals Double Negation in a Negative Concord language: An experimental investigation

Lingua ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 75-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviane Déprez ◽  
Susagna Tubau ◽  
Anne Cheylus ◽  
M. Teresa Espinal
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Blanchette ◽  
Chris Collins
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
West Texas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scope Freezing

AbstractThis article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

Negative concord in Quebec French

Probus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Labelle
Keyword(s):  
Negative Concord ◽  
Dependency Relation ◽  
Quebec French

AbstractIt is argued that there are two types of asymmetric negative concord languages: in languages like Spanish and Italian, negative concord results from a purely formal agreement relation between the negation and a negative concord item. In Quebec French, in addition to this purely formal licensing, there is a negative dependency relation between both items, which form two segments of a discontinuous negative quantifier. This accounts for the following differences. While Spanish, Italian and Quebec French reject negative concord between a subject negative expression and the negation, in Quebec French, negative concord with the negation becomes possible when the clause contains a postverbal negative expression in addition to a preverbal one. Moreover, in Quebec French, but not in Spanish or Italian, negative concord is blocked across a quantifier meaning

scholarly journals Standard negation in Awa Pit: From synchrony to diachrony

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-474
Author(s):  
Olga Krasnoukhova ◽  
Johan van der Auwera
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Clausal Negation

Abstract This study deals with clausal negation in Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language spoken in South America. By bringing together the data on negation from different varieties of the language, we present an analysis of synchronic patterns of negation marking. Based on the variation we suggest a number of innovations in the negation system, for which we put forward diachronic scenarios. Some innovations are likely to be contact-induced, whereas others are products of language-internal diachronic processes. The latter involve mechanisms associated with a classical ‘Jespersen Cycle’. However, Awa Pit offers us very non-classical Jespersen’s Cycles – at best. The case of Awa Pit is instructive as some of the scenarios that we suggest are likely to be relevant for other languages or languages families.

scholarly journals Exploring negation in Awing

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
NYOMY Cyrine Cyrine
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
West Region ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Universal Category ◽  
Negative Marker

Negation is a universal category and languages differ in many respects in the way they express the latter (see Klima 1964). In this regards, some languages express sentential negation (a subcategorization of negation) with one marker (Dutch, German, English, etc.) while others like French uses two markers. Alongside markers used to express sentential negation, other items, among which Negative Polarity Items, mark negation and tight a particular element within its domain. In this paper, I aim at providing a picture of the expression of negation in Awing (a Bantu Grassfield langue of the Ngemba Group spoken in the North West region of Cameroon). Accordingly, sentential negation is expressed with two discontinuous markers kě…pô. One fact important to the presence of this negative marker is the movement of postverbal elements to a preverbal position turning the SVO structure in non-negative clause to an SOV pattern in negative clauses. In addition, the study describes other negative elements and negation subcategories. In last, the study of negative concord reveals that Awing belongs to the group of Strict Negative Concord (SNC) languages in which n-words must co-occur with negative marker to yield negation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document