A Typology of Negative Indefinites

This chapter is concerned with the linguistic environments in which double negation readings do and do not arise in double negation and negative concord languages. The theoretical background comes from other chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Negation. The chapter briefly surveys the experimental literature on the role of prosody in the comprehension of negative concord and double negation, and continues with a multilingual corpus investigation that focuses on language use. Under the assumption that all languages convey the same message in a specific context, production data in parallel corpora enable us to detect grammatical variation through translation. The examples are extracted from the parallel corpus EuroParl and the languages discussed are English, Dutch, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Even though the set of languages is relatively small, the spread of grammars should be wide enough to shed light on the phenomenon of double negation in natural language.

Recent research demonstrates that prototypical negative concord (NC) languages allow double negation (DN) (Espinal & Prieto 2011; Prieto et al. 2013; Déprez et al. 2015; Espinal et al. 2016). In NC, two or more syntactic negations yield a single semantic one (e.g., the ‘I ate nothing’ reading of “I didn’t eat nothing”), and in DN each negation contributes to the semantics (e.g. ‘It is not the case that I ate nothing’). That NC and DN have been shown to coexist calls into question the hypothesis that grammars are either NC or DN (Zeijlstra 2004), and supports micro-parametric views of these phenomena (Déprez 2011; Blanchette 2017). Our study informs this debate with new experimental data from American English. We explore the role of syntax and speaker intent in shaping the perception and interpretation of English sentences with two negatives. Our results demonstrate that, like in prototypical NC languages (Espinal et al. 2016), English speakers reliably exploit syntactic, pragmatic, and acoustic cues to in selecting an NC or a DN interpretation.

Most Romance negative concord (NC) languages in particular configurations give rise to double negation (DN) readings. In this article, I discuss an intricate DN pattern in French. After discussing some previous accounts, I provide an analysis of French pas (and in its slipstream also of the French expletive negative element ne) that takes pas to be a purely semantically but not formally (i.e., syntactically) negative element. I then argue that the reason why French pas is so different from other negative markers lies in its diachrony and show that other attested asymmetries between the formal properties of negative markers and neg-words in Romance must receive a diachronic explanation as well.

This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions whendhen/nu/newere not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presence in a clausal domain is enough to assign a single negation reading to the whole sequence, thus arguing in support of the hypothesis that in NC structures the minimal semantic requirement to convey single negation is that one or more NCIs encoding a negative feature appear within a sentential domain. We argue that in these structuresdhen/nu/neare the instantiations of a negative feature [neg] disembodied from an indefinite negative NCI in order to obey a syntax–phonology interface constraint.

In this study, African American English (AAE)-speaking children's comprehension of 2 different types of double negative sentences was examined and contrasted with that of a comparison group of Standard American English (SAE)-speaking children. The first type of double negative, negative concord, involves 2 negative elements in a sentence that are interpreted together as single negation. The second type of double negative, called true double negation, involves 2 negatives that are interpreted as independent negatives. A cross-sectional cohort of 61 (35 AAE, 26 SAE) typically developing children ranging in age from 5;2 (years;months) to 7;11 participated. The children responded to story-based grammatical judgment tasks that required them to differentiate between negative concord and true double negation. Results revealed no statistically significant differences between AAE- and SAE-speaking children in the way they interpreted negative concord and true double negation. However, there were significantly more correct responses to negative concord sentences across combined groups. In particular, the older children (i.e., 7-year-olds) produced more correct responses to negative concord than did the younger group (i.e., 5-year-olds). Explanations for these findings are framed in terms of children's knowledge about sentences with 2 negatives, the constraints affecting the interpretation of 2 negatives that include negative concord, and the clinical importance of negative concord for assessing specific language impairment in child AAE speakers.

In all Sign Languages (SLs) studied to date, negation can be expressed by manual negative signs and by non-manual markers (mostly a headshake). The way these two types of markers interact, however, has been shown to be subject to cross-linguistic variation. In particular, in some SLs, the use of a manual negator is obligatory (e.g. Turkish SL, Italian SL), while in others, clauses are commonly negated by means of a non-manual marker only (e.g. German SL). Moreover, within both groups, some SLs allow for Negative Concord (NC) involving manual negators while others do not. We offer an account of the attested variation within a model that reduces typological differences in the area of sentential negation to differences in feature values associated with negative elements (Zeijlstra 2004). Applying Zeijlstra’s three-way typological distinction, we argue that German SL is a Strict NC language while Turkish SL can be classified as a Non-strict NC language. We further discuss the possibility that Italian SL exemplifies the third type, a Double Negation (DN) language, but conclude that this analysis is faced with empirical problems and that a SL of the DN type is yet to be identified.

In this paper I argue that the set of formal features that can head a functional projection is not predetermined by UG but derived through L1 acquisition. I formulate a hypothesis that says that every functional category F is realised as a semantic feature [F] unless there are overt doubling effects in the L1 input with respect to F; this feature is then analysed as a formal feature [i/uF]. In the first part of the paper I provide a theoretical motivation for this hypothesis, in the second part I test this proposal with a case study, namely the cross-linguistic distribution of Negative Concord (NC). I demonstrate that in NC languages negation must be analysed as a formal feature [i/uNEG], whereas in Double Negation languages this feature remains a semantic feature [NEG] (always interpreted as a negative operator), thus paving the way for an explanation of NC in terms of syntactic agreement. In the third part I argue that the application of the hypothesis to the phenomenon of negation yields two predictions that can be tested empirically. First I demonstrate how this hypothesis predicts negative markers Neg° can be available only in NC languages; second, independent change of the syntactic status of negative markers, can invoke a change with respect to the exhibition of NC in a particular language. Both predictions are proven to be correct. I finally argue what the consequences of the proposal presented in this paper are for both the syntactic structure of the clause and second for the way parameters are associated to lexical items.

Intonational encoding of double negation in Catalan

We provide empirical evidence that colloquial Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is a variable negative concord language, which allows negative indefinites (NIs) to occur in postverbal position without a preverbal negative licensor, as in Vi nada ontem ‘I saw nothing yesterday.’ The results of an online survey (N = 443) distributed via Facebook show that speakers’ acceptability judgments toward the lack of negative concord in BP are closely connected to the frequency of the individual NIs, and in particular to the frequency of V + NI collocations. Speaker judgments are also sensitive to the type frequency and token-type ratio of individual NIs. We conclude that variable negative concord in BP is paradigmatically constrained by the identity of the NI in question.

This paper presents a novel account for the optionality of negative concord observed withneither...norcoordinations, in an otherwise strict negative concord language—Turkish. I argue that the apparently optional negative concord is a surface phenomenon that can be traced back to a structural ambiguity arising from the type-flexibility of coordination operators. The semantic type of the coordination affects its syntactic position relative to the Turkish NegP, which results in different surface facts: whenever theneither...norcoordination is of a generalized quantifier type, it originates in the vP below the NegP, akin to other negative concord items likenobody, triggering negative concord with sentential negation; whenever it is a propositional coordination, it contains the NegP position, and there is no negative concord. We can account for this exceptionally optional negative concord phenomenon by seamlessly importing these facts into an existing negative concord architecture (Zeijlstra 2004, 2012), with no significant modifications. This reductionist analysis contrasts with alternative approaches that explain optionality by adding complexity to the mechanics of the negative concord system (Şener and İşsever 2003 for Turkish; Szabolcsi 2018a for Hungarian). Finally, this account crucially relies on a theory of coordination operators as type-flexible, and therefore contributes an argument against a view of coordinators as having a rigid propositional type (Hirsch 2017; Schein 2017).

Negation is a topic that has received considerable attention ever since the early days of sign language linguistics; also, it is one of the grammatical domains that has given the impetus for sign language typology. In this paper, we offer a typological and theoretical contribution to the study of sign language negation. As for the typological side, we add Georgian Sign Language (GESL) to the pool of languages investigated. Our description reveals that GESL displays a number of typologically unusual features: a considerable number of negative particles, including emphatic, prohibitive, and tense-specific particles; specialized negative modals; and a wide range of possibilities for Negative Concord (NC) involving two manual negative signs, including a unique tense-specific instance of NC. Most of the patterns we report—available negative particles, their clausal position, and NC possibilities—are clearly different from those attested in spoken Georgian. As for the theoretical contribution, we investigate how the highly complex GESL negation system compares to existing taxonomies of NC and Double Negation systems, and we conclude that GESL aligns with certain languages that have been classified as atypical NC languages.

In this chapter, the analysis according to which negative indefinites have to be licensed by sentential negation is extended to languages without negative concord. This step is motivated by a phenomenon negative indefinites in German exhibit: In certain contexts, negative indefinites yield a split reading, where another operator takes scope in between the negative and the indefinite meaning component. This indicates that negation is not interpreted where it is marked morpho-syntactically. An analysis of negative indefinites in German is spelled out, including a detailed investigation of scope splitting in certain constructions (intensional verbs, predicative positions, topic-focus accent). This analysis is compared to other approaches to scope splitting proposed in the literature.

Double negation and negative concord statements content negative markers and express exceptions or unusual occurrences. The purpose of this article is to investigate the process of interpretation for hearers to be able to interpret sentences into either negative concord or double negation sentences. A literature review was used as the method of this article. Two experiments were reviewed in this article. It is implied that the preference of negative concord or double negative interpretations is a bias toward which negation style is acquired first during the linguistic developmental phase of children. It is also implied that redundant information, such as negative concord sentences, is more easily processed than more complex sentences such as double negation sentences. However, evidence state that standard English permits no use of negative concord.

This paper proposes an analysis of the diachrony of negation in German. We suggest that despite the changes in the negation particle and the availability of negative concord (NC), there is a large amount of diachronic continuity both with respect to the syntax of negation in terms of NegP as well as to the semantic status and licensing requirements of the neg-markers. Notably, negative indefinites are licensed throughout the history of German by a covert negation operator in a one-to-one relation. The apparent diachronic continuity in the availability of NC in certain German dialects by contrast is argued to be only of a superficial nature: It is in fact due to diachronic change, as NC is not a homogeneous phenomenon.

In some strict Negative Concord (NC) languages, Negative Concord Items (NCIs) can be freely used in negated clauses, while pronominal Polarity Sensitive Items (PSIs) are blocked. Despite being a strict NC language, Slovene does not exhibit such blocking. This raises the question of why there is more than one pronoun group suitable for use in negated clauses. We seek to provide an answer to this question by offering a comprehensive analysis of the data from the reference corpus Gigafida 2.0. We focus on the scopal interaction between Slovene bare PSI pronouns and different types of clausemate negation, showing that bare pronouns either outscope propositional negation or appear in its scope with the help of “shielding” positive implicatures. Unmodified bare pronouns commonly occur in the scope of presuppositional negation, which is syntactically more distant from them than propositional negation and highlights the contextual activation of the embedded proposition. The pragmatic markedness exhibited by bare pronouns in the scope of negation is expected, as such use is much less prominent in the paradigm of negated clauses.