Abstract

In the literature on negation, Afrikaans is generally categorised as a negative concord language. Unlike most other negative concord languages though, utterances containing multiple indefinites in the scope of negation are typically produced with a combination of one negative indefinite and one (or more) non-negative indefinite, or negative polarity item, as in (i). (i) Ons het niemand ooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there pst-see sn ‘We never saw anybody there.’ However, although prohibited in formal, standard Afrikaans, where such utterances are prescriptively assigned a double negation meaning (O$x 1 O$x 2 ) and produced with a specific prosodic contour, in colloquial Afrikaans it is also possible to produce multiple negative indefinites with a single, or negative concord, meaning, as in (ii). (ii) Ons het niemand nooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there pst-see sn ‘We never saw anybody there.’ (¬$x 1 $x 2 ) Standard analyses of negative concord as presented in the literature do not account for the alternation of indefinites and negative indefinites in (i) vs. (ii), or the potential availability of both negative concord and double negation readings for the utterance in (ii). Perception experiments show that grammaticality judgements, by native speakers of Afrikaans, of multiple negative indefinites presented as auditory stimuli exhibit gradient acceptability in relation to combinations of negative indefinites and non-negative indefinites. Furthermore, this experimental data indicates that listeners use sentence prosody to assist in the interpretation of potentially ambiguous sentences containing multiple negative indefinites. The gradience of acceptability of multiple negative indefinite combinations is mirrored in turn by the frequency of such constructions in a written corpus of Afrikaans. In this paper, we account for this variation in the expression and interpretation of multiple indefinites in the scope of negation within the framework of stratified bidirectional Optimality Theory (OT). Such an analysis fills a gap in the typology of negation in accounting for alternation between negative and non-negative indefinites in the production of standard and colloquial Afrikaans, as observed through corpus and experimental data, and allows for a prosodically constrained ambiguity between single and double negation readings.

Highlights

  • IntroductionIn the literature on negation, Afrikaans is generally categorised as a negative concord language, a language which makes use of multiple instances of negation to express a single negation, as Afrikaans sentences typically contain a sentence-medial negative marker nie, or a negative indefinite as well as a sentence-final negative marker nie (indicated by SN in the gloss), as illustrated in (1)

  • We are left with the form nooit niks as the optimal form for expressing the meaning x1 x2, and vice versa. This analysis is able to account for the observation that in prescriptive, standard Afrikaans, the way of realising indefinites in the scope of negation is with negative indefinite (NI-NNI) combinations, while MNI combinations always yield a double negation reading, the account presented here does not accommodate the observation that a particular double negation prosodic contour is necessary for the latter

  • We have shown that multiple indefinites in the scope of negation are generally realised by one negative indefinite together with any number of non-negative indefinites, it is possible for MNI constructions to occur in Afrikaans

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Summary

Introduction

In the literature on negation, Afrikaans is generally categorised as a negative concord language, a language which makes use of multiple instances of negation to express a single negation, as Afrikaans sentences typically contain a sentence-medial negative marker nie, or a negative indefinite as well as a sentence-final negative marker nie (indicated by SN in the gloss), as illustrated in (1).. A bidirectional Optimality Theoretic analysis of multiple negative indefinites in Afrikaans 139 negative indefinites (MNIs), expressing a single negation, as illustrated by the sentences in (2). In such cases, the interpretation of MNIs can be analysed through resumptive quantification (De Swart and Sag 2002).. That negative indefinites in standard, prescriptive Afrikaans cannot co-occur with other negative indefinites expressing a single logical negation, while at the same time always cooccurring with a marker of sentential negation, sentence-final nie, is a contradiction that is largely ignored in the literature (some exceptions being Molnárfi 2004, Biberauer 2009, Huddlestone 2010 and Biberauer and Zeijlstra 2012).

Acceptability and preferred interpretation of multiple negative indefinites
Multiple indefinites in the scope of negation in standard Afrikaans
Multiple negative indefinites in colloquial Afrikaans
Findings
Conclusion
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