Finiteness, negation and the directionality of headedness in Bangla

Abstract

This paper investigates a pattern in the South Asian language Bangla which strongly resembles the finite/non-finite positioning of verbs in English and French reported in Pollock (1989). In finite clauses in Bangla, verbs precede negation, as in English, while in non-finite clauses verbs follow negation, as in French. The paper considers whether the analysis of (leftwards) movement of the verb to Tense/Agreement in finite clauses argued for by Pollock for French should be assumed to operate in the SOV language Bangla as well, potentially supporting a Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) head-initial analysis of Bangla, which has elsewhere regularly been taken to be a head-final language. Considering other patterns in the language relating to negative polarity item (NPI) licensing and quantifier scope in finite and non-finite clauses, it is argued that a leftwards head-movement analysis is unable to account for such patterns. A different analysis of the alternating position of negation and verbs is then suggested, which attributes this to the realization of negation either in the specifier or head position of NegP, drawing on Pollock’s (1989) analysis of the dual location of negative morphemes in French and on much recent work on alternations between specifier and head lexicalization (van Gelderen 2004 and others).