Abstract
This article aims at investigating some diachronic aspects of the Italian negative system, considering a time span ranging from Old Latin to Modern Italian. Most of the negative polarity phenomena populating the Modern Italian system are consequences of a crucial change that occurred in Old Latin: The Latin negative morpheme nōn (“not”), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, and became a syntactic (negative) head. This change caused the shift from a double negation system to a negative concord one, which affects many Romance languages (and their dialects). It also determines the availability of the expletive reading of negation in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages (ex. French), calling for a new generalization: only languages (and structures) displaying a negative head allow the expletive interpretation of negation, languages displaying a maximal projection status do not.
Highlights
This article aims at investigating some diachronic aspects of the Italian negative system, considering a time span ranging from Old Latin to Modern Italian
‘I will stay here until John comes’. Both in (3a) and (3b) the temporal subordinate clause should be negative due to the occurrence of the Italian negative morpheme non (‘not’), but it is affirmative, instantiating a case of vacuous—or expletive—negation. The availability of this phenomenon seems to rely on the syntactic status of the negative morpheme that is involved, calling for a new generalization: (4) Generalization: only languages displaying a negative head allow the expletive interpretation of negation, languages displaying a maximal projection status do not
Most of the negative polarity phenomena populating the Modern Italian system are consequences of a crucial change that occurred in Old Latin: The Latin negative morpheme nōn (“not”), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, became a syntactic head
Summary
Latin to Modern Italian: Some Notes on Negation. Languages 7: 46. I will propose that this phenomenon depends on a crucial change that occurred in the syntactic status of the Latin negative morpheme nōn (“not”), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, but it became a syntactic (negative) head over time. This was the result of changes that responded to generalizations, such as those formalized as Jespersen’s Cycle and Spec-to-head principle/Head Preference Principle. The shift from a maximal projection status to a head one had some crucial consequences, such as the availability of the expletive reading of negation in Old and Modern.
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