On the multiple expression of negation in Romance

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to deal with the expression of negation is some Romance languages, and to do so by deriving the so-called “negative concord” phenomena from more general principles and constraints on the occurrence of negative expressions within the clause boundaries. Our proposal is built on two general principles: 1A principle regarding the lexical marking of argument variables in the scope of a negation. This principle says that in a given natural language, there is a way of marking unambiguously an argument variable as having to be interpreted in the scope of clause-mate negation. 2A principle limiting the recursivity of negation within the verb-argument domain. The consequence of this constraint is that there is, in the default case, one negation per clause. Our assumption is that these two principles are generalisations valid for most, if not all, natural languages. In order to cope with most varieties of Romance, we assume that a third principle is necessary: 3A constraint on the distribution of negative expressions in the clause, namely “Negfirst”. This principle requires the presence of a preverbal negative expression in the surface structure of the clause. Principle (3) is neither universal nor specific to Romance languages. It appears nevertheless to constrain a very large set of natural languages, and we will show in this paper how it should be tuned for some Romance languages (Romanian, French and Italian).