Russian Negative Exclamatives in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Abstract

Relying upon the data of Russian and other languages, this paper discusses various types of negation in exclamatives. It argues that morphological negation is felicitous in exclamatives. However, sentential negation exhibits diversity. Its wide scope variety seems to be absolutely ungrammatical in all the languages under consideration. On the contrary, its narrow scope variety is subject to cross-linguistic variation: some languages exhibit the felicitousness of narrow scope readings in gradable adjectival and quantity exclamatives. Finally, expletive negation makes for a criterion of rhetorical exclamatives.