Some properties of neg-raising in three sign languages

Abstract

Neg-raising, the phenomenon whereby a negation in the main clause of a complex constructionis interpreted as if belonging to the embedded clause, has been intensivelystudied in spoken languages. The same cannot be said for sign languages. In this paper,we investigate the properties of Neg-raising constructions in three sign languages:French Sign Language, Italian Sign Language, and Sign Language of the Netherlands.We report on two syntactic tests we applied to disambiguate Neg-raising and non-Negraisingreadings, showing that Neg-raising constructions have similar properties in thethree sign languages that we studied, as well as in comparable constructions in spokenlanguages. We also discuss some intricate headshake spreading patterns we found inNeg-raising constructions in Sign Language of the Netherlands, a non-manual dominantsign language.