Abstract
This study investigates a putative case of negative concord in Southern Min where two negatives (m‘not’ and bian ‘need.not’) co-occur without canceling each other out semantically. Contra common belief, I argue that Southern Min does not have negative concord. Corpus data on m-bian and m-tioh are examined, where tioh ‘need’ and bian are necessity modal counterparts. Corpus findings reveal that negativity in m participates in neither m-bian nor m-tioh in semantics. Feature loss is discovered in m, which is then taken as evidence for m being a new category other than negative. I analyze m under investigation as mood, situated in the discourse layer.
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