The interaction of negation with focus: ne…ne… phrases in Turkish

Abstract

This article is an attempt to investigate subject and object phrases coordinated with ne… ne ‘neither …nor’ in Turkish. Arguing against the common Turkological practice, it is suggested that the use of subject or object ne… ne phrases with negative predicates, in addition to those with non-negative predicates, is well-motivated in terms of their information structure. In other words, ne… ne phrases with negative and non-negative predicates differentiate for their focal properties and this is reflected in their information structures. In accordance with the generalizations reached in terms of their information structures, the syntactic behavior of subject and object ne… ne phrases in matrix and embedded clauses is given an account within the minimalist framework of Chomsky (Chomsky, N., 1995. Categories and transformations. In: The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). Bošković and Takahashi's [Ling. Inquiry 29 (1998) 347] arguments for lowering at LF are also adopted to overcome the problems raised by the ne… ne phrases in embedded clauses.