Abstract
This paper examines the interaction between negation and some expressions of bouletic modality. Whereas most other types of modals may scope below negation, expressions of bouletic modality in the form of hortative and optative markers never do. The distribution of high adverbials, as well as co-occurrence possibilities with a negative head, such as French ne, reveal that hortatives and optatives do not target the same position: they occupy two different heads within the left peripheral structure. However, it is argued that the syntax of the bouletic operator, which is analyzed as involving high left-peripheral positions, prevents the negative marker from syntactically and semantically scoping over it. This is shown to also correlate with access to metalinguistic negation interpretations. While with the adequate context, the bouletic operators examined here are compatible with metalinguistic negation, no wide scope interpretation above the bouletic modal content is accessible. This is exactly the contexts in which the negative head is syntactically banned. It is proposed that these observations constitute evidence for the fact that metalinguistic negation requires specific syntactic conditions, namely access to a high contrast-related position. Metalinguistic negation is obviously triggered by contextual input, but, at least in the cases examined here, is not blind to syntax.
Highlights
This paper examines the interaction between negation and some expressions of bouletic modality
It was tentatively proposed that they are “frozen” in this position. Their bouletic feature is checked with the bouletic head, creating a chain which scopes over the rest of the clause
I propose a higher granularity of the left periphery, where, in addition to positions dedicated to epistemic modality and speech act mood as proposed in Cinque (1999), a speaker-related position associated with bouletic modality is included: (60) a.Fine-grained hierarchy of heads encoding expressions of modality: (..) Mood bouletic [optative]> Mood [imperative] > Moodeistemic ...[NegP ]
Summary
This paper stems from the observation that some expressions of bouletic modality behave in an unexpected way with respect to negation in its metalinguistic interpretation. Optatives occur in various guises, such as a fronted modal (English), fronted subjunctive verb form (French, for example), or dedicated mood markers (as in Hungarian for example) Both hortatives and optatives are expressions of the speaker’s desire that some situation be brought about, and as such, can be viewed as expressions of bouletic modality (see section 3 for a detailed discussion). The reverse pattern is, on the other hand, not accessible Another observation is that, in the same circumstances, a metalinguistic reading of negation is restricted to narrow scope with respect to the modality marker (3c). This leads us to the hypotheses that the paper will propose to verify (2.5).
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