Negative Indefinites Research Articles

Kein subjects are hard: Exploring German-speaking children’s behavior with negative indefinites

ABSTRACT In this article, we present converging results from three studies investigating children’s production or comprehension of the negative indefinite kein in German. An elicited production study found that 3- to 6-year-old children and adults exhibit different patterns with respect to the production of kein: children, but not adults, exhibit an asymmetry with respect to the position where they produce negative indefinites, in that they use negative indefinites more frequently in object position than in subject position. A corpus study investigating spontaneous speech replicated this asymmetry for children but this time found it also present for adults. Finally, the asymmetry is corroborated by a comprehension study indicating a processing cost for negative indefinite subjects relative to negative indefinite objects. We argue that these patterns are most straightforwardly captured by an explanation that assumes the decomposition approach to the German negative indefinite kein: rather than a single semantic unit (i.e. negative quantifier), kein is decomposed into a negative part and an indefinite part.

On the status of NCIs: An experimental investigation on so-called Strict NC languages

This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions whendhen/nu/newere not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presence in a clausal domain is enough to assign a single negation reading to the whole sequence, thus arguing in support of the hypothesis that in NC structures the minimal semantic requirement to convey single negation is that one or more NCIs encoding a negative feature appear within a sentential domain. We argue that in these structuresdhen/nu/neare the instantiations of a negative feature [neg] disembodied from an indefinite negative NCI in order to obey a syntax–phonology interface constraint.

A new approach to Negative Concord: Catalan as a case in point

In this paper, we revisit the phenomenon of Negative Concord focusing on the Strict vs. Non-Strict divide. With Catalan as a case in point, we show that Negative Concord Items (NCIs) are not negative quantifiers (NQs) or polarity items (PIs) but inherently negative indefinites by virtue of carrying a negative feature [neg] that contributes a negative semantics to the proposition and is subject to a syntax–phonology constraint that forces it to overtly c-command Tense in compliance with Jespersen’s NegFirst principle. We argue that to satisfy such constraint, [neg] can disembody from the NCI via overt Move F(eature) to adjoin at a pre-Infl(ection) position and be Spelled-Out homophonous to the negative marker. The Strict vs. Non-Strict contrast follows from whether [neg] always moves independently from the rest of the NCI via Move F (Strict Negative Concord) or predates, whenever possible, on another movement of the NCI that places [neg] in the required pre-Infl position (Non-Strict Negative Concord) thus not having to disembody.

Negative Concord without Agree: Insights from German, Dutch and English Child Language

Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children’s non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided.

Children’s acquisition of negation in L1 Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that originated in South Africa as a descendent of Dutch. It displays discontinuous sentential negation (SN), where negation is expressed by two phonologically identical negative particles that appear in two different positions in the sentence. The negation system is argued to be an innovation that came about through the reanalysis of a discourse-dependent (pragmatically conditioned) structure in Dutch, reinforced by proponents of the standardisation of Afrikaans who prescriptively imposed a negative concord structure onto the Dutch negation system. The Afrikaans negation system is therefore argued to be artificially created, making it crosslinguistically rare and syntactically complex, the latter possibly having a delaying effect on acquisition. This study investigates both the comprehension and production of negation by young child speakers of Afrikaans. Sentences containing negative indefinites (NIs) ( niks ‘nothing’ and geen ‘no’/ ‘none’ with a final negative particle) are compared with those containing two negative particles (referred to as SN), which are syntactically less complex. We examined (1) whether the comprehension of sentences with NIs is more difficult to acquire than that of sentences using SN and (2) when and how negation is produced by young children. Data were collected through a picture selection task (comprehension) and recordings of spontaneous speech during free play (production). Results show that the comprehension of SN was acquired before that of NI, indicating that sentences containing NIs were indeed more difficult to comprehend than those containing SN. The production data showed that even the youngest participants (age 3;0) could produce grammatically well-formed negated constructions, but that errors occurred until age 4;3. In comparison with that found for other West Germanic languages, Afrikaans’ complex system of expressing negation seems to have a delaying effect on the comprehension of negation, specifically NIs, but not on production.

Flexible syntax–prosody mapping of Intonational Phrases in the context of varying verb height

AbstractThis paper provides new evidence in support of the hypothesis that the syntax–prosody mapping of Intonational Phrases is flexible (Hamlaoui and Szendrői 2015). In the traditional ‘rigid’ approaches, Intonational Phrases are taken to map onto particular syntactic projections. In contrast, in the ‘flexible’ approach, the Intonational Phrase corresponds to the highest projection of the verb (HVP). Accordingly, the ‘flexible’ approach predicts that the HVP should also determine the size of Intonational Phrases in a language where the verb height depends on the utterance type. Our evidence comes from a language of this type, Iron Ossetic (East Iranian). First, we demonstrate that verbs in Iron Ossetic occupy different functional heads in different contexts. Then, based on novel prosodic data, we show that the HVP indeed directly determines the size of Intonational Phrases in clauses with narrow foci and negative indefinites. Additionally, in wh-questions, language-specific mapping constraints come into play.

Neg-phrases in Eton (Bantu): An HPSG-analysis

This paper presents a study of so-called neg-phrases in Eton, a negative concord language spoken in Cameroon. These phrases strongly resemble negated noun phrases that consist of a negative determiner and a noun, however, I will show that Eton neg-phrases are built differently. Reconciling the non-negative approach to negative indefinites by Penka & Zeijlstra (2005) and the negative approach by Richter & Sailer (2004a,b, 2006), I will argue that Eton neg-phrases consist of an inherently negative modifier and a non-negative indefinite derived from a noun. Embedding the analysis in Lexical Resource Semantics, I will reveal the inherent negativity of Eton neg-phrases and account for their composition by using a lexical rule based on the semantic approach to noun phrases by Beavers (2003).

Negative Concord in Jamaican

This study aims to account for some dimensions of the strictness and of what will be called the ‘range’ of Negative Concord in Jamaican (also ‘Jamaican Creole’ or ‘Patwa’) and in so doing to increase our typological understanding of Negative Concord. As to the strictness, parameters will be the position of the negative indefinite relative to the verb, the pronominal vs. nominal nature of the negative indefinite, and the phonetic closeness of positive and negative auxiliaries. As to the range, it will be shown how Jamaican Negative Concord allows the privative preposition (‘without’) as a trigger and the non-indefinites ‘not at all’ and ‘neither’ as targets. It will also be shown how strictness and range interact. Throughout – and also in the negative spread pattern, the pattern with two or more negative indefinites – it will be argued that the main exponent of negation in the Negative Concord constellation is the clausal negator, which allows the negative indefinite to be interpreted as negative by association only. This results in a negative polarity reading, which then allows non-negative though still negatively polar and free choice uses.

Prosody and the meanings of English negative indefinites

This paper investigates the acoustic correlates of single and Double Negation (DN) readings of English negative indefinites in question–answer pairs. Productions of four negative words (no one, nobody, nothing, and nowhere) were elicited from 20 native English speakers as responses to negative questions such as “What didn't you eat?” in contexts designed to generate either a single negation reading or a logically affirmative DN reading. A control condition with no negation in the question was employed for comparison. A verification question following each item determined whether tokens were interpreted as expected and, therefore, produced with the target interpretation. Statistical analysis of the f0 curves revealed a significant difference: DN is associated with a higher fundamental frequency than single negation. In contrast, the single negative and control conditions were not significantly different with respect to f0. Analysis of the verification question responses showed significant differences between all three conditions (Control > DN > single negation), suggesting that single negation is more difficult to interpret than DN as a response to a negative question. The results are compared with previous work on Romance, and we demonstrate how English behaves like a prototypical Negative Concord language in that DN is the prosodically marked form.

Negative Indefinites in the history of Portuguese : the case of <em>nemigalha</em>

This paper focuses on negative indefinites in Portuguese, paying particular attention to nemigalha, a negative indefinite that disappeared from the language around the 16th century. We claim that nemigalha originates from the reanalysis of the negative particle nem and the minimizer migalha in an early stage of the language, starting as a weak negative polarity item and then becoming a strong negative polarity item, in the sense of Martins (1997, 2000). It is well known that minimizers can grammaticalize into intrinsically negative items, being good candidates to undergo the Jespersen Cycle (Jespersen 1917). Although that was not the case of nemigalha, it completed all the grammaticalization stages proposed by Garzonio & Poletto (2008, 2009), losing all the properties of a common noun and being able to stand alone as the only negative marker in preverbal position. The comparison between nemigalha and the negative indefinite nada shows that both items exhibited similar behaviour and occurred in identical contexts, probably acting as competing items until nemigalha’s disappearance. Furthermore, a few examples from the 16th century suggest that nemigalha might have become a more functional item, participating as a negation marker in presuppositional contexts (cf. Larrivée 2010 and Hansen 2013).

Integrating syntactic theory and variationist analysis: The structure of negative indefinites in regional dialects of British English

This paper integrates syntactic theory and variationist analysis in an investigation of the variation between English not-negation (I don’t have any money), no-negation (I have no money) and negative concord (I don’t have no money). Using corpora of three varieties of UK English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside and Salford respectively, I test two theoretical accounts of the variation. Account 1 applies Zeijlstra’s (2004) agreement-based theory of negative concord to all three variants, such that n-words (e.g. nobody) which feature in no-negation and negative concord are not inherently negative but agree with a negative operator in a higher NegP. Under Account 2, no-negation is instead derived via negative-marking within the DP followed by movement to the higher NegP for sentential scope (Kayne 1998; Svenonius 2002; Zeijlstra 2011). These accounts, together with observations about the raising properties of functional versus lexical verbs, lead to the formulation of different hypotheses about the distribution of variants in speech according to verb type, verb phrase complexity, and the discourse status of the propositions expressed. Results of distributional analysis and mixed-effects modelling support Account 2 of the variation over Account 1, suggesting structural identity between not-negation and negative concord (in contrast to no-negation). This supports Tubau’s (2016) proposal that English negative indefinites have two distinct structures: one in which negation is marked syntactically in the DP and one in which they agree with a syntactically-higher NegP.

Parallelism for (Negative) Indefinites under VP Ellipsis

Parallelism for (Negative) Indefinites under VP Ellipsis

How (Not) to Elide Negation

AbstractThis paper examines the behavior of English negative indefinites under VP ellipsis. The main empirical observation is that negative indefinites cannot take scope out of a verbal ellipsis site. We propose that negative indefinites involve fusion under adjacency between the clausal polarity head and an indefinite determiner and that this adjacency comes about under multidominance. Multidominance can feed the morphological coalescence of two syntactic terminals that on the surface do not appear to be linearly adjacent. The claim that there is a morphological relation between these two heads—rather than a syntactic one—is supported by the fact that it can be bled by ellipsis. Given that ellipsis is a process at Phonological Form (PF), it can block fusion, thus preventing high scope of negative indefinites out of an ellipsis site.

Variation as a testing ground for grammatical theory

This paper addresses the contribution that corpus-based studies of syntactic variation can make to the construction, elaboration and testing of formal syntactic theories, with a particular focus on the testing dimension. In particular, I present a new empirical study of obligatory and optional asymmetric negative concord phenomena, and I show how an influential analysis for obligatory concord patterns (de Swart, 2010) can be tested using variation data through looking at the predictions that its natural probabilistic extension makes for the forms, interpretations and frequency distributions of expressions in languages in which asymmetric concord is optional. In obligatory negative concord languages like Spanish, negative indefinites, such asnadie‘no one’, appear bare in preverbal position (i.e. in an expression like Nadieha venido‘No one came’), but they co-occur with the negative markernoin postverbal negative concord structures such as Nohe visto anadie ‘I did not see anyone.’ (lit. ‘I did not see no one.’). Furthermore, in this language, co-occurrence between a negative marker and an n-word is either prohibited (*Nadie noha venido), or it is obligatory (*He visto anadie). Québec French shows a variable version of the Spanish pattern in which the negation marker optionally co-occurs with postverbal negative indefinites (J’ai (pas) vupersonne ‘I saw no one’) but is prohibited with preverbal negative indefinites*Personneestpasvenu(Ok: Personneest venu.‘No one came’). I show how the predictions for Montréal French of de Swart’s analysis of Spanish can be tested (and, in this case, mostly verified) using a quantitative study of the distribution of bare and concord structures in theMontréal 84corpus of spoken Montréal French (Thibault & Vincent, 1990) through looking at its natural extension within Boersma (1998)’s stochastic generalization of the Optimality Theory framework, which is the framework in which de Swart’s proposal is set.

Negation and indefinites in Late Latin

In this paper I investigate the interplay between sentential negation and indefinites in some Late Latin texts (since the 3rd century AD), with the aim of tracing back to this stage later developments affecting the early Romance languages. I argue that the persistence of Object-Verb order with negative indefinites in Late Latin is a sign of an early restructuring in the system of sentential negation, preluding to the early Romance systems. I propose a parsimonious interpretation of this diachronic process in terms of one crucial change in the formal features of the negative marker nōn, with a number of significant consequences for its relationship with the indefinite pronouns.

Negative sensitive items and the discourse-configurational nature of Japanese

We take up three Negative Sensitive Items (NSIs) in Japanese, Wh-MO plain negative indefinites, exceptive XP-sika, and certain minimizing indefinites, such as rokuna N (‘any decent N’). Although these three NSIs behave differently, we demonstrate that the two traditional NSI categories of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) and Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are sufficient for characterizing these items. We argue that Wh-MO and XP-sika are NCIs, thus they contain a neg feature ([uneg]) which enters into (upward) agreement with its corresponding an uninterpretable feature ([ineg]). The third NSI, rokuna N, is an NPI. Two issues arise with XP-sika. First, it has an inherent focus feature, which distinguishes it from the other two. Second, this focus feature is syntactically active – meaning that movement is forced – only for the argument XP-sika. We argue that these properties of XP-sika associated with focus are independent of NP-sika as an NSI, and should be dealt with as an overall property of Japanese being a discourse configurational language. We introduce a case-theoretic solution to how focus becomes syntactically active solely with argument XP-sika.

Negation and Negative Dependencies

Languages may vary greatly in the way they express negation. Most languages exploit specifically designated negative markers, such as English not. Many languages may also use negative indefinites (such as English nobody or nothing) to express negation. The behavior of these negative indefinites is subject to crosslinguistic variation: In some languages, negative markers and negative indefinites cannot express a single semantic negation (nobody didn't come means that everybody came and not that nobody came), but in other languages they can. Languages with these properties, such as Italian, are called Negative Concord languages. In this review, I discuss the difference between negative indefinites in languages that exhibit Negative Concord and languages that do not. I also compare the behaviors of negative indefinites in languages that exhibit Negative Concord and so-called Negative Polarity Items. This article provides an accurate overview of recent developments in the study of negation and negative dependencies.

On the syntax of English minimizers

The syntactic behaviour of English minimizers such as (not) a/one word, (not) a/one bit and (not) sleep a/one wink is puzzling: while they can behave as polarity items (PIs) in non-negative and negative contexts, they become negative quantifiers (NQs) when merged with a negation in negative contexts. Unlike previous accounts, where emphasis is put mainly on highlighting the similarity of minimizers to any-PIs and on supporting the contribution of an even-reading, I integrate the peculiar behaviour of minimizers in English within an analysis of negative indefinites as existential quantifiers that can structurally associate with negation in different ways. I claim that English minimizers contain three basic ingredients: a Numeral Phrase, a Focus particle and, in negative contexts, a Negative Phrase, not. The presence of a Focus particle even in the structure of minimizers plus the flexible merging possibilities of not with respect to the other two components of the minimizer result in their NQ-like behaviour, which can be now fully integrated into a theory of negative indefinites as syntactic objects that are compositionally built.

Not a light negation

In languages like Dutch and German, certain instances of negation, such as negated indefinites, are ruled out in out-of-the-blue contexts, i.e. with the unmarked reading where negation outscopes an unfocused indefinite (*Er kann nicht eine Fremdsprache ('He speaks not a foreign language')). Such instances are, however, fine in NPI licensing contexts. Schwarz (2004) and Bhatt & Schwarz (2006) argue that in such cases the negative marker is not a plain negation, but rather a homophonous marker of light negation, which they take to be an NPI. In this paper I argue, though, that this phenomenon can be explained by adopting standard pragmatic assumptions. In short, I argue that such instances of negation are bad due to the existence of some alternative expression that only conveys the unmarked reading (in this example an expression containing a negative indefinite: er kann keine Fremdsparache (‘he speaks no foreign language’)). Uttering a less simple construction, such as the example above with the negated indefinite, will give rise to an implicature that states that the speaker does not intend such utterances with their unmarked readings, since the unmarked reading could have been conveyed in a simpler manner. This implicature, then, is suppressed in NPI licensing contexts.

A bidirectional Optimality Theoretic analysis of multiple negative indefinites in Afrikaans

In the literature on negation, Afrikaans is generally categorised as a negative concord language. Unlike most other negative concord languages though, utterances containing multiple indefinites in the scope of negation are typically produced with a combination of one negative indefinite and one (or more) non-negative indefinite, or negative polarity item, as in (i). (i) Ons het niemand ooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there pst-see sn ‘We never saw anybody there.’ However, although prohibited in formal, standard Afrikaans, where such utterances are prescriptively assigned a double negation meaning (O$x 1 O$x 2 ) and produced with a specific prosodic contour, in colloquial Afrikaans it is also possible to produce multiple negative indefinites with a single, or negative concord, meaning, as in (ii). (ii) Ons het niemand nooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there pst-see sn ‘We never saw anybody there.’ (¬$x 1 $x 2 ) Standard analyses of negative concord as presented in the literature do not account for the alternation of indefinites and negative indefinites in (i) vs. (ii), or the potential availability of both negative concord and double negation readings for the utterance in (ii). Perception experiments show that grammaticality judgements, by native speakers of Afrikaans, of multiple negative indefinites presented as auditory stimuli exhibit gradient acceptability in relation to combinations of negative indefinites and non-negative indefinites. Furthermore, this experimental data indicates that listeners use sentence prosody to assist in the interpretation of potentially ambiguous sentences containing multiple negative indefinites. The gradience of acceptability of multiple negative indefinite combinations is mirrored in turn by the frequency of such constructions in a written corpus of Afrikaans. In this paper, we account for this variation in the expression and interpretation of multiple indefinites in the scope of negation within the framework of stratified bidirectional Optimality Theory (OT). Such an analysis fills a gap in the typology of negation in accounting for alternation between negative and non-negative indefinites in the production of standard and colloquial Afrikaans, as observed through corpus and experimental data, and allows for a prosodically constrained ambiguity between single and double negation readings.