Abstract
Witnessing that French N-words successfully pass the tests for negativity discussed in Zanuttini (1991, Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation: A comparative study of Romance Languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania) for Italian, and in Giannakidou (1997, The Landscape of Polarity Items. Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics 18) for Greek, I claim that they are intrinsically negative (Mathieu, 1999, wh in-situ and the intenvention effect. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 441–472; de Swart ans Sag, 2002, Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 373–417.). Because they show semantico-syntactic properties similar to ∀Qs, I claim that they are negative ∀Qs, with the negative operator scoping over the universal operator. My account brings up a new view on French N-words, which are traditionally analysed as indefinites (Déprez, 1997, Probus 9: 103–143; Rowlett, 1998, Sentential Negation in French. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; Mathieu, 1999, wh in-sita and the intervention effect. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 11: 441–472.), as well as a new typology of ∀Qs.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
I use the terms ‘local’, ‘phrasal’, ‘constituent’ and ‘parasitic’ negation interchangeably. They all must be distinguished from sentential negation, which operates over the whole sentence.
- 3.
I am only interested in spoken French. It is however true that formal written French requires ne to appear in negative sentence. Thanks to Ur Shlonsky for pointing this out to me.
- 4.
Because it is not the aim of this work to discuss this issue, I leave it for future research.
- 5.
A potential problem raised by G.puskás (p.c) is that the paraphrase of (19) suggests the following meaning: it is not the case that all the students have passed the exam. In Section 4.1.2.2 I show that pas in (19) takes scope over the ∀Q obligatorily (NPI licensing is a case in point). (19) then must be distinguished from (i), where the sentence is scopally negative, i.e. in (19), there is an ‘event’ of succeeding the exam, while in (i), there is no event of roses being bought by students/it is not the case that students brought roses:
(i)
Pas un étudiant a amené de roses
not a student has bought roses
- 6.
Godard 2004 points out that the sequence non (pas) ‘no not’ signals constituent negation.
- 7.
Zwarts 1998 showed that negative Ops exhibit different degrees of negative strength (i).
(i) Anti-morphic ⊆ anti-additive ⊆ decreasing ⊆ non-veridical
- 8.
The role of syntax has first been noticed by Linebarger 1980: in (i) any must be in the immediate scope of a decreasing operator and means that there are no earrings that she wore to every party, and not that It wasn't to every party that she wore any earrings.
(i)
She didn’t wear any earrings to every party
(Acquaviva 1997, (23b))
- 9.
By the De Morgan Laws (i), anti-additive Operators are those that bear out only (ia):
(i)
a.
¬(A ∨ B) = ¬ A ∧ ¬B
b.
¬(A ∧ B) = ¬A ∨ ¬B
A function ƒ is anti-additive iff ƒ(A∪ B) → ƒ(A) ∩ ƒ(B).
- 10.
The same is valid for every (ex. from Geurts):
(i)
Everyone who had any luck will pass the exam
(ii) *
Everyone who passes the exam must have any luck
- 11.
For some reasons, pas cannot negate chacun ‘each’ (see also Section 3.1.2):
(i)
a. *
Chacun des enfants a pas mangé des pâtes
each of.the children has not eaten pasta
b. *
Pas chacun des enfants a mangé des pâtes
c. *
Les enfants ont pas chacun mangé des pâtes
d. *
Juliette a pas mangé chacune des pâtes
The impossibility of negating chacun seems to be tied to its distributive status, whereas tous is ambiguous between a collective and a distributive reading (see Beghelli and Stowell 1997; Chapter 3, Section 3.1.2.2). For this reason, only sequences with pas and tous are regarded.
- 12.
A sentence with a ∀Q subject and sentence medial negation is bizarre (Zeijlstra 2004). Yet it is productive in spoken French and speakers give uncontroversial judgments: the only possible reading is (¬ >∀). ‘When negation is present, it must take scope over the ∀Q and its restriction, but not over the whole sentence’ (http://www.lexilogos.com/, my translation). Intonation is neutral on both items. I think that their awkward status is due to the fact that
these sentences are hard to parse as surface structure suggests an interpretation in which the ∀Q scopes over negation. Moreover, there is a much easier way to produce a clause with the same reading (¬ >∀ ), namely by putting the negation in front of the universal quantifier at surface structure. In sum, I assume that clauses with an ∀-subject are generally blocked by the existences of sentences like [(56b, my example)], where the interpretation is identical, but which are more easy to parse. Zeijlstra 2004 :187
- 13.
If ∀Q is stressed, then surface scope results (in the examples under discussion). I leave this open for discussion and concentrate mainly on neutral constructions.
- 14.
- 15.
If full ∀Qs must reconstruct, then they are interpreted in their base (A)-position: the argument of the verb is the associate-DP, over which ∀Q adjoins. FQs cannot reconstruct, i.e. they must occupy a distinct position from full ∀Qs, i.e. an ‘adverbial’ adjoined position. The argument of the verb is generated in a A-position (see also Baunaz 2008).
- 16.
For Genoveva Puskás (p.c), given an appropriate context, (64a) is grammatical without ne, with pas scoping over the VP mange du chocolat only, and not over the event itself. This phrasal interpretation is not easily obtained (Christopher Laenzlinger, p.c). Souvent would be required to scope over pas in (68a), yielding a frequency of a negative action, i.e. with the meaning all the children often did not eat chocolate, which is bizarre.
- 17.
Pas un occurs only in subject position (see also Godard 2004:354, fn.6). I tentatively propose that un N in pas un N constructions under discussion is the indefinite counterpart of de N ‘of.N’, the only obvious difference being that de N only appear in object position. In that position, pas is an adverbial and yields a non-canonical quantification structure (in the sense of Obenauer 1983, 1984, Doetjes 1997). Compare pas with beaucoup (i) , where beaucoup in (ia-b) is an adnominal Q, while in (ic) , it is a VP adjoined element:
(i)
a.
Beaucoup de garçons ont vu Marie
a’.
Pas un garçon a vu Marie
A lot of boys have seen Marie
Not a boy has seen Marie
b.
Marie a vu beacuoup de garçons
b.’
——————————-
M. has seen a lot of boys
c.
Marie a beaucoup vu de garçons
c’.
Marie a pas vu de garçon
Marie has a lot seen of boys
Marie has not seen of.boy
Classically, non-canonical quantification structures have adverbials for Qs. (Sentential) pas is an abverb. The question that arises is that of the position of pas/beaucoup: is pas in pas .. de N moved to NegP, or is it base-generated there ? My analysis of pas un N favors the former solution; Doetjes 1997 argues for the latter (for Ihsane (p.c), de Ns in negative sentences are analogous to beaucoup de Ns, yet involving a non-overt quantity). I leave this for further research.
- 18.
Object-related FQs and parasitic pas share an important property: both can be separated from their domain of operation (the associate DP) by past participles. Object-related pas resembles tous in (i). Like pas, tous c-commands the object, suggesting leftward tous float and Neg raising:
(i)
J’ai tous voulu les voir
I have all wanted them see
‘I want to see them all’
- 19.
Pas tous les N as a cluster in object position is not easy to get. Out-of-the-blue, the sentence in (ib) is ungrammatical, and some context (if pas receives some light stress and pas tous les cocas is a subset of the set of bottles in the fridge) is necessary to improve the sentence (hence the ‘??’ in (76b)). The same contrast does not save pas un N in object position, drawing, again, a clear contrast between the two sequences:
(i)
a.
?
J'ai bu pas tous les coca, d'ailleurs, y en a encore dans le frigo
‘I didn’t drink all the bottles, besides there are more of them in the fridge’
b.
*
J’ai bu pas un cosmo, d’ailleurs y en avait plus dans le frigo
‘I didn’t drink a single cosmo, beside there wasn’t any in the fridge’
- 20.
Two questions remain: (i) why can NegP be projected in (76a)? (while it cannot in (76a/b)) and (ii) why does object-related pas favor clause medial positions rather than within the DP? as said above, (i) and (ii) are related to the fact that tous les N appears in object position.
- 21.
Thanks to Lorenza Russo for the Italian judgments, Antonio Leoni de leon, Oscar Diaz and Selja Sepällä for the Spanish judgments, Eric Haeberli, Yves Scherrer and Tom Leu for the German judgments, and Greg Ellison for the English ones.
- 22.
Genoveva Puskás (p.c) notes that with the right kind of intonation, German speakers do get the inverse scope (and contrastive topic interpretation as well). In this case, yet, it involves a particular information structure, necessarily different from the neutral information structure, which underlies the whole dissertation. See Molna´r 1998 and references cited there.
- 23.
For Corblin et al. 2004, the co-occurrence of two N-words with overt restrictions yields Double Negation obligatory (see also Déprez 2000). To my ear and the Swiss French speakers asked, this sentence has a DN reading iff the first N-word is stressed, i.e. there might be linguistic variations, though I am not sure why it should be so. This question is left open for discussion.
- 24.
Thanks to Marcel den Dikken for this point.
- 25.
Italian seems to be halfway between French and Greek: as Zanuttini 1991 shows, N-words in Italian are Negative Qs, but the negative marker non is obligatory only when the N-word is post-verbal, but not when it appears with a pre-verbal N-word. In Greek dhen is always obligatory, and in French pas cannot show up. Another difference between the three languages at stake is the fact that Italian N-words can have non-negative readings, as in the interrogative sentence in (i):
(i)
Ha telefonato nessuno?
Has called
anybody
- 26.
The presence of negation in the elliptical part is impossible, as (ia) illustrates, since pas ‘not’ is excluded from the NC-system of French, but compulsory in Greek and Japanese (Watanabe 2004). Recall that DN is extremely difficult with the French sentential marker, unless it triggers emphatic stress. The elided material must be identical to its antecedent (ib) (Merchant 2001). Hence, if the full structure is to be spelled out, only (ib) is grammatical.
(i)
a. *
Je veux marier Anne et/ou [je ne veux pas marier] personne (d’autre)
I want marry A. and/or [I NE want not marry ] nobody
(else)
b.
Je veux marier Anne et/ou [je (ne) veux marier] personne (d’autre)
I want marry A. and/or [I NE want marry ] nobody
(else)
‘I want to marry either Anne or I do not want to marry anybody (else)’
This analysis crucially relies on the idea that the elided material refers to its antecedent, i.e. je ne veux pas marier /je veux marier. Note that (ii) is bad because pas and personne cannot co-occur without yielding DN. DN is unavailable since pas occurs in the elided material (and as such cannot be emphasized), and the sentence is ungrammatical:
(ii)
*
Je ne veux pas marier Anne et/ou je ne veux pas marier] personne
I NE want not marry A. and/or [I NE want not marry ] nobody (else)
‘I do not want to marry either Anne and I do not want to marry anybody (else)’
Hence (i) suggests that personne is intrinsically negative: if the elliptical part contains a negative element, the sentence is out if the negative element within the elided material is interpreted.
- 27.
I have established that N-words are negative. When multiple N-words occur in the same clause, two readings are available: NC and D(ouble) N(egation) (the unmarked reading is NC. Yet depending on the intonation, DN can show up (see Corblin et al. 2004)). The question to be answered is how the disappearance of negation in NC is possible without losing compositionality. Since it is not the aim of this paper to discuss in details the semantic process of NC, I refer the reader to Ladusaw 1992, Zanuttini 1991, Zanuttini and Haegeman 1991, Haegeman 1995, Mathieu 2002, Déprez 1997, 2000 and de Swart and Sag 2002 (a.o).
- 28.
Zanuttini 1991:138 concludes that N-words are
quantifiers consisting of two semantic components, a quantificational and a negative element. While being one constituent from the syntactic point of view, they differ from other quantifiers in the language in having to satisfy the requirements of both their semantic components, the quantificational and the negative one. Hence, unlike non-negative quantifiers, they have the requirement that they must raise to a position where the negative component can enter a configuration of Spec-Head agreement with a functional element of type X° which has negative features.
Greek N-words are not intrinsically negative, rather they are ‘polarity sensitive ∀Qs which need negation in order to be licensed, but must rise above negation in order to yield the ordering ∀ ¬’ (Giannakidou 2000:1). They can appear in non-negative contexts, unlike in French (see Section 4.1.3). She claims that NC languages such as Greek involve ∀Qs scoping over negation. This order is finally obtained via LF-movement (corresponding to QR) of ∀Q in a wide scope position.
- 29.
These data contrast with Kayne’s 1981 examples in (i), which display a subject-object asymmetry. Yet, in the variety of French discussed here, there is no subject-object asymmetry with respect to LF-raising: the sentences in (i) are starred, i.e. French N-words are clause-bound.
(i)
a.
Je ne demande que la police arrête personne
I NE ask that the police arrest no one
‘I do not ask that the police arrest anyone’
b.
*
Je ne demande que personne soit arrêté
I NE ask that no one be arrested
- 30.
Scoping outside the embedded verb is only possible under modal verbs (i). In (i) no modal is involved: Décider involves a control structure. As (ia) illustrates, if the ne is in the matrix clause, the sentence is ungrammatical, suggesting that personne cannot scope outside CPs, i.e. it is clause-bound. This fact strengthens my point. It also suggests that embedded clause under modals are cases of restructuring. More work needs to be done, though.
(i)
a.
*
Juliette ne décide de voir personne
Juliette NE decides C see.inf. nobody
b.
Juliette décide de ne voir personne
Juliette decides C NE see nobody
- 31.
The relevance of this test for us is to show that personne patterns like tous les N rather than chacun des N. Zanuttini 1991 and Giannakidou 2000 argue that Italian and Greek ∀Qs can be modified by the degree adverb ‘almost’, just like N-words. In French toutes les filles and personne are modifiable by presque ‘almost’, (113); ∃Qs aren’t (i):
(i)
a. *
Presqu’une fille a mangé des sushis
almost a girl has eaten sushis
b. *
Presque quelqu’un a mangé des sushis
almost someone has eaten sushis
Although these data lead us toward the universal status of N-words, van der Wouden and Zwarts 1993 argue, on the basis of the contrast in (ii), that the lower N-word of a concord chain is interpreted as an ∃Q. De Swart and Sag 2002 provide clear counter-examples to this conclusion (iii):
(ii)
a.
Presque personne n’a rien dit
NC/DN
Almost no one NE has nothing said
b.
Personne n’a presque rien dit
DN only
no one NE has almost nothing said
(iii)
Un vieil écrivain nous a quittés sur la pointe des pieds sans que presque personne y prête attention.
An old writer has left us quietly without that almost no one paid attention to it
= hardly without any attention (de Swart and Sag 2002, (6a))
Note that when presque modifies an N-word (or a ∀Q) in object position, it gets ambiguous with a VP modification. presque can modify the VP in (iv) meaning that the children are eating, but have not yet finished. Similarily, the same phenomenon occurs with presque modifying completive aspectual tout ‘all’ in (v) (de Swart and Sag 2002, fn.4Chapter 3)
In that sense, when presque modifies a lower N-word too, it can take wide scope over the whole chain. As such, presque-modification does not tell anything about their existential status. See also Déprez 2000 for counter-arguments against this test as a diagnostic in favor of an interpreation of N-words as existential quantifiers.
- 32.
(110) is not rejected equally by all the speakers consulted. A majority simply starred the two examples; a minority liked it. I do not know what to do with this difference.
- 33.
Zanuttini 1991 claims that topicalization is a diagnostic establishing the universal status of Italian N-words. The data discussed raise questions in the light of recent studies on topicalization in Italian (Rizzi 1997 a.o). The Italian strategy corresponds to ClLD, as in (i): If proprio tutti i ragazzi is preposed in (ii), no resumptive clitic is inserted:
(i)
Gianni, l’ho visto
John, cl. have.1.sg seen
(ii)
a.
Proprio tutti i ragazzi, ho visto
really all the boys, I-have seen
b *
Proprio tutti i ragazzi, li ho visti
really all the boys, them have seen.pl
What Zanuttini 1991 considers to be topicalized (proprio niente in (ii)) is probably not topicalized but focalization: proprio is a focus marker (Luigi Rizzi (p.c)); N-words cannot appear in this construction (see Appendix 2), (iib):
(iii)
a.
Proprio niente, ho detto
Absolutely nothing, I have said (Zanuttini (1991:129, (213)))
b.
*
Nessuno, lo ho visto
no one, him I-have seen
- 34.
Similarily, Zanuttini 1991 observes that depending on the intonation falling on ‘topicalized‘ proprio niente, (i) gets different interpretations (see fn.33):
(i)
Proprio niente, non ho detto
‘I haven’t said nothing’
‘I haven’t said anything’ (Zanuttini (1991:129, (214)))
If there is ‘(a) primary stress on niente and a secondary stress on the finite verb ho, (b) a pause separates the two, and (c) niente has a rise and a fall on it, then the reading is that of double negation (…)’ (Zanuttini 1991:130), a reading normally disallowed in Italian. NC arises if ‘there is (a) primary stress on the preposed constituent and no stress on the rest of the clause, (b) no noticeable pause separating the two parts and, (c) only a fall on niente’ (ibid.), i.e. it is focalized. Yet speakers disagree on this last interpretation: some reject NC under the focal intonation: non being impossible in such a structure (Andrea Cattaneo, p.c). This needs to be worked out.
- 35.
I follow Kayne 1994 and assume that right adjunction is banned from syntactic phrase structures, being ruled out for c-command’s sake. Because scope is defined in terms of c-command, right-adjunction of ¬ is unwanted: if ¬ were adjoined to the right of ∀ in (120) and (121), ∀ would not c-command it, the scope relationship discussed would fail, an unwanted result.
- 36.
As such, this claim is very controversial, though. Indeed, (i) does not presuppose that unicorns exist (Marcel den Dikken, p.c):
(i)
There is no unicorn in the garden
(ii) is ambiguous. Under a reading, the whole event of talking is negated; no presupposition is involved. Under another reading, it means that among all the people I know that were around me this morning (my colleagues), I talked to no one. The set is presupposed, but negated.
(ii)
J’ai parlé à personne ce matin
I have talked to nobody this morning
My claim is that the universal part of the N-word involves a partitive restriction that is negated. It is that latter reading which interests me in this book.
- 37.
That presuppositional features are related to the restriction associated with Q is supported by prosody: recall that wh-phrases in-situ realize the restriction of an abstract Q; on them, stress prominence arises with specificity (Chapter 2, Section 2.1.2.2, as well as fn. 19, Chapter 3).
- 38.
Aucun N is not discussed in this book, for the same reasons chaque ‘every’ and tout ‘all.sg.’ aren’t. see Chapter 1, Section 1.1.1.5. See also fn.12 of Chapter 1.
- 39.
I would like to thank Christopher Laenzlinger for checking these data with me.
- 40.
In Russian, direct objects can be in Accusative or Genitive if the sentence contains negation. Generally, referential DPs do not receive Genitive in this configuration, though, and only accusative case shows up (Babyonyshev 1996, Pereltsvaig 1999, a.o), (i). In a footnote, Harves 2002 provides (ii), where Genitive is assigned to the referential DP Masha:
Whether there are semantic differences in (ii) is unclear and left for future reseach.
- 41.
Thanks to Marcel den Dikken and Genoveva Puskás for pointing this out to me.
- 42.
Thanks to Marcel den Dikken (p.c) for pointing this out to me.
- 43.
Thanks to Genoveva Puskás for confirming this point. Note though, that (i) is ungrammatical:
(i)
*
N’a telephoné qu’aucun des garçons
NE has called only none of the boys
‘Only none of the boys called’
The status of (i) might have to do with its ‘only’ flavor, i.e. the ungrammaticality of (i) would have to do with the semantics attributed to restrictive clauses in French.
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Baunaz, L. (2011). N-Words. In: The Grammar of French Quantification. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 83. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0621-7_4
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