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\(\neg\)(A&B). Gapping, negation and speech act operators

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Research on Language and Computation

Abstract

The paper shows that in gapping sentences where a negative marker in the first conjunct takes wide scope over the whole coordination, the negation obligatorily operates on the level of the speech act rather than on the level of the proposition. In assertions, this is denial negation, and in questions, outer negation. The negation operating on the level of the speech act is argued to be an instantiation of the degrees of strength that are associated with the sincerity conditions of a speech act, which is a feature that it shares with VERUM focus and certain epistemic adverbs. Syntactically, this negation is situated higher than propositional negation, viz. in the CP of the clause. This suggests that gapping with wide scope negation is fundamentally different from ‘ordinary’ gapping which always involves propositional negation.

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  1. Institut für Deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Sophie Repp

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  1. Sophie Repp
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Correspondence to Sophie Repp.

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This paper is based on and develops further a chapter of Repp (2005).

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Repp, S. \(\neg\)(A&B). Gapping, negation and speech act operators. Research Language Computation 4, 397–423 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-006-9022-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11168-006-9022-y

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