Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Sentential Negation and Negative Indefinites

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Expression and Interpretation of Negation

Part of the book series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory ((SNLT,volume 77))

  • 861 Accesses

Introduction and overview

This chapter integrates the results on sentential negation (from Chapter 3) with the analysis of negative concord and double negation (from Chapter 4). Section 1 develops the classification of co-occurrence restrictions between sentential negation and negative indefinites in negative concord and double negation languages. The grammar of negative spread supports the claims made by de Swart and Sag’s (2002) that in the presence of n-words, the marker of sentential negation in negative concord languages is semantically redundant (Section 2).

Even though the marker of sentential negation is not needed to convey negation in negative concord contexts, many languages combine it with n-words. In line with much current literature, I take sentential negation to serve as a scope marker in such cases. Two syntactic constraints governing the scope of negation account for the contrast between strict and nonstrict negative concord languages. Section 3 shows how the preverbal/postverbal asymmetry exploits NegFirst. Section 4 introduces a new constraint in order to capture strict negative concord languages in which a marker of sentential negation always accompanies an n-word.

Sections 5 through 10 treat in more detail the complex situations found in Catalan, French, Welsh, Hungarian, West Flemish, and Afrikaans. Section 11 concludes the chapter.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Watanabe (2004) glosses nani-mo as ‘what-mo’, because it consists of a wh-item followed by the focus particle mo. In line with the way n-words are written in this book, I gloss it as ‘nothing’.

  2. 2.

    Richter and Sailer (2006) call their principle the Neg Criterion, due to its similarity in effect to the Neg Criterion of Haegeman and Zanuttini (1996). Given the differences in theoretical framework between Haegeman and Zanuttini’s generative syntax and Richter and Sailer’s HPSG formulation, the details of the formulation are not the same.

  3. 3.

    The expression dim byd literally means ‘no world’, but it is used as a fixed expression for ‘nothing’.

  4. 4.

    The constraints are intended to account for finite main clauses. The situation of negation in nonfinite and subordinate clauses in Welsh is different, and will not be treated here, because the ramifications for the syntax are beyond the scope of this book (cf. Chapter 3, Section 5 for some discussion, but no analysis). Borsley and Jones (2005) offer extensive data and an HPSG analysis.

  5. 5.

    Surányi (2006a,b) glosses the sem part of the sem-expressions as sem. I follow his glosses, even though I adopt a different semantics of s-pronouns and sem-expressions, as will become clear shortly.

  6. 6.

    Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to the example of oute in relation to the Hungarian sem-expressions.

References

  • Adger, Carolyn Temple, Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian (2007). Dialects in schools and communities, 2nd edition, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashby, William (1981). The loss of the negative particle ne in French: a change in progress. Language 57, 674–687.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernini, Giuliano and Paolo Ramat (1996). Negative sentences in the languages of Europe, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Besten, Hans den (1986). Double negation and the genesis of Afrikaans, in: P. Muysken and N. Smith (eds.). Substrata versus universals in Creole languages, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 185–230.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biberauer, Theresa (2006). Doubling vs. omission: insights from Afrikaans, Proceedings of the workshop on syntactic doubling, Amsterdam: Meertens Instituut. Available at http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/projecten/edisyn/Papers_workshop-on-Doubling.html.

  • Borsley, Bob (1996). Modern phrase structure grammar, Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borsley, Bob and Bob Morris Jones (2005). Welsh negation and grammatical theory, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bošković, Željko (2008). Licensing negative constituents and negative concord, Proceedings of NELS 38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bréal, Michel (1897). Essai de Sémantique, Paris: Hachette.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breitbarth, Anne and Liliane Haegeman (2008). Not continuity, but change: stable stage II in Jespersen’s cycle, M.S. University of Cambridge and Université de Lille III.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, Charles C. (1904). The actual force of the French ne, Modern Philology 2, 279–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corblin, Francis and Lucia Tovena (2003). L’expression de la négation dans les languages romanes, in: D. Godard (ed.). Les langues romanes: ‘problèmes de la phrase simple, Paris: CNRS Editions, 279–342.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cuervo, Cristina and Natalia Mazzaro (2008). Beyond negative concord: negative doubling in a variety of Spanish, paper presented at the 2008 meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, Östen (1979). Typology of sentence negation, Linguistics 17, 79–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Déprez, Viviane (1997a). Two Types of Negative Concord, Probus 9, 103–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Déprez, Viviane (2000). Parallel (A)symmetries and the internal structure of negative expressions, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, 253–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dryer, Matthew (2000). Verb-object-negative order in Central Africa, in: N. Cyffer, E. Ebermann and G. Ziegelmeyer (eds.). Negation patterns in West Africa, Amsterdam: Benjamins (to appear).

    Google Scholar 

  • Espinal, M. Teresa (2000). On the semantic status of n-words in Catalan and Spanish, Lingua 110, 557–580.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falaus, Anamaria (2007a). Le paradoxe de la double négation dans une langue à concordance négative stricte, in: F. Floricic (ed.). La négation dans les langues romanes, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 75–97.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falaus, Anamaria (2008). Romanian n-words as negative quantifiers, University of Pennsylvania working papers in linguistics, 14 (1), 119–134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franco, Jon and Alazne Landa 2006. Preverbal n-words and anti-agreement effects, in: Sagarra, N. and Toribio, A.J. (eds.). Selected proceedings of the 9th Hispanic linguistics symposium, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 34–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaatone, David (1971). Étude descriptive du système de la négation en français contemporain (Publication romaines et françaises, CXIV), Genève: Librairie Droz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gass, Kate van (2007). Multiple n-words in Afrikaans, SPIL Plus 35, 167–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia (1997). The landscape of polarity items, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Groningen University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia (1998). Polarity sensitivity as (non)veridical dependency, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia (2000). Negative…concord? Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, 457–523.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia (2006). N-words and negative concord, in: H. van Riemsdijk et al. (eds.). The syntax companion, Oxford: Blackwell, 327–391.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia (2007). The landscape of EVEN, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25, 39–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Godard, Danièle (2004). French negative dependency, in: F. Corblin and H. de Swart (eds.). Handbook of French semantics, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 351–390.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groot, Casper de (1993). Hungarian, in: P. Kahrel and R. van den Berg (eds.). Typological studies in negation, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 143–162.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane (1995). The syntax of negation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Raffaella Zanuttini (1996). Negative concord in West Flemish, in: A. Belletti and L. Rizzi (eds.). Parameters and functional heads, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 117–180.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haspelmath, Martin (1997). Indefinite pronouns, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoeksema, Jack (1997). Negation and negative concord in middle Dutch, in: D. Forget, P. Hirschbühler, F. Martineau and M.-L. Rivero (eds.). Negation and polarity: syntax and semantics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 139–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horn, Laurence (1989). A natural history of negation, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Reprinted (2001) with a new introduction, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoyt, Frederick (2006). Long distance negative concord and restructuring in Palestinian Arabic, in: P. Dekker and H. Zeijlstra (eds.). Concord phenomena and the syntax-semantics interface, Malaga: ESSLLI Publication, 27–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jäger, Agnes (2008). History of German negation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, Otto (1917). Negation in English and other languages, Copenhagen: A.F. Høst. Reprinted in: Selected writings of Otto Jespersen (1962), London: George Allen & Unwin, 3–151.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, Otto (1933). Essentials of English grammar, reprinted 1964, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaiser, Elsi (2006). Negation and the left periphery in Finnish, Lingua 116, 314–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kayne, Richard (1984). Connectedness and binary branching, Dordrecht: Foris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Labov, William (1972). Negative attraction and negative concord in English grammar, Language 48, 773–818.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ladusaw, William (1992). Expressing negation, Proceedings of SALT 2, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 237–259.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laka, Itziar (1990). Negation in syntax: on the nature of functional categories and projections, Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martineau, France and Viviane Déprez (2004). Micro-parametric variation and negative concord, in: J. Auger, J.C. Clements and B. Vance (eds.). Contemporary approaches to Romance linguistics, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 139–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller, Claude (1991). La négation en français, Genève: Droz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ouali, Hamid (2003). Sentential negation in Berber: a comparative study, in: J. Mugany (ed.). Linguistic description. Typology and representation of African languages, Trenton: Africa World Press, 243–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Posner, Rebecca (1984). Double negatives, negative polarity and negative incorporation in Romance: a historical and comparative view, Transactions of the Philological Society 1984, 1–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Progovac, Ljiljana (1993). Negative polarity: entailment and binding, Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 149–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Przepiórkowski, Adam and Anna Kups´c´ (1999). Eventuality negation and negative concord in Polish and Italian, in: B. Borsley and A. Przepiorkówski (eds.). Slavic in HPSG, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 211–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puskás, Genoveva (2006). Negation in Finno-Ugric: an introduction, Lingua 116, 203–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richter, Frank and Manfred Sailer (2004). Polish negation and lexical resource semantics, in: L.S. Moss and R.T. Oehrle (eds.). Electronic notes in theoretical computer science, vol. 53, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 309–321.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richter, Frank and Manfred Sailer (2006). Modeling typological markedness in semantics, in S. Müller (ed.). Proceedings of the 13th international conference on HPSG, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 305–325.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwenter, Scott (2005). The pragmatics of negation in Brazilian Portuguese, Lingua 115, 1427–1456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sells, Peter (2001). Structure, alignment and optimality in Swedish, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Surányi, Balázs (2006a). Predicates, negative quantifiers and focus: specificity and quantificationality of n-words, in: K. É Kiss (ed.). Event structure and the left periphery, Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Surányi, Balázs (2006b). Quantification and focus in negative concord, Lingua 116, 272–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swart, Henriëtte de and Ivan Sag (2002). Negation and negative concord in Romance, Linguistics and Philosophy 25, 373–417.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tanaka, Shin (1994). Die Mehrfachnegation: ein Sprachgut der Unraffinierten?, in: D. Halwachs and I. Stütz (eds.). Sprache—Sprechen—Handeln: Akten des 28 Linguistischen Kolloquiums, Graz 1993, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 191–198.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tesnière, Lucien (1959). Eléments de syntaxe structurale, Paris: Klincksieck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tovena, Lucia, Viviane Déprez and Jacques Jayez (2004). Polarity sensitive items, in: F. Corblin and H. de Swart (eds.). Handbook of French semantics, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 391–415.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vallduví, Enric (1994). Polarity items, n-words and minimizers in Catalan and Spanish, Probus 6, 263–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van der Auwera, Johan and Annemarie Neuckermans (2004). Jespersen’s cycle and the interaction of predicate and quantifier negation, in: B. Kortmann (ed.). Dialectology meets typology. Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 453–478.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vinet, Marie-Thérèse (1998). Contrastive focus, French n-words and variation, Canadian Journal of Linguistics 431, 121–143.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watanabe, Akira (2004). The genesis of negative concord: syntax and morphology of negative doubling, Linguistic Inquiry 35, 559–612.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wouden, Ton van der (1994). Negative contexts. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Groningen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wouden, Ton van der (1997). Negative contexts: collocation, polarity and multiple negation, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Xiao, Richard and Anthony McEnery (2008). Negation in Chinese: a corpus-based study, Journal of Chinese linguistics 36: 274–330.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zanuttini, Raffaella (1991). Syntactic properties of sentential negation: a comparative study of Romance languages, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zanuttini, Raffaella (1994). Reexamining negative clauses, in: G. Cinque et al. (eds.). Paths towards universal grammar. Studies in honor of Richard S. Kayne, Washington, Georgetown University Press, 427–451.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zanuttini, Raffaella (1996). Negation and clausal structure: a comparative study of Romance languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeijlstra, Hedde (2004). Sentential Negation and Negative concord, Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeijlstra, Hedde (2007). Emphatic multiple negative expressions in Dutch, Amsterdam: ACLC working papers and lingBuzz/000344.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Henriëtte de Swart

Authors
  1. Henriëtte de Swart
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henriëtte de Swart .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

de Swart, H. (2010). Sentential Negation and Negative Indefinites. In: Expression and Interpretation of Negation. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 77. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3162-4_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation