Examples like 'Can't nobody beat 'em.' ('Nobody can beat them.') in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have the inverted form of questions but the falling intonation and sentence meaning of (emphatic) declaratives. Labov et al. (1968) concluded that this phenomenon of 'negative inversion" (Y0 requires two overlapping but distinct syntactic analyses. Recasting them in current terms, these proposals are Aux-to-Comp movement, as in subject-auxiliary inversion in interrogatives, and a non-movement structure containing a null expletive subject. Two explanatory problems arise with the view that Labov et al. present: (i) why the single phenomenon of NI should find its expression in two distinct structures and (ii) why this inversion phenomenon is restricted to negative sentences.Using ideas from Optimality Theory, we develop a syntactic account of the yl data that also directly addresses problems (i) and (ii). We show that the relevant aspects of the syntax of AAV rz and Standard English (sE) can be accounted for in terms of the different rankings of three relevant constraints. The account is driven in part by consideration of an apparent change since the 1960"s in the acceptability of ~'l examples in embedded clauses.Some problems which our research raises, but does not fully resolve, include a complete analysis of the function of NI structures, the explanation for the quantitative favoring of inverted over non-inverted structures, and the extent to which negative inversion in AAVE has changed since the 1960's, in particular whether it has become closer to similar structures found in sv.
INTRODUCTIONDespite the advances in both generative grammar and sociolinguistics over the past three decades, developments in each subfield have had relatively little impact on the other. Both in content and methodology, syntactic theory and variation theory have been largely isolated from one another
Socalled multiple nominative constructions (MNCs) in Korean are quite theoretically as well as computationally puzzling. This paper shows that a grammar allowing the interaction of declarative constraints on types of signs-in particular, constructions (phrases and clauses)-can provide a robust and efficient way of encoding generalizations for two different MNCs. The feasibility of the grammar developed has been checked with its implementation into the LKB (Linguistic Knowledge Building) system.
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