La problématique des indéfinis de choix libre du français

Corblin, Francis; Tovena, Lucia M.; Vlachou, Evangelia

doi:10.3917/lf.166.0003

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Some scholars also report instances of diachronic (Dragomirescu 2007) and diatopic (Manea 2013(Manea , 2016 variations. Romanian was chosen because, for this Romance language, like for French (Corblin 1995;Corblin et al 2004;de Swart 2010), it has been claimed that when two or more NCIs occur within a sentence and certain prosodic conditions (still to be precisely defined) are met, then, in addition to a single negation reading, a double negation interpretation is also available (Fălăuş 2007;Iordăchioaia 2010;Fălăuş & Nicolae 2016). 10 Note that Romanian NCIs occur in isolation as fragment answers (8).…”

Section: Research Questions and Motivation For The Experimental Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

ESPINAL,

PUIG-MAYENCO,

ETXEBERRIA

et al. 2023

J. Ling.

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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 when dhen/nu/ne were 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 structures dhen/nu/ne are the instantiations of a negative feature [neg] disembodied from an indefinite negative NCI in order to obey a syntax–phonology interface constraint.

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Section: Research Questions and Motivation For The Experimental Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

ESPINAL,

PUIG-MAYENCO,

ETXEBERRIA

et al. 2023

J. Ling.

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“…Hence, it can at best act as a scope marker (cf. Corblin et al 2004;Godard 2004). Second, ne's distribution is outside negation (mostly) restricted to non-negative (Strawson-)downward entailing or non-veridical contexts 7 , such as exceptives (11a), comparatives (11b), complement clauses of expressions of fear (11c), avoidance (11d), denial or doubt (11e), conditionals (11f), and temporal before-clauses (11g), as shown below (all examples have been taken from (Rooryck 2017, pp.…”

Section: Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(6c) can thus also have the reading 'nobody eats nothing' (cf. Corblin et al 2004), as focus can generally disrupt NC. However, crucial here is that (6c) allows for an NC interpretation.…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pas de Problème: The Distribution and Nature of Double Negation in French and Other Romance Negative Concord Languages

Zeijlstra

2023

Languages

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Most Romance negative concord (NC) languages in particular configurations give rise to double negation (DN) readings. In this article, I discuss an intricate DN pattern in French. After discussing some previous accounts, I provide an analysis of French pas (and in its slipstream also of the French expletive negative element ne) that takes pas to be a purely semantically but not formally (i.e., syntactically) negative element. I then argue that the reason why French pas is so different from other negative markers lies in its diachrony and show that other attested asymmetries between the formal properties of negative markers and neg-words in Romance must receive a diachronic explanation as well.

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“…Because of this behavior, expressions such as personne and rien are often called n-words in the literature (Laka Mugarza, 1990). The exact syntactic and semantic analysis of such expressions in French is complex and frequently controversial (see Corblin, Déprez, & Swart, 2004, for an overview). However, the (uncontroversial) fact that is relevant for the argument developed in this paper is that the NPI personne is the older form and the negative quantifier/n-word personne is the newer form.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural explanations in syntactic variation: The evolution of English negative and polarity indefinites

2018

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It is well documented that the study of differences in grammaticality contrasts across the world's languages has implications for the synchronic study of preferential/frequency contrasts within a single language. Our paper extends this observation, arguing that the cross-linguistic study of both grammaticality and frequency contrasts can be crucial to the proper characterization of patterns of diachronic change. As an illustration of this proposal, we investigate patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the use of postverbal negative quantifiers (e.g., nothing, nobody, no book, etc., as in, I know nothing) versus negative polarity items under negation (e.g., not … anything, not … anybody, not … any book, etc., as in, I don't know anything) in English. We show how a detailed comparison with similar patterns found elsewhere in closely related languages can give us a better understanding of which linguistic factors condition the use of these different kinds of indefinites in Modern Spoken English and a new perspective on a well-studied proposed change in progress in the English quantificational system.

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La problématique des indéfinis de choix libre du français

Cited by 5 publications

References 17 publications

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

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

Pas de Problème: The Distribution and Nature of Double Negation in French and Other Romance Negative Concord Languages

Structural explanations in syntactic variation: The evolution of English negative and polarity indefinites

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