Negative Features on Negative Indefinites: Evidence from Split Scope

Abstract

The assumption that negative indefinites are semantically non-negative elements associating with sentential negation has proven fruitful to account for the behaviour of negative indefinites in languages exhibiting negative concord. Under this view, negative indefinites carry a negative feature that has to be licensed by a semantic negation. This paper critically discusses and evaluates different ways in which the notion of negative features can be spelled out. Particular attention is paid to approaches that build on the indefinite nature of negative indefinites and postulate that negative indefinites have to be bound by a negation operator (e.g. Ladusaw, 1992;Kratzer, 2005). It is shown that such analyses are problematic in light of the fact that another semantic operator can take scope in between the negation and the negative indefinite. Parallel data have been discussed for negative indefinites in German and Dutch under the label split scope (e.g. Jacobs, 1980;de Swart, 2000;Abels and Martí, 2010).

Strict and Non-strict Negative Concord in Hungarian: A Unified Analysis

“…reflects an amendment byPenka (2011Penka ( , 2012. While Zeijlstra proposed that nessuno, rien, and nikdo were variables, Penka argued that they need to be indefinites.…”

Exceptionally optional negative concord with Turkish neither...nor

“…NCIs carry [uNeg] features. I assume that quantifier NCIs are non-negative existentials, formed from an [uNeg]-carrying existential quantifier combining with an NP (following Penka 2011Penka , 2012. I adopt a standard syntax for quantifier phrases, in which the logical operator sits in its head, and the NP is in its complement.…”

“…Here are a few studies addressing the question of the nature of negative quantifiers/connectives: Giannakidou (2000) (universals in Greek);Wurmbrand (2008) (conjunction in English); DeSwart (2000);Potts (2000);Penka (2011Penka ( , 2012 (existentials in German and English); Shimoyama (2011) (universals in Japanese);Gonzalez and Demirdache (2015) (conjunction in French);Gajić (2016) (disjunction in BCS).21 Note thatAbels and Martí (2010) provide a different analysis for these apparent split scope readings, in which there is an existential quantifier over choice functions scoping above the modal: this does not affect the analysis of our NCIs as existential quantifiers.…”

Neg-phrases in Eton (Bantu): An HPSG-analysis

“…The majority of the papers on NC languages is concerned with the question whether negative indefinites are inherently negative or not. Despite the negative indefinites' prominence being due to their tight relationship with NC, they have also attracted the interest of many researchers in recent years outside of NC languages (Penka & Zeijlstra (2005,2010, Zeijlstra (2011), Penka (2012), inter alia). These papers often concentrate on Germanic languages and their negative indefinites and again scrutinize the negative indefinites' (non-) negativity.…”