The dynamics of negative concord

Kuhn, Jeremy

doi:10.1007/s10988-020-09318-3

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…19 To sum up, we have shown that so-called semantically expletive items are not semantically inert, because -beyond denoting an identity function-they contribute a meaning already expressed in the sentence by a c-commanding category. 20 We highlight the tendency that semantic 18 See Haddock (1987), Bumford (2017) and Kuhn (2021) for an analysis of split scope definites and other redundant forms under a dynamic semantics approach. The similarity between long weak definites and examples such as the rabbit in the hat is that the lower definite article does not contribute a presupposition of unicity and therefore can be replaced by an indefinite article.…”

Section: Semantic Expletivesmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…NCIs are fully negative when they occur as fragment answers, in languages that have this type of items, whereas expletives cannot occur as fragments. NCIs have been claimed to introduce a discourse referent and a zero-cardinality test (Kuhn 2021), whereas none of these properties apply in the case of expletives. NCIs can be claimed to have an at-issue/truth-conditional contribution, whereas we here argue that expletives make no at-issue contribution to a proposition but may constrain one of the speech act layers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

Tsiakmakis

Espinal

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper sets out to find the defining characteristics of so-called expletive categories and the consequences the existence of such categories has for Universal Grammar. Looking into different instantiations of expletive subjects and impersonal pronouns, definite articles, negative markers and plural markers in various natural languages, we reach the following generalizations: (i) expletive categories are deficient functional elements interpreted as introducing an identity function at the level of semantic representation, (ii) they can be divided into syntactic expletives, that occur to satisfy some syntactic relationship with another item in the clause, and semantic expletives, that stand in a semantic dependency with some c-commanding category, and (iii) expletive categories tend to develop additional meaning components that are computed beyond core grammar, at the level where speech act-related information is encoded. Our discussion reveals that all categories that have been traditionally considered as expletive in the linguistic literature are interpretable in grammar or beyond and, thus, do not violate Chomsky’s Full Interpretation Principle. We conclude that there are no expletive elements in natural languages and that expletiveness is not a grammatically relevant concept.

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Section: Semantic Expletivesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

Tsiakmakis

Espinal

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…Nonetheless, there have been proposals of post-suppositions that lead to falsity or ungrammaticality rather than presuppositional failure if the post-suppositional conditions are not met (e.g. Brasoveanu 2013, Kuhn 2021. I adopt the view of Charlow 2016 andKuhn 2021 that what is post-suppositional or not should be a matter of evaluation order, rather than the 'kind' of meaning.…”

Section: Introduction To Post-suppositionsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Brasoveanu 2013, Kuhn 2021. I adopt the view of Charlow 2016 andKuhn 2021 that what is post-suppositional or not should be a matter of evaluation order, rather than the 'kind' of meaning.…”

Section: Introduction To Post-suppositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They propose that this can be done by classifying the requirement of additive particle mo as a postsupposition rather than a pre-supposition, as is standardly assumed. To see how this works, I will give a sketch of the proposal using paraphrases in the style of Kuhn (2021), where post-suppositions are indicated by underline. ( 19) is the paraphrase for the meaning of ( 17) above.…”

Section: Introduction To Post-suppositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A post-suppositional account of associative plurals in Burmese

New

2022

SALT

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I investigate the interpretation of the associative plural tó/dó in Colloquial Burmese based on original fieldwork. I report that in a conjunction of associative plurals, there is an available reading where the named individuals in the conjunction internally satisfy the plural requirement. I call this the internal plural reading, a reading which has not been previously observed in the literature. I propose that the named individuals in a conjunction of associative plurals can satisfy each other's plural requirement if the Burmese associative plural has a meaning that ixs post-suppositional. The proposal is inspired by Brasoveanu & Szabolcsi 2013's treatment of conjunctions of additive phrases in some languages, but our proposals crucially differ in that associative plurals contribute assertive meaning rather than not-at-issue meaning.

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Negative concord in Russian Sign Language

Kuhn

Pasalskaya

2022

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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In this paper, we provide the first systematic description of negative concord in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Although non-manual markers have been argued to participate in negative concord in sign languages, negative concord involving only manual signs has been shown to be much rarer. The RSL pattern thus fills this typological gap, providing one of the first clear cases of negative concord of manual signs in sign language. We show that RSL contributes important new data to the typology of negative concord known from spoken language. First, we show that RSL (like Hungarian) shows characteristics of both strict and non-strict patterns of negative concord. In neutral contexts without movement, NC items in both subject and object position require a negative licensor; on the other hand, in contexts with appropriate information structure, focused NC items may appear in specific structural positions without a licensor. These facts provide evidence against analyzing the strict/non-strict divide as a language-level property. Second, focusing on non-strict concord, we show that RSL diverges from other languages with respect to important macro-syntactic properties. In RSL, like in a number of other sign languages, negative elements may appear in a structure on the right edge. It is precisely this position that allows NC items to appear without a licensor; in this respect, RSL is a mirror-image of languages like Italian. These syntactic properties provide new evidence that structural hierarchy, not linear order, is responsible for explaining the presence or absence of a licensor in patterns of non-strict concord.1 Terminologically, we use the term 'negative marker' to refer to an overt verbal marker of sentential negation: for example, the word not in English, the word ne in Russian, and the word glossed NOT in RSL. We use the term 'negative indefinite' to refer to quantificational words used to express negation: the words nobody, nothing, never in English, the words nikto, nichego, nikogda in Russian, and the words glossed NOBODY, NOTHING, NEVER1, NEVER2 in RSL. The term 'negative element' is used as a general term that encompasses both negative markers and negative indefinites. We reserve the term 'NC item' specifically for those negative elements whose grammaticality depends on the presence of a negative licensor. Thus, the Russian negative indefinite nichego is a NC item, but the English negative indefinite nothing is not.We further show that RSL, like Hungarian, is a language with characteristics of both strict and nonstrict negative concord. When NC items appear in their in situ position, they require a negative licensor, regardless of whether this in situ position is before, after, above, or below the verb. Such findings mirror the strict concord patterns observed in languages like Russian, in which both preverbal subjects and postverbal objects require a negative licensor. On the other hand, focused NC items may be dislocated to the right edge of the clause; in such cases, they may appear without any additional ov...

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The dynamics of negative concord

Cited by 9 publications

References 71 publications

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

Expletiveness in grammar and beyond

A post-suppositional account of associative plurals in Burmese

Negative concord in Russian Sign Language

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