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Intensification, a general device used by speakers to convey their message more clearly and to strengthen their position to it (Bolinger 1972), has been discussed widely in the literature. However, the specific use of intensification on negatives (i.e. it didn't do any harm at all, I hadn't the faintest idea who he was) has received much less attention. The aim of this paper is to identify and explore the resources used by British adults and teenagers in the intensification of negative constructions. A second focus of interest will be the extent to which differences exist here in the language of adults and teenagers, given that the latter are, broadly speaking, more prone to use intensification. Findings indicate that the strengthening of negatives in English can be achieved in different ways: a) by means of a number of non-assertive and negative polarity-oriented items, such as in the slightest, in the least, at all, even; b) the repetition of the adverb never or the combination never ever; c) cases of multiple negation or negative concord intended to heighten a negative meaning); d) negative polarity collocations and idiomatic expressions; and e) adverbs such as definitely, absolutely, certainly plus a negative (not/no or nothing). Teenagers tend to intensify negatives more than adults, although these differences are not so clearly marked as expected, and while the former prefer the use of swear words and idiomatic or semi-idiomatic expressions together with locutions such as no way, the latter opt more often for negatively oriented polarity sensitive items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xhosa and Zulu nominals have restricted distributions when lacking an outer class prefix known as the augment. We argue that in negative contexts augmentless ([−A]) nominals bear negative concord features, uNeg, which must Agree with a negative licenser iNeg (Zeijlstra ). This accounts for the fact that some of them can be used as negative sentence fragment answers, and at the same time cannot appear in sentences without c-commanding negation. It also explains a clausemate requirement [S ...Neg...[−A]...] consistently reported by speakers of both languages in our study for all but subjunctive and (occasionally) neg-raising environments. We demonstrate that further distributional constraints attributed by Halpert (, ) to special Case-licensing needs of Zulu [−A] nominals are shared by [+A] DPs modified by kuphela-'only', and [+/−A] wh-phrases are subject to near-identical restrictions. This is a state of affairs that Halpert's approach would not predict and cannot explain. We build on Sabel and Zeller (), and Zeller () in attributing the pattern to incompatibility between [+focus] features characteristic of negative concord items, 'only'-modified DPs, and wh-phrases, and [−focus] features of certain Zulu and Xhosa clausal positions. Thus all aspects of [−A] nominal distribution reduce to independently motivated features of the class of expressions to which they belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper I investigate, from a Minimalist perspective and using data from the Freiburg English Dialect corpus, the patterns of Negative Concord (NC) attested in different Traditional Dialects of British English. By arguing that lexical variation exists in the negative operator used to express sentential negation, which is truly semantic in Standard English but carries an interpretable negative feature in Traditional Dialects of British English, I explain why NC, understood as syntactic Agree between [iNeg] and [uNeg] features, is attested in the latter but not in the former. In the same vein, by arguing that in Traditional Dialects of British English two lexical entries are possible for n-words which contrast in the interpretability of the negative feature they carry ([iNeg] vs. [uNeg]), the optionality of NC in the studied Non-Standard dialects of English as well as the different patterns observed in the data can be accounted for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the application of the concept of negative concord (Giannakidou, Horrocks, Denizot, Willmott), which is not reflected in standard reference books on Ancient Greek (including the most recent books by Basile and Crespo) and is not used in Czech Hellenistic circles. Taking into account the well-known rule of the accumulation of negatives of the same kind (οὐ ... οὐδείς, οὐδείς ... οὐ), the author offers support for certain surprising yet convincing findings by Denizot concerning the sequence of οὐδείς ... οὐ and argues that Ancient Greek is a non-strict negative concord language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the contribution that corpus-based studies of syntactic variation can make to the construction, elaboration and testing of formal syntactic theories, with a particular focus on the testing dimension. In particular, I present a new empirical study of obligatory and optional asymmetric negative concord phenomena, and I show how an influential analysis for obligatory concord patterns (de Swart, 2010) can be tested using variation data through looking at the predictions that its natural probabilistic extension makes for the forms, interpretations and frequency distributions of expressions in languages in which asymmetric concord is optional. In obligatory negative concord languages like Spanish, negative indefinites, such as nadie 'no one', appear bare in preverbal position (i.e. in an expression like Nadie ha venido 'No one came'), but they cooccur with the negative marker no in postverbal negative concord structures such as No he visto a nadie 'I did not see anyone.' (lit. 'I did not see no one.'). Furthermore, in this language, co-occurrence between a negative marker and an n-word is either prohibited (*Nadie no ha venido), or it is obligatory (*He visto a nadie). Québec French shows a variable version of the Spanish pattern in which the negation marker optionally co-occurs with postverbal negative indefinites (J'ai (pas) vu personne 'I saw no one') but is prohibited with preverbal negative indefinites *Personne est pas venu (Ok: Personne est venu. 'No one came'). I show how the predictions for Montréal French of de Swart's analysis of Spanish can be tested (and, in this case, mostly verified) using a quantitative study of the distribution of bare and concord structures in the Montréal 84 corpus of spoken Montréal French (Thibault & Vincent, 1990) through looking at its natural extension within Boersma (1998)'s stochastic generalization of the Optimality Theory framework, which is the framework in which de Swart's proposal is set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the impact of morphosyntactic variation in the input on the language acquisition process. In particular, it studies the acquisition of variable subject-verb agreement and variable negative concord by children acquiring the Belfast dialect of English. It finds that, given variation in the input, children can acquire more than one grammatical variant, although both do not necessarily emerge at the same time in the case of negative concord, forms without negative concord emerge in the children's language before the use of negative concord is used. It is also found that the proportion of each variant in a child's output matches the proportion in the input they receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focuses on the syntactic and semantic nature of the expressions identified in the literature as n-words (preferably, n-phrases), and on their licensing conditions. Concerning their status, arguments will be given in favor of Ladusaw's 1992 thesis that these are existential (and non-specific, it is claimed) indefinites. In a brief excursus, it will be shown that other constructs engage in the process known as "negative concord". In the final part, an attempt will be made to offer a systematic picture of the intra-- and cross-sentential licensing conditions of classical n-phrases. In this regard, the paramount importance of contextual decreasing monotonicity becomes apparent.

This paper investigates the interpretation and processing of simple transitive Catalan sentences with multiple negative expressions experimentally. Our results provide empirical confirmation that Negative Concord (NC) is the preferred and faster interpretation for negative sentences that either omit or contain the overt negative marker no ‘not’. However, they also reveal that, in contrast to traditional descriptions of Catalan and independently of particular favouring contexts, a non-negligible amount of Double Negation (DN) readings arises, mainly when the negative marker co-occurs with pre-verbal Negative Concord Items (NCIs), and when these NCIs have a complex DP structure. Our results further suggest that two populations could be distinguished: one for whom the negative marker is optional and leaves the favoured NC reading essentially unaffected, and another where the co-presence of no significantly increases DN readings. We account for these findings within a micro-parametric approach that features ambiguous NCIs (non-negative vs. negative) and a possible ambiguous negative marker no (negative vs. expletive) variably available for Catalan speakers. The nuanced empirical NC landscape that our experimental work reveals serves to stress the importance of taking DN readings into consideration for a better understanding of the nature of negative constructions in Catalan and cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop a syntax-semantics of negative concord in Romanian within a constraint-based lexicalist framework. We show that n-words in Romanian are best treated as negative quantifiers which may combine by resumption to form polyadic negative quantifiers. Optionality of resumption explains the existence of simple sentential negation readings alongside double negation readings. We solve the well-known problem of defining general semantic composition rules for translations of natural language expressions in a logical language with polyadic quantifiers by integrating our higher-order logical object language in Lexical Resource Semantics (LRS), whose constraint-based composition mechanisms directly support a systematic syntax-semantics for negative concord with polyadic quantification in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sentential negation, and the negative concord in particular, is a complex phenomenon which is far from being diachronically invariable. We could observe on the example of Portuguese that the main reason for the diachronic variation in the field of negation is the changing semantical status of the sentential negative marker não, according to the theory developed by Zeijlstra and Penka. The non-strict negative concord language as it is now has developed from Archaic Portuguese which could be considered as a strict NC language. The negative marker was originally required to accompany the semantically negated verb at any time, even in the co-occurrence with pre-verbal n-words. The negative marker was semantically non-negative which means that it had to participate, together with the remaining negative elements in the sentence, in a feature checking relation with an abstract negative operator, free of phonological content. Later on, in the contemporary standard Portuguese, the negative marker adopted the function of semantically negative operator against which other negative elements in the sentence need to be checked. Where the negative marker couldn't license the n-words due to syntactical constraints it was not desirable, for the economy reasons, to appear anymore and was simply replaced by the abstract negative operator. The admitting of new structures of sentential negation in the contemporary colloquial Brazilian Portuguese is a proof that the system of sentential negation in Portuguese tends to evolve further in the common direction described by Jespersen. The Contemporary Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese is without doubts still a non-strict NC language which makes use of the negation marker não in a different way than it is common in the Standard Portuguese: it places it in the sentence final position to give a negative interpretation to the content of the sentence and to emphasize it at the same time.

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This study investigates a putative case of negative concord in Southern Min where two negatives ( m'not' and bian 'need.not') co-occur without canceling each other out semantically. Contra common belief, I argue that Southern Min does not have negative concord. Corpus data on m-bian and m-tioh are examined, where tioh 'need' and bian are necessity modal counterparts. Corpus findings reveal that negativity in m participates in neither m-bian nor m-tioh in semantics. Feature loss is discovered in m, which is then taken as evidence for m being a new category other than negative. I analyze m under investigation as mood, situated in the discourse layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ancient Greek a single set of indefinite enclitic pronouns was used indifferently in both negative/affective environments (i.e. like negative polarity items (NPI)) and in positive ones (i.e. like positive polarity items (PPI)). At the same time the negative pronouns used as negative quantifiers (NQ) were also employed as emphatic NPIs, with negative concord. The two functions of each class (i.e. PPI-like vs NPI-like, NQ vs NPI) were determined by syntactic distribution. In the specific case of negative sentences, an indefinite before a sentential negative marker (NM) functioned like a PPI but after a NM like an NPI, while a negative pronoun before a NM was an NQ but after an NM an NPI. This pattern was at odds with the canonical VSO clause structure that evolved in later antiquity, in which focal constituents were contrastively stressed and fronted to the left periphery: neither indefinite nor negative pronouns could be focalised because of the prosodic and/or semantic restrictions on their distribution. This deficiency was eventually remedied by formal/prosodic recharacterisation, the loss of NQs and the generalisation of NPIs to all syntactic positions available to DPs, including the focus position, a process that triggered their reinterpretation as involving universal quantification over negation rather than, as before, existential quantification under negation. The Modern Greek PPI kápjos and NPI kanís are traced from their origins in Ancient Greek and their role in the evolution of the system is explored. The final outcome is typologically to be expected in so far as NQs are redundant in a system in which NPIs appear freely both before and after NMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I provide a unified explanation for two puzzling phenomena concerning sentence-initial negation: the ban on True Negative Imperatives that is attested in many languages and the ban on sole negative markers in sentence-initial position in V-to-C languages. I argue that both phenomena can be explained once it is assumed after Han () that operators encoding the illocutionary force of a speech act take scope from matrix C and may not be outscoped by negation. Consequently, a morphosyntactically negative element can appear in a position in C or SpecCP only if it is semantically non-negative or if it can reconstruct to a lower position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper argues that Negative Concord is generated by the grammars of all English varieties, but just not 'realized' in the standardized variety, in the sense of Barbiers (2005, 2009). I show that Double Negation constructions, wherein two negative elements yield a doubly negated meaning, are formed identically by English varieties that realize Negative Concord and those that do not. Unlike previous Minimalist Agree approaches to English Negative Concord, this proposal accounts for the fact that English varieties generate both Double Negation and Negative Concord constructions. This paper employs Tortora's (2009, in press) mechanism of feature spreading, and López's (2009) derivational assignment of the pragmatic feature [contrast], to successfully capture the facts of Negative Concord and Double Negation in English. In so doing, it contributes insight into the representation of sentential negation, and supports the Barbiersian notion that not all grammatical structures are realized in a given variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation has a very long history of study. In the realm of logic, negation is seen as a simple operation that turns an affirmative to a negative. This assumption strongly affected the linguistic study of negation, and led to some misconceptions. For example, negation in natural languages is seen as something unnatural, artificial and syntactically as well as semantically dependant on affirmation. It is perceived as a logical/mathematical operation that turns affirmatives into negatives by way of syntactic transformation and semantic cancellation of multiple negatives. To refute some of these misconceptions, the paper investigates the nature of negation as a linguistic phenomenon, and shows that negation in logic and linguistics should not and cannot be treated in the same fashion. Special attention is paid to the problems of structural complexity, the syntactic notion of multiple negation and its different semantic interpretations. With regard to the semantic interpretation of multiple negation, languages, by and large, allow for two possibilities: negative concord and double negation. Negative concord, which interprets two negatives as a single negation, seems to represent the natural course of language development, while double negation, which allows the cancellation of two negatives resulting in affirmation, was introduced into languages under the influence of logic in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Negative Indefinites (NIs) in languages such as Dutch and German may give rise to split-scope readings. Sentences like German Du must keine Krawatte anziehen ('you must wear no tie') have a reading where the modal takes scope in between the negation and the indefinite. In this paper I argue that West Germanic NIs are not negative quantifiers (in the Montegovian sense), but complex syntactic structures that consist of an abstract negative operator and an indefinite that are spelled out as a single word. Split-scope effects result from application of the copy theory of movement. I argue that in split-scope constructions, though they are spelled out as a single word, after Quantifier Raising the negative operator is interpreted in a higher copy and the indefinite in a lower copy of the NI. Furthermore I demonstrate that alternative analyses that take NIs in Dutch and German to be negative quantifiers, n-words, or the result of amalgamation or incorporation processes face problems that the analysis presented in this paper does not encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based primarily on data from the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT), is concerned with the description of those features of the negative polarity system that can be regarded as particularly characteristic of teenage language. A comparison is drawn with the expression of negation by adults, looking at a subcorpus of data extracted from the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE). Findings are classified into three main categories: syntactic, lexical, and pragmatic. At the syntactic level, teenage spoken language is characterized by a high frequency of negatives, a large number of negative concord structures, a common use of never as a single negator in the past, and a particular way of intensifying negative statements. Teenage spoken lexis shows the innovative use of some new negative items and a high proportion of negative polarity idioms. From a pragmatic perspective, the language of the teenagers in the corpus is notable for avoiding hedges and for being extremely direct and straightforward. Adolescent speakers also tend to use negatives as a kind of game to contradict their interlocutors. The article concludes by arguing that the expression of negation in teenage language is best understood within the framework of the interaction of cognitive and sociological variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This response focuses on two synchronic and two diachronic issues raised by Agnes Jäger's contribution to this volume. On the synchronic front, we take a closer look at the limits of the featural underspecification approach adopted by Jäger, arguing for the need to draw a featural distinction between 'ordinary' indefinites and positive polarity items, and also highlighting that the [affective] feature appears to play a rather central role not only in the domain of indefinites, but also beyond. In the diachronic domain, we briefly take issue with the feasibility of constraint reranking as an explanation for change, and then turn to a consideration of how a reinterpretation of Roberts and Roussou's () analysis of 'increasing negativity' may be captured in terms of an Agree-based system (cf. Biberauer and Roberts ). Like Jäger's proposed system, this alternative does not predict that indefinite-related developments should always be unidirectional, as has sometimes been supposed (cf. i.a. also Hoeksema ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction addresses some key issues and questions in the study of negation and polarity. Focussing on negative polarity and negative indefinites, it summarizes research trends and results. Special attention is paid to the issues of synchronic variation and diachronic change in the realm of negative polarity items, which figure prominently in the articles and commentaries contained in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is concerned with a construction in which multiple foci are found in front of the inflected verb, contrary to the accepted view on focussing in Hungarian, which allows for only one constituent there. Since earlier proposals for multiple wh-question constructions or multiple (postverbal) foci cannot be extended to cover the new cases, a new analysis is put forward based upon the assumption that Neg does not attract Tense and that wh-phrases must be licensed by Comp. The phenomenon of negative concord is invoked to provide independent evidence for the analyses presented. The interaction of negated universal quantifiers with negative concord quantifiers and focus is also examined in order to argue for the checking mechanisms at work in this language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Sentential negation, and the negative concord in particular, is a complex phenomenon which is far from being diachronically invariable. We could observe on the example of Portuguese that the main reason for the diachronic variation in the field of negation is the changing semantical status of the sentential negative marker não, according to the theory developed by Zeijlstra and Penka. The non-strict negative concord language as it is now has developed from Archaic Portuguese which could be considered as a strict NC language. The negative marker was originally required to accompany the semantically negated verb at any time, even in the co-occurrence with pre-verbal n-words. The negative marker was semantically non-negative which means that it had to participate, together with the remaining negative elements in the sentence, in a feature checking relation with an abstract negative operator, free of phonological content. Later on, in the Contemporary Standard Portuguese, the negative marker adopted the function of semantically negative operator against which other negative elements in the sentence need to be checked. Where the negative marker couldn’t license the n-words due to syntactical constraints it was not desirable, for the economy reasons, to appear anymore and was simply replaced by the abstract negative operator. The admitting of new structures of sentential negation in the Contemporary Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese is a proof that the system of sentential negation in Portuguese tends to evolve further in the common direction described by Jespersen. The Contemporary Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese is without doubts still a non-strict NC language which makes use of the negation marker não in a different way than it is common in the Standard Portuguese: it places it in the sentence final position to give a negative interpretation to the content of the sentence and to emphasize it at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we argue that variation in subject-verb agreement in Belfast English and Appalachian English bears on a number of issues that are relevant to current syntactic theory, including clause structure and subject positions, case, the syntax of negative polarity items and negative concord and the structure of the DP. We show that while the nature of the subject plays a role in determining subject-verb agreement in the two varieties (in different ways), subject position is the overt structural manifestation of the differing properties of the subject, independent of which properties are relevant in the variety in question. Our proposal on subject positions, which goes beyond what proposed for Belfast English, is able to capture clusters of properties not discussed by Henry, and thus more fully accounts for the range of micro-parametric variation we find. This paper thus provides support for a configurational approach to subject-verb agreement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article examines the formalization of negative concord in terms of the Minimalist Program, focusing entirely on negative concord in West Flemish. It is shown that a recent analysis of negative concord that advocates Multiple Agree is empirically inadequate. Instead of Multiple Agree, a particular implementation of the simpler and less powerful binary Agree proves superior in deriving the data in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will seek to answer the following two questions: (i) How can it be that in a language such as English, multiple "n-words" can be used to express a single semantic negation? and (ii) what is the status of n-words such as nothing and nowhere in the English lexicon? It will be shown that a semantic re-evaluation of n-words has occurred historically, with such words originating as a kind of morphologically-complex "n-marked" Negative Polarity Item (which entered into a "concord" relationship with other negative expressions) that later underwent lexicalisation to become Negative Quantifiers capable of expressing negation independently. Although this change is in keeping with the Jespersen Cycle, this paper will show that the change was not "across the board" in English, with both regional dialects and "the vernacular tongue" preserving the older system of negation, Negative Concord, until the present day. This has resulted in a rich and complex system of negation in modern English which has a similarly complex semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with a construction in which multiple foci are found in front of the inflected verb, contrary to the accepted view on focussing in Hungarian, which allows for only one constituent there. Since earlier proposals for multiple wh-question constructions or multiple (postverbal) foci cannot be extended to cover the new cases, a new analysis is put forward based upon the assumption that Neg does not attract Tense and that wh-phrases must be licensed by Comp. The phenomenon of negative concord is invoked to provide independent evidence for the analyses presented. The interaction of negated universal quantifiers with negative concord quantifiers and focus is also examined in order to argue for the checking mechanisms at work in this language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper argues that Soh's (2007) EP analysis only partially explains polarity operation in Mandarin VP-ellipsis. With new examples of the use of the particle que 'however', a polarity contrast of ye 'also', we propose that there are two focus projections in VP-ellipsis. One is the contrastive FocP headed by ye or que higher than TP and the other is the polarity PolP headed by an affirmative polarity focus shi 'be' or a covert negative polarity focus lower than TP. Foc interacts with Pol by a way of polarity concord, which is responsible for the polarity symmetry or asymmetry across two conjuncts. We suggest that the polarity concord is achieved via the Agree operation (Chomsky 2000, 2001) in line with Watanabe's (2004) feature copying analysis of the negative concord. A cross-linguistic investigation of languages of various word orders, including English (SVO), Japanese (SOV), Atayal (VOS), and Bunun (VSO) lends support to this focus account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crosslinguistically, negatives change in a cyclical fashion. A particular negative weakens and is renewed by another element. In this article, I provide examples of two distinct negative cycles, one using an indefinite phrase and the other a verbal head as renewal. The examples are taken from Indo-European, Uralic, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit, Haida, Afro-Asiatic, and Chinese. I also provide an account of both cycles using phrase structures and economy principles as in generative grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Licensing of NPIs in Spanish varies depending on the semantics of the trigger. Nonveridical operators license n-words, and antiveridical operators license ni-minimizers. I argue that the NPIs that can occur in antiveridical contexts have a scalar presupposition, but those that are licensed in strictly nonveridical contexts are non-scalar. In this analysis, n-words are scalar (incorporating a silent ni ‘even’) in the scope of antiveridical operators. The distinction between scalar and non-scalar NPIs, I suggest, is the reason for the diversity of polarity sensitivity phenomena in Spanish, as well as in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides evidence that Negative Concord in a single language can simultaneously realize two cross-linguistically available options along two parameters, which parameters are thereby shown to be available in typological terms independently of each other. N-words in Hungarian can be semantically negative or non-negative, and both types are lexically ambiguous between a universally quantified and a non-quantificational indefinite interpretation, confirming a typological prediction of Giannakidou (2000). N-words belonging to the negative paradigm are modified by a negative particle which the non-negative paradigm lacks. The negative n-words are in complementary distribution with each other and with clausal negation preverbally. The universally quantified and the existentially closed indefinite interpretations have different syntactic distributions verifiable among other in terms of presuppositionality effects and modifiability by certain quantification-senstitive elements. N-words are demonstrated to be syntactically focusable in Hungarian, which fact is linked to a historically tracable EVEN component residing in the modifying particle of the negative n-word paradigm, in line with Lahiri (1998) and Horn (2000). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper we provide a synchronic and diachronic analysis of an instance of so-called “expletive” negation in the Spanish approximative adverb por poco. Synchronically, we show that this adverb, when combined with the sentence negator no, is ambiguous between ~p (“expletive”) and ~~p (“canonical”) meanings. Diachronically, we show that this ambiguity arose due to a change in the negation system of Spanish around the fifteenth century. As a result, the supposed instances of “expletive” negation found in present-day uses of por poco are not really expletive at all, but rather are a holdover from the Old Spanish requirement of preverbal negative concord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I show that negative concord involves checking of the neg-features prompted by the uninterpretable focus feature of concord items, recasting Haegeman and Zanuttini's (1991, 1996) original account in the general theory of feature checking. A key theoretical mechanism is feature copying, which derives the core part of Neg-Factorization and is also shown to provide the foundation for the notion of chains defined in terms of occurrences. The proposed analysis of negative concord supports Merchant's (2001) theory of ellipsis, according to which ellipsis is PF deletion and requires semantic identity. I also discuss in detail how morphology interacts with properties of negative concord, taking into account wide-ranging crosslinguistic patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, African American English (AAE)-speaking children's comprehension of 2 different types of double negative sentences was examined and contrasted with that of a comparison group of Standard American English (SAE)-speaking children. The first type of double negative, negative concord, involves 2 negative elements in a sentence that are interpreted together as single negation. The second type of double negative, called true double negation, involves 2 negatives that are interpreted as independent negatives. A cross-sectional cohort of 61 (35 AAE, 26 SAE) typically developing children ranging in age from 5;2 (years;months) to 7;11 participated. The children responded to story-based grammatical judgment tasks that required them to differentiate between negative concord and true double negation. Results revealed no statistically significant differences between AAE- and SAE-speaking children in the way they interpreted negative concord and true double negation. However, there were significantly more correct responses to negative concord sentences across combined groups. In particular, the older children (i.e., 7-year-olds) produced more correct responses to negative concord than did the younger group (i.e., 5-year-olds). Explanations for these findings are framed in terms of children's knowledge about sentences with 2 negatives, the constraints affecting the interpretation of 2 negatives that include negative concord, and the clinical importance of negative concord for assessing specific language impairment in child AAE speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]