Search

Negative concord (NC) is used in many English varieties but usually considered ungrammatical in ‘standard’ contemporary English, where negative polarity items (NPIs) are used. In this paper, we take a novel experimental approach to the use of NC versus NPI constructions, in relation to register, sets of speech repertoires linked to specific situational and functional parameters. We report on two rating experiments with American and British English participants using interlocutor relations as a formality manipulation. Results show that (i) across both samples, NC constructions were rated as less appropriate than NPI associates, and (ii) there was a register effect in the American English data in that NC was rated less appropriate in formal than informal contexts. Our study is the first to provide experimental evidence for the register-sensitivity of NC constructions in American English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, by focussing on the behaviour of polarity elements from a variety of languages from different language families (namely, Basque, Hindi, English, Romanian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, and Russian) we investigate the relationship between polarity sensitive items (PSIs) and negative polarity items (NPIs) on the one hand, and between PSIs and negative concord items (NCIs) on the other. Based on a number of contrasts that we find, we argue that: (i) if a language has PSIs it does not necessarily have NCIs; (ii) PSIs need to be distinguished from NPIs; (iii) NCIs emerge as a subtype of PSIs, not of NPIs; and (iv) all languages that show negative concord (NC) also have polarity sensitivity (PS), but the opposite does not hold. We thus postulate that PS is a general phenomenon across languages with negative polarity (NPol) and NC as possible subtypes of PS but independent among them, and argue against the standard hypothesis that NC is a special subtype of NPol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes an answer to the question of how a language of (strict) negative concord may evince double negation reading in negative clauses with N-words. The question is justified, because according to Giannakidou (2006), languages of strict negative concord cannot express double negation. Romanian is a language of strict negative concord and no consensus exists among researchers, as far as the double negation reading of negative clauses with N-words is concerned. For this reason, we designed and conducted an experiment which shows that double negation is an interpretive option in negative clauses with N-words, even if it is not recognised by all the native speakers. Our experiment also reveals that speakers' interpretive options with respect to this topic are very diverse. In order to account for them, we propose a theory that explains the duality negative concord/double negation. The theory consists of a number of rules which pairs the prosody of the N-words with their meaning and use. The theory relies on two theses: (i) N-words in Romanian are universal quantifiers sensitive to negation and scoping above it; (ii) emphatic accent on N-words in Romanian marks either the wide scope of the N-words with respect to negation, or the speaker's verum attitude (Hohle 1992) towards the interlocutor's utterances. In the literature, the verum attitude is called Verum Focus. When emphasis expresses verum focus, it means agreement or disagreement of the speaker with the truth of the utterance held by the interlocutor. Disagreement amounts to rejecting the truth commitment. If the interlocutor's utterance is negative and contains N-words, rejecting the truth commitment is asserting its opposite. This yields the double negation effect. In the final section we compare our approach to other solutions already proposed in the literature, and prospect the chances of extending it to other negative concord languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate the ne...ne construction in Turkish, illustrated by Ne Ali ne (de) Esra geldi 'Neither Ali nor Esra arrived'. The meaning of the ne...ne construction roughly corresponds to the meaning of the neither...nor construction in English, but the syntactic properties of ne...ne are somewhat different from those of neither...nor. I focus on two such differences: one, the fact that ne...ne can, although it doesn't have to, be accompanied by a negated verb; in fact, a negated verb is slightly dispreferred by speakers (but the presence versus the absence of negation interacts in interesting ways with negative concord); and two, the fact that the ne...ne construction cannot be embedded under a wide-scope question particle –mI except when the verb is negated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children's non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel account for the optionality of negative concord observed with neither...nor coordinations, in an otherwise strict negative concord language—Turkish. I argue that the apparently optional negative concord is a surface phenomenon that can be traced back to a structural ambiguity arising from the type-flexibility of coordination operators. The semantic type of the coordination affects its syntactic position relative to the Turkish NegP, which results in different surface facts: whenever the neither...nor coordination is of a generalized quantifier type, it originates in the vP below the NegP, akin to other negative concord items like nobody, triggering negative concord with sentential negation; whenever it is a propositional coordination, it contains the NegP position, and there is no negative concord. We can account for this exceptionally optional negative concord phenomenon by seamlessly importing these facts into an existing negative concord architecture (Zeijlstra 2004, 2012), with no significant modifications. This reductionist analysis contrasts with alternative approaches that explain optionality by adding complexity to the mechanics of the negative concord system (Şener and İşsever 2003 for Turkish; Szabolcsi 2018a for Hungarian). Finally, this account crucially relies on a theory of coordination operators as type-flexible, and therefore contributes an argument against a view of coordinators as having a rigid propositional type (Hirsch 2017; Schein 2017). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes two main claims: the presence of two or more negative elements in Negative Concord, Negative Comparison, and Expletive Negation basically rests upon the pragmatic need of intensifying the negative import of the sentence. Secondly, the paper aims at identifying a possible path of functional expansion that may account for the use of the Expletive Negation in the constructions under scrutiny. Expletive Negation is originally tied to the core concept of inequality comparison (x is more/has more y than z, where y refers to a state, a quality or property), as well as to temporal comparison (x before y)–where the second member is implicitly negated; it may then expand to other constructions such as Negative Concord and the construction of fear verbs.

The studies on multiple negation have been conducted intensively in linguistics, but very few studies have focused on multiple negation in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Although multiple negation appears in informal varieties, researchers find it an important topic for research. First, as linguists, we believe that all kinds of language varieties are worth studying. Second, the complexity of the structure of multiple negation raises queries about the difficulties that Arab students will encounter when they attempt to translate them from English to MSA. Our study focuses on double negation (DN) because, unlike other types of multiple negation, it yields a positive interpretation. This paper begins with a review of studies on multiple negation in English, MSA, and other languages, using a framework of generative grammar and the minimalist program. We then report on our empirical study of 60 randomly selected Arab students of English who were asked to translate 20 sentences containing multiple negation into MSA. To determine whether the intensity of their exposure to English would impact their understanding of these negative English structures, the students studying at levels two and four were selected. The students’ responses were quantitatively analysed. The results showed that MSA exhibits both DN and negative concord constructions. Moreover, the syntactic analyses of DN provided by Watanabe (2004) and Giannakidou (2000) concord with DN in MSA with some considerations. Additionally, all the sampled students had difficulty translating these types of sentences, indicating that intensity of exposure did not cause differences in performance.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Larq Journal for Philosophy, Linguistics & Social Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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 aims to advance the general understanding of negative concord (as in English We don’t need no education) and connective negation (as in English neither … nor’) through an analysis of Persian. For negative concord with indefinites the analysis highlights differences between human vs. non-human and pronominal vs. nominal negative concord. It also deals with the problem that hič, the word that arguably marks negation in negative indefinites, also has a non-negative emphatic meaning in questions. For the relation between negative concord and connective negation the paper suggests the importance of two new parameters: (i) are the connective negator and the normal clausal negator similar? and (ii) can one of two negatively connected phrases precede the verb and the other follow it?

The article aims to advance the general understanding of negative concord through a comparative analysis of nominal and pronominal negative concord in Jamaican and Belizean Creole, based on the translations of the New Testament. It supplies a general characterization of Jamaican and Belizean negative concord and then focuses on negative concord with a negator like what corresponds to English not and either a pronoun or a nominal like what corresponds to English nobody or no man, respectively. The paper makes a strong plea for studying nominal negative concord in its own right. It shows how it differs from pronominal negative concord and for both it lays bare a variety of non-concordant patterns. It explains the variation in terms of a number of principles, one of which is what is standardly called the ‘Negative First’ principle, but it is defined in a new way. The article shows that there can be concord with definite negative nominals.

In this paper I investigate the ne…ne construction in Turkish, illustrated by Ne Ali ne (de) Esra geldi ‘Neither Ali nor Esra arrived’. The meaning of the ne…ne construction roughly corresponds to the meaning of the neither…nor construction in English, but the syntactic properties of ne…ne are somewhat different from those of neither…nor. I focus on two such differences: one, the fact that ne…ne can, although it doesn’t have to, be accompanied by a negated verb; in fact, a negated verb is slightly dispreferred by speakers (but the presence versus the absence of negation interacts in interesting ways with negative concord); and two, the fact that the ne…ne construction cannot be embedded under a wide-scope question particle –mI except when the verb is negated.

This paper investigates the distribution of negation strategies in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in the light of frequency-based data from a naturalistic TİD Corpus. On the basis of frequency occurrences, this study offers a novel account of negation on typological grounds: (i) by focusing on nonmanual markers, we propose that a clause can be negated with a nonmanual element only – a pattern that has been typologically proposed for other sign languages – while previous studies classified TİD as a manual dominant language in terms of Zeshan’s typology (Zeshan, 2006), (ii) Also, we argue that backward head tilt has a syntactic characteristic, not lexically specified for NOT contrast to Gökgöz (2011), (iii) on the other hand, in line with Pfau (2016), we show that TİD can easily be classified as Non-Strict NC language. In addition, by proposing frequency-based typological distinction, we argue that TİD can be classified a hybrid negating sign language.

The present study examines how Korean-speaking learners of English as a second language understand English ‘bi-negative’ sentences, which contain both not and a negative pronoun (e.g., No one didn’t cry, I didn’t do nothing). A semantic similarity judgment task demonstrates that native speakers of English clearly accept patterns of this type and assign them an affirmative interpretation. However, the same task reveals that our 31 Korean participants are largely unaware of this usage and reject the affirmative meaning of the bi-negative sentences. A translation experiment involving a different group of 32 Korean-speaking learners reveals a strong tendency to interpret the bi-negative patterns as if they were the sort of negative concord pattern typical of Korean. These results suggest the presence of first-language transfer, even among advanced speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the interpretation and distribution of n-words in Karak Jordanian Arabic. Karak Jordanian Arabic is considered a special case among other Negative Concord languages because it exhibits both strict and non-strict n-words at the same time. Previous accounts of Negative Concord in Arabic and other languages suffer the problem of capturing the special case of languages like Karak Jordanian Arabic that exhibit a mixed case of strict and non-strict Negative Concord. The current study attempts to extend Swart's (2006, 2010) Optimality-Theoretic approach of Negative Concord to Karak Jordanian Arabic. The study shows that Optimality Theory can account for the facts surrounding the interpretation and distribution of Negative Concord in Karak Jordanian Arabic. We assume that n-words in Karak Jordanian Arabic are semantically negative in contrast to some previous accounts that take n-words to be only formally negative. The study also shows that advanced versions of Optimality Theory, namely Bidirectional and Stochastic Optimality Theory, provide straightforward answers for why n-words seem to lose their negative force in Negative Concord constructions, and why languages like Karak Jordanian Arabic have both strict and non-strict n-words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Likewise, with respect to NC, although [1] pointed to the syntactic differences between English and Spanish as a source of difficulty in the acquisition of NC, little is known about how English-native learners approach NC in language use as they become increasingly more proficient in L2 Spanish. Keywords: negative concord; negative concord items; L2 Spanish negation EN negative concord negative concord items L2 Spanish negation 483 517 35 09/06/22 20220901 NES 220901 1 Introduction Negation is a fundamental feature of human language and has garnered considerable interest in theoretical linguistic study across a wide range of world languages ([31]; [39]). The NCI I nadie i was not a more significant predictor of change in the rate of NC than the NCI I nada i , despite appearing with NC at a higher overall rate in Table 5. Participants were students recruited from a range of Spanish courses, which were First Semester Spanish Language ( I n i = 17 participants), Second Semester Spanish Language ( I n i = 2), Third Semester Spanish Language ( I n i = 2), Spanish Grammar in Context ( I n i = 14), Medical Spanish ( I n i = 11), Advanced Spanish Composition ( I n i = 9), Introduction to Literary Analysis ( I n i = 6), Survey of Peninsular Literature ( I n i = 4), and Advanced Spanish Translation ( I n i = 6). However, the results indicate that there is no significant effect of NCI ( I nada i or I nadie i in argument position) on the production of NC in L2 Spanish, suggesting that NC does not favor one lexical NCI over another based on differences in meaning or frequency. [Extracted from the article]

English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF) is a contact language that has attracted great attention due to its unique global role. Thus, numerous studies have been conducted to determine its characteristics, among which research on such processes as, for example, simplification, added prominence or redundancy underlying language use in the ELF context is of the main interest. Therefore, the paper aims to broaden the perspective on redundancy in ELF, focusing on negative and modal concord in spoken and written data. With the reliance on VOICE, ELFA, and WrELFA corpora, the analysis shows that both phenomena are noticeable in ELF; however, while redundancy in terms of modal concord appears in spoken and written ELF, negative concord is characteristic only of spoken data.

This paper uses a novel argument based on nominalization to argue for a low structural position for negation in Persian. This proposal is advanced in two stages. First, the paper investigates nominalization in Persian to identify the height at which nominal structure is introduced. Using evidence from the distribution of various kinds of syntactic objects in the context of nominalization, it will be argued that nominalization occurs at the level of VoiceP (or just above it) in Persian. Next, the paper uses the findings about nominalization to provide an argument for a low position of sentential negation in the language. It will be shown that negation in Persian in included in the nominalized structure and, hence, negation has to be low. This proposal is weighed against previous accounts in the literature, which have taken negation to be high in the language.

Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children’s non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided.

Negation is a topic that has received considerable attention ever since the early days of sign language linguistics; also, it is one of the grammatical domains that has given the impetus for sign language typology. In this paper, we offer a typological and theoretical contribution to the study of sign language negation. As for the typological side, we add Georgian Sign Language (GESL) to the pool of languages investigated. Our description reveals that GESL displays a number of typologically unusual features: a considerable number of negative particles, including emphatic, prohibitive, and tense-specific particles; specialized negative modals; and a wide range of possibilities for Negative Concord (NC) involving two manual negative signs, including a unique tense-specific instance of NC. Most of the patterns we report—available negative particles, their clausal position, and NC possibilities—are clearly different from those attested in spoken Georgian. As for the theoretical contribution, we investigate how the highly complex GESL negation system compares to existing taxonomies of NC and Double Negation systems, and we conclude that GESL aligns with certain languages that have been classified as atypical NC languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the reading performance of an Italian speaker with egocentric Neglect Dyslexia on sentences with Negative Concord structures, which contain a linguistic cue to the presence of a preceding negative marker and compare it to sentences with no such cue. As predicted, the frequency of reading the whole sentence, including the initial negative marker non, was higher in Negative Concord structures than in sentences which also started with non, but crucially, lacked the medially positioned linguistic cue to the presence of non. These data support the claim that the presence of linguistic cues to sentence structure modulates attention during reading in Neglect Dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents an exploratory data analysis of the syntactic distribution of pre- and postverbal negation (N1 and N2) in a corpus of data gathered from two linguistic atlases, the Linguistic Atlas of France (ALF) and the Italo-Swiss Atlas (AIS). Metadata concerning the distribution of N1 and N2 across dialects and syntactic contexts are analyzed with the r package Rbrul. Multiple logistic regression allows us to assess how independent variables affect the presence/absence of N1/N2. Geographical and grammatical factors are examined; the latter concern mainly clause typing and negative concord, i.e., the co-occurrence of clausal negation and a negative word. The data from the two atlases are first analyzed separately and eventually merged in order to strengthen the statistical significance. Both geographical and grammatical factors prove to be significant. In particular, the preliminary findings show that N1 is more likely retained in sentences containing another negative word, the incidence of N1 varies according to the type of co-occurring negative word, and veridicality has a mild effect on N2 but not N1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negation is a topic that has received considerable attention ever since the early days of sign language linguistics; also, it is one of the grammatical domains that has given the impetus for sign language typology. In this paper, we offer a typological and theoretical contribution to the study of sign language negation. As for the typological side, we add Georgian Sign Language (GESL) to the pool of languages investigated. Our description reveals that GESL displays a number of typologically unusual features: a considerable number of negative particles, including emphatic, prohibitive, and tense-specific particles; specialized negative modals; and a wide range of possibilities for Negative Concord (NC) involving two manual negative signs, including a unique tense-specific instance of NC. Most of the patterns we report—available negative particles, their clausal position, and NC possibilities—are clearly different from those attested in spoken Georgian. As for the theoretical contribution, we investigate how the highly complex GESL negation system compares to existing taxonomies of NC and Double Negation systems, and we conclude that GESL aligns with certain languages that have been classified as atypical NC languages.

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.

This article aims at investigating some diachronic aspects of the Italian negative system, considering a time span ranging from Old Latin to Modern Italian. Most of the negative polarity phenomena populating the Modern Italian system are consequences of a crucial change that occurred in Old Latin: The Latin negative morpheme nōn ("not"), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, and became a syntactic (negative) head. This change caused the shift from a double negation system to a negative concord one, which affects many Romance languages (and their dialects). It also determines the availability of the expletive reading of negation in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages (ex. French), calling for a new generalization: only languages (and structures) displaying a negative head allow the expletive interpretation of negation, languages displaying a maximal projection status do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concord describes a natural language phenomenon in which a single logical meaning is expressed syntactically on multiple lexical items. The canonical example is negative concord, in which multiple negative expressions are used, but a single negation is interpreted. Formally similar phenomena have been observed for the redundant marking of distributivity and definiteness. Inspired by recent dynamic analyses of these latter two phenomena, we extend a similar dynamic analysis to negative concord. We propose that negative concord items introduce a discourse referent (like an existential), but then test that no discourse referent has been introduced in any assignment. These apparently contradictory requirements are licensed with split scope around negation: introduction occurs below negation; the test appears above it. The analysis successfully predicts that negative concord items must be licensed by a sufficiently local negative operator. We further show that modulation of what is at-issue can account for cases in which NC items themselves carry negative force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Croatica: Magazine for Croatian Language, Literature & Culture is the property of University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences 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.)

Copyright of Journal of Linguistic Research / Dilbilim Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of Bogazici University Press 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.)

Copyright of Jezikoslovlje is the property of University of Osijek, Faculty of Philosophy 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 article examines the replication of the Balkan areal pattern in Judeo-Spanish adlimitives or ‘until’-clauses. Based on examples extracted from original Judeo-Spanish sources composed between 16th and 20th centuries of diverse genres, the replication in Judeo- Spanish fin ke/asta ke-clauses of the Balkan pattern of prefixed perfective Indicative verbs (with negator) is traced, instead of the Hispanic prospective subjunctive. The change is analysed based on the contrast between Spanish, Balkan languages and the outcomes of their contact in Judeo-Spanish (as a new-comer to the Balkan Linguistic Area). By transferring to the Balkan area, Judeo-Spanish changed from non-strict to a strict negative concord language and this change affected also the structure of until-clauses. The approach is the division of until-clauses into three subtypes (as identified by Muravyev & Georgieva 2018) and their structure presented in contrast between Spanish (a non-strict negative concord language as the remainder of Ibero-Romance) and strict negative concord (Balkan languages and Judeo- Spanish). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF) is a contact language that has attracted great attention due to its unique global role. Thus, numerous studies have been conducted to determine its characteristics, among which research on such processes as, for example, simplification, added prominence or redundancy underlying language use in the ELF context is of the main interest. Therefore, the paper aims to broaden the perspective on redundancy in ELF, focusing on negative and modal concord in spoken and written data. With the reliance on VOICE, ELFA, and WrELFA corpora, the analysis shows that both phenomena are noticeable in ELF; however, while redundancy in terms of modal concord appears in spoken and written ELF, negative concord is characteristic only of spoken data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents an exploratory data analysis of the syntactic distribution of pre- and postverbal negation (N1 and N2) in a corpus of data gathered from two linguistic atlases, the Linguistic Atlas of France (ALF) and the Italo-Swiss Atlas (AIS). Metadata concerning the distribution of N1 and N2 across dialects and syntactic contexts are analyzed with the r package Rbrul. Multiple logistic regression allows us to assess how independent variables affect the presence/absence of N1/N2. Geographical and grammatical factors are examined; the latter concern mainly clause typing and negative concord, i.e., the co-occurrence of clausal negation and a negative word. The data from the two atlases are first analyzed separately and eventually merged in order to strengthen the statistical significance. Both geographical and grammatical factors prove to be significant. In particular, the preliminary findings show that N1 is more likely retained in sentences containing another negative word, the incidence of N1 varies according to the type of co-occurring negative word, and veridicality has a mild effect on N2 but not N1.

This article aims at investigating some diachronic aspects of the Italian negative system, considering a time span ranging from Old Latin to Modern Italian. Most of the negative polarity phenomena populating the Modern Italian system are consequences of a crucial change that occurred in Old Latin: The Latin negative morpheme nōn (“not”), which initially displayed a maximal projection status, and became a syntactic (negative) head. This change caused the shift from a double negation system to a negative concord one, which affects many Romance languages (and their dialects). It also determines the availability of the expletive reading of negation in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages (ex. French), calling for a new generalization: only languages (and structures) displaying a negative head allow the expletive interpretation of negation, languages displaying a maximal projection status do not.

In the article, we made a synopsis of the advances in the investigation upon the Negative Concord structure (concordança negativa) in Catalan hitherto made. Speaking of Romance languages, an optional negation of the predicate after an n-word is a trait characteristic only of the Pyrenean continuum. The source of the dialectal diversity in the Negative Concord paradigm is to be searched for - primarily in language contact; historical and social factors have also been considered. A special insight has been offered on the ample class of minimizers, just like n-words subject to the processes of desemanticization and grammaticalization as emphatic particles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typologically, the world's languages vary in how they express universal quantification and negative quantification. In patterns of concord, a single distributive or negative meaning is expressed redundantly on multiple morphological items. Sign languages, too, show semantic variation, but, surprisingly, this variation populates a specific corner of the full typological landscape. When we focus on manual signs, sign languages systematically have distributive concord but tend to not have negative concord in its canonical form. Here, I explain these typological facts as the reflection of an abstract, iconic bias. Recent work on distributive concord and negative concord has proposed that the phenomena can be explained in relation to the discourse referents they make available. The use of space in sign language also invites iconic inferences about the referents introduced in discourse. I show that these iconic inferences coincide with the meaning of distributive concord but contradict the meaning of negative concord. The sign language typology is thus explained based on what is easy and hard to represent in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RumeliDE Journal of Language & Literature Research / RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of RumeliDE Uluslararasi Hakemli Dil & Edebiyat Arastirmalari Dergisi 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.)

Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn’t warn nobody about the floods (meaning “the news anchor warned nobody”), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn’t warn anybody about the floods, are prescriptively correct. Because acceptability is often equated with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in “Standard” or standardized English (SE). However, it is possible that SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g., nobody), NPIs (e.g., anybody), and bare plurals (e.g., people), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants’ acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any-NPIs in English.

I analyze the Romance descendants of Latin aliquis 'some or other', which are characterized by a complex pattern of variation in the contemporary Romance languages. I account for this variation in terms of diverging diachronic paths, tracing their determinants back to a process taking place between Classical and late Latin. Classical Latin only used aliquis as an epistemic indefinite, expressing ignorance about the identity of the referent. In late Latin a distributional extension is observed, and aliquis starts to be consistently found as an NPI in negative contexts. This multiplicity of uses is transmitted to medieval Romance and represents the prerequisite for contemporary variation. In their further history, some languages continue only one of the two uses. Other languages maintain both, but the meaning contrast comes to be related to a word-order difference. I analyze this difference as a syntactic DP-internal inversion operation, motivated by focus and connected to polarity sensitivity. Significantly, the diachronic path of the Romance descendants of aliquis contributes to our understanding of general mechanisms of semantic change, since it instantiates a cline of development that can be related to varying (hence, diachronically changing) constraints on quantificational domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the diachronic changes in negation and Emphatic Focus that are responsible for the distribution of negated adjuncts in Present Day English. These can occur clause-medially and clause-initially, but generally not clause-finally. While clause-initial negated adjuncts move to the left-periphery triggering Negative Inversion for emphasis, clause-medial negated adjuncts are argued to occur in their first-merged position as vP-adjuncts. We relate the inability of clause-final negated adjuncts to express sentential negation to the loss of Prosodic-movement and Negative Concord in the transition from Late Middle English to Early Modern English. The eventual loss of Negative Concord is related to the reanalysis of negative words from non-negative (i.e. [uNeg]) to negative (i.e. [iNeg]). Upon loss of Prosodic-movement, reanalysis of negative words as [iNeg] results in the rise of Negative Inversion to express Focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxia is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones 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 focuses on the class of N-words in the Aromanian dialect of Romanian. Being a cross-linguistically central topic in the typological study of negation, the semantic status of the N-words remains a controversial subject. While the Standard Romanian N-words have benefited from various interpretations in the literature (as existential quantifiers under negation, universal quantifiers above negation, free choice items, negative polarity items or negative quantifiers), the N-word paradigms in the South- Danube dialects of Romanian have not been studied yet. This paper offers an analysis and a classification of the Aromanian N-words (or Negative Concord Items), serving also as a typological characterization of the negation system in this dialect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient Greek has at its disposal a complex system of negatives (n-words and negators) that can combine in different ways. Drawing on Xenophon's works, I will show various patterns reflecting the combinations of negatives (negator and n-words) in Ancient Greek sentences; due to its relatively free word order, the place of negative elements may vary considerably. I pay special attention to n-words and negative spread, which is markedly developed in Ancient Greek, and examine the differences between non-strict negative concord languages (like Italian and Spanish) and specific non-strict negative concord languages (like Ancient Greek), arguing for scalar properties of negation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn't warn nobody about the floods (meaning "the news anchor warned nobody"), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn't warn anybody about the floods , are prescriptively correct. Because acceptability is often equated with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in "Standard" or standardized English (SE). However, it is possible that SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g., nobody), NPIs (e.g., anybody) , and bare plurals (e.g., people), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants' acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any -NPIs in English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]