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Title:
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The Grammar of Negation: A lexicalist, constraint-based perspective
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Author:
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Jong-Bok Kim
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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Stanford University
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1996
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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English
French
Italian
Korean
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Director(s):
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Peter Sells
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Ivan Sag
Thomas Wasow
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Abstract:
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This dissertation considers the treatment of negation in languages such as Korean, English, French and Italian, within the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. It focuses on the three questions: (a) what are the main ways of expressing sentential negation in languages like Korean, English, French, and Italian? (b) what are the distributional possibilities of negative markers for sentential negation in these languages in relation to other main constituents of the sentence? (c) what do the answers to these two questions imply for the theory of grammar?
As for the main ways of expressing negation in the languages, there are four main types: morphological negatives as in Korean, negative auxiliary verbs as in Korean, adverbial negatives as in English and French, and (clitic-like) negative verbs as in Italian and Spanish. In addition to these main types, it is argued that English and French allow their adverbial negative markers `not' and `pas' to be converted into complements in lexically restricted environments. Various independent arguments, such as VP ellipsis, fronting, and scope in English and VP preposing and clefting in French, support the analysis of `not' and `pas' as complements. As for the question of what determines the distribution of these various types of negation, I have challenged the derivational view in which the positioning of all the negatives is basically determined by the interaction of movement operations, a rather large set of functional projections including NegP, and their hierarchically fixed organization. Instead I have claimed that a better analysis can be achieved within a nonderivational, strictly lexicalist view in which the distributional possibilities of negatives are basically drawn from the lexical properties of each negative marker and from the interaction of elementary, independently motivated morphosyntactic and valence properties of syntactic heads. The claimed implication of this research has been that a lexicalist theory which allows the proper division of labor between morphology and syntax is much more economical and feasible than a derivational analysis. As a lexicalist, non-derivational grammar, I have chosen the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. The theoretical foundations of HPSG lie in a concrete conception of constituent structures, a limited set of universal principles, and enriched lexical representations. The analyses suggested for each type of negation in this research have shown how the interaction of the precise lexical specification in morphology, a concrete X'-theory, and a limited set of universal principles, can produce effects similar to those of head movement and functional categories, but with broader coverage in a more descriptive and explanatory fashion.
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