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Title:
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Sentential Negation and Negative Concord
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Author:
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Hedde Zeijlstra
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Homepage:
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http://www.heddezeijlstra.nl
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Degree Awarded:
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Universiteit van Amsterdam
, Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Semantics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Dutch
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Director(s):
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Jeroen Groenendijk
Hans Den Besten
Hans Bennis
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Abstract:
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Sentential Negation and Negative Concord describes and explains a series of phenomena that surface in the study of negation as well the typological correlations between these phenomena.
The study focuses on four issues: (i) the way that sentential negation is expressed syntactically, i.e. what are the syntactic properties of negative markers cross-linguistically; (ii) the occurrence of Negative Concord, i.e. the phenomenon that in many languages multiple morpho-syntactically negative elements yield only one semantic negation; (iii) the question whether imperative forms of verbs are allowed to occur in negative constructions; and (iv) the interpretation of constructions in which a universal quantifier subject precedes a negative marker: in most languages the negation then outscopes the subject.
Based on the results of Dutch diachronic, Dutch dialectological and cross-linguistic research the author shows that all these phenomena can be described in terms of typological implications. For instance, every language that bans true negative imperatives has at least a negative marker that is a syntactic head; and every language with such a negative head marker is on its turn a Negative Concord language.
The author presents a syntax-semantics interface theory of sentential negation and Negative Concord that correctly predicts these typological implications. One of the general conclusions of this study is that n-words (in Negative Concord languages) should not be thought of as negative quantifiers or negative polarity items, but that they should be considered as semantically non-negativeindefinites that are syntactically marked for negation.
This study is of relevance to syntacticians, semanticists and scholars in the syntax-semantics interface, as well as to diachronic linguists, dialectologists and typologists.
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