Negative indefinites

Oxrorp STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS General editors: David Adger, Queen Mary University of London; Hagit Borer, University of Southern California Advisory editors: Stephen Anderson, Yale University; Daniel Biiring, University of California, Los Angeles; Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Ben-Gurion University; Donka Farkas, University of California, Santa Cruz; Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Andrew Nevins, University College London; Christopher Potts, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Barry Schein, University of Southern California; Peter Svenonius, University of Troms@; Moira Yip, University College London Recent titles 144 Direct Compositionality edited by Chris Barker and Pauline Jacobson 15 A Natural History of Infixation by Alan C L Yu 16 Phi-Theory Phi- Features Across Interfaces and Modules edited by Daniel Harbour, David Adger, and Susana Béjar 17 French Dislocation: Interpretation, Syntax, Acquisition by Cécile De Cat 18 Inflectional Identity edited by 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Folli and Christiane Ulbrich 32 Negative Indefinites by Doris Penka For a complete list of titles published and in preparation for the series, see pp, 265-6 Negative Indefinites DORIS PENKA OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Jampur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipe: Toronto With offices in Argentina Guatemala South Korea Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic Hungary Italy Japan Poland Switzerland Thailand Turkey France Greece Portugal Singapore Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Doris Penka 2011 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 20 Alf rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you noust impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Namber: 2010930320 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn 978—-0-19-956726-3 (Hbk.) 978—-0~19~956727-0 (Pbk.) 13579108 642 a ISBN WL) UBRARIES | MAR 25 201 MEGENVED Contents Negative indefinites Sentential negation 1.2.1 Definition of sentential negation 1.2.2 The position of sentential negation 1.3 Outline of the book 1.1 1.2 Negative Concord 2.1 ~ XI He Introduction 1X XI COW WH General Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations The phenomenon of negative concord 2.1.1 First data 14 14 14 2.1.2 Strict and non-strict negative concord 16 Approaches to negative concord 2.2.1 Negative indefinites as negative polarity items 2.2.2 Negative indefinites as negative quantifiers 2.2.3 Negative indefinites as being ambiguous between negative quantifiers and NPIs Negative concord as syntactic agreement 2.3 2.2 2.3.1 The approach of Zeijlstra (2004) 2.3.2 Negative indefinites not associating with sentential negation 2.3.3 Negative concord in French 2.4 Summary Split Scope of NIs in German 3.1 Data 3.1.1 Modal and other restructuring verbs 3.1.2 Transitive intensional verbs 3.1.3 Predicative uses 3.1.4 Topic—focus accent 3.1.5 Idiomatic expressions 19 20 32 42 47 47 57 76 86 89 89 89 96 98 101 102 Contents 3.1.6 Further data 3.1.7 Conclusion from the data 3.2 Analysis of negative indefinites in German 3.2.1 Scope splitting with respect to verbs 3.2.2 Scope splitting under topic—focus accent 3.2.3 Negative indefinites in sentence-initial position 3.2.4 Negative indefinites inside prepositional phrases 3.3 Comparison with other accounts 3.3.1 Amalgamation and incorporation 3.3.2 Quantification over abstract individuals 3.3.3 Quantification over higher types 3.4 Summary Scope Splitting with Other Downward-Entailing Quantifiers 104 104 106 106 115 125 129 133 133 141 144 150 151 4.1 Background 151 4.2 Only 4.3 Fewer/less than 4.4 Few/little 153 155 162 4.5 At most 167 4.6 Summary 173 Distributional Restrictions in Scandinavian 174 5.1 The distribution of negative indefinites in Scandinavian 174 5.2 Analysis of negative indefinites in Scandinavian 5.3 Comparison with other accounts 178 183 5.4 Cross-linguistic perspective on negative indefinites in double negation languages The Nature of the Licensing Relation 6.1 LF movement of negative indefinites 190 197 197 6.2 Unselective binding 199 6.3 204 Association with operators in a Hamblin semantics 6.4 Distribution of indefinites in negative contexts Tests for the Quantificational Force of Negative Indefinites 212 228 7.1 Background 7.2 Modification by exceptive constructions 228 229 73 Modification by almost 7.3.1 Previous analyses of almost 232 233 7.3.2 Almost as an operator evaluating scalar alternatives 236 Contents 7.3.3 Negative indefinites modified by almost 73-4 Incompatibility of almost and NPIs 7.3.5 Remarks on the syntax of almost 7.4 Summary vii 239 241 243 244 Summary 246 References Index 249 261 General Preface The theoretical focus of this series is on the interfaces between subcomponents of the human grammatical system and the closely related area of the interfaces between the different subdisciplines of linguistics The notion of ‘interface’ has become central in grammatical theory (for instance, in Chomsky’s recent Minimalist Program) and in linguistic practice: work on the interfaces between syntax and semantics, syntax and morphology, phonology and phonetics, etc has led to a deeper understanding of particular linguistic phenomena and of the architecture of the linguistic component of the mind/brain The series covers interfaces between core components of grammar, including syntax/morphology, syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology, syntax/ pragmatics, morphology/phonology, phonology/phonetics, phonetics/speech processing, semantics/pragmatics, intonation/discourse structure as well as issues in the way that the systems of grammar involving these interface areas are acquired and deployed in use (including language acquisition, language dysfunction, and language processing) It demonstrates, we hope, that proper understandings of particular linguistic phenomena, languages, language groups, or inter-language variations all require reference to interfaces The series is open to work by linguists of all theoretical persuasions and schools of thought A main requirement is that authors should write so as to be understood by colleagues in related subfields of linguistics and by scholars in cognate disciplines In this volume Doris Penka explores the syntactic and semantic conditions on the licensing of negative indefinites She argues on the basis of a novel analysis of split scope effects that, in fact, negative indefinites are never semantically negative; rather they are subject to a syntactic licensing condition which requires them to be in a dependency with clausal negation, with the way that this dependency is configured being subject to cross-linguistic variation This implies the existence in natural language of phonologically null clausal negative markers, but allows a maximally simple mapping between the syntax and the semantics of these items David Adger Hagit Borer Acknowledgements This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, which I submitted to the University of Tubingen in April 2007 I am deeply indebted to the members of my thesis committee: Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Sigrid Beck, and Irene Heim This work would have been impossible without their guidance, advice, support, and encouragement I consider myself very fortunate that these members of my committee were also the people who taught me semantics and linguistics Had it not been for them, I would not be a semanticist or indeed a linguist The analysis I present here develops the ideas of Arnim von Stechow that have been expressed at various points in his work over the last 20 years (see in particular von Stechow, 1992, 1993; von Stechow and Geuder, 1997) Another person this work ts particularly indebted to is Hedde Zetjlstra ] am very happy J had him as a colleague in a project on negation in Tibingen This book has also benefited greatly from detailed and thought-provoking comments from an anonymous reviewer for Oxford University Press I also want to thank the following colleagues for discussion and valuable comments: Klaus Abels, Fabrizio Arosio, Josef Bayer, Ellen Brandner, Viviane Déprez, Anamaria Falaus, Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox, Jon Gajewski, Elena Guerzoni, Jack Hoeksema, Sabine Iatridou, Gianina lordachioaia, Agnes Jager, Angelika Kratzer, Antje Lahne, Winfried Lechner, Youngjoo Lee, Arne Martinus Lindstad, Sveta Krasikova, Claudia Maienborn, Luisa Marti, Cécile Meier, Andrew Nevins, @ystein Nilsen, Rick Nouwen, Orin Percus, Ingo Reich, Frank Richter, Manfred Sailer, Magdalena Schwager, Jan-Philipp Sohn, Uli Sauerland, Torgrim Solstad, and Hubert Truckenbrodt I have also received very valuable comments from audiences in Amsterdam, Berlin, Bilbao, Frankfurt, Oslo, and at MIT Thanks also to my friends and colleagues who generously provided native speaker insights: Anita Bregenzer, Isabelle Darcy, Marcel den Dikken, Chiara Gianollo, Christl Glauder, Simone Hartung, Anne Kjeldahl, Sveta Krasikova, Beatriz Lopez Jiménez, Maria Melchiors, Iryna Pur, John Vanderelst, and Hedde Zeijlstra I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the German Research Council (DFG) to the Sonderforschungsbereich 441 at the University of Tubingen, where | carried out the research leading to this book A scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) enabled me to spend the spring term of 2003 at MIT I am also grateful for the support of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz where | am presently a fellow List of Abbreviations Abbreviations used in text: CP DE DegP DN DP FC {P LF NC NegP NI NP NPI PF PP PPI QR TP VP complementizer phrase downward-entailing (monotone decreasing) degree phrase double negation determiner phrase free choice inflection phrase logical form negative concord negation phrase negative indefinite noun phrase negative polarity item phonetic form preposition phrase positive polarity item quantifier raising tense phrase verb phrase Abbreviations used in example glosses: ACC COMP DAT DET GEN CL INE INSTR MOD-PC NEG NOM OBJ-M PAST PAST-PART PERF-PART accusative case complementizer dative case determiner genitive case clitic infinitive instrumental case modal particle negative marker nominative case object marker past tense past participle perfect participle xii —- List of Abbreviations PL plural PRES PRES-PART present tense present participle REEL reflexive SG singular SUBJ subjunctive mood Notation used in examples: * xt > the expression is ungrammatical the reading is unavailable the expression is ungrammatical without X (*X) ‡ # *? †? the expression is ungrammiatical if X is included marked highly marked on the verge of ungrammaticality judged ungrammatical in the present stage of the language, but accepted as archaic or formal accepted by some but not all speakers infelicitous in the given context scope over falling accent rising accent ~— Vy ® *(X)