A bidirectional Optimality Theoretic analysis of multiple negative indefinites in Afrikaans

Abstract

In the literature on negation, Afrikaans is generally categorised as a negative concord language. Unlike most other negative concord languages though, utterances containing multiple indefinites in the scope of negation are typically produced with a combination of one negative indefinite and one (or more) non-negative indefinite, or negative polarity item, as in (i). (i) Ons het niemand ooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there PST-see SN 'We never saw anybody there.' However, although prohibited in formal, standard Afrikaans, where such utterances are prescriptively assigned a double negation meaning (x1x2) and produced with a specific prosodic contour, in colloquial Afrikaans it is also possible to produce multiple negative indefinites with a single, or negative concord, meaning, as in (ii). (ii) Ons het niemand nooit daar gesien nie. we have nobody ever there PST-see SN 'We never saw anybody there.' (¬x1x2) Standard analyses of negative concord as presented in the literature do not account for the alternation of indefinites and negative indefinites in (i) vs. (ii), or the potential availability of both negative concord and double negation readings for the utterance in (ii). Perception experiments show that grammaticality judgements, by native speakers of Afrikaans, of multiple negative indefinites presented as auditory stimuli exhibit gradient acceptability in relation to combinations of negative indefinites and non-negative indefinites. Furthermore, this experimental data indicates that listeners use sentence prosody to assist in the interpretation of potentially ambiguous sentences containing multiple negative indefinites. The gradience of acceptability of multiple negative indefinite combinations is mirrored in turn by the frequency

Children’s acquisition of negation in L1 Afrikaans

“…The CLAN function of CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) was used to perform word counts and to identify the number of negative elements in each sample. The occurrence of the nominal and adverbial negative elements niemand ‘nobody’, nooit ‘never’, nêrens ‘nowhere’, niks ‘nothing’, as well as the determiner geen/g ′n ‘no’ was counted in the samples – on Huddlestone’s (2010) classification of NIs in Afrikaans – along with the negative particle nie ‘not’ and moenie ‘must-not’.…”

“…Some of the manners in which these pattern in adult Afrikaans are discussed below. Note that we only discuss negation of simple sentences; for a discussion of negation in embedded sentences, see Huddlestone (2010).…”

On the prosody of French ambiguous multiple negative sentences.

“…Four perception studies (Huddlestone (2010) and Huddlestone & De Swart (2014) for Afrikaans, Espinal et al (2016) for Spanish, and Espinal & Prieto (2011) for Catalan) associate DN readings with what they term a "contradictory contour". These contradictory contours are described as a sequence of H*L*L-H% for Huddlestone and a sequence of L+H* LM% (namely a rising pitch accent L+H* on the accented syllable followed by a complex boundary fallrise pitch movement at the end) for Espinal and Prieto (2011) following Prieto et al (2013).…”

A syntactic-semantic optimality theoretic model on Hakka topic-comment construction

“…Triggered by the attempt for linguists to more generally employ the theory in different aspects of grammar, including sounds, words, sentences, and meaning, a bidirectional version of the optimality theory (BiOT) emerges. Hence, it is argued to be an integrated approach that combines areas such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and cognitive science to cope with linguistic problems in a more precise way (Beaver & Lee, 2004;Blutner, 2000;Hendriks et al, 2010;Huddlestone & de Swart, 2014;Jäger 2004;Wilson 2001;Zeevat 2001).…”