Negation and the left periphery in Finnish

Kaiser, Elsi

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2004.08.008

Cited by 23 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…These studies mainly concentrate on the pragmatics of noun phrases. Works devoted to possible information states of propositions include Dryer (1996) (on focal operators) and Kaiser (2004) (on propositions containing a marker of emphatic polarity). Fully conscious of the fact that more fine-grained distinctions can be made, I will assume that old information comes in two kinds, namely old information that has been mentioned explicitly, and old information that hasn't.…”

Section: The Discourse Status Of Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spelling out the obvious

Danckaert

2015

JHP

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In Danckaert (2014), the Latin particlequidemwas analysed as a marker of emphatic affirmative polarity. Building on this proposal, this paper elaborates on the pragmatic properties of this element. I argue thatquidemis not a neutral but a so-called “presuppositional” polarity marker, which confirms a proposition which (i) is already part of the common ground but (ii) was not overtly spelled out in the (immediately) preceding context. In more formal terms, I propose thatquidemgives rise to the conventional implicature that the speaker assumes that the content of his message might already be known to the addressee, or that it conveys information that the latter expects to hear or read.Quidemcan be regarded as a “lexical marker of common ground”, in the sense of Fetzer and Fischer (2007).

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Section: The Discourse Status Of Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spelling out the obvious

Danckaert

2015

JHP

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“…The T position on the other hand can only be a focus position if special stress is associated with it and even then, contrastive interpretation sounds rather marginal (cf. Kaiser 2006 who accounts for the impossibility of linear orders such as SOV where subject is given/known topic and the object is focalized). The T position is normally the position for given information.…”

Section: Jussi Jussimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a similar spirit, Kaiser (2006) proposes for Finnish the structure in (12), in which, again, the contrasted element is assumed to raise to the leftmost position in KontrastP and the known/given information (D-linked in our terms) has a dedicated position in FP, which can be recursive in the sense of Rizzi's recursive TopP projection (cf. Rizzi 1997 All these analyses have one important assumption in common: the leftmost position is dedicated to contrast and there is no place for a leftward moved topic (D-linked in our terms) in front of it.…”

Section: Jussi Jussimentioning

confidence: 99%

Some notes on word order and interpretation in Dutch and Finnish

Boef

Pozzo

2012

NLY

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Dutch is typically known to allow scrambling. Finnish on the other hand has a flexible word order. Even though the two languages differ in many aspects and Finnish does not have scrambling in the sense of an alternation between an adverb and an object, we suggest that the relation between word order and interpretation observed in the two languages is similar. On the basis of new empirical data from Finnish, we show that in both Dutch and Finnish movement of the direct object from its base-position to a noncanonical position in the middle field is related to discourse anaphoricity. IntroductionDutch has a rather rigid word order, but it does allow scrambling. Following Van Gelderen (2003) -but contra e.g. Hopp (2007) -we take scrambling in Dutch to be the alternation between a (sentential) adverb and an object (thus excluding dative shift or PP-movement across an adverb). Finnish, on the other hand, has a relatively free word order. It is a discourse-configurational language (Vilkuna 1989(Vilkuna , 1995, in the sense that word order is mainly driven by discourse considerations. Although Finnish does not seem to show scrambling as in Dutch, the aim of this paper is to show that the relation between word order and interpretation in Finnish is highly similar to the relation between word order and interpretation that is found in Dutch scrambling with full noun phrases. To capture the Finnish word order data in relation to the Dutch scrambling data, a broader definition of the notion scrambling is assumed. That is, we take scrambling in the broad sense to indicate movement of the direct object (DO) to a noncanonical position in the middle field of the clause, and we show that scrambling in the broad sense has the same effect on interpretation in both Dutch and Finnish, namely a D-linked interpretation of the scrambled object.

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“…The basic claim is that noncanonical negation is used to negate a discourse-old proposition. Kaiser (2006), for example, presents an analysis of preposed negation in Finnish along these lines. She observes that preposed negation is used to negate a proposition which is discourse-old in the sense of having been explicitly mentioned in or being inferable from the preceding context (p. 329).…”

Section: Preposed Negation and Discourse-old Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Non-canonical negation is used to negate a proposition activated in the previous discourse (i.e., an unactivated, but discourse-old proposition will be negated by canonical negation). Common to the analyses in Kaiser (2006) and Schwenter (2005) is that noncanonical negation is used to negate a "given" proposition, but the degree of givenness differs. In Kaiser's analysis of Finnish the negated proposition can be inferable from the preceding context; in Schwenter's analysis of Brazilian Portuguese it must have been activated.…”

Section: Preposed Negation and Discourse-old Propositionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negating the verum

Ørsnes

2012

J Comp German Linguistics

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In Danish the base position of the negation (and negated quantifier phrases) is between the subject and the finite verb in embedded clauses. However, in embedded clauses introduced by a non-veridical complementizer such as hvis 'if' or om 'whether', the negation can also appear between the complementizer and the subject. This little-studied phenomenon is referred to as preposed negation. The article investigates the syntax and semantics of preposed negation from a primarily descriptive point of view. It is argued that preposed negation is associated with negated verum-focus of a clause lacking an (aboutness-)topic. The negation of a verum predicate explains why preposed negation-like other constructions with verum-focus-fails to license strong negative polarity items and fails to rule out positive ones. The lack of a topic explains why preposed negation is preferred with non-referential subjects and with weak readings of indefinite subjects and why preposed negation is incompatible with topic-binding particles. It is further argued that preposed negation is not a lexical head (or part of a compound), but that it projects a phrase with wide scope, which is selected by the complementizer, rather than adjoined to the following clause. Two possible analyses of preposed negation are presented: an account where the preposed negation is in the specifier of a (selected) Polarity Phrase, and one where the preposed negation is selected as an optional complement by the complementizer.

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Negation and the left periphery in Finnish

Cited by 23 publications

References 17 publications

Spelling out the obvious

Spelling out the obvious

Some notes on word order and interpretation in Dutch and Finnish

Negating the verum

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