Negative polarity items in Ewe

Collins, Chris; Postal, Paul M.; Yevudey, Elvis

doi:10.1017/s002222671700007x

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In accordance with CP2014's SOME/ any mapping rule (11b), when the lower occurrence of NEG spells out, SOME remains unpronounced. A similar proposal by Collins et al (2017) accounts for NC constructions in Ewe (see also Collins and Postal (2017) on Serbo-Croatian).…”

Section: Negative Concordsupporting

confidence: 61%

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

Blanchette

Collins

2018

Can. J. Linguist.

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This article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

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Section: Negative Concordsupporting

confidence: 61%

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

Blanchette

Collins

2018

Can. J. Linguist.

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“…Here, we will suggest a much more radical alternative, although we will not be able to argue for it in detail here; see Collins, Postal and Yevudey (2015) for a related treatment. See also Bošković (2009), who arrives at a partially related conclusion about a 'null operator (Op) with iNEG'.…”

Section: Sc I-npismentioning

confidence: 97%

“…That is, SC appears to block a structure in which a unary NPI in a complement clause takes high scope with the obligatory NEG raising occurring in the matrix clause. In contrast, Collins, Postal and Yevudey (2015) show that the African language Ewe permits a high-scope analysis for examples analogous to the bad SC cases in (60).…”

Section: Sc Ni-npismentioning

confidence: 97%

NEG Raising and Serbo-Croatian NPIs

Collins¹,

Postal

2017

Can. J. Linguist.

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Collins and Postal (2014) postulate that English NPIs represent two distinct structures: a unary NEG structure and a binary NEG structure. Some NPIs, such as any and ever expressions, can instantiate either of these two structures in different contexts. Others (such as one use of jackshit) have only unary NEG structures. The present article seeks to provide cross-linguistic support for this hypothesis by showing that the two series of NPIs in Serbian/Croatian (Progovac 1994) should be analyzed in terms of the two structure types postulated for English NPIs.

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“…Instead, in place of a phrase like nessuno “nobody” in (1), they contain a phrase which is not overtly negative but depends on a preceding element, prototypically a negation, for its licensing. The following is example is from Ewe (Collins et al, 2017, p. 2, ex. (2b)):…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetries in the Acceptability and Felicity of English Negative Dependencies: Where Negative Concord and Negative Polarity (Do Not) Overlap

Blanchette

Lukyanenko

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn’t warn nobody about the floods (meaning “the news anchor warned nobody”), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn’t warn anybody about the floods, are prescriptively correct. Because acceptability is often equated with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in “Standard” or standardized English (SE). However, it is possible that SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g., nobody), NPIs (e.g., anybody), and bare plurals (e.g., people), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants’ acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any-NPIs in English.

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Negative polarity items in Ewe

Cited by 10 publications

References 33 publications

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

NEG Raising and Serbo-Croatian NPIs

Asymmetries in the Acceptability and Felicity of English Negative Dependencies: Where Negative Concord and Negative Polarity (Do Not) Overlap

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