Quantification and focus in Negative Concord

Surányi, Balâzs

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2004.08.007

Cited by 30 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Réka-NOM n-person-DAT n-thing-ACC NEG said-3S c. Réka semmit nem mondott senkinek. Réka-NOM n-thing-ACC NEG said-3S n-person-DAT Surányi (2006) argues that Hungarian n-words are ambiguous between a universally quantified and an indefinite reading. The author convincingly shows that while n-words in post-verbal position may be indefinites or universally quantified elements, preverbal n-words in (20b,c) are universally quantified and scope over sentential negation.…”

Section: Negation In Hungarianmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather, it occurs in a higher left peripheral position that has been labeled DistP (Szabolcsi 1997) and identified as Field 1 in Surányi (2006). This is the position preverbal universal quantifiers target (42a) and in which a preverbal n-word can appear in simple negative sentences (42b).…”

Section: Contrastive Topics (Ct)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The post-verbal n-word appears as an existentially quantified element. Surányi (2006) discusses at length the fact that Hungarian n-words are ambiguous between a universal and an indefinite reading. The author shows convincingly that in a post-verbal position, n-words may be indefinites.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages

Puskás

2012

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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The paper proposes a syntactic and semantic analysis of Double Negation (DN). It is shown that there are two types of DN. Strong DN is the result of a Focus construction that involves a polar reading triggered by a Verum Focus; Weak DN, on the other hand, arises when the corresponding n-word is marked as a Contrastive Topic and introduces weak (i.e. non exclusive) alternatives. The paper discusses the occurrence of these two kinds of DN in two types of languages, which feature different negative strategies. While Hungarian is a strict NC language with non-negative n-words and an obligatory negative marker, English and German are non-NC languages, with negative n-words that can function on their own. It is shown that both strong DN and weak DN occur in each of these languages. However, the mechanisms that license n-words contributing the DN reading are different, due to the differences in the nature of the n-words and in the discourse-functional behavior of the languages in question. Goal of the paperUntil recently, little real attention has been paid to the phenomenon of double negation. Much of what the literature says amounts to observations. However, it is generally recognized that the phenomenon does exist, and moreover, it coexists with negative concord in some languages (see e.g. Zeijlstra 2004). It has been described in some detail for French (Corblin 1996;Corblin & Tovena 2003) with observations as to the "special" contexts in which it occurs. De Swart is the first to dedicate a whole chapter to the phenomenon (de Swart 2010). She also mentions that double negation needs special contexts. Although her approach gives a reasoned account of the phenomenon, it is set in bidirectional Optimality Theory, a framework in which grammatical differences are modeled as constraint re-ranking, and which is thus incompatible with a minimalist approach.The goal of the paper is to give an account of double negation (henceforth DN) in a minimalist framework, taking as a stance that if the model it proposes is an adequate representation of linguistic knowledge, it should also be able to handle the rather tricky question of double negation for which native speakers have clear intuitions. One of the fundamental claims of a minimalist approach is that syntactic structures are identical crosslinguistically, a claim that leaves much of the burden of variation to the "periphery": "The primary [task] is to show that the apparent richness and diversity of linguistic phenomena is illusory and epiphenomenal, the result of interaction of fixed principles under slightly varying conditions" (Chomsky 1995: 8). Such an approach has been underlying much of the research on negation. It has led to, among other things, a debate about the nature of negative expressions-so-called n-words, following Laka's (1990) terminology. One line of thought proposes that n-words occurring in Negative Concord (henceforth NC) languages are intrinsically negative (cf. Haegeman 1995;Haegeman & Zanuttini 1996;Zanuttini 1997;Mathieu 2001;Corblin & Toven...

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Section: Negation In Hungarianmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contrastive Topics (Ct)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages

Puskás

2012

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…11b,c). For the peculiarities of Hungarian negation, see Puskás (2000), Surányi (2006a), Olsvay (2006), and Kenesei (2009) and references cited there.…”

Section: The Clause Structure Of Hungarian: a Syntactic Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What kind of syntax underlies these responses? The syntactic expression of negative polarity in the (1B2), (2B2) sentences has received considerable attention in Hungarian, with various works converging on the view that negation projects a specific projection, NegP in the left periphery (Puskás 2000, Surányi 2003,2006a, Olsvay 2006, Kenesei 2009 to mention just a few studies). The syntactic expression of positive polarity in (1B1, 2B1), in contrast, has not been given explicit attention and is still a terra incognita when it comes to its syntactic particulars.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The syntax of emphatic positive polarity in Hungarian: Evidence from ellipsis

Lipták¹

2013

Lingua

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The Landscape of Negative Dependencies: Negative Concord and N‐Words

Giannakidou

Zeijlstra

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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This chapter updates an earlier discussion of n‐words and negative concord (NC) offered by the first author. Our goal here is to address the considerable developments in the area of n‐words and NC that took place since 2006. As the title suggests, we study negative dependencies within the context of negative dependencies. We have chosen this term as a theory‐neutral way to refer to phenomena that in one way or another involve dependency of an expression on the presence of negation. Several major negative dependencies can be distinguished; negative polarity, NC, negative quantifiers in Germanic languages, and even the expression of negation itself have been discussed in this context. Negative dependencies form a landscape: they share a space as grammatical phenomena, for instance sensitivity to the presence of negation – but, at the same time, the dependencies are not identical. For instance, the need for negation of a negative polarity item such as any does not derive from the same source as the need of negation for an n‐word, which has a more narrow distribution than any . And within the class of n‐words (the main focus of this chapter) there is considerable variation as well. Our approach is inspired by a long tradition of polarity research that acknowledges diversity and the fact that polarity phenomena are lexically driven. In presenting the phenomena, we apply a compositional perspective by connecting the nature of the sensitivity to the morphosyntactic, semantic, or pragmatic properties of the negation‐sensitive items.

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Quantification and focus in Negative Concord

Cited by 30 publications

References 35 publications

Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages

Licensing Double Negation in NC and non-NC languages

The syntax of emphatic positive polarity in Hungarian: Evidence from ellipsis

The Landscape of Negative Dependencies: Negative Concord and N‐Words

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