2001 Perfective sentences under negation and durative adverbials: A double-jointed construction (original) (raw)
Related papers
Against stativizing negation, expletive negation and NPI-until
Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2011
We present a novel account of phenomena that have been discussed under the labels stativizing negation, expletive negation and the licensing of NPI-(eventive-)until. We argue that these concepts are theoretically undesirable as well as descriptively inadequate because (a) negation does not affect event structure, (b) "eventive" until outscopes negation and can also occur without negation, so it cannot be treated as an NPI, and (c) the properties ascribed to negation and/or until are observed in a wide variety of contexts and should therefore receive a more general, non-lexical analysis. Our account derives the facts from the idea that until-and for-duratives are referential items that scope in the topic field and can receive a contrastive interpretation on analogy with regular topics. This gives us a handle on the socalled "actualization" observed with negated eventives in the scope of a durative, previously handled by lexical duplication of until and by stipulation of idiosyncratic lexical properties.
Negation of resultative and progressive periphrases
This paper focuses on resultative and progressive periphrases in Spanish: <estar 'to be' + participle> and <estar 'to be' + gerund>, respectively. These periphrases have been associated with several negated constructions. On the one hand, the negative particle no 'not' can precede the auxiliary verb (<no estar 'not to be' + participle> and <no estar 'not to be' + gerund>); on the other hand, we have the structure <estar sin 'to be without' + infinitive>. Contrary to what has been suggested in the literature, I will show that these negative constructions have a different interpretation and develop a semantic analysis of them. Furthermore, I will offer new evidence in favor of the existence of negative events.
This article addresses the question why sentences like 'John didn't wake up until nine' are grammatical while their positive counterparts are not: *'John woke up until nine'. It adduces evidence against the two existing analyses (the one claiming that 'not' is a durative predicate, the other that there is a negative polarity item 'until' that collocates with punctual predicates). The analysis that is offered here rests on the claim that 'not until' is an instance of integrated lexicalization, whereby two different semantic elements (roughly, the meaning of temporal 'at' and that of an exclusive focuser like German 'erst' or 'only') are fused into a single (but complex) lexical item. The author adduces a great many pieces of evidence supporting this analysis and points out some interesting theoretical consequences.
Negative adverbs are neither Adv nor Neg
PROCEEDINGS-NELS, 2002
In this paper we shall consider microvariation in the negation systems of Italian and Swiss dialects, with particular reference to Northern Italian ones. This domain of data has been made known within generative linguistics by , whose conclusions are adopted by Cinque (1999) within his larger theory of adverbs and functional structure. Briefly, Zanuttini (1997) individuats four Neg categories within the sentential tree, namely Neg 1 which appears in the inflectional domain of the sentence and is lexicalized by negative clitics, and Neg 2 -Neg 4 which appear within the predicational domain and is lexicalized by negative adverbs. In what follows, we shall concentrate on negative adverbs, arguing that they do not belong to a specialized Neg category; nor are they specialized Adv(erbs), but rather nominal elements. We shall briefly indicate how these conclusions may extend to Adv(erbs) in general and argue that clitic negations are in turn nominal in nature.
Scalar predicates and negation: Punctual semantics and interval interpretations
Many linguists and philosophers hold the view that scalar lexical items are ?ownward bounded semantically and upward bounded only pragmatically via I~p~cat~res_d Ia Grice. This approach, called by Anscombre and Ducrot (1983) the mmu~ahst Vie~, _has ?een controve~sial for some twenty years. In this paper, I will examme the miOJmahst argumentation and will show it to be ill-founded in the case of nui?ber names, b~th empiric~lly and logically. I will then propose another account o~ their s~alar be~~VIor which wtll preserve the results that motivated the minimalist View, while ascnbmg a more adequate lexical meaning to scalar predicates in general.
On the Lexical/Functional Divide: The Case of Negation*
Functional Heads, 2012
In this article we focus our attention on sentential negations, both clitic and adverbial. These are associated with the functional category Neg by Pollock (1989) and further articulated in several Neg positions as part of the adverbial hierarchy by Zanuttini (1997), Cinque (1999). Based on data from Romance varieties, we argue that while the interpretive component of grammar includes a sentential operator negation (with the properties of the logical negation), neither clitic nor adverbial negations instantiate it. Rather both clitic and adverbial negations are negative polarity arguments, implying the negative operator in whose scope they are licenced. In turn, negative polarity properties are not encoded by a specialized functional category, but have exactly the same status as other properties represented in lexical entries as pertaining to their interpretation at the LF interface, including those imputed to lexical categories: animacy, numerability, etc. 'He didn't want to abandon his sword' Northern Italian dialects provide evidence in favor of a non purely etymological connection between negation and partitive assignment to the internal argument of the verb. Thus in (3) the negation triggers the partitive even in the presence of a definite interpretation. This type of data recalls the phenomenon described by Pesetsky (1982) for Russian, whereby the accusative object in nonnegative contexts can alternate with a partitive object in negative ones. (3) (a mmarju) tSamum-ru/na mija Trecate (Piedmont) the Mario we.call-him/of.him not