Chapter published in:
Negation and Negative Concord: The view from Creoles
Edited by Viviane Déprez and Fabiola Henri
[Contact Language Library 55] 2018
► pp. 125–152

Licensing negation and negative concord in Atlantic Creoles

The case of Vincentian

This chapter examines the distribution of a selection of negative dependent indefinites in Atlantic Creoles in general and Vincentian in particular and their syntactic behavior in the presence of sentential negation. It is posited here that the syntactic behavior of indefinites can be partially accounted for under the negative-first principle (Jespersen 1917: 5; Horn 1989: 73). The negative concord phenomenon is also governed by the same principle. With specific reference to Vincentian, it is shown, however, that the negative-first principle needs to be expanded to embrace an analysis supporting two underlying principles. Firstly, there should be one negative concord item (NCI) per clause and secondly, an NCI like nobadi ‘nobody’ can only have scope over the clause if it is in a prominent syntactic position within the verb phrase, i.e. immediately following the verb.

Keywords: Vincentian Creole, NCIs, negative-first principle, syntactic prominence, negative concord
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sentential negation
    • 2.1Sentential negation in English
    • 2.2Sentential negation in the English-based Creoles
  • 3.Negative concord
    • 3.1Negative concord in the West African varieties
    • 3.2Negative concord in the South American varieties
    • 3.3Negative concord in the Caribbean varieties
    • 3.4Summary of findings for the Atlantic Creoles
  • 4.Types of negative concord
    • 4.1Evidence from Vincentian creole
    • 4.2Complementary observations
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Author query
Published online: 12 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.55.06pre
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