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Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography: A crosslinguistic perspective
Edited by Fuzhen Si and Luigi Rizzi
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 267] 2021
► pp. 27–52

Chapter 3
The syntax and information-structural semantics of negative inversion in English and their implications for the theory of focus

| University of Miyazaki

Negative inversion in English (e.g. Never have I seen such a hippopotamus.) has inspired empirical and theoretical interest because it shows complex syntactic and semantic properties. One widely-held cartographic view (e.g. Haegeman (2000, 2012)) has been that negative inversion targets FocP in the CP domain, thereby satisfying the NEG-criterion that requires the fronted NEG operator to be in a Spec-Head configuration with the Foc head occupied by the inverted auxiliary. Focusing on the syntax and information-structural semantics of negative inversion, this study aims to develop the criterial approach in terms of Cruschina’s (2011) split CP model, according to which the Focus projection splits into two: Contrastive Focus (CFoc) and Information Focus (IFoc). On the empirical side, drawing on Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal’s (2009) insights into QP-fronting in Spanish, it is demonstrated that negative inversion displays certain properties related to (non-contrastive) polarity emphasis, which does not contribute to a split between Focus and Presupposition. On the theoretical side, it is argued that the properties relevant to polarity emphasis in negative inversion are attributed to IFoc fronting operations. The proposed analysis, a sophisticated version of the criterial approach proposed in Haegeman (2000, 2012), naturally captures the otherwise-unexplained polarity emphasis effects in negative inversion.

Keywords: negative inversion, NEG-criterion, information-structural semantics, split CP model, polarity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies
    • 2.1Haegeman (2000, 2012)
    • 2.2 Leonetti & Escandell-Vidal (2009)
  • 3.Some empirical and conceptual problems: Treatment of polarity focus fronting
  • 4.Proposal
    • 4.1 Cruschina’s (2011) two-layered focus hypothesis
    • 4.2Application to NI
  • 5.Supportive evidence
    • 5.1Focus-verb adjacency
    • 5.2Non-contrastive use of NI
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.267.03hon
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