Part of
Minimalism and Beyond: Radicalizing the interfacesEdited by Peter Kosta, Steven L. Franks, Teodora Radeva-Bork and Lilia Schürcks
[Language Faculty and Beyond 11] 2014
► pp. 109–128
Edited by Peter Kosta, Steven L. Franks, Teodora Radeva-Bork and Lilia Schürcks
[Language Faculty and Beyond 11] 2014
► pp. 109–128
On the uninterpretability of interpretable features
In this paper I present several arguments that argue against the assumption in current generative syntactic theory that certain formal features are semantically active as well (so-called interpretable formal features). Instead, I propose that the set of formal features and the set of semantic features (to the extent that they are featural in the first place) are fully independent. An acquisitional and diachronic theory further constrains the possible combinations of syntactic and semantic features that can be lexically stored, which results in the apparent overlap in the distribution of particular syntactic and semantic features (which has originally been the cause of taking them on a par).
References
Beghelli, Filippo and Stowell, Tim
1997 “Distributivity and negation. The syntax of each and every.” In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.), Ways of Scope Taking, 71–107. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 
Bobaljik, Jonathan David and Thrainsson, Höskuldur
1998 “Two heads aren’t always better than one.” Syntax 1: 37–71.
Borer, Hagit
1984 Parametric Syntax: Case Studies in Semitic and Romance Languages. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Brown, Sue
1999 The Syntax of negation in Russian: A Minimalist approach. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Chierchia, Gennaro
2006 “Broaden your views. Implicatures of domain widening and the “Logicality” of language.” Linguistic Inquiry 37: 535–590.
2011 “Meaning as an inferential system. Polarity and free-choice phenomena.” Ms., Harvard University.
Chomsky, Noam
1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2002 “Derivation by phase.” In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, Michael J. Kenstovicz (ed.), 1–54. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2005 “Three factors in language design.” Linguistic Inquiry 36: 1–22.
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(ed.) 2002 Functional Structure in DP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(ed.) 2006 Restructuring and Functional Heads. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Epstein, Samuel David, Groat, Erich M., Kawashima, Ruriko and Kitahara, Hisatsugu
1998 A Derivational Approach to Syntactic Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Epstein, Samuel David and Seely, Daniel
2002 Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Grimshaw, Jane
1997 “Projections, heads and optimality.” Linguistic Inquiry 28: 373–442.
Haegeman, Liliane and Zanuttini, Raffaella
1991 “Negative heads and the neg criterion.” The Linguistic Review 8: 233–251.
1996 “Negative concord in West Flemish.” In Parameters and Functional Heads. Essays in Comparative Syntax, Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (eds), 117–179. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane and Lohndal, Terje
2010 “Negative concord and multiple agree: A case study of West Flemish.” Linguistic Inquiry 41: 181–211.
Herburger, Elena
2001 “The negative concord puzzle revisited.” Natural Language Semantics 9: 289–333.
Iatridou, Sabine
1990 “About AgrP.” Linguistic Inquiry 21: 421–459.
Jäger, Agnes
2010 “Anything is nothing is something. On the diachrony of polarity types of indefinites.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28: 787–822.
Kadmon, Nirit and Landman, Fred
1993 “Any.” Linguistics and Philosophy 16: 353–422.
Kayne, Richard
2000 Parameters and Universals, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Koeneman, Olaf
2000 “The Flexible Nature of Verb Movement.” Ph.D. dissertation, Utrecht University.
Krifka, Manfred
1995 “The semantics and pragmatics of polarity items in assertion.” Linguistic Analysis 15: 209–257.
Laka, I
1990 “Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections.” Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Miyagawa, Shigeru
2010 Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational Languages. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nilsen, Øystein
2003 Eliminating Positions: Syntax and Semantics of Sentential Modification. Ph.D. disseration, Universiteit Utrecht.
Pesetsky, David and Torrego, Esther
2007 “The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features.” In Phrasal and Clausal Architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation, Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian and Wendy W. Wilkins (eds), 262–294. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pollock, Jean-Yves
1989 “Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP.” Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365–424.
Postal, Paul
2000 “An introduction to the grammar of squat.” Ms., NYU.
Progovac, Ljiljiana
2005 “Negative and positive feature checking and the distribution of polarity items.” In Negation in Slavic, S. Brown & A. Przepiórkowski (eds), Slavica Publishers.
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 “The fine structure of the left periphery.” In Elements of grammar. Handbook in generative syntax, Liliane Haegeman (ed.), 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
2004 The structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, Ian and Roussou, Anna
2003 Syntactic Change. A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Starke, Michal
2001 “Move Dissolves Into Merge: A Theory of Locality.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Geneva.
2004 “On the Inexistence of Specifiers and the Nature of Heads.” In Structures and Beyond. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 3, Adriana Belletti (ed.), 252–268. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Svenonius, Peter
2006 “Interpreting uninterpretable features.” Linguistic Analysis 33: 375–413.
Zanuttini, Raffaella
1991 “Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Zeijlstra, Hedzer Hugo
2004 “Sentential Negation and Negative Concord.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
2008 “On the syntactic flexibility of formal features.” In Theresa Biberauer (ed.), The Limits of Syntactic Variation, 143–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2010 “On French negation.” In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Berkely Linguistics Society, Iksoo Kwon, Hannah. Pritchett & Justin Spence (eds). Berkely, CA: BLS.
Cited by
Cited by 55 other publications
Adenuga, Priscilla
2022. Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs) in Ògè. In A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives [Language Faculty and Beyond, 17], ► pp. 155 ff. 
Amsili, Pascal & Claire Beyssade
2021. Plus in the French negative system. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 355], ► pp. 30 ff.
Beaver, David & Kristin Denlinger
2020. Negation and Presupposition. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 369 ff.
Biberauer, Theresa
2019. Some thoughts on the complexity of syntactic complexity
. Theoretical Linguistics 45:3-4 ► pp. 259 ff.
Bjorkman, Bronwyn M. & Hedde Zeijlstra
2019. Checking Up on (ϕ-)Agree. Linguistic Inquiry 50:3 ► pp. 527 ff.
Bohn, Manuel, Josep Call & Christoph J. Völter
2020. Evolutionary Precursors of Negation in Non-Human Reasoning. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 577 ff.
Breitbarth, Anne
2020. The Negative Cycle and Beyond. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 530 ff.
Christensen, Ken Ramshøj
2020. The Neurology of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 725 ff.
De Clercq, Karen
2020. Types of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 58 ff.
de Swart, Henriëtte
2020. Double Negation Readings. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 479 ff.
Delfitto, Denis
2020. Expletive Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 255 ff.
Dwivedi, Veena D.
2020. Individual Differences in Processing of Negative Operators. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 713 ff.
Viviane Déprez & M. Teresa Espinal
2020. The Oxford Handbook of Negation,
Fleisher, Nicholas
2020. Calculating the Scope of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 269 ff.
Francis, Naomi & Sabine Iatridou
2020. Modals and Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 285 ff.
Fălăuş, Anamaria
2020. Negation and Alternatives. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 333 ff.
Giannakidou, Anastasia
2020. Negative Concord and the Nature of Negative Concord Items. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 458 ff.
Gianollo, Chiara
2020. Evolution of Negative Dependencies. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 546 ff.
Gianollo, Chiara
2020. The Morpho-Syntactic Nature of the Negative Marker. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 117 ff.
Grodzinsky, Yosef, Virginia Jaichenco, Isabelle Deschamps, María Elina Sánchez, Martín Fuchs, Peter Pieperhoff, Yonatan Loewenstein & Katrin Amunts
2020. Negation and the Brain. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 694 ff.
Hochmann, Jean-Rémy
2020. Cognitive Precursors of Negation in Preverbal Infants. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 589 ff.
Horn, Laurence R.
2020. Negation and Opposition. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 7 ff.
Horn, Laurence R.
2020. Neg-raising. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 199 ff.
Iatridou, Sabine & Hedde Zeijlstra
2021. The Complex Beauty of Boundary Adverbials: In Years and Until. Linguistic Inquiry 52:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Joshi, Shrikant
2020. Affixal Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 75 ff.
Kaup, Barbara & Carolin Dudschig
2020. Understanding Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 635 ff.
Larrivée, Pierre
2020. The Role of Pragmatics in Negation Change. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 563 ff.
Larson, Richard K.
2022. Adjectives, case and concord. In A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives [Language Faculty and Beyond, 17], ► pp. 73 ff.
Martins, Ana Maria
2020. Metalinguistic Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 349 ff.
Mayr, Clemens
2020. Intervention Effects with Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 216 ff.
Moeschler, Jacques
2020. Negative Predicates. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 26 ff.
Muller, Hanna & Colin Phillips
2020. Negative Polarity Illusions. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 656 ff.
Papeo, Liuba & Manuel de Vega
2020. The Neurobiology of Lexical and Sentential Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 740 ff.
Pearce, Elizabeth
2020. Negation and Constituent Ordering. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 152 ff.
Poletto, Cecilia
2020. The Possible Positioning of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 135 ff.
Prieto, Pilar & M. Teresa Espinal
2020. Negation, Prosody, and Gesture. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 677 ff.
Quer, Josep
2020. The Expression of Negation in Sign Languages. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 177 ff.
Ripley, David
2020. Denial. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 47 ff.
Romero, Maribel
2020. Form and Function of Negative, Tag, and Rhetorical Questions. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 235 ff.
Schein, Barry
2020. Negation in Event Semantics. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 301 ff.
Sánchez, Liliana & Jennifer Austin
2020. Negation in L2 Acquisition and Beyond. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 615 ff.
Thornton, Rosalind
2020. Negation and First Language Acquisition. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 599 ff.
Tortora, Christina & Frances Blanchette
2020. Negation in Non-Standard Varieties. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 515 ff.
Tovena, Lucia M.
2020. Negative Polarity Items. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 391 ff.
Tubau, Susagna
2020. Minimizers and Maximizers as Different Types of Polarity Items. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 407 ff.
van der Auwera, Johan & Olga Krasnoukhova
2020. The Typology of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 91 ff.
Walkden, George & Anne Breitbarth
2019. Interpreting (un)interpretability. Theoretical Linguistics 45:3-4 ► pp. 309 ff.
Wallage, Phillip
2020. Quantitative Studies of the Use of Negative (Dependent) Expressions. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 499 ff.
Weir, Andrew
2020. Negative Fragment Answers. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 441 ff.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2020. Negative Quantifiers. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 426 ff.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2022. Negation and Negative Dependencies,
[no author supplied]
2020. Abbreviations. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. xi ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Copyright Page. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Introduction. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 1 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.