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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 53–71

Chapter 3
Negative Concord and sentential negation in Gallo

| University Bordeaux Montaigne CLLE-ERSSàB (UMR5263)
| University of Nantes LLING (UMR6310)

The goal of this paper is to get a better understanding of Negative Concord (NC) in natural language through the study of Gallo, a Romance language spoken in Brittany. Despite obvious similarities with respect to Standard French (SF), Gallo differs from it by integrating sentential negation pâ/pouin ‘not’ to the NC system. We will first show that previous analyses of the phenomenon based on specific properties of n-words (see Déprez (2003, 2016), Zeijlstra (2004, 2010)) fail to account for the difference between Gallo and SF. Then we will argue for an alternative approach (inspired by Muller (2010) and Homer (2013)) based on properties of sentential negation itself. Finally, we will propose how to account for inter/intra-individual microvariation of NC in Gallo.

Keywords: Negative Concord, Romance languages, semi-negations/n-words, Microsyntactic variation, non-veridicality, anti-veridicality, Expletive Negation, Negation, Double Negation, French, Gallo, Creole
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.From Standard French to Gallo
    • 2.1Negative Concord (NC) and Double Negation (DN) in Standard French (SF)
    • 2.2Negative Concord (NC) and Double Negation (DN) in Gallo
  • 3.Evaluation of previous analyses of NC/DN readings
    • 3.1Déprez (2003, 2016): n-words as NPIs
    • 3.2Zeijlstra’s (2004, 2010) syntactic approach
    • 3.3Déprez (1999) and De Swart & Sag (2002): Resumptive quantification
  • 4.Our approach to NC: On the status of sentential neg.
    • 4.1Building on Muller (1991, 2010)
    • 4.2 Pâ/pouin as a semi-negation in Gallo
    • 4.3Implementation through Zeijlstra (2004)?
  • 5.Microvariation in Gallo
    • 5.1Gallo as a non-strict NC language
    • 5.2Intra-/Inter-individual variation
    • 5.3How to analyze microvariation: Some available options
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources of Gallo data
  • Bibliography
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.03gui
References

Sources of Gallo data

GG: Deriano, P. (2005) Grammaire du gallo, Label LN, Ploudalmézeau.Google Scholar
PG: Précis de Grammaire Gallèse (2009), association of Gallo teachersGoogle Scholar
IR: Robin, I. (2010) ‘De la négation en gallo: le cas de pas aoqhun’, MA thesis, University of Nantes.Google Scholar
Lecuyer
(2014) : Ene oraïje naïr, 1st on-line novel in Gallo.Google Scholar
SyMiLa: data from ANR Project on Syntactic Microvariation in Romance Languages of France

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