This chapter examines the syntax and semantics of negative elements across Romance languages and proposes that there are three basic parameters that are encoded in the morphemes used to express sentential negation and negative determiners. These parameters define whether simple negation occurs pre- or post-inflection, whether the negation morpheme has a substantive meaning (e.g. Spanish no, Italian non, French pas) or expletive (e.g. French ne) value or else is ambiguous between the two (e.g. Catalan no), and finally whether negative phrases are ambiguous between “negative operator” and “polarity item” status. The proposal stresses typological implications between having post-inflection negation and post-inflection negative phrases that do not require co-occurrence with a sentential negation. It also tries to explain long puzzling cross-linguistic differences in locality constraints on negative dependencies. The theoretical focus of the work is on exploring how minimalist research on syntactic diversity should be conducted and in which formats its results could be formulated in a rigorous explanatory way.
1997. The Logical Form of Negation. New York NY: Garland.
Baker, Mark C.
2001. The Atoms of Language. New York NY: Basic Books.
Bayer, Joseph.
1990What Bavarian Negative Concord reveals about the syntactic structure of German. InGrammar in Progress, Joan Mascaró & Marina Nespor (eds), 13–24. Dordrecht: Foris.
Bernini, Giuliano & Ramat, Paolo.
1992. La frase negativa nelle lingue d’Europa. Bologna: il Mulino.
Berwick, Robert. & Chomsky, Noam.
2011. The Biolinguistic Program: The current state of its evolution and development. InThe Biolinguistic Enterprise. New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty, Anna-Maria Di Sciullo & Cedric Boeckx (eds), 19–41. Oxford: OUP.
Biberauer, Theresa.
2007. A closer look at Negative Concord in Afrikaans. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics PLUS35:1–51.
Biberauer, Theresa & Zeijlstra, Hedde.
2012. Negative concord in Afrikaans: Filling a typological gap. Journal of Semantics29(3): 345–371.
Biberauer, Theresa. & Roberts, Ian.
2011. Negative words and related expressions: A new perspective on some familiar puzzles. Ms, University of Cambridge.
2011. Approaching parameters from below. InThe Biolinguistic Enterprise. New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty, Anna-Maria Di Sciullo & Cedric Boeckx (eds), 205–221. Oxford: OUP.
Borer, Hagit.
1984. Parametric Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Bortolussi, Luca, Sgarro, Andrea, Longobardi, Giuseppe & Guardiano, Cristina.
2011. How many possible languages are there?InBiology, Computation and Linguistics, Gemma Bel-Enguix, Verónica Dahl, & Maria Dolores Jiménez-López (eds), 168–179. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Carlson, Greg N.
1977. A unified analysis of the English bare plural. Linguistics and Philosophy1: 413–456.
Chomsky, Noam.
1964. Current issues in linguistic theory. InThe Structure of Language, Jerry A. Fodor & Jerrold J. Katz (eds), 50–118. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.
Chomsky, Noam.
1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, Noam.
1986. Knowledge of Language. New York NY: Praeger.
Chomsky, Noam.
2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry36: 1–22.
Crisma, Paola.
2012. Quantifiers in Italian. InHandbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, Edward L. Keenan & Denis Paperno (eds), 467–534. Dordrecht: Springer.
Danckaert, Lieven.
2012. The decline of Latin VOAux: Neg-incorporation and syntactic reanalysis. Paper presented atDiGS 14, Lisbon, July 4–6.
de Swart, Henrïette.
2010. Expression and Interpretation of Negation: An OT Typology [Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 77]. Dordrecht: Springer.
Diesing, Molly.
1992. Indefinites. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Ernout, Alfred & Thomas, Francois.
1972. Syntaxe Latine. Paris: Klincksieck.
Erschler, David & Volk, Vitaly.
2011. On negation, negative concord, and negative imperatives in Digor Ossetic. InTopics in Iranian Linguistics, Geoffrey Haig, Agnes Korn, Pollet Samvelian & Simin Karimi (eds), 135–150. Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Español-Echevarría, Manuel.
1994. A typology for NPI-licensing. Ms, UCLA.
Espinal, M. Teresa.
2000. On the semantic status of N-words in Catalan and Spanish. Lingua110: 557–580.
Gaatone, David.
1971. Etude descriptive du système de la négation en français contemporain. Genève: Librairie Droz.
. 2006. Intervention effects on NPIs and feature movement: Towards a unified account of intervention. Natural Language Semantics14: 359–398.
Haegeman, Liliane
. 1995. The Syntax of Negation. Cambridge: CUP.
Haegeman, Liliane & Zanuttini, Raffaele
. 1991. Negative heads and the Neg-criterion. The Linguistic Review8: 233–251.
Haegeman, Liliane & Zanuttini Raffaele
. 1996. Negative concord in West Flemish. InParameters and Functional Heads. Essays in Comparative Syntax, Adriana Belletti & Luigi Rizzi (eds), 117–179. Oxford: OUP.
Haspelmath, Martin
. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: OUP.
Herburger, Elena
. 2001. The negative concord puzzle revisited. Natural Language Semantics9: 289–333.
Hinzen, Wolfram & Sheehan, Michelle
. 2011. Moving towards the edge: The grammar of Reference. Ms, University of Durham.
Jaeggli, Osvald
. 1984. Subject extraction and the null subject parameter. InProceedings of NELS 14, Charles Jones & Peter Sells (eds), 132–53. Amherst MA: GSLA.
Kayne, Richard
. 1981. Two notes on the NIC. InTheory of Markedness in Generative Grammar, Adriana Belletti, Luciana Brandi & Luiggi Rizzi (eds), 317–346. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.
Kayne, Richard
. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Kayne, Richard
. 2010. Comparisons and Contrasts. Oxford: OUP.
Kroch, Athony
1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change1: 199–244.
1993. Negation, indefinites, and the Jespersen Cycle. InProceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society19: 437–446.
Laka, M.
Itziar. 1990. Negation in syntax: On the nature of functional categories and projections. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Ledgeway, Adam
. 2011. From Latin to Romance. Oxford: OUP.
Lightfoot, David
. 2006. Minimizing government: Deletion as cliticization. The Linguistic Review23: 97–126.
Linebarger, Marcia
. 1980. The Grammar of Negative Polarity. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 1987. The three systems of Romance negation. Paper presented at the X GLOW Colloquium, Workshop on Generative Dialectology, Venice. April 2.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 1988. I quantificatori. InGrande grammatica Italiana di consultazione, Lorenzo Renzi (ed.), 645–696. Bologna: il Mulino.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 1991. In defense of the correspondence hypothesis: Island effects and parasitic constructions in logical form. InLogical Structure and Linguistic Structure, C.-T. James Huang & Robert May (eds), 149–196. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 1996. The syntax of N-raising: A minimalist theory. Utrecht: OTS Working Papers.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 2000. Postverbal subjects and the mapping hypothesis. Linguistic Inquiry31(4): 691–702.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 2003a. Three parameters of Romance negation. Studi e Saggi Linguistici40–41: 181–186 (Atti del convegno di studi in memoria di Tristano Bolelli, Giovanna Marotta (ed.), Pisa: ETS).
. 2005a. A minimalist program for parametric linguistics?InOrganizing Grammar: Linguistic Studies for Henk van Riemsdijk, Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riny Huybregts, Ursula Kleinhenz & Jan Koster (eds), 407–414. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 2005b. Toward a unified grammar of reference. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft24: 5–44.
Longobardi, Giuseppe
. 2012. Convergence in parametric phylogenies: Homoplasy or principled explanation?InParameter Theory and Linguistic Change, Charlotte Galves, Sonia Cyrino, Ruth Lopes, Filomena Sandalo & Juanita Avelar (eds), 304–319. Oxford: OUP.
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Guardiano, Cristina
. 2009. Evidence for syntax as a signal of historical relatedness. Lingua119(11): 1679–1706 (Special issue The Forests behind the Trees
, John Nerbonne (ed.)).
Martín, Txuss & Hinzen, Wolfram
. 2012. The grammar of the essential indexical. Ms, University of Durham.
Martín-González, Javier
. 2002. The Syntax of Sentential Negation in Spanish. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
Martins, Anna Maria
. 2000. Polarity items in Romance: Underspecification and lexical change. InDiachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas & Anthony Warner (eds), 191–219. Oxford: OUP.
Ouhalla, Jamal
. 1990. Sentential negation, relativized minimality and the aspectual status of auxiliaries. The Linguistic Review7: 183–231.
Ovalle, Luis Alonso & Guerzoni, Elena
. 2004. Double negation, negative concord and metalinguistic negation. InProceedings of the Chichago Linguistics Society Meeting: The Main Session, Mary Andronis, Erin Debenport, Anne Pycha & Keiko Yoshimura (eds), 15–31. Chicago IL: CLS Publications.
Penka, Doris
. 2011. Negative indefinites. Oxford: OUP.
Penka, Doris & Zeijlstra Hedda
. 2010. Negation and polarity: An introduction. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory28: 771–786.
Polo, Chiara
. 2003. Word Order between Morphology and Syntax. Padova: Unipress.
Progovac, Ljiljana
. 1994. Positive and Negative Polarity: A Binding Approach. Cambridge: CUP.
Quer, Joseph
. 1993. The Syntactic Licensing of Negative Items. MA thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Rizzi, Luiggi
. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Rizzi, Luiggi & Shlonsky, Ur
. 2006. Strategies of subject extraction. InInterfaces + Recursion = Language? Chomsky's Minimalism and the View from Syntax-Semantics, Hans Martin Gärtner & Ull Sauerland (eds), 115–160. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Roberts, Ian
. 2010. Clitics, Incorporation and Head Movement. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Roberts, Ian
. 2011. Rethinking comparative syntax. ERC Advanced Grant 2010 project, University of Cambridge.
Roberts, Ian & Roussou, Anna
2003. Syntactic Change. A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Rowlett, Paul
. 1998. Sentential Negation in French. Oxford: OUP.
Sauzet, Patrick
. 2006. Doubling phenomena in Occitan. Paper presented at Workshop on Doubling Phenomena in European Dialects, Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam. March 16–18.
Sells, Peter & Kim, Shin-Sook
. 2006. Korean NPIs scope over negation. Language Research42(2): 275–297.
Solà, Joan
. 1972. Estudis de sintaxi catalana. Barcelona: Edicions 62.
Sportiche, Dominiq
. 1986. Zibun. Linguistic Inquiry17(2): 369–374.
Vallduví, Enric
. 1994. Polarity items, N-words and minimizers in Catalan and Spanish. Probus6: 263–274.
Väänänen Ve
. 1981. Introduction au latin vulgaire, 3rd edn (revue et augmentée). Paris: Klincksieck.
Watanabe, Akira
. 2004. The genesis of negative concord. Linguistic Inquiry35: 559–612.
Zanuttini, Raffaele
. 1997. Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. Oxford: OUP.
Zanuttini, Raffaele
. 2001. Sentential negation. InThe Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds), 511–535. MaldenMA: Blackwell.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
. 2004. Sentential Negation and Negative Concord. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
. 2008. Negative concord is syntactic agreement. Ms. University of Amsterdam.
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.
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.
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.
Tubau, Susagna, Viviane Déprez, Joan Borràs-Comes & M.Teresa Espinal
2018. How speakers interpret the negative markersnoandno…pasin Catalan. Probus 30:1 ► pp. 121 ff.
van der Auwera, Johan & Olga Krasnoukhova
2020. The Typology of Negation. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 91 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.
[no author supplied]
2020. Introduction. In The Oxford Handbook of Negation, ► pp. 1 ff.
[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.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 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.