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Negation and Contact: With special focus on Singapore English
Edited by Debra Ziegeler and Zhiming Bao
[Studies in Language Companion Series 183] 2017
► pp. 33–61

Chapter 3
NEG-raising and long-distance licensing of negative polarity items

| University of Groningen

Collins and Postal (2014) have thrown new light on the relation between negation and complementation in contexts that either do or do not permit NEG-raising; in particular, that there are two types of polarity items differing in whether they require NEG-raising for long-distance licensing by negation. Strict items (such as English all that and various other NPIs) require clause-mate licensers, which may undergo NEG-raising to a higher clause (by means of a syntactic transformation) whereas non-strict items (such as any) may also be licensed by negation originating in a higher clause. In this chapter I review the evidence for such a distinction, arguing against a syntactic solution in terms of Neg-Raising, and proposing that the matrix predicate type is relevant for licensing embedded polarity items not only in cases of Neg-Raising, but also in questions. Using a corpus of polarity items in English and Dutch, I discuss various complications that arise in long-distance licensing, including interaction with modals and idiomatic readings of embedding predicates.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Collins & Postal’s Classical Neg-Raising
    • 2.1Evidence from inversion
    • 2.2Evidence from strict negative polarity items
    • 2.3 Evidence from Dutch heel
    • 2.4Evidence from positive polarity items
    • 2.5Evidence from multiple licensing
    • 2.6Evidence from partial cyclicity
  • 3.Factive and nonfactive think
  • 4.Complex predicates and long-distance licensing
    • 4.1Hebben + dat-clause in Dutch
    • 4.2Zeggen + modal / Say + modal
  • 5.Corpus data in long-distance licensing by negation
  • 6.Long-distance licensing in questions and elsewhere
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.183.03hoe
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