Cover not available
Part of
Negation and Contact: With special focus on Singapore English
Edited by Debra Ziegeler and Zhiming Bao
[Studies in Language Companion Series 183] 2017
► pp. 81–114

Chapter 5
What is Strict Negative Concord

Lessons from French Based Creoles

| Rutgers University, L2C2, CNRS, Université de Lyon
Two empirical predictions derive from current accounts of Strict Negative Concord; either their NCI should be universal expressions out-scoping negation, or their doubling negation should be expletive. Based on a comparative analysis of Strict NC in Haitian Creole (HC) and Mauritian Creole (MC), the paper shows that neither prediction is confirmed. On the one hand, both HC and MC NCIs are non-negative expressions with existential, not universal, force. On the other hand, although HC, but not MC, features expletive negation, these obey a finiteness constraint not enforced in HC Strict NC. Concluding that expletive negation is not its hallmark characteristic, I argue that Strict NC features rather a particular type of existential NPIs whose licensing requirement can be satisfied under reconstruction (Déprez et al. 2015).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Comparative properties of HC and Mauritian Creole NCIs
    • 2.1Where Haitian and Mauritian NCIs beg to differ
      • 2.1.1Haitian NCIs in NPI contexts
      • 2.1.2Mauritian Creole NCI in NPI contexts
    • 2.2Similarities between Haitian and Mauritian NCIs
      • 2.2.1Modification
      • 2.2.2Subject doubling and fragment answers
  • 3.A theoretical proposal: NCIs in Strict NC are NPIs that can be licensed under reconstruction
    • 3.1Licensing in preverbal subject position
    • 3.2Fragment answers
  • 4.Expletive negation
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.183.05dep
References
Biberauer, Teresa & Zeijlstra, Hedde
2012 Negative Concord in Afrikaans: Filling a typological gap. Journal of Semantics 29(3): 345–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Genaro
2013 Logic in Grammar. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DeGraff, Michel
1993 A riddle on negation in Haitian. Probus 5: 63–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Déprez, Viviane
1997 Two types of Negative Concord. Probus 9(2): 103–144. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 The roots of Negative Concord in French and French-based Creoles. In Language Creation and Language Change: Creole, Diachrony and Development, Michel. DeGraff (ed.), 375–428. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2000 Parallel (A)symmetries and the Internal Structure of Negative Expressions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18(2): 253–342. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Atoms of negation: An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord. In The Evolution of Negation: Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard Ingham (eds), 221–272. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 ‘NC vs. DN: A macroparametric variation? What can an experimental investigation tell us?’ Paper presented at the Linguistic Symposium of Romance Languages 44, London, University of Western Ontario.
To appear. What is negative in Haitian Creole? A reply to Vincent Homer. In Déprez & Henri.
Déprez, Viviane & Martineau, France
2004 Micro-parametric variation and Negative Concord. In Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 258], Julie Auger, Clancy Clements & Barbara Vance (eds), 139–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Déprez, Viviane, Tubau, Susagna, Cheylus, Anne & Espinal, Maria Teresa
2015 Double negation in a negative concord language: An experimental investigation. Lingua 163: 75–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Déprez, Viviane & Henri, Fabiola
To appear. Negation and Negative Concord: The View from Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
den Dikken, Marcel
1998 Predicate inversion in DP. In Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 22], Artemis Alexiadou & Chris Wilder (eds), 177–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Espinal, Maria Teresa
2007 Licensing expletive negation and negative concord in Catalan and Spanish. In La négation dans les langues romanes [Linguisticae Investigationes Supplementa 26], Franck Floricic (ed.), 49–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henri, Fabiola
To appear. Negation and Negative Concord in Mauritian Creole. In Déprez & Henri, to appear.
Giannakidou, Anastasia
2000 Negative … concord. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18: 457–523. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 N-words and Negative Concord. In The Syntax Companion, Vol. 3, Ch. 45, Martin Everaert, Henk van Riemsdijk, Rob Goedemans & Bart Hollebrandse (eds), 327–391. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoeksema, Jack
2012 On the natural history of Negative Polarity Items. Linguistic Analysis 38(1–2).Google Scholar
Homer, Vicent
2013 On the nonexistence of negative quantifiers: The case of Haitian Creole, Paper presented at the Paris 8 Seminar on Creole Languages. October 7. Saint-Denis, France. [URL]
Horn, Laurence R.
1989 A Natural History of Negation. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Iatridou, Sabine & Sichel, Ivy
2011 Negative DPs, A-movement, and scope diminishment. Linguistic Inquiry 42(4): 595–629. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iordachioaia, Giannina & Richter, Franck
2009 Negative Concord in Romanian as polyadic quantification. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen, Germany, Stefan Müller (ed.), 150–170. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S.
1981 ECP extensions. Linguistic Inquiry 12: 93–133 (reprinted in Kayne (1994)).Google Scholar
1994 The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
May, Robert
1990 A note on quantifier absorption. The Linguistic Review 7: 121–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merchant, Jason
2001 The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Pompilus, Pradel
1976 Contribution à l’étude compare du creole et du français à partir du créole haitien: Morphologie et syntaxe. Port au Prince Haiti: Editions Caraibes.Google Scholar
Shimoyama, Junko
2011 Japanese indeterminate negative polarity items and their scope. Journal of Semantics 28: 413–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Swart, Henriette
2010 Expression and Interpretation of Negation: An OT Typology. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Swart, Henriette & Ivan A. Sag
2002 Negation and negative concord in Romance. Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 373–417. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Syea, Anand
2013 The Syntax of Mauritian Creole. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna
1981 The semantics of Topic/Focus articulation. In Formal Methods in the Study of Language, Jeroen Groenendijk, Theo Janssen & Martin Stokhof (eds), 513–540. Amsterdam: Mathematical Center.Google Scholar
Yoon, Suwon
2011 “Not” in the Mood: The Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics of Evaluative Negation. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
2013 Parametric variation in subordinate evaluative negation: Korean/Japanese versus others. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 22: 133–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2004 Sentential Negation and Negative Concord. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
2008 Negative concord is syntactic agreement. Ms, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
2012 There is only one way to agree. The Linguistic Review 29: 491–539. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Déprez, Viviane
2018. What is negative in Haitian Creole? Negative Concord Items, sentential, constituent and expletive negation. In Negation and Negative Concord [Contact Language Library, 55], ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Déprez, Viviane & Fabiola Henri
2018. Conclusions. In Negation and Negative Concord [Contact Language Library, 55], ► pp. 313 ff. DOI logo
Déprez, Viviane & Fabiola Henri
2018. Negation and negative concord. In Negation and Negative Concord [Contact Language Library, 55], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Déprez, Viviane & Jeremy Daniel Yeaton
2022. On the prosody of French ambiguous multiple negative sentences.. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7:1 DOI logo
ESPINAL, M. TERESA, ELOI PUIG-MAYENCO, URTZI ETXEBERRIA & SUSAGNA TUBAU
2023. On the status of NCIs: An experimental investigation on so-called Strict NC languages. Journal of Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 november 2023. 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.