Article published in:
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

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).
Published online: 31 May 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.183.05dep
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