Table Of ContentNEGATION AND POLARITY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 155
Danielle Forget, Paul Hirschbiihler,
France Martineau and María-Luisa Rivero (eds)
Negation and Polarity
Syntax and semantics
NEGATION
AND POLARITY
SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE COLLOQUIUM
NEGATION: SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
OTTAWA, 11-13 MAY 1995
Edited by
DANIELLE FORGET
PAUL HIRSCHBÜHLER
FRANCE MARTINEAU
MARÍA-LUISA RIVERO
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Colloquium Negation: Syntax and Semantics (1995 : Ottawa, Ont.)
Negation and polarity : syntax and semantics : selected papers from the Colloquium
Negation-Syntax and Semantics, Ottawa, 11-13 May 1995 / edited by Danielle Forget ... [et
al.].
p. cm. - (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series
IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 155)
Selected rev. papers of an international conference held at the University of Ottawa,
Ottawa. Canada, under the auspices of the Département des lettres françaises and the
Department of Linguistics.
Chiefly in English; includes two papers in French.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Negatives-Congresses. 2. Grammar. Comparative
and general-Syntax-Congresses. 3. Semantics-Congresses. I. Forget, Danielle, 1952- . II.
Title. III. Series.
P299.N4C57 1995
415-dc21 97-32234
ISBN 90 272 3660 7 (Eur.) / 1-55619-871-X (US) (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 · USA
FOREWORD
The papers selected for this volume were first read in preliminary versions
at the international conference Negation: Syntax and Semantics, held May 11-
13, 1995, at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, under the auspices of
the Département des Lettres françaises and the Department of Linguistics. The
goal of the conference was to take advantage of renewed interest in the syntax
and semantics of negation and polarity, prompted to a large extend by Jean-
Yves Pollock's 1988 article "Verb Movement, Universal Grammar and the
Structure of IP", to offer semanticists and syntacticians from different
theoretical persuasions a chance to discuss their ideas. The diversity of
perspectives existing in the field was well-represented by the 27 papers
presented at the conference and the 17 papers published in the present volume,
which have been revised, sometimes considerably, on the basis of the
discussions between participants.
The conference and the preparation of the manuscript would not have been
possible without the help of the University of Ottawa. We would like to
acknowledge the generous financial support from the Faculty of Arts and the
School of Graduate Studies, and especially from the Associate Dean of
Research, Jean-Louis Major, for the trust they placed in the project. We also
would like to thank the many students from our two departments who helped
with many aspects of the conference organization, as well as Nicole Pilon and
Pascale Renaud for their assistance in the preparation of the manuscript.
Ottawa, July 3, 1997 The Editors
Contents
Foreword ν
Anne Abeillé & Danièle Godard
The Syntax of French Negative Adverbs 1
Denis Bouchard
The Syntax of Sentential Negation in French and English 29
Viviane Déprez
A Non-Unified Analysis of Negative Concord 53
M. Teresa Espinal
Non-Negative Negation and Wh-Exclamatives 75
Anastasia Giannakidou & Josep Quer
Long-Distance Licensing of Negative Indefinites 95
Liliane Haegeman
The Syntax of N-Words and the Neg Criterion 115
Jacob Hoeksema
Negation and Negative Concord in Middle Dutch 139
Laurence R. Horn
Negative Polarity and the Dynamics of Vertical Inference 157
Aafke Hulk & Ans van Kemenade
Negation as a Reflex of Clause Structure 183
Michael Israel
The Scalar Model of Polarity Sensitivity: the case of
the aspectual operators 209
Jacques Moeschler
La négation comme expression procédurale 231
Claude Muller
De partitif et la négation 251
Elizabeth Pearce
Negation and Indefinites in Maori 271
João Peres
Extending the Notion of Negative Concord 289
viii CONTENTS
Eugene Rohrbaugh
The Role of Focus in the Licensing and Interpretation
of Negative Polarity Items 311
Paul Rowlett
Jespersen, Negative Concord and A'-Binding 323
Daniel Valois
Neg-Movement and Wh-Movement 341
Index of Authors 357
Index of Terms & Concepts 360
Index of Languages & Language Families 366
THE SYNTAX OF FRENCH NEGATIVE ADVERBS*
ANNE ABEILLE & DANIÈLE GODARD
IUF, Université Paris 7 & CNRS
1. Introduction
The syntax of negative adverbs has played an important role in discussions
about sentential structure in recent years. In particular, the position of the
negation pas in French has been taken as an argument in favor of V movement
and functional categories (Emonds 1978, Pollock 1989). We defend the
position that adverbs in French, among which negative adverbs, do not
support V movement. As a consequence, a representation using functional
categories looses all empirical motivation, and alternative phrase structure
representations should be investigated. Working within the lexicalist Phrase
Structure formalism of HPSG (Pollard & Sag 1987, 1994), we propose that
negative adverbs in French, like adverbs in general, have two different
positions: they may be adjoined to VP, or occur at the same level as the
complements in the VP.1
Like all sentential negations, negative adverbs co-occur with the verbal
clitic ne. Semantically, there are two possibilities: either the two elements
participate in the expression of the negation, or the adverb (or the negative NP
or determiner) alone is associated with the negative relation. We adopt the
second analysis here (Corblin 1995). While there are contexts where ne is by
itself negative (Muller 1991:227-245), these are the remains of an older
system, which we leave aside. We limit ourselves to adverbs, and ignore the
analysis of ne and its relation with the negation.3
We first show that negative adverbs occur at the same level as complements
after a finite V. We then give arguments in favor of pas being adjoined to the
infinitival VP (Hirschbühler & Labelle 1993, Williams 1994), and show that
adverbs in general are characterized by a double positioning, either adjoined to
We wish to thank Dan Flickinger, Paul Hirschbühler, Bill Ladusaw, Robert Levine, France
Martineau, Philip Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Carl Pollard, Gaëlle Recourcé, and Ivan Sag
for their comments.
* We leave aside constituent negation.
For a different analysis, v. Milner (1982), Muller (1991).
We consider ne a verbal affix, v. Miller (1992), Recourcé (1995, 1996).
