2007. Negation in Natural language on th
Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Negation in Natural Language: On the Form
and Meaning of Negative Elements
10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Blackwell
Oxford,
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Negation
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Hedde Zeijlstra*
University of Amsterdam
Abstract
A universal property of natural language is that every language is able to
express negation. Every language has some device at its disposal to reverse the
truth value of a certain sentence. However, languages may differ to quite a large
extent as to how they express this negation. Not only do languages vary with
respect to the position of negative elements, also the form of negative elements
and the interpretation of sentences that consist of multiple negative elements
are subject to broad cross-linguistic variation. The study to the behaviour of
sentential negation has therefore strongly been guided by the question as to
what determines the possible ways that sentential negation can manifest itself.
A conclusion of the article will be that the behaviour of negation in natural
language strongly deviates from what intuitively might be expected.
1. Introduction
A universal property of natural language is that every language is able
to express negation. Every language has some device at its disposal to
reverse the truth value of affirmative sentences. However, languages
may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation.
Not only do languages vary with respect to the position of negative
elements, the form of negative elements and the interpretation of
sentences that consist of multiple negative elements are also subject to
broad cross-linguistic variation. The study of the behaviour of sentential
negation has therefore strongly been guided by the question as to
what determines the possible ways that sentential negation can manifest
itself.
In this article, I discuss some classical and recent approaches that
have tried to answer this question by explaining one or more of the
above-mentioned phenomena. In the second section, I provide an
overview of different ways that languages express sentential negation.
Furthermore, I address the question why the base position of negative
markers is not the sentence-initial position. The third section will
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Negation in Natural Language
499
deal with a notorious problem in the study of the syntax-semantics
interface: Why do sentences containing two (or more) negative elements
in most languages often not yield two (or more) semantic negations,
but only one. The study of this phenomenon, dubbed negative concord,
has dominated the study of negation more than 15 years, and it has led
to a number of different analyses, which will be discussed and evaluated
in this section. As negative concord directly concerns the semantic
status of negative elements and it has been a central topic of research
in recent years, it can be seen as a prototypical example of studies of
negation in natural language. For this reason the different analyses
of negative concord that have been presented in recent years will
be discussed in more detail so that the reader may get an impression
of what is currently going on in the field. Section 4, finally, concludes
the article.
2. On the Form of Negative Elements: Negative Markers
A property of natural language is that every natural language has some
device at its disposal to reverse the truth conditions of an affirmative
sentence. Take for instance the following two sentences:
(1) a. Anna is at home
b. Anna is not at home
Sentence (1a) is true if and only if (1b) is not and vice versa. Sentence
(1b) means that ‘it is not the case that Anna is at home’. However, if
negation applies to entire sentences, why does it not occur in a sentenceinitial position? Why do negative sentences not have a form like (2)?
(2) Not: Anna is at home
The position and form of the negative marker in natural language
deviate from what would be intuitively expected. Negative markers
usually do not show up in sentence-initial position. Moreover, negative
markers are quite often not even separate words but are attached to
other words (mostly verbs). In the Czech translation of (1b), the negative
marker ne is attached to verb ní (is).
(3) Anna není doma
Anna neg.is at.home
‘Anna is not at home’
Czech
Section 2.1 discusses the range of variation that natural languages
exhibit with respect to the form of negative markers; Section 2.2 thereafter discusses the position of negative markers in a sentence.
© 2007 The Author
Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
500 Hedde Zeijlstra
2.1 THE FORM OF NEGATIVE MARKERS
A first observation, noted in Horn’s seminal work on negation (1989),
on the form of negative sentences is that the expression of a negative
sentence is always marked in comparison to its affirmative counterpart.
There is no language in the world in which affirmative sentences are
marked and negative ones are not (see also Dahl 1979; Payne 1985).
In this respect negative and affirmative sentences are not symmetric in
natural language.
As it is always the negative sentence that is marked, the following
question that rises is how these sentences can be marked. Languages
exhibit different ways of expressing sentential negation. However, the
number of these different ways is restricted. Two different strategies
for the expression of negation can be distinguished. The first strategy
is exhibited by languages that employ special verbs that negate a
sentence such as Evenki (spoken in Siberia) and Tongan (a Polynesian
language) with negative verbs that take an entire clause as their complement.
(4)
a. Bi ∂∂w dukuwunma dukura
Evenki
I neg.past.1sg letter write
‘I “notted” to write the letter’ = ‘I did not write a letter.’
b. Na’e ‘ikai ke ‘alu ‘a Siale
Tongan
Asp neg asp go abs Charlie
‘It “notted” that Chary went’ = ‘Charlie did not go.’1
The second strategy uses negative particles to express sentential
negation. Negative particles come in different kinds. Following much
of the terminology from Zanuttini (1997, 2001) and Zeijlstra (2004),
one can distinguish the following three kinds of negative markers: (i)
adverbial negative markers, (ii) preverbal negative markers, and (iii)
affixal negative markers.
The first class of negative particles consists of adverbial negative
markers. Those negative markers occur both in preverbal and postverbal
position as is shown for German in (5).
(5)
a. Hans kommt nicht
Hans comes neg
‘Hans does not come’
b. . . . dass Hans nicht kommt
. . . that Hans neg comes
‘. . . that Hans does not come’
German
(adverbial)
The second class of examples is constituted by so-called preverbal
negative markers. These are negative markers that always occupy a
position to the left of the finite verb. Czech ne and Italian non are two
examples of such negative markers. These kinds of negative markers
will be referred to as ‘weak’ and ‘strong preverbal particles’, respectively.
© 2007 The Author
Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Negation in Natural Language
(6)
a. Milan nevolá
Milan neg.calls
‘Milan does not call’
b. Gianni non ha telefonato
Gianni neg has called
‘Gianni did not call’
501
Czech
(weak particle)
Italian
(strong particle)
In both examples the negative marker shows up in a position immediately to the left of the finite verb. In Czech the negative marker is really
phonologically attached to the finite verb. In Italian, however, the
negative marker seems to be a separate word. The examples above show
that the class of preverbal negative markers is not homogenous.2
Affixal negative particles are those markers that participate in the
verbal inflectional system. An example is Turkish, in which sentential
negation is expressed by means of a negative affix me that is located
between the verbal stem and the temporal and personal inflection.
(7)
John elmalari sevmedi3
John apples like.neg.past.3sg
‘John does not like the apples’
Turkish
A final remark needs to be made about the occurrence of multiple
negative markers. Many languages allow more than one negative marker
to appear in negative clauses. Catalan, for example, has apart from its
preverbal negative marker the possibility of including a second additional negative marker pas in negative expressions. In Standard French
the co-occurrence of a preverbal and an adverbial negative marker is
even obligatory. In West Flemish negative clauses the negative adverb
nie is obligatory, and the preverbal negative marker en is optional (8).
(8)
a. No serà (pas) facil
Neg be.fut.3sg neg easy
‘It will not be easy’
b. Jean ne mange pas
Jean neg eats neg
‘Jean does not eat’
c. Valère (en) klaapt nie
Valère neg talks neg
‘Valère does not talk’
Catalan
French
West Flemish
The cross-linguistic variation between the languages in (8) is not
coincidental but reflects a well-known case of diachronic development.
Jespersen (1917) already observed that many languages undergo a process
of change with respect to the expression of negation. Languages like
English, Dutch, Latin and many others all changed from languages with
only a preverbal negative marker through intermediate stages to a stage
in which negation is only expressed by means of a postverbal negative
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502 Hedde Zeijlstra
marker, from which they may change back into a stage with only a
preverbal negative marker. The languages in (8) are in different stages of
this cycle. This process is known as Jespersen’s Cycle (after Dahl 1979)
and formulated by Jespersen as follows:
The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness the
following curious fluctuation; the original negative adverb is first weakened,
then found insufficient and therefore strengthened, generally through some
additional word, and this in its turn may be felt as the negative proper and may
then in course of time be subject to the same development as the original word
( Jespersen 1917: 4).
A number of analyses have been presented to account for the range
of variation that one attests cross-linguistically (both synchronically
and diachronically) with respect to the expression of sentential negation
( Jespersen 1917; Klima 1964; Horn 1989; Laka 1990; Ouhalla 1990;
Haegeman 1995; Zanuttini 1997; Van Kemenade 1999; Zeijlstra 2004;
Condoravdi and Kiparsky 2005; De Swart 2006; among many others).
However, this range of variation is not unique to negation. The crosslinguistic variation that is attested in the domain of negation shows close
resemblance to, for instance, marking of tense, aspect and mood, which
exhibit similar ranges of variation. English past tense, for instance, is
expressed by means of an affixal tense marker, -ed, just like Turkish uses
affixal negative markers to express negation. Lilloet Salish, a Native
American language spoken in British Columbia, on the other hand, has
no affixes for past and present tense and expresses this difference by using
adverbial temporal markers, such as now or yesterday (cf. Matthewson 2006).
The expression of tense in this language is thus similar to the expression
of negation in a language like German, which uses only an adverb like nicht
(not) or negative quantifiers [i.e. words like niemand (nobody) or nichts
(nothing), etc.]. For this reason most researchers consider negation a
syntactic category, similar to tense, aspect or mood.
2.2 THE POSITION OF NEGATIVE MARKERS
The idea that negation is a syntactic category much like tense, aspect
and mood determines the position of the negative marker in the sentential structure. Leaving the syntactic details aside, this correspondence
indicates why affixal negative markers, such as Turkish me, and weak
and strong preverbal negative markers, such as Italian non or Czech ne,
are always in the proximity of the finite verb, just like other tense
markers (e.g. future tense auxiliaries), and why adverbial negative
markers (like German nicht) normally occupy a sentential position that
is close to that of temporal and aspectual adverbs ( like always or usually).
The exact location of negative markers with respect to the position of
markers of other categories (such as tense) has been the subject of debate.
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Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Negation in Natural Language
503
Pollock (1989) and Haegeman (1995) argue that negative markers
stand in a fixed order with tense markers whereas Ouhalla (1990),
Ramchand (2003) and Zeijlstra (2004) propose a more flexible approach
where languages vary with respect to the order between temporal and
negative markers. Zanuttini (1997) proposes a more fine-grained clausal
structure consisting of multiple available positions for tense and negation
markers.
The fact that the position of negative markers is restricted to what
is traditionally called the Middle Field (the area where other syntactic
categories such as tense and aspect operate) may shed more light on a
question that Jespersen addressed back in 1917: if the entire sentence
is negated, why does the negative marker not appear in front of the
entire sentence ( Jespersen 1917: 86)? This does not only hold for
languages like English or other European languages. Dahl (1979)
reports that the base position of negative markers is never found in
the real sentence-initial position, and similar observations have been
reported in Han (2001) and Zeijlstra (2006a). That does not mean
that negative markers may not occur in that position. If, for instance,
a negative marker is always attached to the left of a finite verb and the
sentence starts with such a verb, the negative marker also stands at
the beginning of the sentence. However, in such a language (again,
Czech could be an example) one cannot say that the base position of
the negative marker is the sentence-initial position; its base position is
just left of the finite verb.
That negation occupies a position in the Middle Field and not the
sentence border is also illustrated by the following phenomenon in
Dutch. In this language there is always one constituent left of the finite
verb (at least in affirmative main clauses). Whereas most adverbs are
allowed to occur in that position, where they receive some extra
emphasis, this is forbidden for the Dutch adverbial negative marker niet
(not), as demonstrated in Hoeksema (1997) and Barbiers (2002):
(9)
a. Vaak gaat Jan naar huis
Often goes Jan to home
‘John does not go often’
b. *Niet gaat Jan naar huis
Neg goes Jan to home
‘John does not go home’
Dutch
2.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS
The above discussion already shows that the behaviour of negation in
natural language can be very different from what one would perhaps
expect on the basis of its meaning (it is not the case that ... ). Negation
in natural language appears to be a syntactic category, quite similar to
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Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
504 Hedde Zeijlstra
the way in which tense is expressed, rather than some operator applying
to an entire sentence.
3. On the Meaning of Negative Elements: Negative Concord
Not only syntactic properties, such as form and position, but also the
semantic behaviour of negative elements deviates from what one would
expect. Another well-investigated phenomenon in this area concerns
the interpretation of sentences with more than one negative element.
Take for instance the following Italian examples:
(10)
a. Gianni non ha telefonato
Gianni neg has called
‘Gianni did not call’
b. Nessuno ha telefonato
N-body has called
‘Nobody called’
Italian
In (10a) the negation seems to be introduced by non. The sentence
without non simply means Gianni called. In (10b) nessuno acts like a
negative quantifier, such as English nobody, and thus induces the semantic
negation. However, if the two are combined in a sentence, only one
semantic negation is yielded although two negations would be expected.
(11)
Gianni non ha telefonato a nessuno
Gianni neg has called to n-body
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
Italian
The phenomenon where two (or more) negative elements that are
able to express negation in isolation yield a single semantic negation
is called Negative Concord after Labov (1972). Languages that do
not exhibit Negative Concord are called Double Negation languages.
Negative Concord is attested in a large variety of languages. Within
the Indo-European language family most languages exhibit Negative
Concord: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Polish,
Albanian and Greek, Afrikaans, West Flemish, Yiddish, to mention just
a few, are all Negative Concord languages. Dutch, German, Swedish and
Norwegian are not.
Different types of Negative Concord languages can be distinguished. In
some languages, for example, Czech and Greek, a negative marker obligatorily accompanies all negative quantifiers [or n-words as negative
quantifiers in Negative Concord languages are standardly referred to
(cf. Laka 1990)], regardless of their number and position. Those languages
are called ‘strict Negative Concord languages’, following terminology
by Giannakidou (1998, 2000). In so-called ‘non-strict Negative Concord
languages’, such as Italian and Spanish, Negative Concord can only
be established between n-words in postverbal position and one element
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Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Negation in Natural Language
505
in preverbal position, either an n-word or a negative marker. Examples
are below:
(12)
a. Milan *(ne-)vidi nikoho
Milan neg.saw n-body
‘Milan does not see anybody’
b. Dnes *(ne-)volá nikdo
Today neg.calls n-body
‘Today nobody calls’
c. Dnes nikdo *(ne-)volá
Today n-body neg.calls
‘Today nobody calls’
Czech
(strict Negative Concord)
(13)
a. Gianni *(non) ha telefonato a nessuno
Italian
Gianni neg has called to n-body (non-strict Negative Concord)
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
b. Ieri *(non) ha telefonato nessuno
Yesterday neg has called n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called’
c. Ieri nessuno (*non) ha telefonato (a nessuno)
Yesterday n-body neg has called to n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called (anybody)’
The reader should note that this typology of Negative Concord
languages is not exhaustive. In languages like West Flemish and Afrikaans,
Negative Concord is allowed to occur, but it is not obligatory (Den
Besten 1989; Haegeman 1995). In those languages negative markers
may accompany n-words, but they do not have to. In French and
Romanian the combination of two n-words gives rise to ambiguity
between a Negative Concord reading and a reading with two semantic
negations, standardly referred to as a Double Negation reading (De
Swart and Sag 2002; Falaus 2006). French is also unique in that only
one of its two negative markers, the preverbal particle ne, is allowed
to occur in Negative Concord relations. The postverbal negative marker
pas may never do so (Rowlett 1998; Corblin and Tovena 2001; De Swart
and Sag 2002).
Despite their internal differences, all these languages have in common
the fact that multiple negative elements may yield only one semantic
negation. This forms a major problem for the study of the relation
between syntax and semantics as it seems to violate one of the most
fundamental principles in the study of syntax and semantics of natural
language, the principle of compositionality (Frege 1892; Janssen 1997).
This principle states that the meaning of a sentence directly follows from
the meaning of its parts and the way they are combined. Following
this principle every negative element should contribute a semantic
negation, contrary to what seems to be the case in Negative Concord
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506 Hedde Zeijlstra
languages. The question as to why multiple negative elements may give
rise to only one semantic negation in some languages is thus not only
relevant for the study of the behaviour of the meaning of negative
elements but lies at the heart of the study of the relation between syntax
and semantics.
In order to solve this problem several approaches have been proposed.
The three most influential proposals are (i) the negative quantifier
approach, (ii) the negative polarity approach, and (iii) the syntactic
agreement approach. In the remainder of this section, I briefly discuss
and evaluate these three approaches.
3.1 THE NEGATIVE QUANTIFIER APPROACH
One proposal, which takes all negative elements to be semantically
negative, goes back to Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991, 1996), Zanuttini
(1991), Haegeman (1995), De Swart and Sag (2002) and Szabolcsi (2004).
In these proposals, it is argued that Negative Concord is an instance
of so-called quantifier resumption (May 1989). Quantifier resumption
can be explained as follows:
(14) Three girls called three boys
This sentence is ambiguous. In one interpretation each girl called
three boys, but another available interpretation is one in which
each girl called exactly one boy. The latter explanation could be
rephrased as ‘There are three girl-boy pairs such that the girl called
the boy’. This process in which the two expressions starting with
three (three girls and three boys) melt together in an expression that
contains only a single three, namely, three girl-boy pairs is called quantifier
resumption.
According to De Swart and Sag (2002), quantifier resumption is
always available as a mode of interpretation when a sentence contains
two negative quantifiers. This means that every sentence that contains two
negative quantifiers has two different readings. Take the following sentence
for instance:
(15) No girl called no boy
If quantifier resumption is applied, (15) does not only mean that
there is no girl who called no boy, and thus that every girl called at
least one boy. It also means that there is no girl-boy pair, such that the
girl called the boy. The former reading corresponds to the Double
Negation reading, which (15) receives in English. The latter reading
is the same as the Negative Concord reading, which (15) would get if
English were a Negative Concord language. De Swart and Sag’s (2002)
proposal amounts to saying that the two readings are in principle always
available for every sentence that contains more than one negative
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Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
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Negation in Natural Language
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expression and that independent principles determine whether a language
allows for both interpretations or only one.
De Swart and Sag’s proposal was based on French, which is a language
in which expression with multiple negative elements are indeed ambiguous between a Double Negation and a Negative Concord reading, as
shown in (16).
(16)
Personne aime personne4
N-body loves n-body
Double Negation: ‘Nobody loves nobody’
Negative Concord: ‘Nobody loves anybody’
French
De Swart and Sag correctly argue that alternative analyses that have
tried to derive the ambiguity of these readings have faced problems in
doing so. However, languages rarely exhibit this ambiguity between
Double Negation and Negative Concord readings. French is typologically
exceptional in this respect. Most languages assign to constructions as
in (16) either a Negative Concord reading or a Double Negation reading,
but not both. The question is thus what narrows down the number of
possible interpretations in individual languages?
In De Swart (2006), a syntactic analysis has been developed that
operates on top of the semantic account for Negative Concord presented in De Swart and Sag (2002). In this article, De Swart argues
that the Double Negation–Negative Concord distinction is due to two
conflicting constraints applying to natural language. One constraint
favours marking of every argument under the scope of negation; the
other constraint requires every negatively marked element to receive a
negative interpretation. De Swart (2006) argues that languages vary with
respect to the internal strength of these two conflicting constraints.5
In languages like Italian, the first constraint is stronger than the second
one; therefore, Italian assigns a Negative Concord interpretation to
multiple negative constructions. If the relative ranking is reverse, like
in Dutch, a Double Negation reading will be assigned. In French the
two constraints are said to be equally strong and therefore (16) is
ambiguous.
The following question that rises is what distinguishes strict from
non-strict Negative Concord languages. Why does inclusion of the
Italian negative marker non depend on the position of the other negative
elements with respect to the finite verb? De Swart (2006) argues that
the distinction between strict and non-strict Negative Concord
languages is, again, the result of conflicting constraints. In strict Negative
Concord languages the constraint that always requires a negative marker
in negative sentences is stronger than the constraint that only demands
a negative marker if n-words are in postverbal position. In non-strict Negative
Concord languages, like Italian, this latter constraint is stronger than the
former.
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508 Hedde Zeijlstra
Note that as most Negative Concord languages allow their negative
markers to participate in Negative Concord constructions, the negative
quantifier approach must also extend to negative markers. De Swart and
Sag propose that negative markers should be considered as a particular
type of negative quantifier. This would account for the fact that in strict
Negative Concord languages the negative marker also participates in
Negative Concord constructions. However, not in every language are
negative markers allowed to participate in a Negative Concord construction.
In French the negative marker pas may never occur in a Negative
Concord construction:
(17)
Personne (n’) arrive pas
N-body (neg) comes neg
Double Negation: ‘Nobody does not arrive’
French
In order to account for this behaviour of French pas, De Swart and
Sag argue that negative markers undergoing resumption do not contribute
at all to the semantics (if pas could participate in a Negative Concord
construction, it would not alter its semantics in any way). As there is
no functional motivation for inclusion of negative markers (such as
French pas or Czech ne) in Negative Concord constructions, nothing
forbids or forces Negative Concord languages to do so. Languages may
thus vary as to whether they allow negative markers in Negative Concord
constructions or not.
A crucial property of de Swart and Corblin’s (2002) is that it separates
the mechanism behind the possible interpretations of sentences consisting of multiple negative elements (quantifier resumption) from the
mechanism behind the cross-linguistic variation with respect to Negative
Concord. As De Swart (2006: 17) puts it: ‘the position and distribution
of the marker of sentential negation in negative concord is relevant for
syntax but does not affect the semantics.’ In other words, the question
whether a language is a Negative Concord language or not is independent
of the type of negative marker it has. Apart from the question whether
it would be preferable to have one theory accounting for the occurrence
and distribution of Negative Concord constructions instead of two,
several scholars argued that the syntactic behaviour of negative markers
and the occurrence of Negative Concord are not two independent
phenomena. For instance, Zeijlstra (2004, 2006b) claims that every
language with a marker that is either an affixal negative marker or a weak
or strong preverbal negative marker (using the terminology discussed in
Section 2.1) also exhibits Negative Concord. Such a relation cannot follow
from the kind of approach that De Swart and Sag (2002) propose.
Another criticism of this approach is that Negative Concord is not
always restricted to negative markers and n-words, contrary to what De
Swart and Sag (2002) argue for. In (18) for instance the Spanish verb
dudar (to doubt) or the preposition sin (without) may also establish Negative
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Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
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Negation in Natural Language
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Concord relations with n-words although these elements are not negative
quantifiers. Those examples form a major problem for theories that
take n-words to be negative quantifiers. Without adopting additional
assumptions the verb to doubt or the preposition without cannot undergo
resumption with negative quantifiers.
(18)
a. Dudo que vayan a encontrar nada
Doubt that go to find n-thing
‘I doubt that they will find anything’
b. Sin nadie
Without n-body
‘Without anybody’
Spanish
These considerations have inspired other researchers to think differently
about Negative Concord and to see whether they can explain Negative
Concord as a result of the semantic properties of n-words and negative
markers.
3.2 THE NEGATIVE POLARITY APPROACH
The English translations of the Negative Concord examples in the
previous sections all contained words like anybody or anything. These
English words have a very characteristic property: they can only
occur in particular contexts. This is shown in (19). The word anybody
may not occur in normal affirmative sentence but may occur in negative
sentences.
(19) a. *John saw anybody
b. John did not see anybody
Because of the fact that these words may generally only occur in
negative contexts, these words are called negative polarity items (NPI).
In more technical terms, anybody in (19b) is said to be licensed by the
negation not. In this sense NPIs are quite close to n-words. Take for
instance the Italian example in (20a) which has the same meaning as
English (20b).
(20)
a. Gianni *(non) ha telefonato a nessuno
b. Gianni has*(not) called anybody
Italian
In this example nessuno and anybody share two important properties:
(i) they are interpreted as semantically non-negative indefinites, and (ii)
they must be licensed by negation (non and not, respectively). The
similarities between NPIs and n-words do not end with these two properties. A third striking parallel between NPIs and n-words is that both
can appear in constructions with verbs like to doubt or prepositions like
without [as shown in (18)], which are strictly speaking not negative but
do have some ‘negative flavour’.
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510 Hedde Zeijlstra
Given these strong similarities between NPIs and n-words (or polarity
and Negative Concord) and in order to solve problems introduced by
(18), several scholars have proposed that n-words are in fact special
kinds of NPIs (Ladusaw 1992; Giannakidou 2000). If the lexical semantics
of elements such as Italian nessuno is actually anybody instead of nobody,
the proper readings in (18) and (20) immediately follow. However, such
an approach faces two immediate problems.
First, if n-words are semantically non-negative, how can the readings
of sentences such as (10b) [repeated as (21) below], where a single n-word
induces semantic negation, be derived?
(21)
Nessuno ha telefonato
N-body has called
‘Nobody called’
Italian
Where does the negation come from in (21) if nessuno is semantically
non-negative? In an influential proposal by Ladusaw (1992), n-words are
said to differ from plain NPIs in the sense that they are self-licensing,
that is, if nothing else can license n-words, NPIs may license themselves.
The question how self-licensing takes place in detail rises. Ladusaw (1992)
elaborated two proposals in different syntactic frameworks; however, in
both proposals, it remains unclear how the compositionality problem
is solved. The general problem with self-licensing is the following: if
n-words have a property that allows them to introduce an (unpronounced)
semantic negation, what prevents them from introducing more than
one semantic negation in multiple negative constructions? The idea that
n-words are licensed by unpronounced negations could in principal
explain Negative Concord, but it needs to be clarified how this selflicensing mechanism exactly functions.
The second problem concerns the (other) differences between the
licensing of plain NPIs and n-words. Two differences immediately come
to mind and require closer inspection: (i) the fact that n-words but not
plain NPIs may be licensed by a negative marker that follows them and
(ii) the fact that n-words but not plain NPIs may constitute so-called
fragmentary answers.
First, plain NPIs may only be licensed by a negative marker that
precedes them. This latter constraint does not hold for n-words. Czech
nikdo may precede the negative marker ne, but English anybody may not
occupy this position.
(22)
a. Nikdo ne volá
N-body neg.calls
‘Nobody calls’
b. *Anybody does not call
Czech
Giannakidou (2000), following Szabolcsi (1981), tackles this problem
by arguing that in strict Negative Concord languages such as Czech n-words
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Negation in Natural Language
511
are indeed NPIs, but that they differ from the English type of NPIs, in
the sense that Czech nikdo does not mean anybody but actually means
everybody. The effect of this proposed meaning change is that (22a) does
not mean ‘It is not the case that anybody calls’ but ‘everybody did not
call’. Although the two translations have the same meaning, the order
between anybody and everybody with respect to the negative marker not
is reverse: everybody precedes it; anybody follows it. The only question
then is why do all n-words not precede the negative marker. Giannakidou
(2000) argues that this is due to a discrepancy between semantics and
phonology. The n-words are not always pronounced where they are
interpreted. According to Giannakidou (2000) as well as many others, it
is a general property of quantifiers (such as everybody) that they move to
another position in the sentence before they are interpreted.6
However, if n-words are semantically non-negative, how can they occur
solely in a sentence as in (21)? Giannakidou (2000) is not clear in this
respect as she mainly focuses on strict Negative Concord languages,
where such constructions are ruled out. The only case in Greek where
an n-word may occur with a corresponding negative marker is in a socalled fragmentary answer.
(23)
Q: Ti ides?
What saw.2sg?
What did you see?
A: TIPOTA
N-thing
Nothing!
Greek7
Giannakidou (2000) tries to overcome the problems with self-licensing
by arguing that in these cases the n-word is still licensed by the Greek
negative marker dhen but that this dhen is not pronounced. The actual
answer given in (23) is the full sentence (24), part of which is not
pronounced as the full sentence would then repeat the question. The
strikethrough indicates what is unpronounced:
(24)
Q: Ti ides?
What saw.2sg?
A: TIPOTA dhen ida
N-thing neg saw
Greek
This account, however, has been criticized by Watanabe (2004), who
follows Merchant (2001) by arguing that the only words that can be
left unpronounced are those whose meaning also appears in the question
sentence. As idhes and ida mean the same thing (they refer to same
person seeing something), ida does not have to be pronounced in the
fragmentary answer, but as the question does not contain a negation, no
negation can be left unpronounced in the answer. Otherwise, the answer
a present to a question what did you buy could mean ‘I did not buy a
present’.8
Although Giannakidou (2000) solves the reverse licensing problem, it
appears that the negative polarity approach cannot escape from some
mechanism of self-licensing.
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512 Hedde Zeijlstra
3.3 THE SYNTACTIC AGREEMENT APPROACH
Apart from above-described differences between plain NPIs and n-words,
another difference between NPI licensing and Negative Concord is
that NPI licensing can take place across the border of a sentential clause,
but licensing of n-words cannot. N-words in a subordinate clause for
instance cannot be licensed by an outside negation as opposed to real
NPIs, as is shown in (25).
(25)
a. *Gianni non ha dichiarato che ha visto niente
Gianni neg has declared that has seen n-thing
b. Gianni non ha dichiarato che ha visto alcunché
Gianni neg has declared that has seen anything
‘Gianni did not declare that he saw anything’
Italian
Apparently, for the NPI alcunché it suffices that it stands in a semantically negative context whereas the n-words must be really close to the
negation. Given the differences between plain NPIs and n-words,
Zeijlstra (2004, 2006b) has argued that despite close resemblance NPI
licensing and Negative Concord are two different phenomena. He
proposes a solution to the Negative Concord problem by arguing that
Ladusaw (1992) is correct in assuming that n-words are semantically
non-negative but that does not turn them into NPIs. In his system
Italian nessuno does not mean ‘nobody’, nor does it mean ‘anybody’, but
it simply means ‘a person’. Negative Concord is, in his view, then an
instance of a purely syntactic phenomenon called agreement. What is
meant by agreement is illustrated in (26).
(26)
a. Io canto
I sing.1sg
‘I sing’
b. Canto
Sing.1sg
‘I sing’
Italian
The word canto in (26a) consists of a verbal stem cant- and an affix -o
indicating that the subject is first person singular. Note that this is different
from saying that the word canto means ‘I sing’. If it did, (26a) would get
the bizarre interpretation ‘I I sing’. In other words, canto has some feature
that says that it must stand in a relation with a subject io (I) but that
it does not mean ‘I’ by itself. In technical terms, such features are called
uninterpretable features (Chomsky 1995). But, as the form of the verb
canto already indicates that the subject cannot be anything else than io
(I), the subject can be left out in Italian. In (26b) the subject is left
unpronounced as it is already clear what it is/should be.
Zeijlstra argues that just as the verb canto is already marked for a subject
that is left unpronounced, in Negative Concord languages n-words carry
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Negation in Natural Language
513
an uninterpretable negative feature. Italian nessuno then simply means ‘a
person’ but its uninterpretable negative feature indicates that this word
must stand in a sentence with a semantically negative element. On the
other hand, as it is already clear from the form of nessuno that the sentence
must contain such a semantically negative element, it may be left unpronounced, just like the subject in (26b). In Zeijlstra’s system all negative
elements (n-words and negative markers) are equipped with a negative
feature that is either interpretable ([iNEG]) and corresponds to a semantic
negation, or is uninterpretable ([uNEG]) and requires the presence of
an element that carries a feature [iNEG]. Now the Negative Concord
reading in (27) as follows:
(27)
Gianni non[iNEG] ha detto niente[uNEG] a nessuno[uNEG]
Gianni neg has said n-thing to n-body
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
Italian
Both niente and nessuno are equipped with a feature [uNEG] and require
the presence of an element that carries [iNEG]. Non carries [iNEG] and
can thus fulfil these requirements. But why cannot the negative marker
not be left unpronounced, as was the case with the subject in (26b)? This
is due to a property of Italian, also addressed in Section 2.1, that requires
every negative sentence to have some marker of negation standing to
the left of the finite verb. If non were to be removed in (27), this requirement would be violated. But if the n-word nessuno appears in front of
the finite verb, this condition is already satisfied. In those cases, the
negative marker is indeed superfluous and thus covert.
(28)
Nessuno telefona
N-body calls
‘Nobody calls’
Italian
In (28) the semantically negative element is thus phonologically empty.
This means that what is pronounced in (28) is not the complete
sentence. The complete sentence is as in (29), with being the
unpronounced negative element that carries [iNEG].
(29)
Nessuno[uNEG] telefona
Italian
Although this solution accounts for the absence of the negative marker
in non-strict Negative Concord languages, it remains to be explained
why in strict Negative Concord languages the negative marker must
always appear, even if it is preceded by an n-word. In order to solve this
problem, Zeijlstra argues that the negative marker in strict Negative
Concord languages also carries a feature [uNEG] and does not carry
[iNEG] as the Italian negative marker non does. It is thus semantically
non-negative, just like n-words. The Czech counterpart of (29) is then
like (30). In a language like Czech one could say that all n-words and
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Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
514 Hedde Zeijlstra
finite verbs starting with ne are marked for negation, and that the
semantic negation therefore never needs to be pronounced.
(30)
Nikdo[uNEG] nevolá[uNEG]
‘Nobody calls’
Czech
The difference between strict and non-strict Negative Concord
languages then reduces to the featural make-up of the negative marker.
This assumption also explains why n-words may appear in fragmentary
answers. Take (24) again, repeated as (31).
(31)
Q: Ti ides? A: TIPOTA[uNEG] dhen[uNEG] ida Greek
What saw.2sg?
N-thing neg saw!
What did you see? Nothing!
Greek is a strict Negative Concord language, and dhen is thus
semantically non-negative. This means that dhen ida and ida are semantically identical. Therefore, dhen may be present in the unpronounced
part of the answer in (31). Just like the n-word TIPOTA, it requires the
presence of a semantic negation, which is left unpronounced.
In Zeijlstra’s approach, n-words are semantically non-negative but
different from NPIs, explaining why n-words behave differently from
NPIs. At the same time n-words are different from negative quantifiers,
thus explaining the differences that are attested between n-words and
real negative quantifiers. But Zeijlstra’s approach also faces problems.
Not only is the notion of phonologically empty material controversial,
this approach also has hard times accounting for the ambiguity of
sentences with more than one negative element that is attested in French
and forms a main motivation for the quantifier resumption approach
in De Swart and Sag’s (2002). Moreover, parallels between n-words and
NPIs are again in need of explanation, such as the examples in (18),
repeated as (32). In these cases, Zeijstra is forced to assume that words
like dudo (doubt) and sin (without) also carry a feature [iNEG] although
they are no real negations.
(32)
a. Dudo que vayan a encontrar nada
Doubt that go to find n-thing
‘I doubt that they will find anything’
b. Sin nadie
Without n-body
‘Without anybody’
Spanish
3.4 SOME FINAL REMARKS
This section has been too short to do justice to all accounts of Negative
Concord. First, the analyses that have been evaluated are of course much
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Negation in Natural Language
515
more elaborate than sketched above. Moreover, more analyses have
been proposed that unfortunately could not be discussed here, such as
Herburger (2001), who has attempted to account for Negative Concord
in terms of lexical ambiguity of n-words (in her analysis, Italian nessuno
means both ‘nobody’ and ‘anybody’). However, even on the basis of this
all too brief discussion, it is safe to conclude that all three approaches
can account for the Negative Concord data to quite a large extent, but
at the same time all face problems, which should not be neglected.
This is why Negative Concord is still nowadays a hot topic in the
study of negation, and hopefully the discussion above give the reader a
good impression of the problems that currently need to be tackled.
Despite the differences between these (and other) approaches to
Negative Concord, it is evident that the semantic behaviour of negative
elements is strikingly different from what would be expected at first
sight and is still the subject of intensive debate.
4. Conclusions
In this article, both the form and meaning of negative element have
been discussed, demonstrating the amazing behaviour that negation
exhibits in natural language. Although every natural language exhibits a
device to reverse the truth conditions of a sentence, natural languages
shows a surprisingly large range with respect to the syntactic and semantic
behaviour of negative elements.
The form of negation may vary along the lines of markers of nonpropositional operators, such as tense markers. The distribution of the
negative marker even suggests that negation should no longer be
thought of as an operator that applies to entire sentences. The data
from Negative Concord languages even open up the possibility that
negative elements, markers and quantifiers, may be semantically nonnegative.
As a result, the expression of negation in natural language exhibits a
large range of variation, which deserves perhaps even more attention
than it has received thus far. Further exploring this variation may shed
more light on the syntactic and semantics properties of negation in
natural language.
Short Biography
Hedde Zeijlstra is Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics at the University
of Amsterdam. He has worked intensively on negation and on functional
categories in general, in the domains of syntax and semantics. He is
the author of Sentential Negation and Negative Concord (LOT Publications,
2004) and has written various other papers such as On the Syntactic
Flexibility of Formal Features (Benjamins, 2007) and Doubling and the Ban
© 2007 The Author
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Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
516 Hedde Zeijlstra
on True Negative Imperatives (Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics,
2006). Zeijlstra’s current research concerns the syntax, semantics and
typology of so-called doubling phenomena, that is, multiple morphosyntactic manifestations of single semantic properties. Zeijlstra received
his PhD from the University of Amsterdam, where he also worked for
the Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects (Amsterdam University Press, 2005),
and has occupied a postdoc position at the University of Tübingen.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Hedde Zeijlstra, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam,
Spuistraat 134 (lsg NTK), NL-1012 VB Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected].
1
Data from Payne (1985), cited in Zanuttini (2001: 513).
Cf. Zanuttini (1997) for an even more fine-grained overview of different kinds of preverbal
negative markers based on a survey of Romance microvariation (mostly northern Italian
dialects).
3
Example from Ouhalla (1990), also cited in Zanuttini (2001).
4
According to the standard language a preverbal negative marker ne must be included in this
example. However, this additional negative marker is no longer used in most varieties of French
and is therefore not included in the example. It should be noted that De Swart and Sag,
following Corblin and Tovena (2001), take ne to be semantically vacuous (as opposed to all
other negative elements).
5
The framework that De Swart uses here is called Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky
1993), which is generally adopted to account for phonological variation among languages.
6
This mechanism, called Quantifier Raising, has been motivated to account for the interpretation of sentences such as Every boy loves a girl (cf. May 1985). This sentence has two
readings: ‘for every boy there is girl such that he loves her’ and ‘there is a girl such that every
boy loves her’. The latter reading is said to come from a movement of a girl to a position in
front of every boy after pronouncing.
7
In Gre
Negation in Natural Language: On the Form
and Meaning of Negative Elements
10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Blackwell
Oxford,
Language
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Negation
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Hedde Zeijlstra*
University of Amsterdam
Abstract
A universal property of natural language is that every language is able to
express negation. Every language has some device at its disposal to reverse the
truth value of a certain sentence. However, languages may differ to quite a large
extent as to how they express this negation. Not only do languages vary with
respect to the position of negative elements, also the form of negative elements
and the interpretation of sentences that consist of multiple negative elements
are subject to broad cross-linguistic variation. The study to the behaviour of
sentential negation has therefore strongly been guided by the question as to
what determines the possible ways that sentential negation can manifest itself.
A conclusion of the article will be that the behaviour of negation in natural
language strongly deviates from what intuitively might be expected.
1. Introduction
A universal property of natural language is that every language is able
to express negation. Every language has some device at its disposal to
reverse the truth value of affirmative sentences. However, languages
may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation.
Not only do languages vary with respect to the position of negative
elements, the form of negative elements and the interpretation of
sentences that consist of multiple negative elements are also subject to
broad cross-linguistic variation. The study of the behaviour of sentential
negation has therefore strongly been guided by the question as to
what determines the possible ways that sentential negation can manifest
itself.
In this article, I discuss some classical and recent approaches that
have tried to answer this question by explaining one or more of the
above-mentioned phenomena. In the second section, I provide an
overview of different ways that languages express sentential negation.
Furthermore, I address the question why the base position of negative
markers is not the sentence-initial position. The third section will
© 2007 The Author
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Negation in Natural Language
499
deal with a notorious problem in the study of the syntax-semantics
interface: Why do sentences containing two (or more) negative elements
in most languages often not yield two (or more) semantic negations,
but only one. The study of this phenomenon, dubbed negative concord,
has dominated the study of negation more than 15 years, and it has led
to a number of different analyses, which will be discussed and evaluated
in this section. As negative concord directly concerns the semantic
status of negative elements and it has been a central topic of research
in recent years, it can be seen as a prototypical example of studies of
negation in natural language. For this reason the different analyses
of negative concord that have been presented in recent years will
be discussed in more detail so that the reader may get an impression
of what is currently going on in the field. Section 4, finally, concludes
the article.
2. On the Form of Negative Elements: Negative Markers
A property of natural language is that every natural language has some
device at its disposal to reverse the truth conditions of an affirmative
sentence. Take for instance the following two sentences:
(1) a. Anna is at home
b. Anna is not at home
Sentence (1a) is true if and only if (1b) is not and vice versa. Sentence
(1b) means that ‘it is not the case that Anna is at home’. However, if
negation applies to entire sentences, why does it not occur in a sentenceinitial position? Why do negative sentences not have a form like (2)?
(2) Not: Anna is at home
The position and form of the negative marker in natural language
deviate from what would be intuitively expected. Negative markers
usually do not show up in sentence-initial position. Moreover, negative
markers are quite often not even separate words but are attached to
other words (mostly verbs). In the Czech translation of (1b), the negative
marker ne is attached to verb ní (is).
(3) Anna není doma
Anna neg.is at.home
‘Anna is not at home’
Czech
Section 2.1 discusses the range of variation that natural languages
exhibit with respect to the form of negative markers; Section 2.2 thereafter discusses the position of negative markers in a sentence.
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500 Hedde Zeijlstra
2.1 THE FORM OF NEGATIVE MARKERS
A first observation, noted in Horn’s seminal work on negation (1989),
on the form of negative sentences is that the expression of a negative
sentence is always marked in comparison to its affirmative counterpart.
There is no language in the world in which affirmative sentences are
marked and negative ones are not (see also Dahl 1979; Payne 1985).
In this respect negative and affirmative sentences are not symmetric in
natural language.
As it is always the negative sentence that is marked, the following
question that rises is how these sentences can be marked. Languages
exhibit different ways of expressing sentential negation. However, the
number of these different ways is restricted. Two different strategies
for the expression of negation can be distinguished. The first strategy
is exhibited by languages that employ special verbs that negate a
sentence such as Evenki (spoken in Siberia) and Tongan (a Polynesian
language) with negative verbs that take an entire clause as their complement.
(4)
a. Bi ∂∂w dukuwunma dukura
Evenki
I neg.past.1sg letter write
‘I “notted” to write the letter’ = ‘I did not write a letter.’
b. Na’e ‘ikai ke ‘alu ‘a Siale
Tongan
Asp neg asp go abs Charlie
‘It “notted” that Chary went’ = ‘Charlie did not go.’1
The second strategy uses negative particles to express sentential
negation. Negative particles come in different kinds. Following much
of the terminology from Zanuttini (1997, 2001) and Zeijlstra (2004),
one can distinguish the following three kinds of negative markers: (i)
adverbial negative markers, (ii) preverbal negative markers, and (iii)
affixal negative markers.
The first class of negative particles consists of adverbial negative
markers. Those negative markers occur both in preverbal and postverbal
position as is shown for German in (5).
(5)
a. Hans kommt nicht
Hans comes neg
‘Hans does not come’
b. . . . dass Hans nicht kommt
. . . that Hans neg comes
‘. . . that Hans does not come’
German
(adverbial)
The second class of examples is constituted by so-called preverbal
negative markers. These are negative markers that always occupy a
position to the left of the finite verb. Czech ne and Italian non are two
examples of such negative markers. These kinds of negative markers
will be referred to as ‘weak’ and ‘strong preverbal particles’, respectively.
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Negation in Natural Language
(6)
a. Milan nevolá
Milan neg.calls
‘Milan does not call’
b. Gianni non ha telefonato
Gianni neg has called
‘Gianni did not call’
501
Czech
(weak particle)
Italian
(strong particle)
In both examples the negative marker shows up in a position immediately to the left of the finite verb. In Czech the negative marker is really
phonologically attached to the finite verb. In Italian, however, the
negative marker seems to be a separate word. The examples above show
that the class of preverbal negative markers is not homogenous.2
Affixal negative particles are those markers that participate in the
verbal inflectional system. An example is Turkish, in which sentential
negation is expressed by means of a negative affix me that is located
between the verbal stem and the temporal and personal inflection.
(7)
John elmalari sevmedi3
John apples like.neg.past.3sg
‘John does not like the apples’
Turkish
A final remark needs to be made about the occurrence of multiple
negative markers. Many languages allow more than one negative marker
to appear in negative clauses. Catalan, for example, has apart from its
preverbal negative marker the possibility of including a second additional negative marker pas in negative expressions. In Standard French
the co-occurrence of a preverbal and an adverbial negative marker is
even obligatory. In West Flemish negative clauses the negative adverb
nie is obligatory, and the preverbal negative marker en is optional (8).
(8)
a. No serà (pas) facil
Neg be.fut.3sg neg easy
‘It will not be easy’
b. Jean ne mange pas
Jean neg eats neg
‘Jean does not eat’
c. Valère (en) klaapt nie
Valère neg talks neg
‘Valère does not talk’
Catalan
French
West Flemish
The cross-linguistic variation between the languages in (8) is not
coincidental but reflects a well-known case of diachronic development.
Jespersen (1917) already observed that many languages undergo a process
of change with respect to the expression of negation. Languages like
English, Dutch, Latin and many others all changed from languages with
only a preverbal negative marker through intermediate stages to a stage
in which negation is only expressed by means of a postverbal negative
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502 Hedde Zeijlstra
marker, from which they may change back into a stage with only a
preverbal negative marker. The languages in (8) are in different stages of
this cycle. This process is known as Jespersen’s Cycle (after Dahl 1979)
and formulated by Jespersen as follows:
The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness the
following curious fluctuation; the original negative adverb is first weakened,
then found insufficient and therefore strengthened, generally through some
additional word, and this in its turn may be felt as the negative proper and may
then in course of time be subject to the same development as the original word
( Jespersen 1917: 4).
A number of analyses have been presented to account for the range
of variation that one attests cross-linguistically (both synchronically
and diachronically) with respect to the expression of sentential negation
( Jespersen 1917; Klima 1964; Horn 1989; Laka 1990; Ouhalla 1990;
Haegeman 1995; Zanuttini 1997; Van Kemenade 1999; Zeijlstra 2004;
Condoravdi and Kiparsky 2005; De Swart 2006; among many others).
However, this range of variation is not unique to negation. The crosslinguistic variation that is attested in the domain of negation shows close
resemblance to, for instance, marking of tense, aspect and mood, which
exhibit similar ranges of variation. English past tense, for instance, is
expressed by means of an affixal tense marker, -ed, just like Turkish uses
affixal negative markers to express negation. Lilloet Salish, a Native
American language spoken in British Columbia, on the other hand, has
no affixes for past and present tense and expresses this difference by using
adverbial temporal markers, such as now or yesterday (cf. Matthewson 2006).
The expression of tense in this language is thus similar to the expression
of negation in a language like German, which uses only an adverb like nicht
(not) or negative quantifiers [i.e. words like niemand (nobody) or nichts
(nothing), etc.]. For this reason most researchers consider negation a
syntactic category, similar to tense, aspect or mood.
2.2 THE POSITION OF NEGATIVE MARKERS
The idea that negation is a syntactic category much like tense, aspect
and mood determines the position of the negative marker in the sentential structure. Leaving the syntactic details aside, this correspondence
indicates why affixal negative markers, such as Turkish me, and weak
and strong preverbal negative markers, such as Italian non or Czech ne,
are always in the proximity of the finite verb, just like other tense
markers (e.g. future tense auxiliaries), and why adverbial negative
markers (like German nicht) normally occupy a sentential position that
is close to that of temporal and aspectual adverbs ( like always or usually).
The exact location of negative markers with respect to the position of
markers of other categories (such as tense) has been the subject of debate.
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Pollock (1989) and Haegeman (1995) argue that negative markers
stand in a fixed order with tense markers whereas Ouhalla (1990),
Ramchand (2003) and Zeijlstra (2004) propose a more flexible approach
where languages vary with respect to the order between temporal and
negative markers. Zanuttini (1997) proposes a more fine-grained clausal
structure consisting of multiple available positions for tense and negation
markers.
The fact that the position of negative markers is restricted to what
is traditionally called the Middle Field (the area where other syntactic
categories such as tense and aspect operate) may shed more light on a
question that Jespersen addressed back in 1917: if the entire sentence
is negated, why does the negative marker not appear in front of the
entire sentence ( Jespersen 1917: 86)? This does not only hold for
languages like English or other European languages. Dahl (1979)
reports that the base position of negative markers is never found in
the real sentence-initial position, and similar observations have been
reported in Han (2001) and Zeijlstra (2006a). That does not mean
that negative markers may not occur in that position. If, for instance,
a negative marker is always attached to the left of a finite verb and the
sentence starts with such a verb, the negative marker also stands at
the beginning of the sentence. However, in such a language (again,
Czech could be an example) one cannot say that the base position of
the negative marker is the sentence-initial position; its base position is
just left of the finite verb.
That negation occupies a position in the Middle Field and not the
sentence border is also illustrated by the following phenomenon in
Dutch. In this language there is always one constituent left of the finite
verb (at least in affirmative main clauses). Whereas most adverbs are
allowed to occur in that position, where they receive some extra
emphasis, this is forbidden for the Dutch adverbial negative marker niet
(not), as demonstrated in Hoeksema (1997) and Barbiers (2002):
(9)
a. Vaak gaat Jan naar huis
Often goes Jan to home
‘John does not go often’
b. *Niet gaat Jan naar huis
Neg goes Jan to home
‘John does not go home’
Dutch
2.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS
The above discussion already shows that the behaviour of negation in
natural language can be very different from what one would perhaps
expect on the basis of its meaning (it is not the case that ... ). Negation
in natural language appears to be a syntactic category, quite similar to
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the way in which tense is expressed, rather than some operator applying
to an entire sentence.
3. On the Meaning of Negative Elements: Negative Concord
Not only syntactic properties, such as form and position, but also the
semantic behaviour of negative elements deviates from what one would
expect. Another well-investigated phenomenon in this area concerns
the interpretation of sentences with more than one negative element.
Take for instance the following Italian examples:
(10)
a. Gianni non ha telefonato
Gianni neg has called
‘Gianni did not call’
b. Nessuno ha telefonato
N-body has called
‘Nobody called’
Italian
In (10a) the negation seems to be introduced by non. The sentence
without non simply means Gianni called. In (10b) nessuno acts like a
negative quantifier, such as English nobody, and thus induces the semantic
negation. However, if the two are combined in a sentence, only one
semantic negation is yielded although two negations would be expected.
(11)
Gianni non ha telefonato a nessuno
Gianni neg has called to n-body
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
Italian
The phenomenon where two (or more) negative elements that are
able to express negation in isolation yield a single semantic negation
is called Negative Concord after Labov (1972). Languages that do
not exhibit Negative Concord are called Double Negation languages.
Negative Concord is attested in a large variety of languages. Within
the Indo-European language family most languages exhibit Negative
Concord: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Polish,
Albanian and Greek, Afrikaans, West Flemish, Yiddish, to mention just
a few, are all Negative Concord languages. Dutch, German, Swedish and
Norwegian are not.
Different types of Negative Concord languages can be distinguished. In
some languages, for example, Czech and Greek, a negative marker obligatorily accompanies all negative quantifiers [or n-words as negative
quantifiers in Negative Concord languages are standardly referred to
(cf. Laka 1990)], regardless of their number and position. Those languages
are called ‘strict Negative Concord languages’, following terminology
by Giannakidou (1998, 2000). In so-called ‘non-strict Negative Concord
languages’, such as Italian and Spanish, Negative Concord can only
be established between n-words in postverbal position and one element
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in preverbal position, either an n-word or a negative marker. Examples
are below:
(12)
a. Milan *(ne-)vidi nikoho
Milan neg.saw n-body
‘Milan does not see anybody’
b. Dnes *(ne-)volá nikdo
Today neg.calls n-body
‘Today nobody calls’
c. Dnes nikdo *(ne-)volá
Today n-body neg.calls
‘Today nobody calls’
Czech
(strict Negative Concord)
(13)
a. Gianni *(non) ha telefonato a nessuno
Italian
Gianni neg has called to n-body (non-strict Negative Concord)
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
b. Ieri *(non) ha telefonato nessuno
Yesterday neg has called n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called’
c. Ieri nessuno (*non) ha telefonato (a nessuno)
Yesterday n-body neg has called to n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called (anybody)’
The reader should note that this typology of Negative Concord
languages is not exhaustive. In languages like West Flemish and Afrikaans,
Negative Concord is allowed to occur, but it is not obligatory (Den
Besten 1989; Haegeman 1995). In those languages negative markers
may accompany n-words, but they do not have to. In French and
Romanian the combination of two n-words gives rise to ambiguity
between a Negative Concord reading and a reading with two semantic
negations, standardly referred to as a Double Negation reading (De
Swart and Sag 2002; Falaus 2006). French is also unique in that only
one of its two negative markers, the preverbal particle ne, is allowed
to occur in Negative Concord relations. The postverbal negative marker
pas may never do so (Rowlett 1998; Corblin and Tovena 2001; De Swart
and Sag 2002).
Despite their internal differences, all these languages have in common
the fact that multiple negative elements may yield only one semantic
negation. This forms a major problem for the study of the relation
between syntax and semantics as it seems to violate one of the most
fundamental principles in the study of syntax and semantics of natural
language, the principle of compositionality (Frege 1892; Janssen 1997).
This principle states that the meaning of a sentence directly follows from
the meaning of its parts and the way they are combined. Following
this principle every negative element should contribute a semantic
negation, contrary to what seems to be the case in Negative Concord
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languages. The question as to why multiple negative elements may give
rise to only one semantic negation in some languages is thus not only
relevant for the study of the behaviour of the meaning of negative
elements but lies at the heart of the study of the relation between syntax
and semantics.
In order to solve this problem several approaches have been proposed.
The three most influential proposals are (i) the negative quantifier
approach, (ii) the negative polarity approach, and (iii) the syntactic
agreement approach. In the remainder of this section, I briefly discuss
and evaluate these three approaches.
3.1 THE NEGATIVE QUANTIFIER APPROACH
One proposal, which takes all negative elements to be semantically
negative, goes back to Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991, 1996), Zanuttini
(1991), Haegeman (1995), De Swart and Sag (2002) and Szabolcsi (2004).
In these proposals, it is argued that Negative Concord is an instance
of so-called quantifier resumption (May 1989). Quantifier resumption
can be explained as follows:
(14) Three girls called three boys
This sentence is ambiguous. In one interpretation each girl called
three boys, but another available interpretation is one in which
each girl called exactly one boy. The latter explanation could be
rephrased as ‘There are three girl-boy pairs such that the girl called
the boy’. This process in which the two expressions starting with
three (three girls and three boys) melt together in an expression that
contains only a single three, namely, three girl-boy pairs is called quantifier
resumption.
According to De Swart and Sag (2002), quantifier resumption is
always available as a mode of interpretation when a sentence contains
two negative quantifiers. This means that every sentence that contains two
negative quantifiers has two different readings. Take the following sentence
for instance:
(15) No girl called no boy
If quantifier resumption is applied, (15) does not only mean that
there is no girl who called no boy, and thus that every girl called at
least one boy. It also means that there is no girl-boy pair, such that the
girl called the boy. The former reading corresponds to the Double
Negation reading, which (15) receives in English. The latter reading
is the same as the Negative Concord reading, which (15) would get if
English were a Negative Concord language. De Swart and Sag’s (2002)
proposal amounts to saying that the two readings are in principle always
available for every sentence that contains more than one negative
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expression and that independent principles determine whether a language
allows for both interpretations or only one.
De Swart and Sag’s proposal was based on French, which is a language
in which expression with multiple negative elements are indeed ambiguous between a Double Negation and a Negative Concord reading, as
shown in (16).
(16)
Personne aime personne4
N-body loves n-body
Double Negation: ‘Nobody loves nobody’
Negative Concord: ‘Nobody loves anybody’
French
De Swart and Sag correctly argue that alternative analyses that have
tried to derive the ambiguity of these readings have faced problems in
doing so. However, languages rarely exhibit this ambiguity between
Double Negation and Negative Concord readings. French is typologically
exceptional in this respect. Most languages assign to constructions as
in (16) either a Negative Concord reading or a Double Negation reading,
but not both. The question is thus what narrows down the number of
possible interpretations in individual languages?
In De Swart (2006), a syntactic analysis has been developed that
operates on top of the semantic account for Negative Concord presented in De Swart and Sag (2002). In this article, De Swart argues
that the Double Negation–Negative Concord distinction is due to two
conflicting constraints applying to natural language. One constraint
favours marking of every argument under the scope of negation; the
other constraint requires every negatively marked element to receive a
negative interpretation. De Swart (2006) argues that languages vary with
respect to the internal strength of these two conflicting constraints.5
In languages like Italian, the first constraint is stronger than the second
one; therefore, Italian assigns a Negative Concord interpretation to
multiple negative constructions. If the relative ranking is reverse, like
in Dutch, a Double Negation reading will be assigned. In French the
two constraints are said to be equally strong and therefore (16) is
ambiguous.
The following question that rises is what distinguishes strict from
non-strict Negative Concord languages. Why does inclusion of the
Italian negative marker non depend on the position of the other negative
elements with respect to the finite verb? De Swart (2006) argues that
the distinction between strict and non-strict Negative Concord
languages is, again, the result of conflicting constraints. In strict Negative
Concord languages the constraint that always requires a negative marker
in negative sentences is stronger than the constraint that only demands
a negative marker if n-words are in postverbal position. In non-strict Negative
Concord languages, like Italian, this latter constraint is stronger than the
former.
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Note that as most Negative Concord languages allow their negative
markers to participate in Negative Concord constructions, the negative
quantifier approach must also extend to negative markers. De Swart and
Sag propose that negative markers should be considered as a particular
type of negative quantifier. This would account for the fact that in strict
Negative Concord languages the negative marker also participates in
Negative Concord constructions. However, not in every language are
negative markers allowed to participate in a Negative Concord construction.
In French the negative marker pas may never occur in a Negative
Concord construction:
(17)
Personne (n’) arrive pas
N-body (neg) comes neg
Double Negation: ‘Nobody does not arrive’
French
In order to account for this behaviour of French pas, De Swart and
Sag argue that negative markers undergoing resumption do not contribute
at all to the semantics (if pas could participate in a Negative Concord
construction, it would not alter its semantics in any way). As there is
no functional motivation for inclusion of negative markers (such as
French pas or Czech ne) in Negative Concord constructions, nothing
forbids or forces Negative Concord languages to do so. Languages may
thus vary as to whether they allow negative markers in Negative Concord
constructions or not.
A crucial property of de Swart and Corblin’s (2002) is that it separates
the mechanism behind the possible interpretations of sentences consisting of multiple negative elements (quantifier resumption) from the
mechanism behind the cross-linguistic variation with respect to Negative
Concord. As De Swart (2006: 17) puts it: ‘the position and distribution
of the marker of sentential negation in negative concord is relevant for
syntax but does not affect the semantics.’ In other words, the question
whether a language is a Negative Concord language or not is independent
of the type of negative marker it has. Apart from the question whether
it would be preferable to have one theory accounting for the occurrence
and distribution of Negative Concord constructions instead of two,
several scholars argued that the syntactic behaviour of negative markers
and the occurrence of Negative Concord are not two independent
phenomena. For instance, Zeijlstra (2004, 2006b) claims that every
language with a marker that is either an affixal negative marker or a weak
or strong preverbal negative marker (using the terminology discussed in
Section 2.1) also exhibits Negative Concord. Such a relation cannot follow
from the kind of approach that De Swart and Sag (2002) propose.
Another criticism of this approach is that Negative Concord is not
always restricted to negative markers and n-words, contrary to what De
Swart and Sag (2002) argue for. In (18) for instance the Spanish verb
dudar (to doubt) or the preposition sin (without) may also establish Negative
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Concord relations with n-words although these elements are not negative
quantifiers. Those examples form a major problem for theories that
take n-words to be negative quantifiers. Without adopting additional
assumptions the verb to doubt or the preposition without cannot undergo
resumption with negative quantifiers.
(18)
a. Dudo que vayan a encontrar nada
Doubt that go to find n-thing
‘I doubt that they will find anything’
b. Sin nadie
Without n-body
‘Without anybody’
Spanish
These considerations have inspired other researchers to think differently
about Negative Concord and to see whether they can explain Negative
Concord as a result of the semantic properties of n-words and negative
markers.
3.2 THE NEGATIVE POLARITY APPROACH
The English translations of the Negative Concord examples in the
previous sections all contained words like anybody or anything. These
English words have a very characteristic property: they can only
occur in particular contexts. This is shown in (19). The word anybody
may not occur in normal affirmative sentence but may occur in negative
sentences.
(19) a. *John saw anybody
b. John did not see anybody
Because of the fact that these words may generally only occur in
negative contexts, these words are called negative polarity items (NPI).
In more technical terms, anybody in (19b) is said to be licensed by the
negation not. In this sense NPIs are quite close to n-words. Take for
instance the Italian example in (20a) which has the same meaning as
English (20b).
(20)
a. Gianni *(non) ha telefonato a nessuno
b. Gianni has*(not) called anybody
Italian
In this example nessuno and anybody share two important properties:
(i) they are interpreted as semantically non-negative indefinites, and (ii)
they must be licensed by negation (non and not, respectively). The
similarities between NPIs and n-words do not end with these two properties. A third striking parallel between NPIs and n-words is that both
can appear in constructions with verbs like to doubt or prepositions like
without [as shown in (18)], which are strictly speaking not negative but
do have some ‘negative flavour’.
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Given these strong similarities between NPIs and n-words (or polarity
and Negative Concord) and in order to solve problems introduced by
(18), several scholars have proposed that n-words are in fact special
kinds of NPIs (Ladusaw 1992; Giannakidou 2000). If the lexical semantics
of elements such as Italian nessuno is actually anybody instead of nobody,
the proper readings in (18) and (20) immediately follow. However, such
an approach faces two immediate problems.
First, if n-words are semantically non-negative, how can the readings
of sentences such as (10b) [repeated as (21) below], where a single n-word
induces semantic negation, be derived?
(21)
Nessuno ha telefonato
N-body has called
‘Nobody called’
Italian
Where does the negation come from in (21) if nessuno is semantically
non-negative? In an influential proposal by Ladusaw (1992), n-words are
said to differ from plain NPIs in the sense that they are self-licensing,
that is, if nothing else can license n-words, NPIs may license themselves.
The question how self-licensing takes place in detail rises. Ladusaw (1992)
elaborated two proposals in different syntactic frameworks; however, in
both proposals, it remains unclear how the compositionality problem
is solved. The general problem with self-licensing is the following: if
n-words have a property that allows them to introduce an (unpronounced)
semantic negation, what prevents them from introducing more than
one semantic negation in multiple negative constructions? The idea that
n-words are licensed by unpronounced negations could in principal
explain Negative Concord, but it needs to be clarified how this selflicensing mechanism exactly functions.
The second problem concerns the (other) differences between the
licensing of plain NPIs and n-words. Two differences immediately come
to mind and require closer inspection: (i) the fact that n-words but not
plain NPIs may be licensed by a negative marker that follows them and
(ii) the fact that n-words but not plain NPIs may constitute so-called
fragmentary answers.
First, plain NPIs may only be licensed by a negative marker that
precedes them. This latter constraint does not hold for n-words. Czech
nikdo may precede the negative marker ne, but English anybody may not
occupy this position.
(22)
a. Nikdo ne volá
N-body neg.calls
‘Nobody calls’
b. *Anybody does not call
Czech
Giannakidou (2000), following Szabolcsi (1981), tackles this problem
by arguing that in strict Negative Concord languages such as Czech n-words
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are indeed NPIs, but that they differ from the English type of NPIs, in
the sense that Czech nikdo does not mean anybody but actually means
everybody. The effect of this proposed meaning change is that (22a) does
not mean ‘It is not the case that anybody calls’ but ‘everybody did not
call’. Although the two translations have the same meaning, the order
between anybody and everybody with respect to the negative marker not
is reverse: everybody precedes it; anybody follows it. The only question
then is why do all n-words not precede the negative marker. Giannakidou
(2000) argues that this is due to a discrepancy between semantics and
phonology. The n-words are not always pronounced where they are
interpreted. According to Giannakidou (2000) as well as many others, it
is a general property of quantifiers (such as everybody) that they move to
another position in the sentence before they are interpreted.6
However, if n-words are semantically non-negative, how can they occur
solely in a sentence as in (21)? Giannakidou (2000) is not clear in this
respect as she mainly focuses on strict Negative Concord languages,
where such constructions are ruled out. The only case in Greek where
an n-word may occur with a corresponding negative marker is in a socalled fragmentary answer.
(23)
Q: Ti ides?
What saw.2sg?
What did you see?
A: TIPOTA
N-thing
Nothing!
Greek7
Giannakidou (2000) tries to overcome the problems with self-licensing
by arguing that in these cases the n-word is still licensed by the Greek
negative marker dhen but that this dhen is not pronounced. The actual
answer given in (23) is the full sentence (24), part of which is not
pronounced as the full sentence would then repeat the question. The
strikethrough indicates what is unpronounced:
(24)
Q: Ti ides?
What saw.2sg?
A: TIPOTA dhen ida
N-thing neg saw
Greek
This account, however, has been criticized by Watanabe (2004), who
follows Merchant (2001) by arguing that the only words that can be
left unpronounced are those whose meaning also appears in the question
sentence. As idhes and ida mean the same thing (they refer to same
person seeing something), ida does not have to be pronounced in the
fragmentary answer, but as the question does not contain a negation, no
negation can be left unpronounced in the answer. Otherwise, the answer
a present to a question what did you buy could mean ‘I did not buy a
present’.8
Although Giannakidou (2000) solves the reverse licensing problem, it
appears that the negative polarity approach cannot escape from some
mechanism of self-licensing.
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3.3 THE SYNTACTIC AGREEMENT APPROACH
Apart from above-described differences between plain NPIs and n-words,
another difference between NPI licensing and Negative Concord is
that NPI licensing can take place across the border of a sentential clause,
but licensing of n-words cannot. N-words in a subordinate clause for
instance cannot be licensed by an outside negation as opposed to real
NPIs, as is shown in (25).
(25)
a. *Gianni non ha dichiarato che ha visto niente
Gianni neg has declared that has seen n-thing
b. Gianni non ha dichiarato che ha visto alcunché
Gianni neg has declared that has seen anything
‘Gianni did not declare that he saw anything’
Italian
Apparently, for the NPI alcunché it suffices that it stands in a semantically negative context whereas the n-words must be really close to the
negation. Given the differences between plain NPIs and n-words,
Zeijlstra (2004, 2006b) has argued that despite close resemblance NPI
licensing and Negative Concord are two different phenomena. He
proposes a solution to the Negative Concord problem by arguing that
Ladusaw (1992) is correct in assuming that n-words are semantically
non-negative but that does not turn them into NPIs. In his system
Italian nessuno does not mean ‘nobody’, nor does it mean ‘anybody’, but
it simply means ‘a person’. Negative Concord is, in his view, then an
instance of a purely syntactic phenomenon called agreement. What is
meant by agreement is illustrated in (26).
(26)
a. Io canto
I sing.1sg
‘I sing’
b. Canto
Sing.1sg
‘I sing’
Italian
The word canto in (26a) consists of a verbal stem cant- and an affix -o
indicating that the subject is first person singular. Note that this is different
from saying that the word canto means ‘I sing’. If it did, (26a) would get
the bizarre interpretation ‘I I sing’. In other words, canto has some feature
that says that it must stand in a relation with a subject io (I) but that
it does not mean ‘I’ by itself. In technical terms, such features are called
uninterpretable features (Chomsky 1995). But, as the form of the verb
canto already indicates that the subject cannot be anything else than io
(I), the subject can be left out in Italian. In (26b) the subject is left
unpronounced as it is already clear what it is/should be.
Zeijlstra argues that just as the verb canto is already marked for a subject
that is left unpronounced, in Negative Concord languages n-words carry
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513
an uninterpretable negative feature. Italian nessuno then simply means ‘a
person’ but its uninterpretable negative feature indicates that this word
must stand in a sentence with a semantically negative element. On the
other hand, as it is already clear from the form of nessuno that the sentence
must contain such a semantically negative element, it may be left unpronounced, just like the subject in (26b). In Zeijlstra’s system all negative
elements (n-words and negative markers) are equipped with a negative
feature that is either interpretable ([iNEG]) and corresponds to a semantic
negation, or is uninterpretable ([uNEG]) and requires the presence of
an element that carries a feature [iNEG]. Now the Negative Concord
reading in (27) as follows:
(27)
Gianni non[iNEG] ha detto niente[uNEG] a nessuno[uNEG]
Gianni neg has said n-thing to n-body
‘Gianni did not call anybody’
Italian
Both niente and nessuno are equipped with a feature [uNEG] and require
the presence of an element that carries [iNEG]. Non carries [iNEG] and
can thus fulfil these requirements. But why cannot the negative marker
not be left unpronounced, as was the case with the subject in (26b)? This
is due to a property of Italian, also addressed in Section 2.1, that requires
every negative sentence to have some marker of negation standing to
the left of the finite verb. If non were to be removed in (27), this requirement would be violated. But if the n-word nessuno appears in front of
the finite verb, this condition is already satisfied. In those cases, the
negative marker is indeed superfluous and thus covert.
(28)
Nessuno telefona
N-body calls
‘Nobody calls’
Italian
In (28) the semantically negative element is thus phonologically empty.
This means that what is pronounced in (28) is not the complete
sentence. The complete sentence is as in (29), with being the
unpronounced negative element that carries [iNEG].
(29)
Nessuno[uNEG] telefona
Italian
Although this solution accounts for the absence of the negative marker
in non-strict Negative Concord languages, it remains to be explained
why in strict Negative Concord languages the negative marker must
always appear, even if it is preceded by an n-word. In order to solve this
problem, Zeijlstra argues that the negative marker in strict Negative
Concord languages also carries a feature [uNEG] and does not carry
[iNEG] as the Italian negative marker non does. It is thus semantically
non-negative, just like n-words. The Czech counterpart of (29) is then
like (30). In a language like Czech one could say that all n-words and
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finite verbs starting with ne are marked for negation, and that the
semantic negation therefore never needs to be pronounced.
(30)
Nikdo[uNEG] nevolá[uNEG]
‘Nobody calls’
Czech
The difference between strict and non-strict Negative Concord
languages then reduces to the featural make-up of the negative marker.
This assumption also explains why n-words may appear in fragmentary
answers. Take (24) again, repeated as (31).
(31)
Q: Ti ides? A: TIPOTA[uNEG] dhen[uNEG] ida Greek
What saw.2sg?
N-thing neg saw!
What did you see? Nothing!
Greek is a strict Negative Concord language, and dhen is thus
semantically non-negative. This means that dhen ida and ida are semantically identical. Therefore, dhen may be present in the unpronounced
part of the answer in (31). Just like the n-word TIPOTA, it requires the
presence of a semantic negation, which is left unpronounced.
In Zeijlstra’s approach, n-words are semantically non-negative but
different from NPIs, explaining why n-words behave differently from
NPIs. At the same time n-words are different from negative quantifiers,
thus explaining the differences that are attested between n-words and
real negative quantifiers. But Zeijlstra’s approach also faces problems.
Not only is the notion of phonologically empty material controversial,
this approach also has hard times accounting for the ambiguity of
sentences with more than one negative element that is attested in French
and forms a main motivation for the quantifier resumption approach
in De Swart and Sag’s (2002). Moreover, parallels between n-words and
NPIs are again in need of explanation, such as the examples in (18),
repeated as (32). In these cases, Zeijstra is forced to assume that words
like dudo (doubt) and sin (without) also carry a feature [iNEG] although
they are no real negations.
(32)
a. Dudo que vayan a encontrar nada
Doubt that go to find n-thing
‘I doubt that they will find anything’
b. Sin nadie
Without n-body
‘Without anybody’
Spanish
3.4 SOME FINAL REMARKS
This section has been too short to do justice to all accounts of Negative
Concord. First, the analyses that have been evaluated are of course much
© 2007 The Author
Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Negation in Natural Language
515
more elaborate than sketched above. Moreover, more analyses have
been proposed that unfortunately could not be discussed here, such as
Herburger (2001), who has attempted to account for Negative Concord
in terms of lexical ambiguity of n-words (in her analysis, Italian nessuno
means both ‘nobody’ and ‘anybody’). However, even on the basis of this
all too brief discussion, it is safe to conclude that all three approaches
can account for the Negative Concord data to quite a large extent, but
at the same time all face problems, which should not be neglected.
This is why Negative Concord is still nowadays a hot topic in the
study of negation, and hopefully the discussion above give the reader a
good impression of the problems that currently need to be tackled.
Despite the differences between these (and other) approaches to
Negative Concord, it is evident that the semantic behaviour of negative
elements is strikingly different from what would be expected at first
sight and is still the subject of intensive debate.
4. Conclusions
In this article, both the form and meaning of negative element have
been discussed, demonstrating the amazing behaviour that negation
exhibits in natural language. Although every natural language exhibits a
device to reverse the truth conditions of a sentence, natural languages
shows a surprisingly large range with respect to the syntactic and semantic
behaviour of negative elements.
The form of negation may vary along the lines of markers of nonpropositional operators, such as tense markers. The distribution of the
negative marker even suggests that negation should no longer be
thought of as an operator that applies to entire sentences. The data
from Negative Concord languages even open up the possibility that
negative elements, markers and quantifiers, may be semantically nonnegative.
As a result, the expression of negation in natural language exhibits a
large range of variation, which deserves perhaps even more attention
than it has received thus far. Further exploring this variation may shed
more light on the syntactic and semantics properties of negation in
natural language.
Short Biography
Hedde Zeijlstra is Assistant Professor of Dutch Linguistics at the University
of Amsterdam. He has worked intensively on negation and on functional
categories in general, in the domains of syntax and semantics. He is
the author of Sentential Negation and Negative Concord (LOT Publications,
2004) and has written various other papers such as On the Syntactic
Flexibility of Formal Features (Benjamins, 2007) and Doubling and the Ban
© 2007 The Author
Language and Linguistics Compass 1/5 (2007): 498–518, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00027.x
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
516 Hedde Zeijlstra
on True Negative Imperatives (Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics,
2006). Zeijlstra’s current research concerns the syntax, semantics and
typology of so-called doubling phenomena, that is, multiple morphosyntactic manifestations of single semantic properties. Zeijlstra received
his PhD from the University of Amsterdam, where he also worked for
the Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects (Amsterdam University Press, 2005),
and has occupied a postdoc position at the University of Tübingen.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Hedde Zeijlstra, Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam,
Spuistraat 134 (lsg NTK), NL-1012 VB Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected].
1
Data from Payne (1985), cited in Zanuttini (2001: 513).
Cf. Zanuttini (1997) for an even more fine-grained overview of different kinds of preverbal
negative markers based on a survey of Romance microvariation (mostly northern Italian
dialects).
3
Example from Ouhalla (1990), also cited in Zanuttini (2001).
4
According to the standard language a preverbal negative marker ne must be included in this
example. However, this additional negative marker is no longer used in most varieties of French
and is therefore not included in the example. It should be noted that De Swart and Sag,
following Corblin and Tovena (2001), take ne to be semantically vacuous (as opposed to all
other negative elements).
5
The framework that De Swart uses here is called Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky
1993), which is generally adopted to account for phonological variation among languages.
6
This mechanism, called Quantifier Raising, has been motivated to account for the interpretation of sentences such as Every boy loves a girl (cf. May 1985). This sentence has two
readings: ‘for every boy there is girl such that he loves her’ and ‘there is a girl such that every
boy loves her’. The latter reading is said to come from a movement of a girl to a position in
front of every boy after pronouncing.
7
In Gre