Syntacticizyng Negation

Cecilia PolettoGöttingen Summer School

September 2015

Ovierview of the course

• I: setting the problem, why is Negation different from other FPs?

• II: presenting a solution based on a cartographic perspective.

• III providing empirical evidence on the basis of exceptions to the Jespersen cycle

• IV providing empirical evidence on the basis of the diachronic development of various types of negative markers

Setting the problem(s)

• Problems in determining how semantic negation has to be encoded in the syntax can derive from different sources.

• In this course we examine sentential negation and will come to constituent negation only at the end of the course.

Do syntax and semantics match one to one?

• If negation in natural language is similar to the one found in formal logic, i.e. each sentence should be negated by means of an operator occurring in front of the clause

• If ¬ P is reflected in the syntax, the null hypothesis is that negation is universally located at the beginning of the clause before the whole proposition.

No Neg first

• This has been formalized in the principle “negation first” (Jespersen 1917, Dahl 1979 Corblin and Tovena 2001)

• This is not true of all languages. • Actually, in the Romance domain there is no

language that displays standard negation as the first element of a clause in front of Topic and Focus, Subject etc.

• Standard negative markers are those that negate a clause without further sentence implicatures

• Non standard negative markers are those that trigger various sorts of sentence implicatures. They are generally found at various stages of the Jespersen cycle and seem to occur as the “new” negator (see for instance Italian mica , Cinque 1976) but also as the “old negator” (see West Flemish en Breithbart and Haegeman (2008).

• Negative markers can be located “preverbally” in the sense that they occur immediately in front of the verb but after the subject, i.e. they can be said to occur in the TP domain.

• They can also be located in the CP, but this is generally to be found in embedded clauses, i.e. where the clause has a negative complementizer (see for instance the Latin negative complementizer ne).

• The only type of negative marker which comes close to what we would expect is the one derived by a cleft clause, which is really at the beginning of the clause, since in origin it was the main clause.

• Within Romance dialects like Sicilian have this type of negative marker neca (not.is.that), but this is not the standard negative marker.

• In any case, the observation remains that there are few languages that start out with the negative marker when they intend to negate a main clause, while we would expect this structure to be universal.

• The syntax of negative markers is thus much more complex than expected, as I will show now.

• The biggest syntactic problem we have in dealing with negation is the following: let us admit that negation is expressed by a NegP (Pollock (1989), Zanuttini (1991), (1997)) which is located in the clausal spine or even as an adverb adjoined to the verb.

• We have at our disposal SpecNegP and Neg° to place the negative marker

• According to Pollock, both the head and the specifier of NegP are occupied in French, pas is occupies SpecNeg, ne is in the Neg° which clitizes onto the inflected verb to yield the correct order: ne Vinfl pas Vpast participle.

• Still, the position of this NegP seems to be variable across languages. Even admitting with Pollock that the preverbal position of ne/non is due to its clitic status, we observe much more variability than expected: for instance some Portuguese varieties and Afrikaans have sentence final negation (see Biberauer 2007, Biberauer and Zeijlstra). Some sign languages have also been reported to have sentence final negation.

• Hy verstaan nie Afrikaans nie• he understand NEG Afrikaans NEG = “He

doesn’t understand Afrikaans”• (2) Ons wil nooit ophou nie• us want n-ever stop NEG = “We never want to

stop”

• Typological work, work on creole languages and the whole cartographic project have shown that the sequence of functional elements/phrases is universal.

• While all other FPs which correspond to semantic notions have a universal position in the clause, i.e. they are in a fixed sequence with other FPs, negation is the only known exception.

• This is the biggest result of the cartographic project, i.e. to have shown that however the ordering of adverbials has to be modeled (through independent specifiers of distinct functional projections or through multiple specifiers whose fixed word order is derived by semantic requirements), this order is universal.

• Cinque (1999) provides a detailed analysis of several modal, tense and aspectual values and shows that they are universally mapped in sentence structure.

• There exist two types of languages: • A) those where the verb moves and carries the

TAM marker with itself• B) those where independently of verb

movement the order of TAM is the basic one.

• If the verb does not raise, you always observe the basic word order of TAM

• If the verb raises, you have two possibilities: • a) you find the same order as above, or • b) you find the opposite order Tense-Mod,

since the verb has taken the Tense marker in its movement up the clausal spine.

Epistemic Mod > Tense• Cinque (1999:72): Evidence for this order is

found in Korean; in Guyanese Creole, in the Sino-Tibetan language Garo; and in Oksapmin (New Guinea)

a. Jaan shuda bin kyaan get fu gu. (Gibson 1986, 585)J. MODepislemPASTMODroot MODroot COMP go'J. should not have been able to be allowed to go.'

b. Anti-ci re'an-aha-kon. (Bybee 1985, 180)market-to go-PAST-PROBABLE'He probably went to the market.'

c. Go haanip di-kin-o poripti. (Lawrence 1972, 33)you person eat.PAST-PROBABLE-quotation marker say then "You probably attacked the person," we say, then.'

Habitual Aspect > Perfect

Eda-n ohi du. ( Basque Ortiz de Urbina 1989, 141)drink-PERF HAB Aux.agr'He usually drinks.'O ku p mah hooc yem kmra root taa kaan. (Austronesian

Kammu Svantesson 1994, 273)Isg HAB eat food PERF when wife come to home'I have usually eaten when [my] wife comes home.'O waa kd re ren.58 (Niger Congo Sekiri Omamor 1982, 110)he FUT HAB go PERF'He will have started going habitually.'

• If all functional elements that can either be expressed as affixes or as adverbs have a universal order, we would expect negation to do the same modulo the position of the verb and the status of the negative marker as affix or as adverb.

However, this is not the case.

• The multiple positions of sentential negative markers in Italian dialects constitutes a problem for the cartographic “one head=one feature” approach, where each projection has different semantic import and they are universally ranked.

• Actually, Cinque himself notices that Negation is the only functional category which does not have a universal position in the clausal spine together with Agreement.

Cinque 1999

• Many languages have negation higher than T(Past) ; others between T(Past) and T(Future); others below T(Past) and T(Future); and other possibilities exist.

a. Pooy-ITTUND-aayir-unn-illa. (Malayalam; see Appendix 2)go-ANT-be.PAST-unn-NEG'(He) had not gone.'

b. A-ka-a-dzie-ak-a . . . ngamba wesu. (Babele; Leitch 1994, 197)3sg-NEG-PAST-eat-ASP-Final Vowel elephant all'He didn't eat the whole elephant.'

c. xar) ir-san-gui. (Mongolian; Svantesson 1991, 192)king come-PAST-NEG'The king did not come."

a. Po na' ke kwe mbe wo. (Bangwa; Nguendjio 1992, 95)Ipl PAST NEG eat-ANT meat NEG'We had not eaten meat.'

b. Po ko i nkwe mbe wo.Ipl NEG PUT eat-IMPERF meat NEG'We will not eat meat.'

a. Ai bin no de du mai wok dat taim. (Nigerian Pidgin; Ofuani 1982, 236)I PAST NEG PROG do my work at that time

b. Ai no go foget. (Nigerian Pidgin; Ofuani 1981, 315)I NEG PUT forget

a. Cahs-ma-yacak-ti. (Turkish; van Schaaik 1994, 39)work-NEG-FUT-PAST'(S)he wouldn't work.'

b. (Pe ne-sitom re save) yoko naga ve vimi re poli. (Lewo; Early 1994, 74)(Negl Isg-think Neg2 that) PUT he Negl come Neg2 Neg3'(I didn't think that) he will not come.'

• An even bigger problem for the expected universal position of negation is the analysis made by Zanuttini (1997) of Northern Italian dialects.

• One would expect that in such a cohesive domain the position of negation would never change. However, Zanuttini clearly shows that there exist four different positions for NegP.

• Adopting Cinque’s view of adverbs, Zanuttini shows that sentential negative markers can occur in four different positions in the clause:

A) The first is a negative preverbal head higher than TP (see Italian, Spanish non)

B) The second between the the inflected verb and the past participle (see French pas, Italian mica)

• The third lower than the adverb already but higher than manner adverbs (similar to Germanic negation not, nicht)

• The fourth after the whole series of adverbs and very often in a sentence final position (similar to sentence final nao in some Portuguese varieties and Afrikaans)

NegP1 : No sai (Cencenighe Agordino (BL)) (I) Not know

NegP2: A l’a pa già ciama (Torino) He cl.has not already called

NegP3 A l’avia già nen volu ‘ntlura (Torino) He it had already not wanted then

NegP4: No kredo che podia parla con elo no (Cembra) Not think that could talk to him not

Negative doubling

• Several negative markers can cooccur, which shows that they cannot be in the same position:

• No la go miga magnada NO! (Venice)Not it have not eaten not‘I did not eat it’

• These cases often require specific pragmatic context and are related to discourse implicatures, i.e. they are not cases of standard negation, but the negative markers still occur together.

• The situation we have seen in Italian varieties is similar to the one found in typological work:

• Devos et alii (2014): Bantu (mvûl) kà-nák-ááŋ pénd(1.rain) neg1.1sc-rain-tam neg2‘it does not rain’(mvûl) kà-nák-ááŋ-áp (kwénd)(1.rain) neg1.1sc-rain-tam-neg2 (neg3)‘it does not rain’

Negative strategies in Kanincin

• neg1+neg2 ki-... pend• neg1+neg2(+neg3) ki-...-p(a) (kwend/kwaam)• p(a) is originally a minimizer • Pend is a compound for of p(a) plus end, a

possessive pronoun used for emphasis• Kwend is a possessive pronouns typically used

as a focus marker

Three negative markers

ka-zeby-áandi khúumbu ya ŋgúdy-áani kóneg1.1sc-know-neg3 9.name 9.conn 1.mother-

poss.1sg neg2• ‘he does not know the name of my mother’• (Suundi H16b, Baka 1998:fieldnotes)• three negative markers can also be used for

standard negation

Is there a NegP?

• As for AgreementP, the fact that Agreement can occur in different positions was one of the motivation that have lead the generative approaches to reject the idea that there exists an AgrP projection.

• Should we conclude the same for NegP?

The syntax-semantic interface

The existence of the many positions also poses a problem for an account which considers the semantic operation of negating a clause performed in natural languages as the same of formal logic.

The multiple forms and positions that negation can take in natural language suggest that this might not be the case.

The syntactic procedures negating a clause are not as simple as the structural counterpart of something like ¬ P.

Another side of the problem

• Another less explored side of the problem is the one concerning the etymological origin of negative markers.

• Looking at the grammaticalization process of functional elements, we see that they tend to stem from a closed set of lexical sources.

• For instance articles generally derive from demonstratives, complementizers either from wh or demonstrative pronouns or a certain class of verbs, agreement markers from personal subject pronouns etc.

• Looking at the etymological sources of negative markers, we see a wealth of different origins, which is astonishing but goes hand in hand with the number of different positions noted until now.

• A negative marker can derive from an n-word, like German nicht, or Piedmontese nen, Franco-provencal res. I will refer to this type of negation as Q-negation

• Negative markers can derive from a negative auxiliary (often corresponding to ‘be’) which has incorporated a negative marker. This is the case of some Celtic languages and English ‘aint’, I will call this type Aux-negation

• Negative markers can correspond to a form of the verb ‘lack’ like Southern Italian ‘manco’ (see van der Auwera (2010) for a typological view of this case).

• A further case is provided by the grammaticalization of what is originally the main clause of a negative cleft, like Sicilian neca.

• n-e-ca = neg-is-that

• Negation can be derived by a sort of minimizer, like French pas, Italian mica Rhaetoromance bucca, Florentino punto.

• Negation can be derived from the pro-sentence negative marker as Milanese or Trentino no.

• A possible source of negation are also so called vulgar minimizers, Milanese minga is possibly a contamination of ‘miga’ and ‘menga’, originally a swear-word.

• Why are there so many sources of negative markers? In Poletto (2012) I have tried to argue for a usage of etymology when establishing featural complexity of a given functional element.

• I have proposed that the number of etymological sources found for a given F° is directly related to the number of features the element contains, i.e. the more etymological sources are found, the more features an element will have.

• Etymological observations also point to the same basic problem:

• If negation is a single semantic operation as generally assumed, and other semantic notions (like Tense, Modality, Aspect), which look at least as complex as negation are universally realized in one position and through an etymologically rather uniform set of elements, why is negation so different?

• A way to solve the syntactic problem: one can postulate that the negative marker is NOT the semantic operator. The semantic operator is always in its clause initial position and the negative marker is always some sort of negative polarity item, which must be licensed by the null operator.

• Such a line of thought has been taken by several authors, among whom Zeijlstra (2007), Biberauer and Roberts (2011).

• The real negative operator would be lexically empty and reconstructed/licensed by the presence of the polarity items it licenses.

• Even work that points out a possible weakness of Zeijlstra’s account, like Haegeman and Lohndal (2010) maintains the same basic idea that the negative operator can be null, and only change the mechanism of Agree from multiple agree to stepwise agree which can only occur between two elements.

If we take this hypothesis in its strongest form, i.e. that negative markers and n-words are never intrinsecally negative, then questions like the following do not make sense:

Is French ne still a negative element?Is Italian mica already negative? Are n-words in Italian intrinsecally negative?

• Similarly, there is no distinction between languages whose negative marker is a real negation and those whose negative marker is a negative polarity item, since no negative element represents the logical operator, but only one (or more) semantic operations which license its presence.

• Hence, there is no lexical counterpart of the logic negative operator. That the way natural languages negate a clause only partially correspond to the way this is done in formal logic, i.e. the negative operator sitting at the beginning of the clause is never realized but requires a number of syntactic and semantic steps in order to be licensed in the structure of the clause.

• I will try to provide empirical evidence that natural languages adopt a compositional mechanism in order to achieve sentential negation, which in the end might not rid us of the null operator, but at least we will have a more precise idea of the set of semantic/syntactic operations to be performed in order for the speaker/hearer to retrieve sentential negation.

• Although the elements we call negative are not the whole negative operator, they are not simply polarity items, but spell out one or more formatives corresponding to the operations performed to obtain negation.

• This might lead us to the conclusion that the operator of formal logic is different from negation in natural languages, which is performed by a set of operations independently available in other contexts (like Focus).

• In the next lesson, I will provide empirical evidence for this view from the way Northern and Southern Italian dialects encode “negative markers” and by means of looking at their syntactic properties in detail.