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The asymmetric behavior of English negative quantifiers in negative sentences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2020

SUSAGNA TUBAU Open the ORCID record for SUSAGNA TUBAU [Opens in a new window]
SUSAGNA TUBAU*
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
*
Author’s address: Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Carrer de la Fortuna, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres, 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, SpainSusagna.Tubau@uab.cat
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Abstract

In this paper, the unexpected behavior of object negative quantifiers in some diagnostic tests of sentential negation is accounted for within a Minimalist framework assuming that: (i) negative quantifiers decompose into negation and an existential quantifier; (ii) negative quantifiers are multidominant phrase markers, as Parallel Merge allows the verb to c-select their existential part but not their negative part, thus giving negation remerge flexibility; (iii) tag questions involve or-coordination of TPs, and neither/so clauses involve and-coordination of TPs; (iv) two positions for sentential negation are available in English, one below TP (PolP2), and one above TP (PolP1). Activation of either PolP1 or PolP2 in the absence of other scope-taking operators corresponds to two distinct grammars. If PolP1 is active, the negative part of an object negative quantifier remerges in its Specifier valuing the [upol: ] feature of Pol1 as negative ([upol:neg]) while skipping the TP-domain. As no negative formal feature is present in the TP, a negative question tag is required, as well as so-coordination, too-licensing and Yes, I guess so ‘expression of agreement’. Conversely, if PolP2 is active, the negative part of the object negative quantifier remerges in the TP-domain (in Spec, PolP2), thus requiring a positive question tag, neither-coordination, either-licensing, and No, I guess not.

Keywords

negative quantifiersdecompositionalitymultidominancesentential negationgrammatical variationEnglish
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 775 - 806
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This research has been supported by two grants awarded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2017-82547-P, FFI2016-81750-REDT), and by a grant awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR634). I thank three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for helping me significantly improve the paper. All errors remain my own. The following abbreviations have been used throughout the paper: C and CP = Complementizer and Complementizer Phrase, D and DP = Determiner and Determiner Phrase, N = Noun, Neg and NegP = Negation and Negation Phrase, PF = Phonetic Form, Pol and PolP = Polarity and Polarity Phrase, Spec = Specifier of, T and TP = Tense and Tense Phrase, v and vP = little v and little v Phrase, V and VP = Verb and Verb Phrase.

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