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4 - Context-Sensitive Aspects of Constituent Negation

from Part I - The Computational Component

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2018

By
Ricardo Etxepare  and
Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria
Edited by
Ángel J. Gallego  and
Roger Martin
Ángel J. Gallego
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Roger Martin
Affiliation:
Yokohama National University, Japan
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Summary

In this paper we analize a variety of cases involving sequences formed by negation and a quantifier phrase (Neg+QP) which have been descriptively characterized as constituent negation (cn) in Spanish. We show that Neg+QP sequences do not uniformly map into syntactic terms (in the sense of Chomsky 1995), and may display very different syntactic and semantic properties. In particular, while some of them reflect instances in which the negative particle and the relevant QP are merged together, other sequences involve an instance of negation which is external to the QP, and is located in a position higher than ordinary sentential negation. The adjacency between negation and the quantifier in this case follows from an independent process of QP-fronting into the left periphery of the sentence. The two configurations seem to be sensitive to the type of quantifier involved: constituent negation understood as a syntactic term is a natural structural option for degree quantifiers, but an impossible one for those quantifiers which do not license a scale. For those cases, the sequence Negation+QP must correspond to a different structural option. We argue that those correspond to instances of association with focus
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Chapter
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Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences , pp. 77 - 98
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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