Emphatic multiple negative expressions in Dutch

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20344313
AutoresHedde Zeijlstra (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen27
Número1
Fecha de publicación2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Linguistic Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0167-6318 • E-ISSN: 1613-3676
EditorialWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tlir.2010.003
OpenAlexW1964405188
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas51
Referencias citadas18

Double Negation languages like Dutch and German still exhibit constructions, such as Dutch 'niemand niet' ‘nobody not’ or 'nooit geen' ‘nothing no’, that seem to have a Negative Concord reading. Since these constructions normally have an emphatic reading, they are called Emphatic Multiple Negative Expressions (EMNEs). In this article I discuss the difference between so-called EMNEs and plain Negative Concord constructions. I demonstrate that EMNEs are fundamentally different from Negative Concord constructions, and that for this reason EMNEs should not be taken to be instances of Negative Concord in Double Negation languages. Instead, I argue that EMNEs are best analyzed as lexical items that consist of two semantic objects, of which only one is semantically negative. By applying overt movement, followed by partial reconstruction at the level of Logical Form both semantic objects can take scope from a different position in the tree. I argue that the single negation an EMNE consists of is the result of the disappearance of Negative Concord in Dutch: after the loss of the preverbal negative marker 'en/ne', strings containing two n-words or an n-word and a negative marker 'niet' could no longer act as a cue for NC and therefore had to be stored in the lexicon. The death of Dutch NC, so to speak, led to the birth of EMNEs

Epistemology · German · Lexicon · Linguistics · Negation · nobody · Nothing · Computer Science · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Topic Modeling