Modals, negation and movement

A reassessment

Datos Bibliográficos

ID22130576
AutoresPaloma Jeretič (0000-0003-4680-8577, Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics), Gary Thoms (0000-0001-5790-675X, New York University)
Año2023
Volumen8
Número1
Fecha de publicación2023-03-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGlossa a journal of general linguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2397-1835 • E-ISSN: 2397-1835
EditorialOpen Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.16995/glossa.8520
OpenAlexW4319159636
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas63

This article addresses the question of how root necessity modals are able to take scope over negative operators. Previous work has argued that wide scope readings are derived by syntactic movement of the modal over negation. We argue against this view. Reviewing facts from a number of different languages, we show that the availability of wide scope readings is not conditioned by the clause structure in which the modal is embedded, and we show that deriving the wide scope readings in the full range of configurations where they are found requires a number of complications for the movement rules involved. We discuss other issues for deriving the correct interpretations for modals in various negative constructions, and we outline an recent in-situ account of the modal facts (Jeretič 2021a) which avoids the complications that beset the syntactic account

Linguistics · Modal · Modal verb · Natural language processing · Negation · Programming language · Syntactic structure · Syntax · Verb · Computer Science · Engineering · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence