The Interaction of Modality and Negation

by Haan,Ferdinand De

• ISBN13: 9780815328926
• ISBN10: 0815328923
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Based on a wide variety of languages, this study examines the ways in which modal notions, such as permission and obligation, interact with negation. In particular, the study focuses on how ambiguities in scope are resolved. It is shown that languages overwhelmingly make use of two different strategies. The first strategy (the Modal Suppletion Strategy) is to use different modal verbs for the different scope interpretations. This strategy is found in languages such as English, Finnish, and Tamil. The second strategy (the Negation Placement Strategy), which is found in French, Russian, and Modern Greek (among others) is to use two different places for the negation to surface. It turns out that these two strategies have two different foundations: the first strategy is a semantic one, while the second strategy is syntactic in nature. That there is a difference can be shown by appealing to syntactic tests. The Modal Suppletion Strategy is not sensitive to these tests, while the Negation Placement Strategy is. It can also be shown that the two different strategies are correlated with word order: the Negation Placement Strategy is found exclusively in languages with a basic SVO order and with a negative morpheme that precedes the verb. This is checked against a database of 75 languages. Finally, these results are compared to other scope resolutions in languages.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix	(2)
List of abbreviations	xi
Chapter 1: Introduction	3	(18)
1.1 Modality	4	(5)
1.2 Negation	9	(2)
1.3 Interaction of Modality and Negation	11	(2)
1.4 Notational Conventions	13	(3)
1.5 Outline of the Study	16	(5)
Chapter 2: Theories of Modality and Negation	21	(34)
2.1 Negation, Modality, and Aristotle	21	(7)
2.2 Negation and the Klima Tests	28	(13)
2.3 Theories of Modality	41	(14)
Chapter 3: Basic Strategies for Ambiguity Resolution	55	(90)
3.1 Introduction	55	(3)
3.2 The Modal Suppletion Strategy	58	(28)
3.3 The Negation Placement Strategy	86	(23)
3.4 Is there a Third Type?	109	(3)
3.5 Languages with Mixed Strategies	112	(9)
3.6 Towards an Explanation of the Occurrence of MSS and NPS Languages	121	(5)
3.7 The Notion SHOULD	126	(3)
3.8 Other ways in which Modality and Negation interact	129	(6)
3.9 Double Negatives and Modality	135	(10)
Chapter 4: Negation and Scope in Other Areas	145	(44)
4.1 Introduction	145	(1)
4.2 Evidentials	146	(25)
4.3 Quantifiers and Negation	171	(18)
Chapter 5: Word Order Correlations	189	(36)
5.1 Introduction	189	(1)
5.2 Previous Word Order Studies on Modality and Negation	190	(12)
5.3 The GRAMCATS Data	202	(18)
5.4 Conclusions	220	(5)
Chapter 6: Conclusions: On the Representation of Scope in Natural Language	225	(12)
Appendix	237	(4)
Bibliography	241	(10)
Index	251