The Syntax of Negation

by Liliane Haegeman

• ISBN13: 9780521023481
• ISBN10: 0521023483
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this book Liliane Haegeman presents an account of sentential negation within a Government and Binding framework. Building on the work of Klima and Lasnik, Haegeman demonstrates the parallelism between negative sentences and interrogative sentences, and gives a unified analysis in terms of a well-formedness condition on syntactic representations: the AFFECT criterion, instantiated as the WH-criterion in interrogative sentences and as the NEG-criterion in negative sentences. It is shown that in the same way that in many languages the WH-criterion gives rise to WH-movement, the NEG-criterion may also give rise to NEG-movement. This is particularly clear in the Germanic languages. In the analysis of sentential negation in Romance languages the author makes extensive use of the notion of representational chain, showing that in these languages too the NEG-criterion applies at the level of S-structure. In addition to providing a syntactic analysis of sentential negation the book also raises a number of theoretical issues such as that of the distinction between A-positions and A'-positions and the level of application of well-formedness conditions. This book will be of interest to all those working on theoretical syntax, particularly of the Germanic and Romance languages.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(69)
The theoretical framework for the discussion	1	(51)
Some notes on the syntax of SOV languages	52	(18)
The WH-criterion and the NEG-criterion	70	(42)
Introduction: negation and interrogation in generative grammar	70	(23)
The Affect-criterion	93	(18)
Scope of the present study	111	(1)
NEG-movement and the NEG-criterion	112	(51)
Introduction	112	(4)
The expression of negation in WF	116	(18)
The NEG-criterion	134	(6)
Asymmetries between the NEG-criterion and the WH-criterion	140	(5)
Infinitival clauses and NegP in WF	145	(10)
The realization of en	155	(4)
Conclusion	159	(4)
The application of the NEG-criterion	163	(71)
Negation in West Germanic languages	163	(31)
Negation in Hungarian	194	(1)
Negation in Romance languages	195	(36)
Conclusion: parametric variation and operator chains	231	(3)
A-positions and A'-positions and the syntax of negation	234	(36)
Aim and scope	234	(1)
The NEG-criterion and non-negative constituents	234	(8)
Survey of the data: scrambling and negation	242	(4)
An analysis of object shift	246	(2)
The NEG-chain and extended projections of NEG	248	(4)
A-positions and A'-positions: problems of analysis	252	(12)
The syntax of Negation and derived A'-positions	264	(4)
Conclusion	268	(2)
The syntax of negative operators	270	(20)
Aim and scope	270	(1)
Negative operators and negated constituents	270	(14)
Summary and problems for future research	284	(6)
Notes	290	(30)
References	320	(11)
Index	331