Classical NEG Raising: An Essay on the Syntax of Negation
Chris Collins and Paul M. Postal
Abstract
This book considers examples such as the one below on the interpretation where Nancy thinks that this course is not interesting: Nancy doesn't think this course is interesting. It argues that such examples instantiate a kind of syntactic raising known as Classical NEG Raising (NR). This involves the raising of a NEG (negation) from the embedded clause to the matrix clause. The book develops three main arguments to support its claim. First, it shows that Classical NR obeys island constraints. Second, it documents that a syntactic raising analysis predicts both the grammaticality and particular ... More
This book considers examples such as the one below on the interpretation where Nancy thinks that this course is not interesting: Nancy doesn't think this course is interesting. It argues that such examples instantiate a kind of syntactic raising known as Classical NEG Raising (NR). This involves the raising of a NEG (negation) from the embedded clause to the matrix clause. The book develops three main arguments to support its claim. First, it shows that Classical NR obeys island constraints. Second, it documents that a syntactic raising analysis predicts both the grammaticality and particular properties of what it terms Horn clauses (named for Laurence Horn, who discovered them). Finally, it argues that the properties of certain parenthetical structures strongly support the syntactic character of Classical NR. The book also offers a detailed analysis of the main argument in the literature against a syntactic raising analysis (which it calls the Composed Quantifier Argument). It shows that the facts appealed to in this argument not only fail to conflict with their approach but actually support a syntactic view. The book also touches on a variety of related topics, including the syntax of negative polarity items, the status of sequential negation, and the scope of negative quantifiers.
Keywords:
syntactic raising,
Classical NEG Raising,
negation,
Horn clauses,
parenthetical structures,
Composed Quantifier Argument,
syntax,
negative quantifiers,
negative polarity items
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262027311 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: September 2015 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262027311.001.0001 |
