Who invokes silent negation? The view from a hybrid negative concord language
Anna Szabolcsi
November 2024
 

In seminal work, Zeijlstra has proposed that the sentential negative marker in strict negative concord languages is a meaningless particle (uNeg) that invokes a silent negative operator (iNeg) at the periphery. Negative concord items (NCI) are also supposed to have uNeg. This paper puts forth new arguments to the effect that the Hungarian negative marker NEM has uNeg, but NCIs do not. Their relation to negation is indirect; they are existentials that need to be exhaustified, which in turn requires an intervening negation to maintain logical coherence (Chierchia 2013). This eliminates the appearance of redundancy in the negative marker co-occurring with NCIs. The analysis combines features of Zeijlstra's proposal for strict NC and Chierchia's proposal for non-strict NC. Hungarian is a true NC hybrid that has an overt counterpart (SEM) of Chierchia's NEG. Hybridity proves that these features can coexist.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008502
(please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords: negative concord, hungarian, syntax, semantics
previous versions: v1 [October 2024]
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