Constituent negation requires entailment of an alternative
Danfeng Wu
January 2025
 

This paper observes that negated numerals require 'but' (e.g. Not three *(but four) students arrived), whereas 'not many' doesn’t (e.g. Not many students arrived). Drawing on the additional observation that negated non-quantifier DPs require 'but' (e.g. Max eats not spinach *(but chard)), I propose that constituent negation presupposes that the utterance containing the negation must entail a true alternative utterance, if there exists such a true alternative. This is generally satisfied by an overt but-phrase, except with the not-many-sentence because it entails an alternative sentence on its own–'Some students arrived'. I also take the contrast between 'not many' and negated numerals as evidence that they have different types of assertion, in support of Kennedy (2013, 2015): 'many' asserts at least n, while numerals assert at least n and at most n at the same time. Therefore, in contrast to 'not many', which entails 'some', 'not three' does not entail 'not one' or 'not two', and thus requires the but-phrase to introduce the true alternative.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008781
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: submitted
keywords: constituent negation, numerals, quantifiers, correction, semantics-pragmatics, semantics
Downloaded:83 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]