Chris Collins and Paul M. Postal
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027311
- eISBN:
- 9780262323840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027311.003.0014
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter examines Horn clauses in relation to Negative Inversion. It first considers the properties of the Negative Inversion focus and the Negative Inversion Condition (first and second ...
More
This chapter examines Horn clauses in relation to Negative Inversion. It first considers the properties of the Negative Inversion focus and the Negative Inversion Condition (first and second versions), along with various difficulties for the latter condition. In the sentences A human can know a finite number of primes and A finite number of primes can a human know, a finite number is decreasing in the first case, but the second is still ungrammatical. The chapter also considers a range of expressions with decreasing semantic values for which speakers differ with respect to whether Negative Inversion can be triggered, including cases of decreasing expressions that do not systematically form legitimate Negative Inversion foci but involve the numeral zero, which forms decreasing (in fact, antiadditive) determiner phrases. Finally, it discusses the Negative Inversion Condition (third and fourth versions), the relevance of scope to Negative Inversion, and the implications of quasi-Horn clauses for the Horn clause argument concerning the syntactic nature of Classical NEG Raising (NR).Less
This chapter examines Horn clauses in relation to Negative Inversion. It first considers the properties of the Negative Inversion focus and the Negative Inversion Condition (first and second versions), along with various difficulties for the latter condition. In the sentences A human can know a finite number of primes and A finite number of primes can a human know, a finite number is decreasing in the first case, but the second is still ungrammatical. The chapter also considers a range of expressions with decreasing semantic values for which speakers differ with respect to whether Negative Inversion can be triggered, including cases of decreasing expressions that do not systematically form legitimate Negative Inversion foci but involve the numeral zero, which forms decreasing (in fact, antiadditive) determiner phrases. Finally, it discusses the Negative Inversion Condition (third and fourth versions), the relevance of scope to Negative Inversion, and the implications of quasi-Horn clauses for the Horn clause argument concerning the syntactic nature of Classical NEG Raising (NR).
Chris Collins and Paul M. Postal
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027311
- eISBN:
- 9780262323840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027311.003.0013
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter focuses on certain contexts, dubbed Horn clauses, that demand the syntactic presence of a negative constituent. It first considers fronted negative polarity items (NPIs) by giving ...
More
This chapter focuses on certain contexts, dubbed Horn clauses, that demand the syntactic presence of a negative constituent. It first considers fronted negative polarity items (NPIs) by giving examples that represent standard cases of the Negative Inversion construction. The most obvious characteristic of the construction is that the extracted non-wh-constituent in the clause-initial position, termed Negative Inversion focus, co-occurs with subject-auxiliary inversion, which is obligatory. Sentences containing Horn clauses, such as Carl did (not) claim that penguins were mammals and neither did I and Carl claimed that penguins were not mammals (and neither did I), involve syntactic raising of a negation (NEG) from the embedded clause. The chapter proposes for Horn clause cases an analysis that treats examples as resulting from the raising via Classical NR of the NEG. It also shows that Classical NEG Raising (NR) out of Horn clauses is subject to the same set of island constraints holding for non-Horn clause island structures.Less
This chapter focuses on certain contexts, dubbed Horn clauses, that demand the syntactic presence of a negative constituent. It first considers fronted negative polarity items (NPIs) by giving examples that represent standard cases of the Negative Inversion construction. The most obvious characteristic of the construction is that the extracted non-wh-constituent in the clause-initial position, termed Negative Inversion focus, co-occurs with subject-auxiliary inversion, which is obligatory. Sentences containing Horn clauses, such as Carl did (not) claim that penguins were mammals and neither did I and Carl claimed that penguins were not mammals (and neither did I), involve syntactic raising of a negation (NEG) from the embedded clause. The chapter proposes for Horn clause cases an analysis that treats examples as resulting from the raising via Classical NR of the NEG. It also shows that Classical NEG Raising (NR) out of Horn clauses is subject to the same set of island constraints holding for non-Horn clause island structures.
