Negation Raising

Logical Form and Linguistic Variation
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4438-2506-1
Verlag: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 160 Seiten

With this book, the author explores the syntax of negative sentences, tracing the fine-grained contours of linguistic variation and offering a detailed cartographic representation of the distribution of negative markers.

The goal is to show the existing tension in language between the variable surface realization of negation and its stable logical representation. In order to solve this tension and to unify the interpretation of negative sentences, a mapping operation, LF-Negation Raising, is proposed.

Verbal arguments related to negation such as n-words, negative quantifiers and negative polarity items are also considered, in order to derive negative concord phenomena from the inner semantics of nominal constituents.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Moscati, Vincenzo

Über Autor(innen)

Moscati, Vincenzo
Vincenzo Moscati is an Assistant Professor and Senior Postdoctoral Researcher in Syntactic Theory and Language Acquisition at the University of Siena, Italy.

He has been working on the syntax of negation, focusing on the interpretive properties and the syntactic distribution of negative complementizers, the logic scope of sentential negative markers and the dependency between negative operators and polarity sensitive arguments, such as polarity items and n-words in Romance.

Additionally, he is also interested in the acquisition of the correct interpretation of negative sentences by 3–5 year old children. He has been conducting experimental research on preschoolers in different language groups including Italian, German and English in order to assess the role of the linguistic input in shaping the logic representation.