On the status of NCIs

This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers' acceptability and interpretation of sequences with...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Espinal, M. Teresa|||0000-0002-8079-7253, Puig Mayenco, Eloi|||0000-0002-5622-8018, Etxeberria, Urtzi|||0000-0001-6560-1614, Tubau, Susagna|||0000-0002-3677-6607
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:283413
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/283413
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1017/S0022226723000221
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Greek
Interpretation
Negative Concord Items
Romanian
Russian
Strict Negative Concord languages
(un)acceptability
Descripción
Sumario:This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers' acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions when dhen/nu/ne were not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presence in a clausal domain is enough to assign a single negation reading to the whole sequence, thus arguing in support of the hypothesis that in NC structures the minimal semantic requirement to convey single negation is that one or more NCIs encoding a negative feature appear within a sentential domain. We argue that in these structures dhen/nu/ne are the instantiations of a negative feature [neg] disembodied from an indefinite negative NCI in order to obey a syntax-phonology interface constraint.