Negation and imperatives

While some languages have negative imperatives, others do not, and express prohibition through suppletive subjunctives or infinitives. The present paper argues that a language with negative imperatives projects a mood/modality phrase, ModP, which is c-commanded by Neg. In a language with no negative...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Miseska Tomic, Olga
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:1999
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:2210
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/2210
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Word order
Negated imperatives
Wackernagel clitics
South-Slavic
Ordre de mots
Imperatius negats
Clítics Wackernagel
Eslau meridional
Descripción
Sumario:While some languages have negative imperatives, others do not, and express prohibition through suppletive subjunctives or infinitives. The present paper argues that a language with negative imperatives projects a mood/modality phrase, ModP, which is c-commanded by Neg. In a language with no negative imperatives, however, ModP and NegP are fused. Within the South European languages there is a distinction with respect to the distinct projection of ModP: while the majority of the Romance languages do not project it, all the South Slavic languages do. Within South Slavic there is a parametric difference with respect to the strength of Neg, however. This difference is reflected in two distinct positionings of the clitics relative to the imperative verb: in the South Slavic languages with strong Neg the clitics are wedged between the negation operator and the imperative verb, while in the South Slavic languages with weak Neg they occur to the left of the verb.