| dc.description.abstracteng | Some languages make use of special forms for coordination markers in negative environments, known as negative coordination (‘Nina will neither sing nor dance’). This dissertation explores negative coordination in English and in BCMS (Bosnian / Croatian / Montenegrin / Serbian). The primary goal is to account for the logically strong interpretation (‘it is not the case that Nina will sing and it is not the case that Nina will dance’) of sentences with neither...nor, ni...ni, and niti...niti. The secondary goal is to relate these constructions, in which two coordination markers are present, to the ones where only a single neither/nor, ni or niti appears as an additive particle.
Negative coordination constructions concern two major topics in formal semantics and syntax/semantics interface – negation and (binary) connectives. This perspective occupies a central place in the empirical description offered in the first half of the thesis, as well as in the theoretical discussion of the analyses proposed. Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 focus on the negative aspect of the construction, whereas Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 deal with the connective underlying negative coordination.
In Chapters 3 and 4, it is shown that paired negative coordination markers have a wider distribution than combinations of a single marker with a plain connective or with sentential negation only. Chapter 5 shows that constructions with single markers can also materialize as independent sentences, in which case an additive particle use is invoked. English and BCMS diverge in the interaction of negative coordination with other negative or polarity sensitive expressions, as revealed in Chapter 6. Nonetheless, neither, nor, ni, and niti conform to the general system of negation in their corresponding languages, since neither and nor are found to be inherently negative, whereas ni and niti are not.
The empirical investigation is narrowed to constructions with iterated coordination markers further on in Chapters 7, 8 and 9, where the logico-semantic nature of the connective component is determined. Using diagnostics with a third scope-taking expression, it is shown that negative coordination in both languages is underlyingly disjunctive. After dismissing an approach in terms of plural denotations and homogeneity, scopal ordering between disjunction and negation is discussed in Chapter 10. An LF with a disjunction scoping over negation is adopted for neither...nor, despite absence of alternative question readings and ignorance inferences with negative coordination in both languages. However, such an LF does not reflect the strong readings of negative coordination constructions, which are stable. On the other hand, ni...ni and niti...niti correspond to disjunctions in the scope of negation, which is directly compatible with their interpretation.
The starting point for the analyses in the second half of the thesis is thus that both ni...ni and niti...niti in BCMS are underlyingly semantically non-negative disjunctions, which need to stay in the scope of a negative operator. This is implemented in Chapter 11 through a syntactic agreement mechanism between the coordination markers ni and niti and a c-commanding silent negative operator (Zeijlstra, 2004). It is further argued that this is not an option for neither...nor, which is why Across-The-Board movement of negative operators at LF is briefly considered. The form-meaning mismatch in English is given a better-motivated account in Chapter 12, where exhaustification of disjunct alternatives is used to strengthen the interpretation, in two versions – recursive Innocent Exclusion (Fox, 2007) and Innocent Exclusion followed by Innocent Inclusion of alternatives (Bar-Lev and Fox, 2017). This prompts ample discussion of issues which arise in the
derivation of alternatives for negative coordination in English and its exhaustification in different environments. As the problems are not satisfactorily resolved, Chapter 13 offers an alternative approach, this time employing focus alternatives of the disjuncts to stipulate presuppositions on neither and nor, which not only brings about the strong meaning of
negative coordination, but also accounts for their use as single additive particles. Chapters 14 and 15 reproduce strengthening by exhaustification and by presuppositions, respectively, for negative coordinations in BCMS, where it is vacuous, showing that the latter rather than the former can provide a useful add-on to the analysis with syntactic agreement from Chapter 11. | de |