Abstract
This paper provides a typological overview of expletive negation based on a survey of 722 languages, focusing in detail on a smaller sample of five languages. Expletive negation (EN) has been discussed extensively within Romance linguistics. This paper surveys its occurrence across languages of the world and offers a comprehensive list of EN-triggering contexts collected from French and Mandarin, comparing that list with EN triggers in Januubi, English, and Zarma-Sonrai. The paper proposes a language production and semantic account of the similarity of EN-triggering contexts found in these five languages. We propose that the meaning of EN triggers entails or strongly implies ¬p and that the activation of ¬p alongside p is what leads speakers to produce EN. Four semantic licensing conditions for EN triggers are identified and each EN-triggering context is semantically analyzed.
- Abbreviations in glosses
- ART
article
- BA
BA marker
- CLF
classifier
- COMP
complementizer
- COND
conditional
- DAT
dative
- DET
determiner
- EM
emotional
- EMPH
emphatic
- DIR
directional
- IMP
imperative
- INDF
indefinite
- INF
infinitive
- IPFV
imperfective
- LD
locative-directional
- MOD
modality marker
- NF
non-finite
- NEG
negation
- NOM
nominative
- NSP
non-specific
- PFV
perfective
- PL
plural
- PN
proper noun
- POSS
possessive
- PRS
present
- PST
past
- PTCP
participle
- REFL
reflexive
- SBJV
subjunctive
- SG
singular
- TOP
topic
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Supplementary Material
Supplementary material to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty.2020-2053.
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