Clause-final negation, structure and interpretation

Reesink, Ger

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Clause-final negation, structure and interpretation

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons150

Reesink, Ger
Language and Cognition Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Other Research, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Reesink, G. (2002). Clause-final negation, structure and interpretation. Functions of Language, 9(2), 239-268.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-189A-7

Abstract

Negation in a number of Austronesian and Papuan languages with SVO order is expressed by a rather rigid clause-final position of the negative adverb. Some typological generalizations for negation are reviewed and the distribution of this trait in languages of different stocks is discussed, arguing that it most likely originates in Papuan languages. Some proposals for different types of negation, such as whether it is a verbal (or VP) operator, a constituent operator or a sentential operator are considered. The problem of determining the scope of negation is discussed, with the conclusion that hard and fast semantic meanings for NEG at different structural levels cannot be posited, suggesting that perhaps a solution can be found in the application of some universal pragmatic principles.