Etxeberria, Espinal & Tubau (2024). Establishing the limits between Polarity Sensitivity, Negative Polarity and Negative Concord

5 abril, 2024

Autors:

Urtzi Etxeberria, M.Teresa Espinal & Susagna Tubau

Títol:

Establishing the limits between Polarity Sensitivity, Negative Polarity and Negative Concord

Editorial: Linguistic Typology (de Gruyter)
Data de publicació: 4 d'abril del 2024

Text complet

In this paper, by focussing on the behaviour of polarity elements from a variety of languages from different language families (namely, Basque, Hindi, English, Romanian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, and Russian) we investigate the relationship between Polarity Sensitive Items (PSIs) and Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) on the one hand, and between PSIs and Negative Concord items (NCIs) on the other. Based on a number of contrasts that we find, we argue that: (i) if a language has PSIs it does not necessarily have NCIs; (ii) PSIs need to be distinguished from NPIs; (iii) NCIs emerge as a subtype of PSIs, not of NPIs; and (iv) all languages that show Negative Concord (NC) also have Polarity Sensitivity (PS), but the opposite does not hold. We thus postulate that PS is a general phenomenon across languages with Negative Polarity (NPol) and NC as possible subtypes of PS but independent among them, and argue against the standard hypothesis that NC is a special subtype of NPol.

Espinal, M. Teresa & Tubau, Susagna. 2026. Negation: diachronic developments.

13 abril, 2026

‘Negation: diachronic developments’ (with S. Tubau). In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Diachronic and Historical Linguistics

Autors:

Espinal, M. Teresa & Tubau, Susagna

Títol:

Negation: diachronic developments.

Editorial: The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Diachronic and Historical Linguistics
Col·lecció:
Data de publicació: 2026

Més informació

 Edited by Adam Ledgeway, Edith Aldridge, Anne Breitbarth, Katalin É Kiss, Joseph Salmons and Alexandra Simonenko. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This chapter focuses on some relevant diachronic processes that involve sentential negation and on the most relevant diachronic developments that characterize negation in natural languages. We provide linguistic evidence showing that negative markers are involved in upward movements of negative expressions from an inside position within the sentential structure to its left-periphery; alternatively, they are base-generated in an outside position. Argumental negation is expressed by lexical items that are involved in several diachronic processes: from non-negative concord (NC) to NC, and vice versa, from non-strict NC to strict NC, and vice versa, as well as the possibility of displaying negative spread and double negation readings.