Chapter 3 - Semantic and Pragmatic Effects of Negative Markers

Summary

The previous chapter argued for a multi-locus analysis for negation in Arabic. The primary focus in that chapter was to display the key distributional contracts between the NegP projection below TP and the one above TP in relation to the position of adverbs and subjects in the syntactic structure, the availability of complementizer deletion, and the availabity of certain negative markers in the context of modals. This chapter focuses on the semantic and pragmatic effects associated with the various positions of negation. Particularly, presuppositional readings for negative statements can arguably be explained by a difference in the position of negation (higher in the TP) as opposed to the non-presuppositional interpretations associated with the lower NegP below TP. Some of the JA data and analysis in this chapter are taken in part from my 2012 Ph.D. dissertation. Extra data from JA and analogous data from GA (Qatari in particular) is included in this chapter. The examples in (1)a–c show pragmatic contexts in which only higher negation (maa by itself) is grammatical (Alqassas 2012: §4 126–46):

(1) a. maliiħ maa rasabt-(*iš) (JA)

good NEG fail.2MSG.PFV-(*NEG)

‘It is good that you didn't fail.’ (presupposition)

b. ʔilbas dʒakeet laa yidʒmad-(*iš)

wear.imp jacket NEG freeze.3MSG.IPFV-(*NEG) (JA)

dʒism-ak

body-your

‘Wear a jacket so that your body doesn't freeze.’ (imperative mood: cautioning)

c. laa t-igaʕ-(*iš) (JA)

NEG 2-fall.imp-(*NEG)

‘Don't fall/Be careful not to fall.’ (imperative mood: cautioning)

This chapter also analyzes contrasts between SA maa on the one hand and laa and its variants on the other hand. These contrasts are related to scope readings, presupposition, mood and speech acts.

I argue that presuppositional negation is a product of the interplay between syntax and pragmatics. Specifically, I propose that presuppositional negative markers are higher in the syntactic structure. They occupy a position above the tense phrase in the clausal structure, namely NegP above TP.

This proposal bears on the cross-linguistic debate over whether the locus of negation is parametric (either above TP or below TP in a given language, as in Ouhalla 1993) or non-parametric (a particular language may opt for any position of negation for syntactic and pragmatic reasons, as in Zanuttini 1997a, 1997b; Ramchand 2001, 2002; Zeijlstra 2004; Alqassas 2012, 2015).