Investigation into the Interaction between the Indefinites and Negation 9783050080093, 9783050036717

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Joanna Btaszczak Investigation into the Interaction between the Indefinites and Negation

studia grammatica Herausgegeben von Manfred Bierwisch unter Mitwirkung von Hubert Haider, Stuttgart Paul Kiparsky, Stanford Angelika Kratzer, Amherst Jürgen Kunze, Berlin David Pesetsky, Cambridge (Massachusetts) Dieter Wunderlich, Düsseldorf

studia grammatica 51

Joanna Btaszczak

Investigation ÌlltO the Interaction between the Indefinites and Negation

Akademie Verlag

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Btaszczak, Joanna : Investigation into the interaction between the indefinites and negation / Joanna Btaszczak. - Berlin : Akad. Verl., 2001 (Studia grammatica ; 51) Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Uni v., Diss., 1999 ISBN 3-05-003671-0

ISSN 0081-6469 © Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2001 Das eingesetzte Papier ist alterungsbeständig nach DIN/ISO 9706. Alle Rechte, insbesondere die der Übersetzung in andere Sprachen, vorbehalten. Kein Teil dieses Buches darf ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlages in irgendeiner Form - durch Photokopie, Mikroverfilmung oder irgendein anderes Verfahren - reproduziert oder in eine von Maschinen, insbesondere von Datenverarbeitungsmaschinen, verwendbare Sprache übertragen oder übersetzt werden. All rights reserved (including those of translation into other languages). No part of this book may be reproduced in any form - by photoprinting, microfilm, or any other means - nor transmitted or translated into a machine language without written permission from the publishers. Druck und Bindung: GAM Media GmbH, Berlin Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany

(Diogenes Laertios, Zywoty i poglqdy stynnychfilozofow

De nihilo nihil fit Nic nie powstaje z niczego 1,4; cited from Kalinkowski 1997:56)

Scientiae radices amarae, fructus dulces Korzenie wiedzy s^ gor2kie, ale jej owoce slodkie (Diogenes Laertios, Zywoty i poglqdy slynrtych filozofow 5,1,18; cited from Kalinkowski 1997:208)

Preface

Plautus, the famous Roman comedist, once said that no-one on his own is ever wise enough. And I think he was right. If it had not been for all the help -linguistic and non-linguistic-1 have been offered during my years spent in the Graduiertenkolleg - this dissertation would never have been finished, let alone come into being. Now, that I have succeeded in bringing this study to an end, I wish to express my gratitude to all who supported me at various stages: to all professors from the Graduiertenkolleg for teaching me linguistics, and especially to Prof. Bierwisch, Prof. Fanselow, Prof. Donhauser, Dr. Wilder, Prof. Lang, Prof. Staudacher, and to Prof Kosta for stimulating discussions, to all students from the Graduiertenkolleg for a wonderful time spent together and for being friends, to Dr. Chris Wilder for supervising this dissertation from the very beginning, for giving me helpful comments, for reading and commenting every page I ever gave him, for making 'my English' sound 'more English', for his constant encouragement, and every other kind of help and support he has ever offered me, to Prof. Karin Donhauser for long discussions in the evenings, for making me believe that I will finish my dissertation some day, for teaching me patience 'at times of crisis', for helping me to overcome my despair at various stages of this enterprise, to Eva Schlachter for all her warmth and kindness, for her endless patience with me at times when I was without any hope left, to Susann Fischer for always having time for me, for offering me help and support, for being able to solve every imaginable (and unimaginable) problem, to Marzena Rochon, Malgosia Cavar, Diana Pili, Michaela Schmitz for believing in me and being my friends, to Dorothee Kaesler for coming every weekend to the 'Schiitzenstrasse' and for keeping me company in the otherwise empty institute,

viii to my room-mate Damir Cavar for never stopping asking me: "No co,ju2 oddalas?", to my friend Sibyl Grohmann for listening to my complaints, to all my friends and colleagues -too many to mention them all- for emotional support, for their confidence in my work and constant encouragement, and finally and most importantly to my parents, my sister and brother for all their love.

ix

Table of Contents

Preface Table of Contents Abbreviations 1 1.1 1.2

1.3

1.4

1.5 1.6 2 2.1 2.2

2.3

vii ix xv

Introduction Introduction: the field of inquiry Basic facts about Polish: the problems 1.2.1 The problem of the DP in Polish 1.2.2 The problem of the syntactic structure of a clause in Polish 1.2.3 The outline of a possible approach Interaction between DPs and the clause structure: examples 1.3.1 Basic facts about the relevance of the word order for the interpretation of DP 1.3.2 Behavior of DPs in the clause 1.3.3 Possible accounts: two major approaches 1.3.3.1 Indefinites as variables (Heim 1982) 1.3.3.2 The Mapping Hypothesis (Diesing 1992) The puzzles 1.4.1 The problem of subjects in negated sentences 1.4.2 'Genitive subjects'in existential sentences 1.4.2.1 The existential predicate hypothesis 1.4.2.2 Existential'be'as a copula'be' 1.4.2.3 A Heim-Diesing approach 1.4.3 The problem of n-words in Polish Sketch of the analysis The way in which this dissertation is organized

1 1 2 3 6 9 9 10 11 15 16 19 21 21 24 24 25 27 28 29 30

Structure of negative sentences Introduction Negative sentences from a typological point of view 2.2.1 Different ways of realization of negation 2.2.2 Different positions of negation in the clause Approaches to negation 2.3.1 The opponents of the NegP

33 33 34 35 37 39 39

X

2.3.2

2.4

The advocates of the NegP 2.3.2.1 Status of a negative marker 2.3.2.2 Position of NegP in relation to other constituents Negation in Polish 2.4.1 Realization of negation 2.4.1.1 Sentence negation versus constituent negation 2.4.1.1.1 Position of the negative marker 2.4.1.1.2 Genitive of Negation (GoN) 2.4.1.1.3 (Co-)Occurrence of n-words 2.4.1.2 Partial conclusions 2.4.2 Negation related phenomena: two diagnostics for sentential negation 2.4.2.1 Genitive of Negation (GoN) 2.4.2.1.1 Objects of negated transitive verbs 2.4.2.1.2 Internal arguments of negated unaccusative verbs 2.4.2.1.3 External arguments of negated verbs 2.4.2.1.4 Partial conclusions 2.4.2.2 Negative pronouns 2.4.3 Position of negation in Polish 2.4.3.1 Auxiliary verbs and the position of negation 2.4.3.1.1 The inventory of auxiliaries in Polish 2.4.3.1.2 Syntactic positions of the auxiliaries 2.4.3.1.3 Position of negation with respect to the auxiliaries 2.4.3.1.3.1 Negation in the periphrastic constructions 2.4.3.1.3.2 Negation and the conditional auxiliary 2.4.3.1.3.3 Negation and the subject agreement clitic 2.4.3.1.3.4 Partial conclusions: problem of the future auxiliary 2.4.3.2 Modal verbs and the position of negation 2.4.3.2.1 General remarks on the nature of modal verbs in Polish 2.4.3.2.2 Problem: position of modals and the future auxiliary 2.4.3.2.2.1 Arguments against assuming the same position for modals and the future auxiliary 2.4.3.2.2.1.1 No complementary distribution 2.4.3.2.2.1.2 Negation facts 2.4.3.2.2.2 Structure of modal clauses 2.4.3.2.2.2.1 Negative pronouns in modal clauses 2.4.3.2.2.2.2 Similarities with other infinitival constructions 2.4.3.2.2.2.3 Possible analysis of infinitival constructions 2.4.3.2.3 Partial conclusions: back to the problem of the future auxiliary 2.4.3.3 Conclusions

42 44 48 53 54 55 55 58 59 59 60 60 61 62 63 64 65 71 72 72 78 81 81 82 83 83 84 84 85 86 86 86 90 90 92 93 95 98

xi

2.5

2.6 2.7 3 3.1 3.2 3.3

3.4 3.5

2.4.3.4 Note on the relation between tense and sentential negation Is there a NegP in Polish? 2.5.1 Arguments against NegP or against the negative marker being the head of a NegP 2.5.1.1 Nie as a prefix attached to the verb already in the lexicon 2.5.1.1.1 Stress Shift 2.5.1.1.2 Coordination 2.5.1.1.3 Non-uniformity of negation (arbitrary gaps) 2.5.1.2 Nie as a clitic, but not the head of a NegP 2.5.2 Arguments in favor of NegP in Polish 2.5.2.1 Problem of scope 2.5.2.2 Nie as a clitic, but yet unlike other clitics 2.5.2.3 Negation related word order facts 2.5.2.4 Nie as the head of NegP Structure of negative clause in Polish Summary N-words in Polish Introduction Etymology of n-words in Polish: crosslinguistic comparison Distribution of n-words in Polish: crosslinguistic comparison 3.3.1 Negative contexts/Negative Concord: basic facts 3.3.2 Problematic cases 3.3.2.1 Contexts without an overt negative marker 3.3.2.2 Expletive negation 3.3.2.3 Lexical negation 3.3.3 Locality of Negative Concord 3.3.4 Non-negative contexts 3.3.5 Comparison with n-words in other languages (Romance) 3.3.5.1 Pre-vs. postverbal asymmetry 3.3.5.2 Excursus 3.3.5.3 Occurrence in non-negative contexts 3.3.5.4 Licensing by higher clause negation 3.3.5.5 Interpretational asymmetries 3.3.5.6 Summary Puzzles in the distribution of n-words: complementary distribution with non-n-words Possible analyses of n-words 3.5.1 The NEG-Criterion (movement)- analysis 3.5.1.1 Arguments in favor ofthe analysis of n-words as negative universal quantifiers 3.5.1.1.1 N-words as inherently negative elements 3.5.1.1.1.1 The'answer'-test

102 106 108 108 108 110 112 114 117 117 121 124 127 130 130 133 133 135 139 139 140 140 142 145 146 150 151 151 152 155 156 156 159 159 163 164 164 165 165

xii 3.5.1.1.1.2 Counterarguments 3.5.1.1.1.3 Partial conclusions 3.5.1.1.2 N-words as universal quantifiers 3.5.1.1.2.1 Tests for the status of n-words as universal quantifiers 3.5.1.1.2.2 Counterarguments 3.5.1.1.2.3 Partial conclusions 3.5.1.2 Movement and the NEG-Criterion 3.5.1.2.1 Similarities between multiple n-words and multiple wh-movement 3.5.1.2.2 Similarities between wh-absorption and 'negative absorption' 3.5.1.2.2 Dissimilarities between wh-movement and n-wordlicensing 3.5.1.2.4 Further criticism of the NEG-Criterion analysis 3.5.1.2.5 Partial conclusions 3.5.2

3.5.3

4 4.1 4.2

Negative 3.5.2.1 3.5.2.2 3.5.2.3

Concord: excursus Problems for compositionality NEG-Criterion and its problems Problems for accounting for NC in terms of the Minimalist Program (feature checking) 3.5.2.4 Compositional analysis of Negative Concord 3.5.2.5 A novel analysis of Jespersen's cycle and NC (Rowlett 1997) N-words as universal quantifiers sensitive to negative polarity and the logical subject of negative predications (Giannakidou 1998) 3.5.3.1 N-words as universal quantifiers 3.5.3.1.1 Tests for the status of n-words as universal quantifiers 3.5.3.1.2 Differences between n-words and universal quantifiers 3.5.3.1.3 Further problems for the analysis of n-words in terms of universal quantifiers 3.5.3.1.4 Partial conclusions 3.5.3.2 N-words as the logical subject of negative predications 3.5.3.2.1 Counterarguments: interpretation of n-words 3.5.3.2.2 Conclusions 3.5.3.3 Note on the incompatibility of n-words with universal quantifiers in negated sentences 3.5.4 N-words as indefinites

N-words as NPIs Introduction Arguments in favor of analyzing n-words as NPIs 4.2.1 Obligatory co-occurrence with nie 4.2.2 Bez as licenser of NPIs 4.2.3 'Affirmative' meaning of n-words

165 169 169 169 171 173 176 177 187 192 197 200 201 202 208 209 211 218 221 222 222 222 224 227 227 227 230 230 233 237 237 238 238 240 242

xiii

4.3

4.4 4.5 5 5.1 5.2 5.3

5.4

4.2.4 'Indefinite nature'of n-words Problems of the analysis of n-words in terms of NPIs 4.3.1 Problems of the n-word-subjects 4.3.1.1 Comparison with the licensing of any in the subject position 4.3.1.2 Further counterarguments: crosslinguistic comparison 4.3.1.3 Towards an explanation of the differences between English and Polish 4.3.2 Occurrence of n-words in isolation 4.3.3 Non-licensing of n-words in other Negative Polarity environments 4.3.3.1 A binding approach to Polarity 4.3.3.2 Arguments in favor of the binding approach to Polarity 4.3.3.3 Defining the'binding domain'in Polish 4.3.3.4 Problems of the Binding Analysis 4.3.3.4.1 Potential antecedents and the Governing Category for polarity items 4.3.3.4.2 The Polarity Operator in Comp 4.3.3.4.3 The problem of bez 'without' 4.3.3.4.4 Licensing of lexical NPIs and other non-specific indefinites Summary Appendix: Focus particles and polarity contexts Seeking the explanation of the complemantary distribution of n-words and non-n-words Introduction Extending the analysis to other indefinite pronouns: distribution and feature specification Negative Polarity environments as downward entailing (downward monotonic) 5.3.1 Problem of characterizing all Negative Polarity environments as DE 5.3.1.1 Not all negative polarity environments can be easily defined as DE 5.3.1.2 NPIs licensed in non-DE environments 5.3.1.3 NPIs not licensed despite the presence of a licensing (DE) context 5.3.1.4 Not all NPIs are licensed by all DE expressions 5.3.2 Possible solutions: readjustment of the notion'downward entailing' 5.3.2.1 Case 1: NPIs licensed despite a (strictly speaking) not DE environment 5.3.2.2 Case 2: Failure of licensing despite a (strictly speaking) DE environment 5.3.3 Partial conclusions The 'strength' hierarchy of downward entailing functions 5.4.1 Three different types of downward entailing functions (Zwarts 1993) 5.4.2 Negative Concord as restricted to anti-additive expressions 5.4.2.1 Problems

243 246 246 247 253 257 265 267 268 271 275 282 283 286 291 293 296 297

301 301 303 321 324 325 327 327 328 331 331 337 339 340 341 347 350

xiv

5.5

6

Towards 5.5.1 5.5.2 5.5.3 5.5.4

5.4.2.2 Partial conclusions a solution Defining the semantic properties of the n-word-licensers: problems Excursus: antiveridicality as the relevant notion (Giannakidou 1997, 1998) Antimorphicity as the relevant notion Defining the Negative Polarity environments in terms of their monotonic properties 5.5.4.1 N-words as subject to the strongest type of negation 5.5.4.1.1 Superordinate negation 5.5.4.1.2 Note on 'expletive negation' 5.5.4.1.3 Note on'lexical negation' 5.5.4.2 Distribution of -s- and -kolwiek-pronoxms and semantic properties of contexts of their occurrence 5.5.4.3 Problem of the complementary distribution 5.5.4.3.1 Examples of existing solutions 5.5.4.3.1.1 Non-n-words as bipolar items (van der Wouden 1997) 5.5.4.3.1.2 An account in terms of'internal morphological structure of the polarity items' (Uribe-Echevarria 1994) 5.5.4.3.1.3 An account in terms of 'morphological blocking' (Pereltsvaig 1998) 5.5.4.3.2 Yet another solution 5.5.4.3.2.1 The use of -kolwiekpronouns in Free Choice contexts 5.5.4.3.2.2 Puzzles in the distribution of -kolwiek pronouns 5.5.4.3.2.3 Towards an analysis 5.5.4.3.2.3.1 -kolwiekpronouns as w/i-NPIs (Rullmann 1996) 5.5.4.3.2.3.2 Etymology of -kolwiek pronouns 5.5.4.3.2.3.3 Concession and disjunction: arbitrary choice 5.5.4.3.2.4 Explaining the puzzles in the distribution of -kolwiek pronouns 5.5.4.3.2.5 Summary

Summary and Open Ends

References

360 362 362 370 373 376 379 379 382 386 389 392 393 393

399

400 401 404 408 410 410 416 421 425 431

433 439

XV

Abbreviations

1,2,3 ACC AGR CL COND PART DAT emp FEM FUT GEN IMP IMPERF INF INST LOC MASC NEG NEUTR NOM OBJ PAST PAST PRT PERF PL PRES REFL SG SUBJ SUBJ PART

first, second, third person accusative case agreement clitic conditional particle dative case emphatic marker feminine gender future tense genitive case imperative imperfective aspect infinitive instrumental case locative case masculine gender negation neuter gender nominative case object past tense past participle perfective aspect plural number present tense reflexive pronoun singular number subject subjunctive particle

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction

1.1 Introduction: the field of inquiry The linguistic literature of the last three decades is unusually abundant in works dealing with phenomena of quantification and nominal reference in natural languages, and in particular with various aspects of defmiteness/indefmiteness, the relation between quantification and (definite/indefinite) reference, appropriate ways of expressing quantifier scope distinctions, etc., and with the phenomenon of negation. Although these two phenomena, i.e., quantification and negation, have been systematically investigated at least since Aristotle, and although this by now twenty-three centuries old research has a quite considerable heritage in form of numerous linguistic theories or accounts of various aspects of nominal quantification, or semantic determination in a broader sense, and negation, many problems remain still unresolved and there are still many open questions. The phenomena in question are the more interesting as they concern concepts which are claimed to be universal. Every language has the possibility of expressing negation in some or other way (cf. Horn 1989). Similarly, every language has some means at its disposal to express quantification or semantic determination in general (cf. among others Felix 1988, Vater 1991, Spath 1997, Spath and Steube 1998 and the references cited there for the idea that determination (and the determiner phrase in general) is a universal concept). Bernini and Ramat (1996:1) report that "(•••) there is no known language which does not have some means or another of expressing negation." Similarly, in his typological study of indefinite pronouns Haspelmath (1993) shows that most languages have them and those few languages that lack indefinite pronouns altogether have alternative means of expressing the intended meanings, e.g. generic nouns, existential sentences, non-specific free relative clauses, etc. (cf. Haspelmath 1993:57f.); see also Partee (1995) for discussion the phenomenon of quantification in natural languages. Equally fascinating is the fact that quantification or determination and negation can be investigated from various perspectives, e.g. diachronic, typological, syntactic, pragmatic or semantic. A separate treatment from only one perspective, e.g. taking into account only

2

Introduction

syntactic aspects while completely ignoring the semantic side, or vice versa, interesting as it might be, will inevitably show certain shortcomings resulting from the simple fact that these phenomena are complex and have effects at different interfaces, most clearly a syntactic-semantic interface. There are indeed accounts dealing chiefly with semantic or mainly with syntactic aspects of say negation (e.g. various works by Zwarts or Haegeman, respectively). However, an account simultaneously combining various aspects, e.g. syntactic, semantic or pragmatic, seems to be more promising and is the route pursued here. The present work focuses on two phenomena, to wit: nominal phrases (especially indefinites) and negation. What is sought is a way of putting these two phenomena together. Two sets of problems are of an immediate relevance here: existential constructions, and in particular the phenomenon of Genitive of Negation in negated existential sentences, on the one hand, and the phenomenon of Negative Polarity Items, and Negative Concord in particular, on the other hand. The present study concentrates primarily on the latter set of problems. It is interesting, though, to ask whether these two sets of problems are connected with each other, i.e., whether it is possible to explain them in a uniform way. Such questions are beyond the scope of this investigation. The present study, however, provides the necessary background for further research, thus also for answering these or similar questions. The phenomena mentioned above will be investigated in Polish. Polish is nearly an ideal language in relevant respects: it shows all phenomena mentioned above, and in addition, it does not have the category article so that indefiniteness or definiteness has to be marked in some other way. This other way of marking will become especially interesting when negation comes into play.

1.2 Basic facts about Polish: the problems Polish shows two important characteristics the interrelation of which de facto has given rise to this investigation. On the one hand Polish lacks articles and on the other hand it is a language with a considerable freedom of constituent order. These two characteristics in turn lead to two problems, defined here as (i) the problem of the DP in Polish and (ii) the problem of the syntactic structure of a clause in Polish. I discuss these problems in turn in the following subsections.

Chapter 1

3

1.2.1 The problem of the DP in Polish Polish has no articles. It can however distinguish between predicative and referential nominal phrases, cf. (la) and (lb) respectively. (1) a.

Adam jest wysokim m?zczyzn^. Adam be-3.SG.PRES tall-INST.MASC.SG man-INST.MASC.SG 'Adam is a tall man.' b. Do pokoju wszedl wysoki m^zczyzna. into room come-3.SG.PAST tall-NOM.MASC.SGman-NOM.MASC.SG 'A tall man came into the room.'

Moreover, it is possible to distinguish in Polish between definite and indefinite nominal phrases despite its lack of the category article. In Szwedek's words: "Although there is no article in Polish we seldom have doubts whether a noun in a text is definite or indefinite" (Szwedek 1974a:203). So, given the fact that on the one hand there is no article in Polish and on the other hand Polish speakers can make the distinction between definite and indefinite nominal phrases, the puzzling question is: How is this possible? What is/are the alternative way(s) of expressing the category definiteness/indefiniteness? Without going into much detail,1 we can observe that Polish indeed has alternative means of expressing the category (in-)definiteness, the most important ones being word order, different stress/intonational patterns, and lexical means such as indefinite and demonstrative pronouns. The relevance of the word order for the interpretation of nominal phrases will be the subject of section 1.3.1. In this section, stress and lexical means are briefly discussed. Example (2) shows that Polish employs different indefinite and definite pronouns (determiners) to make the indefinite/definite distinction. (2) a.

Ewa rozmawiala z jakims wysokim m^zczyzn^. Ewa talk-3.SG.PAST with some-INST tall-INST man-INST 'Ewa talked to a/some tall man.' b. Ewa rozmawiala z pewnym wysokim m^zczyzn^. Ewa talk-3.SG.PAST with certain-INST tall-INST man-INST 'Ewa talked to a certain tall man.' c. Ewa rozmawiala z tym wysokim m^zczyzn^. Ewa talk-3.SG.PAST with this-INST tall-INST man-INST 'Ewa talked to this tall man.'

For a detailed discussion see Blaszczak (1995); see also Späth (1997), Späth and Steube (1998) for related discussion of Russian.

Introduction

4

The question is often discussed in the Slavonic literature whether these pronouns (or at least some of them) can have a quasi article-like function. Los (1923:331) remarks: The demonstrative pronouns are used before a noun as its determiner. This is especially frequent in colloquial language where pronouns ten or on1 (in literary language more frequently ow) are used in the meaning of a definite article (Germander, French le), e.g. [(3)] [cited fromMiodunka (1974:38); my translation; J.B.]

Byla tarn tablica, a na tej (onej, owej) tablicy bylo napisane .... be-3.SG.NEUTR.PAST there table and on this (this, the said (that)) table be3.SG.NEUTR.PAST written ... ' There was a table and on the (this, that) table it was written...'

(3)

However, according to Pisarek (1968), the assumption that the demonstrative pronoun ten 'this' may have an article-like function is unjustified since the use of this pronoun is optional (except in adverbial phrases such as e.g.wtych dniach 'in these days', tej niedzieli 'this Sunday'). More specifically, in her opinion in Polish there are no pronouns that can be called definite. This opinion has been challenged by Szwedek (1976b), who shows that in Polish the use of the demonstrative pronoun (and of the indefinite pronoun jakis 'some' for that matter) is obligatory in some cases depending on the word order and sentence stress placement and "therefore they function in a way similar to the English articles (...)" (Szwedek 1976b:270); see section 1.3.1. Another important observation is that the demonstrative pronoun may have a demonstrative or an article-like function and that the respective meaning of such pronouns depends on sentence stress. This completely parallels the situation found in English. Both in Polish and English, the demonstrative pronoun, if unstressed, loses the demonstrative meaning and has only the article function, cf. (4)-(9) (cf. Szwedek 1976b:268ff). In (5) and (8), the sentence stress falls on the verb and neither in English nor Polish is a demonstrative meaning is detectable, i.e., the pronouns seem to express "nothing more than the definite article" (ibid., p. 269) or they have "a clearly coreferential meaning" (p. 270). This contrasts with (6) and (9) respectively, where the sentence stress on the demonstrative pronouns restores their truly demonstrative meaning.3 (4)

Give me (the, this, that) book.

(5) a. b. c.

GIVE me the book. GIVE me this book. GIVE me that book.

2

3

The pronoun on in the meaning of the demonstrative pronoun ten 'this' is now an obsolete form. I have left out here examples -also discussed by Szwedek (1976b)- where the sentence stress falls on the noun 'book'. In such cases, the noun 'book' seems to carry a contrastive meaning.

Chapter 1

(6) a. b. c.

Give me THE book. Give me THIS book. Give me THAT book.

(7)

Daj mi (t?, tamt^) ksi^zk?. give-IMP me (this, that) book 'Give me (this, that) book.'

(8) a.

DAJ mi t? ksiqzk?. 'Give me this book.' DAJ mi tamt^ ksi^zk?. 'Give me that book.'

b.

(9) a. b.

5

Daj mi TIJ ksi^zk?. 'Give me this book.' Daj mi TAMTA ksi^zk?. 'Give me that book.'

The placement of sentence stress is relevant in yet another respect. Consider(lO) with possible continuations (11), (12) or (13) (Szwedek 1976a:17). (10)

Widzialem na ulicy kobiet?. see-1. SG.MASC.PAST on street woman-ACC 'I saw a woman in the street.'

(11)

Kobiet? bil m^zczy zna. woman-ACC hit-3.SG.MASC.PAST man-NOM 'The woman was hit by a man'

(12)

M^zczyzna bil kobiet?. man-NOM hit-3.SG.MASC.PAST woman-ACC 'The man was hitting a woman.'

(13)

M^ZCZYZNA bit kobiet«?. man-NOM hit-3.SG.MASC.PAST woman-ACC roughly: 'It was a man who was hitting the/this woman.'

(11) constitutes a coherent discourse with (10). However, (12) -under normal intonation with the sentence stress falling on the final element- cannot be understood as forming a sequence with (10) as kobieta 'woman' in (12) would not be preferential with kobieta in (10). If sentence stress falls on a nominal, that expression cannot corefer with a correspond-

Introduction

6

ing nominal in a preceding sentence (Szwedek 1976a). Consequently, if the sentence stress shifts from the final element to the initial position (cf. (13)), the unstressed noun may retain its coreferential interpretation, thus being able to form a coherent discourse with the preceding sentence (here (10)). However, the stressed noun (here 'man') is then interpreted contrastively. This example illustrates the role played by sentence stress placement in the interpretation of a bare noun (i.e., a noun that is not accompanied by any kind of 'determiner', e.g. a pronoun). However, in his numerous works Szwedek emphasizes the priority of word order for the interpretation of a given nominal phrase as definite or indefinite (or as coreferential or noncoreferential), pointing out that in Polish -in contrast with English- "it is rather the word order that changes -moving the indefinite noun to the final position- rather than the place of the sentence stress" (Szwedek 1976a: 17); see also Ozga (1977) for a similar observation: those meanings that are signalled in English only by means of stress can be expressed in Polish mainly by specific ordering of sentence elements. This leads us directly to questions concerning constituent order and clause structure in Polish.

1.2.2 The problem of the syntactic structure of a clause in Polish The second important characteristic of Polish -as already mentioned in section 1.2- is its free "although not unconstrained" word order (cf. Willim 1989:37). Given a sentence consisting of three elements: subject, verb, and object, in principle all orders are possible (14); see also Witkos (1993:291f.). (14)a.

Jan czyta ksi^zk?. Jan-NOM read-3.SG.PRES book-ACC 'Jan is reading/reads a book.' b. Jan ksi^zke czyta. c. Ksi^zk? Jan czyta. d. Czyta ksi^zk? Jan. e. Czyta Jan ksi^zk?.

SVO

SOV OSV VOS VSO

Regarding the arrangement of lexical elements in a sentence in Polish, three comments have to be made. Firstly, the SVO order is considered neutral or unmarked (cf. in Fisiak et al. 1978:37); in isolated sentences and sentences which as a whole carry a new information (e.g. as an answer to the question What happenecH) the order of basic syntactic elements in Polish is SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT (thus, the same as in English). The SVO order is also assumed to be the underlying order of a sentence in Polish, on the basis that in cases where inflection fails to unambiguously reflect the grammatical roles of arguments, the sentence is normally interpreted with the SVO order, cf. (15) (Willim 1989:39).

Chapter 1

(15)

7

Swierki wyparly buki. spruce trees-NOM/ACC supersede-3.PL.PAST beech trees-NOM/ACC 'Spruce trees superseded beech trees.' and not 'Beech trees superseded spruce trees.'

Secondly, it has been recognized that in Polish (as in other Slavic languages) the main principle governing the actual arrangement of lexical items in a sentence is not grammatical, but communicative. Thus, as argued in Grzegorek (1984:92), lexical items occur in the order of their relative communicative value, i. e., according to the increasing degree of C. D. (= Communicative Dynamism) or according to the topicality in Givon's terminology. (...) In languages such as Polish or Russian preverbal position usually marks the part of the sentence which is old information, whereas the verb functions either as transition or as part of focal phrase.

Thirdly, the word order in Polish is not entirely free, but on the contrary, plays an important role in interpretational processes; cf. Szwedek (1974b:213), Grzegorek (1984:92), Willim (1989). As pointed out by Willim (1989:37f), there are two types of sentences which are systematically distinguished through word order in surface structure: SVO-predicational (categorical) sentences and VSO-presentational (thetic) sentences. In a 'categorical' sentence (16), the subject denotes an entity (or set of entities) whose existence is (or is assumed to be) presupposed. Predicational sentences are used to describe some property of this entity or to make a comment on the subject. (16)

Wyklad byl bardzo ciekawy. lecture be-3.SG.PAST very interesting 'The lecture was very interesting.'

In a 'thetic' sentence (17), the existence of the subject entity is not presupposed; the entity is merely introduced into discourse. (17)

Przy szedl do ciebie list. arrive-3.SG.PAST for you letter-NOM 'A letter arrived for you.'

The Polish word order facts reviewed above present a problem for current syntactic theory, i.e., Minimalist Program. A syntactic model of Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program type forbids any kind of optional movement, requiring moreover that movement be triggered by some uninterpretable feature of the target that has to be checked in order for

Introduction

8

a derivation to converge. 4 Such word order rearrangements as scrambling cannot be part of the computational process, that is, they are unlikely to be subject to the same principles as the morphological checking (e.g. the Case checking) 5 (notice that if nothing more is said it is difficult to imagine that scrambling might be triggered by some sort of uninterpretable feature whose sole function is to cause displacement of a constituent, and then to disappear from the derivation (cf. the notion of 'Suicidal Greed' in Chomsky 1996). But i f scrambling is not part o f the computational process, then the corollary o f Chomsky's (1995) system is that it is subject to the PF relevant conditions. The dilemma w e are faced with results from the fact that on the one hand -given the assumptions o f the Minimalist Program (cf. Chomsky 1995)- PF is separated from LF beyond the Spell-out point, thus excluding any further PF-LF interactions, on the other hand however, w e already know that such word order rearragements are relevant for the interpretation of nominal elements. Putting these two components together, it is hard to see h o w something taken to be the matter o f PF only could influence the interpretation, the exclusive domain of LF; see also Witkos (1996) for a similar observation. 6 Chomsky himself is aware of these problems:

4

5

6

I follow Willim (1989), Witkos (1993) among others in the assumption that Polish is a configurational language. For arguments in favor of this assumption see the works mentioned above. See however Meinunger (1995) for an alternative solution to the problem of scrambling in German. The main idea behind Meinunger's proposal, which in some sense is an elaboration of Diesing's (1992) analysis (see section 1.3.3.2 for more detail on Diesing 1992), can be summarized as follows: scrambled constituents -in contrast to unscrambled ones which are assumed to refer to discourse-new entities and to remain in their VP internal basis positions- act as constituents about which something is asserted. The relevant feature of scrambled constituents which enables them to function as anchors in the conversation is [+Topic], The [+Topic] feature in turn is checked in the specifier position of agreement projections. The use of agreement projections as the locus of checking of the [+Topic] feature of scrambled constituents is motivated by the observation that such [+Topic] arguments in fact co-occur with grammatical phenomena which are related to or which might be explained by postulating agreement phrases, e.g., Case differences, agreement facts, position change etc. See also Adger (1994) for another example of using the functional headAgr which is claimed to be implicated in the interpretation of arguments. His claim is that there is a close tie between the functional head Agr and argument DPs characterized by the property of familarity at the level of discourse representation (cf. Heim 1982). Such problems remain unsolved (at least not in a satisfactory way) also in later versions of Minimalist Program, (Chomsky 1998) and Chomsky (1999). For instance, Chomsky (1998) suggests in footnote 45 that ""stylistic" operations might fall within the phonological component". In Chomsky (1999:4) it is even argued that whereas in the case ofwh-movement "there are grounds to believe that features of probe and goal are involved", "in other cases (e.g., topicalization, VP-fronting), postulation of features is much more stipulative (....)."

Chapter 1

9

Notice that I am sweeping under the rug questions of considerable significance, notably, questions about what in the earlier Extended Standard Theory (EST) framework were called "surface effects" on interpretation. These are manifold, involving topic-focus and themerheme structures, figure-ground properties, effects on adjacency and linearity, and many others. Prima facie, they seem to involve some additional level or levels internal to the phonological component, postmorphology but prephonetic, accessed at the interface along with PF (Phonetic Form) and Logical Form (LF). If that turns out to be correct, then the abstraction I am pursuing may require qualification. I will continue to pursue it nontheless, merely noting here, once again, that tacit assumptions underlying much of the most productive recent work are far from innocent. [Chomsky (1995:230)]

1.2.3 The outline of a possible approach In the preceding subsections two important characteristics of Polish and simultaneously two major problems have been discussed. A possible approach which suggests itself lies in a combination of the problems discussed above. Such a combined approach would thus be supposed to: (i) examine the interaction between DPs and a clause (ii) try to motivate a DP in Polish semantically, i.e., basing on its interpretation (cf. the definite/indefinite distinction) (in) try to discover the syntactic structure of the clause in Polish basing on this interaction. My aim in the next section is to show that the approach outlined above may be on the right track. To this end some examples of the interaction between DPs and the clause structure will be discussed.

1.3 Interaction between DPs and the clause: examples In addition to the thetic/categorical distinction, there are other factors that determine the interpretation of nominal phrases, such as the position of a nominal phrase in the clause and the pronominal marking of a nominal phrase.

Introduction

10

1.3.1

Basic facts about the relevance of the word order for the interpretation of DP

The basic rule about the interplay of word order and the definite versus indefinite interpretation of noun phrases is formulated in Szwedek (1974a:208): (...) Nouns with indefinite interpretation appear in sentence final position only (unless explicitly marked indefinite in some other way). This is why the pronoun ten ('this') is obligatory with a noun in this position if the noun is to be interpreted as definite. Nouns with definite interpretation appear in non-final positions (again, unless explicitly marked otherwise).

Let us compare examples (18) and (19) for illustration. Sentence (18) can have different continuations as shown in (19). However, only in (19a) and (19d) can the underlined nominal phrases be understood as coreferential with the nominal phrase introduced into the discourse in sentence (18).7 In (19a) the relevant nominal phrase occurs in sentence initial position, thus -according to the rule given above- it is interpreted as definite, in this concrete case as coreferential with the man introduced into discourse in the preceding sentence. The same effect can be achieved by using a demonstrative pronoun. In this case the nominal phrase in question is not restricted to the initial position. In other words, the pronominal marking on the relevant nominal phrase ensures that it is interpreted in the intended way irrespective of its actual position in the clause. The indefinite (or noncoreferential) interpretation of a given nominal phrase is just a mirror image of that of the definite one. The indefinite interpretation may be obtained just by putting a nominal phrase into sentence final position as in (19b). Once again, a noun accompanied by the indefinite pronounjakis 'some' is free to occur in other positions in a sentence apart from the initial one, retaining its indefinite interpretation, cf. (19c). (18)

Widzialem, j ak do pokoju wchodzil mgzczyzna (1) see-1.SG.MASC.PAST how to room come-3.SG.PAST man-NOM (1) 'I saw a man walking into the room.'

(19)a.

Kiedy wszedlem, zobaczylem, ze mgzczyzna (1) stal przy oknie. when enter-I.SG.MASC.PAST see-l.SG.MASC.PAST that man-NOM (1) stand-3.SG.MASC.PAST at window 'When I came in, I saw the man standing at the window.' b. Kiedy wszedlem, zobaczylem, ze przy oknie stal m$zczyzna (2). when enter-1.SG.MASC.PAST see-l.SG.MASC.PAST that at window stand3.SG.MASC.PAST man-NOM (2) 'When I came in, I saw a man standing at the window.' (1) indicates the coreferentiality of the nominal phrases in question, (2) indicates the noncoreferentiality.

Chapter 1

11

c.

Kiedy wszedlem, zobaczylem, ze jakis mgzczyzna (2) stal przy oknie. when enter-l.SG.MASC.PAST see-l.SG.MASC.PAST that some man-NOM (2) stand-3. SG.MASC.PAST at window 'When I came in, I saw a man standing at the window.' d. Kiedy wszediem, zobaczylem, ze przy oknie stal ten mgzczyzna (1) when enter-1.SG.MASC.PAST see-l.SG.MASC.PAST that at window stand3. SG.MASC.PAST this man-NOM (1) 'When I came in, I saw the man standing at the window.' However, there is a certain asymmetry with respect to the effect of pre- or postverbal placement on the interpretation of an NP. While in a postverbal position (i.e., in the socalled rhematic part of a sentence) a nominal phrase not accompanied by any determiner (i.e., any indefinite or demonstrative pronoun) is in principle ambiguous (definite or indefinite), a nominal phrase in the initial preverbal position (i.e., in the so-called thematic part of the sentence, under normal intonation characteristic of the initial position) must be accompanied by an indefinite pronoun when it functions as an unspecified (indefinite) argument. Otherwise it would be automatically interpreted as specified (definite); cf. Weiss (1982:235), Topoliñska (1981:64), cf. (20a) and (20b). (20)a.

b.

Jakas firma zacz?la tu budow?. some fiim-NOM begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-ACC 'A company began building here.' Firma zacz^la tu budow?. firm-NOM begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-ACC 'The company began building here.'

Let us now consider the behavior of nominal phrases in the clause in more detail.

1.3.2 Behavior of DPs in the clause Nominal phrases are not interpreted in a uniform way. On the contrary, different types of DPs are subject to different interpretation. The following observations can be made here: (i) Proper names, pronouns and definite (or specific) nomináis display a scope insensitive (essentially de re) reading with respect to negation and modal contexts. The presupposition of the existence of the referent of a nominal phrase in question is preserved. (ii) In contrast with (i), bare nomináis and other indefinite nomináis seem to be forced to take the narrowest possible scope, in particular with respect to negation and intensional contexts (i.e., they produce a necessarily opaque or de dicto reading).

Introduction

12

(iii) (iv)

Some indefinite nominate seem to be able to produce a transparent reading even in context of negation; they are interpreted as 'specific' nominals. There are indefinite nominals that can never be specific; they seem to be forced to take only a narrow scope (opaque) reading within some operator.

The first two observations are illustrated in (21) and (22), respectively. (2 l)a.

Powiedziano mi, bym si? skonsultowal z tym lekarzem / z Kowalskim. told-impersonal form me SUBJ PART+AGR REFL consult-PAST PRT with this doctor / with Kowalski 'I was told to consult this doctor / Kowalski.' b. Zawolajcie tego lekarza / Kowalskiego. call-2.PL.IMP this doctor / Kowalski ' Call in this doctor / Kowalski.' / ' Send for this doctor / Kowalski.' c. Nie konsultowalem si? z tym lekarzem / z Kowalskim. NEG consult-1 .SG.PAST REFL with this doctor / with Kowalski 'I didn't consult this doctor / Kowalski.'

(22)a.

Powiedziano mi, bym si? skonsultowal z jakims lekarzem / z lekarzem. told-impersonal form me SUBJ PART+AGR REFL consult-PAST PRT with some doctor / with doctor 'I was told to consult a doctor.' b. Zawolajciejakiegos lekarza / lekarza. call-2.PL.IMP some doctor / doctor 'Call in a doctor.' / 'Send for a doctor.' c. Nie konsultowalem si? z *jakims lekarzem8 / lekarzem. NEG consult-1.SG.PAST REFL with *some doctor / doctor 'I didn't consult a (any) doctor.'

Observe that indefinite nominals can have different interpretations depending on the context. In a modal context like that in (22a,b), jakis 'some' can develop the meaning of jakikolwiek 'any' (cf. Koseska-Toszewa 1991:96). In a negative sentence like (22c) the indefinite nominal lekarz '(a) doctor' can be interpreted as taden lekarz 'no doctor' (or more precisely 'not any doctor'). However, in contrast with (22c), bare nominals occurring in the initial position cannot be interpreted as being in the scope of negation. They are interpreted as definite nominals instead, cf. (23a). In order to be interpreted within the scope of negation they have to be accompanied by a negative pronoun zaden 'no', cf. (23b). In the context of clausemate negation the indefinite pronoun is not licit and a negative pronoun has to be used instead. Negative pronouns are discussed in detail in later chapters.

Chapter 1

13

(23)a.

Firma me zacz^la tu budowy. finn-NOM NEG begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-GEN 'The company didn't begin building work here.' b. Zadna firma me zacz^la tu budowy. no finn-NOM NEG begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-GEN 'No company began building work here.'

Regarding the third observation, note that -as s h o w in (22c) above- indefinite pronouns within the scope of negation lead to ungrammaticality. Negative pronouns have to be used instead (cf. footnote 8). However, on the other hand, it is certainly not the case that indefinite pronouns can never occur in negative sentences. If this were true, example(24) from Grzegorczykowa (1972:80) would have to be ungrammatical which is not. The decisive point is that in (24) the indefinite pronoun is interpreted as specific, that is, as outside the scope of negation (cf. 'wide scope existentials'). Similarly in(25)-(26) from Kawinska (1980:122f.) the indefinites are interpreted as specific, more precisely as a kind of partitive indefinite (some X of a contextually specified set) in (25) and as specific in sense of 'the speaker has (a specific referent) in mind' in (26). (24)

Ojciec czegos nie przywiozl z Krakowa. father something NEG bring-3.SG.PAST from Cracow 'The father did not bring something from Cracow.' meaning: 'There is something the father did not bring from Cracow.'

(25)

Jakis student nie zjawil si? na kolokwium: mialo ich bye trzynastu, a przepytalam tylko dwunastu. some student NEG turn up-3.SG.PAST REFL for colloquium: should3.SG.NEUTR.PAST them be-INF thirteen, but examine-l.SG.FEM.PAST only twelve 'A/some student didn't turn up for the colloquium: there were to be thirteen of them and I examined only twelve.'

(26)

Ktos czegos nie pil wczorajszej nocy, i nawet wiem, kto i czego, ale nie powiem. somebody something NEG drink-3.SG.PAST last night, and even knowl.SG.PRES who and what but NEG tell-l.SG.FUT 'Somebody didn't drink something last night, and I even know who it was and what he did not drink, but I won't tell.'

Finally, let us come to the last (fourth) observation, namely that there are indefinite nominals that can never be specific. This appears to be true for -kolwiek type pronouns ('any'-type) which cannot occur in episodic sentences in contrast with normal indefinite

Introduction

14

pronouns of jakis-type ('some'-type), cf. (27). However, they are acceptable in modal contexts, e.g. with a modal verb expressing possibility as in (28) or with an imperative as in (29). (27)a.

Wczoraj Basia obrazilakogos. yesterday Basiainsult-3.SG.FEM.PAST someone 'Yesterday Basia insulted someone.' b. * Wczoraj Basia obiazila kogokolwiek. yesterday Basia insult-3.SG.FEM.PAST anyone

(28)

To moze zrobic ktokolwiek. this can do-INF anyone 'Anyone can do this.'

(29)

Zostaw te klucze u kogokolwiek w bibliotece. leave-2.SG.IMP these keys at anyone in library 'Leave these keys with someone / anyone in the library.'

Another group of indefinites that cannot be interpreted specifically are interrogative pronouns functioning as indefinite pronouns (in colloquial language); (the so-called 'bare whindefinites': jaki 'which', kto 'who', co 'what', etc.). There is a 'positional' restriction imposed on such indefinites, to wit, they are illicit in the sentence initial position, cf. the contrast in (30). Notice that no similar ban is observed in the case of normal indefinite pronouns, that is, the latter are not restricted to non-initial positions. (30)a.

Wejdzie kto / ktos do pokoju i.... enter-3.SG.FUT WH-indef/ someone to room and ... 'Someone will enter the room and ....' b. *Kto /ktos wejdzie do pokoju i.... WH-indef / someone enter-3.SG.FUT to room and ... 'Someone will enter the room and ...'

In addition to this structural restriction, 'bare wh-indefinites' are also banned from 'specific contexts', that is contexts entailing or presupposing the existence of a referent of a given nominal phrase.9 Thus, 'bare wh-indefinites' are acceptable in modal or future contexts, and in imperatives, cf. (31), however, they are banned from past tense contexts, cf. (32).

Haspelmath (1993) defines 'specific contexts' as past tense and ongoing present contexts.

Chapter 1

(31)

15

Daj mi tam jak^ ksi^zk?. give-2.SG.IMP me emp particle WH-indef book 'Give me some book (or other).'

(32) * Wczoraj wszedl kto do pokoju. yesterday enter-3.SG.PAST WH-indef to room 'Yesterday someone entered the room.' In (32), the occurrence of the wh-indefinite pronoun in a postverbal position does not save the example from ungrammaticality. In other words, it is not only the positional requirement that governs the acceptability of such wh-indefinites. It seems that such bare indefinites require the presence of some operator in whose scope they are interpreted. That this explanation might be on the right track is supported by examples like (33) below where the bare wh-indefinite seems to be licensed within the scope of the universal quantifier, thus receiving a necessarily non-specific reading (see Carlson et al. 1995 for the observation that bound variable/indefinites are necessarily non-specific). (33)

Kazdy, kto majak^ ide?, niech si? zglosi do mnie. everyone who have-3.SG.PRES WH-indef idea should REFL come and talk to me 'Everyone who has some idea should come and talk to me / should see me.'

1.3 .3 Possible accounts: two major approaches (Heim 1982, Diesing 1992) The discussion in sections 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 leads to two major conclusions. Firstly, there is an asymmetry between a preverbal and a postverbal position as far as the interpretation of nomináis is concerned. In a preverbal position a nominal is normally interpreted as definite or specific. This is why nomináis occurring in this position must be explicitly marked with a pronominal determiner in order to escape the definite interpretation, recall examples (20) and (23). This might also be the reason why indefinites that are inherently non-specific, e.g. bare wh-indefinites (but see Chapter 5, in. 15), are banned from the initial position.10 Notice that the explanation of the ban of bare wh-indefinites from the initial position in terms of 'the danger of being mistaken for wh-interrogative pronouns' cannot be the whole story. Questions differ from declarative clauses in their prosodic properties, thus a bare wh-indefinite even if occurring in the sentence initial position should not be mistaken for awh-word unless a special interrogative prosody is used. A supporting piece of evidence for this hypothesis comes from languages such as Chinese which is a language without an overt wh-movement (i.e., a 'whin-situ' language) and which also uses bare wh-indefinites. As reported by Haspelmath (1993:168), only intonation disambiguates the two superficially identical sentences, cf. (i). The stress is also used to disambiguate sentences with bare wh-indefinites in Korean. The same holds

Introduction

16

Secondly, indefinite, but not definite nominals can have different interpretations depending on the context in which they occur, recall (26). In contrast with definite nominals which display a scope insensitive reading, indefinite nominals may have different scope readings. In some cases they are forced to take the narrowest scope, but in some other cases they may be interpreted as specific indefinites with wide scope. Some indefinites seem to lack completely the specific interpretation, that is, such indefinites are basically interpreted within the scope of some other operator. The interpretative variability of indefinites suggests that indefinites should be treated as free variables. This, in fact, seems to be the most promising account. I present the main tenets of such an account in the next subsection. 1.3.3.1 Indefinites as variables (Heim 1982 The idea that indefinites might be treated as variables was elaborated independently by Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982) and was directed against the standard view of indefinites in formal semantics.12 In the eighties the prevailing view of indefinites was namely that they are existential quantifiers (cf. Montague 1974, Barwise and Cooper 1981). However, in the Kamp-Heim view all indefinites are nonquantificational expressions, they merely introduce a variable that is bound by an external quantificational force together with the restriction of this variable. In Heim's words What appears to be the quantificational force of an indefinite is always contributed by either a different expression in the indefinite's linguistic environment, or by an interpretative principle that is not tied to the lexical meaning of any particular expression at all. [Heim (1988:122)]

This view might help to explain the quantificational variability of indefinites: their actual interpretation (quantificational force) depends on what quantificational operator happens to be around (the 'chameleon-like' behavior, cf. Heim 1988:127). Thus in a sentence like for Ancient Greek interrogative tis 'who?'(always stressed) and the indefinite tis 'someone' (always unstressed); cf. Haspelmath (1993:168). (i) a. Ta ba shenme shu diu le? she ACC what book throw PERF 'What books did she throw away?' b. Ta ba shenme shu diu le. she ACC what book throw PERF 'She threw away a certain book.' [Tsai (1990:41), cited from Haspelmath (1993:168)] The aim of this section is just to present some ideas or possible approaches without going into all details, complications and problems connected with them The ideas briefly introduced in this section will be taken up later in this investigation, all necessary details will be thus provided at appropriate points in the text. See van Geenhoven (1998) for a recent, very detailed discussion on indefinites, reviewing most of the relevant literature.

Chapter 1

17

(34a) below the indefinite expression is claimed to take its quantificational force from the adverb usually. In a donkey-type sentence like (35a) below both free variables introduced by indefinite expressions are bound by the quantificational adverb always.13 Heim builds here on Lewis' (1975) analysis of 'adverbs of quantification' as 'unselective quantifiers'. The term 'unselective quantifiers' is intended to mean that such quantifiers in contrast with 'selective quantifiers' bind not just one particular variable, on the contrary, they might bind simultaneously an unlimited number of variables. Both in Lewis' and Heim's analyses, the quantificational adverb (or any other operator) takes two sentential arguments: the restrictive clause ('restictor') (expressed by the ¡/-clause) whose semantic role is to restrict the domain of quantification, and the matrix clause (also called 'nuclear scope'), cf.(34b) and (35b). (34)a. b.

A contrabassonist usually plays too loudly. USUALLY x [contrabassonist (x)] [play-too-loudly (x)] restrictive clause

(35)a. b.

nuclear scope

If a man owns a donkey he always beats it. ALWAYS x, y [man (x) & donkey (y) & own (x, y)] [beat (x, y)] restrictive clause

nuclear scope

In some cases there is no visible candidate for a quantificational force in a sentence (be it an adverb of quantification or a nominal quantifier), e.g. in the simple conditional sentence (36) below. In order to maintain her assumption that indefinites are just variables and that their apparent quantificational force is due to some other element in their environment, Heim is forced to say that such sentences in fact contain an invisible necessity operator and that this operator is the source of universal force of the indefinite in (36); cf. Heim (1988:169ff). (36)a. b.

If a donkey kicks John, he beats it. Dxi [donkey(xi) & kick (x b John2)] [beat(he2, iti)]14

The same manoeuvre is also used in the case of generic sentences with so-called 'generic indefinites'. Thus in (37) we observe the familiar scenario: though there is no visible source of quantification force, the indefinite seems to be interpreted with quasi-universal force. As

For problems of the Kamp/Heim view of indefinites for donkey-sentences and possible solutions see among others Kadmon (1987), Kamp and Reyle (1993), de Hoop (1992),Kratzer (1995), van Geenhoven (1998) and the references cited there. I ignore here the problems of anaphoric relations, indicating here by means of the same ' referential index ' ; cf. Heim ( 198 8:13 2ff).

Introduction

18

in (36) it is an invisible operator (here: an invisible Generic operator15) that does the job: it unselectively binds the variable introduced by the indefinite expression providing it with a necessary quantificational force. (37)a. b.

A catthathas been exposed to 2,4-D goes blind. GENX [cat (x) & exposed-to-2,4-D(x)] [go-blind(x)]

(Heim 1988:191)

This assumption allows Heim to account in an elegant way for 'generic indefinites' which presented a problem for the advocates of the 'quantificational approach to indefinites' as they were forced to say that the generic interpretation is a separate reading of the indefinite article, i.e., a reading distinct from the existential-quantifier interpretation. What about the existential interpretation of indefinites? Thus far we have seen that indefinites can be unselectively bound by some operator and that they may therefore show quantificational variability, but we do not know yet how the existential interpretation comes about. What we know is that indefinites can be existentially interpreted -in fact this is the most natural interpretation for them. In Heim's analysis a rule of Existential Closure is the sought-after mechanism. It comes in two subrules intended to account for the two possible conditions under which indefinites receive existential interpretation. The first of them takes care of indefinites in unembedded sentences; it requires simply that the existential quantifier be adjoined at the text level to a (sequence of) sentence(s); cf. (38) (cf. Heim 1988:140). The purpose of the second subrule is to account for the existential reading of indefinites occurring in the scope of a quantifier, but not in the restrictive term, cf. (39). According to this rule, an existential quantifier is adjoined to the nuclear scope of every quantifier, existentially closing off the nuclear scope, thus preventing the occurrence of unbound variables, cf. (39b) (cf. Heim 1988:138). (38)a. b. (39)a. b.

He went to a restaurant. It was expensive. 3xi ((restraunt(xi) & went-to (x2, x t )) & expensive(xi))16 Every man saw a cat. Vx [man(x)] 3y[cat (y) & saw (x,y)]

Heim (1988:139f.) Heim (1988:136ff)

With Heim's analysis in hand we have an account for the observed quantificational variability of indefinites. The mechanism of Existential Closure offers in addition a convenient device for ensuring the existential interpretation. But this is not yet sufficient to capture all the facts observed in section 1.3.2, especially the specific reading of indefinites

See Heim (1988:192ff) for some ideas as to what the actual meaning of such invisible generic operator may be like. A detailed discussion of the interpretation of the generic operator is offered in Carlson and Pelletier (1995, Ch. 1). Notice that Heim treats pronouns (and in fact definite NPs too) as variables. Every NP is assigned a referential index, cf. Heim (1988:132). See also footnote 14.

Chapter 1

19

and the 'asymmetry' in the interpretation of nominal phrases with respect to their pre- or postverbal position in a clause. The analysis of Diesing (1992) brings us a step forward towards an explanation. 1.3.3.2 The Mapping Hypothesis (Diesing 1992) Diesing's analysis builds on the ideas introduced in the previous section, especially on the view that the logical representation of a sentence has a form of a tripartite structure, that is, it consists of an operator, a restrictive clause (restricting the domain the quantifier operates on) and the nuclear scope, recall the representations in (34b) and (35b). It is proposed that there is a link between the syntactic representation and the semantic representation. This takes the form of a 'mapping procedure' which splits the syntactic tree into two parts which correspond to the two parts distinguished in the logical representation: the material from VP is mapped into the nuclear scope, and the material from IP is mapped into a restrictive clause (cf. Diesing 1992: lOfi), cf. (40). (40)

Mapping Hypothesis (tree splitting)

piesing (1992:9)]

IP restrictive clause

nuclear scope

A rule of Existential Closure always applies at the level of nuclear scope. In terms of the syntactically 'split' tree, this means that only indefinites occurring within VP at the level at which the mapping procedure takes place can be existentially closed, i.e., existentially interpreted. With this assumption, we have an explanation of the asymmetry in the interpretation of nominal phrases discussed earlier in the text. If VP is indeed the level at which an implicit existential quantifier is introduced with the aim of binding the yet unbound variables it is immediately clear why nominals remaining in the VP receive (or tend to) an existential interpretation. This may also be seen as the reason why nominal phrases in a preverbal position require a special pronominal marking (by means of an indefinite pronoun) to prevent the quasi-default definite interpretation, recall example (20). This pronominal marking could potentially be treated as a signal that the nominal phrase in question has to 'be reconstructed back at LF' into its VP-internal position in order to be

20

Introduction

existentially bound. While this assumption is certainly not flawless and presumably not entirely correct (and we will see later on that indeed it is not), we may take it as a starting point for the explanation of what is actually going on in Polish. Questions remain to be answered concerning other readings for indefinites. If an existential reading of indefinites is due to Existential Closure taking place at VP, how do other readings of indefinites such as a specific or wide scope reading or a partitive reading (not to mention the immediate scope reading discussed in the literature17) come about? We are faced with a kind of dilemma: on the one hand we observe that indefinites seem to be able to take a wide scope reading, but on the other hand the twin assumptions that indefinites are always nonquantificational elements, i.e., variables, and that the Existential Closure that prevents the occurrence of unbound variables is restricted to the level of VP force us to the conclusion that indefinites should never be able to receive a wide scope reading or any interpretation other than the existential one. One possible way out of this problem is to give up the assumption that indefinites are always nonquantificational elements. Instead, indefinites might be ambiguous between indefinite descriptions without quantificational force (i.e., variables in Heim's sense) and indefinite descriptions with quantificational force (i.e., existential quantifiers in a traditional sense).18 This is precisely the assumption Diesing (1992) makes. Only nonquantificational elements can remain within VP at the time the mapping procedure takes place, i.e., only the first type of indefinites (variables) can receive a pure existential interpretation. All quantificational elements on the other hand (including indefinite descriptions that are existential quantifiers) have to be interpreted outside the VP at LF, i.e., they form a restrictive clause. The distinction Diesing makes between quantificational and nonquantificational elements is based on the contrast between the so-called 'weak' and 'strong' determiners (and by extension 'weak' and 'strong' NPs) observed by Milsark (1974). According to Milsark, the former are interpreted nonquantificationally as cardinality predicates, whereas the latter receive a quantificational interpretation. The term 'strong' NPs is used as a cover term for all kinds of NPs that are not interpreted weakly, i.e., existentially. This includes NPs interpreted specifically, partitively, genetically or presuppositionally (see however van Geenhoven 1998 and McNally and van Geenhoven 1998 for criticism). Assuming two parameters: (i) [± quantificational force] (i.e., whether or not the NP has a determiner which functions as an operator) and (ii) [± QR] (i.e., whether or not the NP undergoes QR) -whereby it is claimed that "there is a close connection between the presuppositionality of an NP and the obligatoriness of QR"- Diesing arrives at the following taxonomy of indefinites:

See among others Farkas (1981), Ruys (1992), Abusch (1994), Reinhart (1995), van Geenhoven (1998) and the references cited there for a discussion of problems caused by immediate scope readings of indefinites and for solutions proposed to account for such problems. See however Abusch (1994) and van Geenhoven (1998) among others for criticism of this view.

Chapter 1

21

(41) Generic Q-force? no QR? yes

3 Closure Presuppositional no yes no yes

To summarize, such a joint Heim-Diesing approach may be used to account at first approximation for the observations discussed in sections 1.3.1 and 1.3.2. It helps to sort things out and to reach first conclusions about the behavior of nominal phrases in a clause. A nice aspect of such a joint approach is that it takes into consideration the relevance of the position of a nominal phrase for its interpretation, thus the semantic and syntactic aspects of NP interpretation are interrelated. This corresponds to our initial hypothesis that there is an interaction between nominals and the clause. How can we approach the problem of interaction between nominals and the clause? In the next section I show three puzzles each of them could in principle be used as a starting point for the analysis since they are closely related to each other, thus dealing with one of them necessarily leads to the others. The puzzles in question are: (i) the problem of subjects in negated sentences, (ii) 'Genitive subjects' in negated existential sentences, and (iii) the problem of n-words. In this study it is the last puzzle that is chosen as a starting point. The other puzzles, though not completely ignored, will be dealt with only marginally. This investigation will thus be a kind of route we will follow in order to solve this particular puzzle. Each station on this route (i.e., each chapter) will -hopefully- bring us closer to this hidden solution. Having solved this puzzle, we will hopefully gain more insight into the initial problems, i.e., the problem of DP in Polish and the problem of the syntactic structure of a clause in Polish. In the long term, the result of the present study will set a basis in virtue of which the other problems, in particular the problem of 'Genitive subjects' in existential sentences can be (re-)considered (see Chapter 6). So let us move on to the puzzles.

1.4 The puzzles 1.4.1 The problem of subjects in negated sentences The first puzzle concerns the interpretation of subjects in a preverbal position. We have already seen that they are preferably interpreted as definite or specific and that a special pronominal marking is required on a subject DP in a preverbal position in order to prevent its default definite interpretation, cf. (20) repeated here as (42).

Introduction

22

(42)a.

Jakas firma zacz^la tu budow?. some finn-NOM begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-ACC 'A company began building here.' b. Firma zacz^la tu budow^. firm-NOM begin-3.SG.PAST here building work-ACC 'The company began building here.'

The next question will be to ask what happens in the case of negated sentences, i.e., how a preverbal subject DP is interpreted in this case. What we observed is the following: a preverbal subject DP is interpreted as definite, i.e., as known from the previous or actual context, or as specific. In other words, what we get is an interpretation outside the scope of negation, cf. (43) and (44). (43)

Poci^g me przyjechal od czterech godzin. train-NOM NEG come-3.SG.PAST for four hours 'The train didn't arrive for four hours.'

(44)

Lekarz me pojawil si? wczoraj w szpitalu. doctor-NOM NEG appear-3.SG.PAST REFL yesterday in hospital 'The doctor didn't appear in the hospital yesterday.'

However, there are a few cases in which the bare subject nominal phrase, i.e., one not accompanied by any pronominal determiner, seems to be interpreted within the scope of negation, contrary to what we have just said, cf. (45).19 (45)

Rozwi^zanie tego problemu me istnieje. solution-NOM this-GEN problem-GEN NEG exist-3.SG.PRES 'A solution to this problem doesn't exist.' (meaning: 'There is no solution to this problem.')

Thus the puzzling question is why in some cases a preverbal bare subject allows for an interpretation within the scope of negation whereas in majority of other cases it is Such examples are dealt with among others by Uribe-Echevarría (1994:42fí). It is argued there that in cases like (45) "the preverbal indefinite has to reconstruct at LF in order to be in a strict sisterhood relation with the bleached predicate and form a complex predicate with it" (p. 49). This assumption is supported by the fact that in the cases at hand it is possible to use Negative Polarity Items within a relative clause or PP modifying the indefinite (Negative Polarity Items have to be licensed, i.e., c-commanded by negation), cf. (i) (Uribe-Echevarria 1994:43) (see section 1.4.3; cf. also Chapter 4, section 4.3.1). (i) a. A solution to this problem doesn't exist. b. ? A solution to any of these problems doesn't exist.

Chapter 1

23

interpreted outside the scope of negation. What makes these two cases different? Is there a syntactic difference between them in terms of different structures involved or are the resulting different interpretations due to some distinctive properties of the nomináis in question? Next, we want to know how an existential interpretation of the subject DP within the scope of negation may be obtained. Given what we said in the preceding sections about the relevance of the word order and pronominal marking for the interpretation of nomináis, we would predict two things to happen. Firstly, by putting a bare subject nominal phrase into a postverbal position -which should be allowed given the free word order in Polish- we would expect to be able to produce the required result: a subject nominal phrase should receive an existential interpretation. In Diesing's terms, it should be existentially closed off provided that it is interpreted as a free variable. Secondly, we would expect that the use of the pronominal marking in form of an indefinite pronoun would rescue the indefinite/existential interpretation of a given subject nominal phrase within the scope of negation. The latter prediction is clearly not borne out. As pointed out in section 1.3.2, an indefinite pronoun in negated sentences either causes ungrammaticality or is interpreted as a specific indefinite taking scope over negation, recall examples (22) and (24), repeated here as (46) and (47). As for the first prediction, the native speakers consulted reluctantly interpret the bare subject nominal phrase as existential within the scope of negation20 (they clearly prefer a variant with a negative pronoun, see below). Notice that in these examples unaccusative verbs of appearance are used, for which we independently know that the favoured word order is VS, cf. section 1.2.2. In the case of transitive verbs with a postponed subject, the construction is clearly marked and the subject typically receives a contrastive interpretation.21 (46) * Nie konsultowalem z jakims lekarzem. NEG consult-1. SG. PAST REFL with some doctor (intended: 'I didn't consult a (any) doctor.') (47)ok

Ojciec czegos nie przywiózl z Krakowa. father something NEG bring-3.SG.PAST from Cracow 'The father did not bring something from Cracow.'

* NOT > SOME

^ SOME > NOT

Some speakers had difficulties with the inteipretation of such sentences altogether (in most cases they were unable to decide what is the actual interpretation of the subject). Yet other speakers found these sentences as such somewhat strange. as in e.g. (i). Other interpretations are not excluded, though admittedly more marked, (i) Zakupy zrobila BASIA (a nie Ania). shopping do-3.SG.FEM.PAST Basia (and not Ania) 'It was Basia and not Ania who did the shopping.'

24

Introduction

meaning: 'There is something the father did not bring from Cracow.' (48)

Od czterech godzin nie przyjechal poring. for four hours NEG arrive-3.SG.PAST train-NOM

(49)

Wczoraj w szpitalu nie pojawil si? lekaiz. yesterday in hospital NEG appear-3.SG.PAST doctor-NOM

What is then the normal way of marking nominal phrases for the existential/indefinite interpretation within the scope of negation or ensuring such an interpretation? There are two possibilities that can be used here, to wit (i) existential constructions with genitive subjects and (ii) pronominal marking in form of negative pronouns (so-called nwords). The following subsections take a closer look at them.

1.4.2

'Genitive subjects' in existential sentences

As illustrated in (50) below in a negated existential sentence the subject obligatorily appears in Genitive. The verb 'be' takes the default form (3.SG.NEUTR). (50)

Od czterech godzin nie bylo (zadnego) poci^gu / *(zaden) poring. for four hours NEG be-3.SG.NEUTR PAST (no) train-GEN / *(no) train-NOM 'There was no train for four hours.'

Notice that in existential constructions a Genitive subject does not require a pronominal marking in form of a negative pronoun. That is, even without such a marking, Genitive subjects in existential constructions receive a clear existential interpretation within the scope of negation (but see (56a) below). The question arises as to what it is that makes such constructions special. What guarantees the existential interpretation of the subject nominal phrase? Why does the subject occur in Genitive? At least three possible answers come to mind. 1.4.2.1 The existential predicate

hypothesis

Firstly, we observe that there is a close connection between existential constructions with the verb 'be' and other constructions involving verbs of existence or appearance as far as the interpretation of the subject nominal phrase is concerned. In both of them the subject receives an existential interpretation, cf. (45). This leads us to expect that it is the special type of 'existential predicates' that provides the nominal phrase with an existential interpretation. However, complications arise as soon as negated variants of such constructions are taken into consideration. Only in negated existential constructions with 'be' does the subject nominal phrase appear in Genitive. No other predicate of existence or appearance

Chapter 1

25

(which may also be understood in a broader sense as a predicate of existence, to wit of coming into existence) takes in its negated variant a Genitive subject. The subject is marked for Nominative in such cases, cf. (45), (48) or (49). Assuming that predicates of existence or appearance belong to the class of unaccusative verbs, the subject nominal phrase in question is in fact the underlying internal argument. Thus, the natural assumption would be that it is the fact that such nominals are basegenerated in the internal argument positions which make them prone to the existential interpretation. The existential interpretation would thus be the result of a sort of incorporation of the internal argument into the verb of existence (cf. van Geenhoven 1998). However, if existential constructions with 'be' behaved in the same way as unaccusative predicates of existence or appearance do, there should be no difference between them in negated sentences. In other words, both of them should either take a Genitive subject or in both of them the subject should appear in Nominative. While this prediction is fulfilled for Russian which allows Genitive subjects not only with the existential verb 'be' but also with other existentials and unaccusative predicates, it does not work in Polish where only the former, but not the latters allows for Genitive subjects under negation. Why should Polish be different in this respect from Russian? Does it mean that the existential 'be' in Polish is different from other unaccusative verbs after all? But if it is not an unaccusative predicate, what is it then and how does the existential interpretation come about? 1.4.2.2 Existential 'be' as a copula 'be' Here we come to the second possible assumption, namely: the existential 'be' is nothing but a meaningless copular verb. In this sense, existential constructions are treated in a parallel fashion to copular sentences (cf. Freeze 1992, Moro 1993, 1997, Zamparelli 1995 among others): in both cases the copular 'be' is a semantically empty element that takes a smallclause. In the simplest version of this hypothesis, an existential sentence is just an inverse copular construction. In other words, what is the subject in a normal copular sentence appears to be a nominal predicate in an existential sentence, cf. (51). (5 l)a.

Ksi^zka jest na stole. book-NOM be-3.SG.PRES on table 'The book is on the table.' b. Na stole j est ksiqzka. on table be-3.SG.PRES book-NOM 'There is a book on the table.'

A nice pay-off of such an assumption is that it provides an explanation of why the subject in an existential sentence must be indefinite: it is indefinite since it is just a nominal predicate (and nominal predicates are taken to be realized syntactically as NPs, but not as DPs; cf. among others Stowell 1989, Hudson 1989, Longobardi 1994, Zamparelli 1995).

Introduction

26

One might buy this as an explanation of the so-called 'definiteness' restriction in existential sentences (see however McNally and van Geenhoven 1998), but it is not obvious that is really explains where the existential interpretation come from. Another complication arises when one takes into account differences between 'true' copular constructions and the existential ones. So, for instance, in copular constructions the predicate is obligatory, in existential sentences on the other hand it is not, cf. (52). Wiele egzemplarzy tej ksi^zki bylo ?*(w bibliotece).22 many copy-GEN.PL Ihis-GEN.SG book-GEN.SG be-3.SG.NEUTR.PAST (in library) 'Many copies of the book were *(in the library).' b. Bylo wiele egzemplarzy tej ksi^zki (w bibliotece). be-3.SG.NEUTR.PAST many copy-GEN.PL this-GEN.SG book-GEN.SG (in library) 'There were many copies of this book (in the library).'

(52)a.

Furthermore, 'true' copular sentences always show subject-verb agreement both in affirmative and negative variants, cf. (53) and (54). We know however that in negated existential constructions the verbs does not agree with the subject which appears in Genitive, recall (50). (53)a.

Jan jest nauczycielem. Jan-NOM be-3.SG.PRES teacher-INSTR 'Jan is a teacher.' b. Jan me jest nauczycielem. Jan-NOM NEG be-3.SG.PRES teacher-INSTR 'Jan is not a teacher.'

(54)a.

Jan jest w Krakowie. Jan-NOM be-3.SG.PRES in Cracow 'Jan is in Cracow.' b. Jan nie jest w Krakowie. Jan-NOM NEG be-3.SG.PRES in Cracow 'Jan is not in Cracow.'

Thus it seems that existential constructions may be not identified with copular constructions. If so, we still do not have an account of existential constructions, more importantly of the problem of how the existential interpretation comes about (and of course The default form of the verb and the Genitive form of the noun 'copies' is due to the presence of the quantifier 'many' in the sentence.

27

Chapter 1

why the subject in negated existential sentences appears in Genitive). So let us try a third explanation. 1.4.2.3 A Heim-Diesing

approach

The third possible explanation would be based on the Heim-Diesing assumptions. Thus, a subject nominal phrase in existential constructions is treated as a variable (i.e., as a Heimnian indefinite) that gets existentially bound via the mechanism of Existential Closure which in turn applies at the level of VP. This assumption as such does not provide yet any explanation of why the subject appears in Genitive. What it does however is to provide an explanation of the asymmetry in the interpretation of a given subject NP. This is illustrated in the examples below. As expected, a bare Nominative subject NP is interpreted as definite, i.e., outside the scope of negation, cf. (55a). The existential construction with the 'Genitive subject' (cf. (55b,c)) allows for the existential interpretation of a given NP within the scope of negation. In other words, nothing surprising happens. However, as shown in (56), a bare 'Genitive subject' NP in a preverbal position is preferably interpreted as definite/specific again. (55)a.

Lekarz nie jest we wsi. doctor NEG be-3.SG.PRES in village 'The doctor is not in the village.' b. We wsi nie ma (zadnego) lekarza.23 in village NEG have-3.PS.SG.PRES (no-GEN) doctor-GEN ' There is no doctor in the village.' c. Nie ma (zadnego) lekarza we wsi. NEG have-3.PS.SG.PRES (no-GEN) doctor-GEN in village 'There is no doctor in the village.'

(5 6) a.

Lekarza nie ma we wsi. doctor-GEN NEG have-3.PS.SG.PRES in village 'The/a doctor is not in the village.' b. Zadnego lekarza nie ma we wsi. no-GEN doctor-GEN NEG have-3.PS.SG.PRES in village 'There is no doctor in the village.'

Thus, it seems that the assumption that the mechanism of Existential Closure takes place at the VP-level may turn out to be relevant here.24 Notice that when a negative pronoun is

Notice that in negated existential sentences in Presence instead of the verb be the verb have is used.

Introduction

28

used (cf. (56b)), even a 'preverbal' Genitive subject NP is interpreted within the scope of negation. This latter observations leads us directly to the next puzzle, to wit to the puzzle of n-words in negative sentences.

1.4.3

The problem of n-words in Polish

As observed in the last section, the use of a pronominal marking in form of a negative pronoun (henceforth n-word) ensures the interpretation of a given NP within the scope of negation. The question that immediately arises is whether there is any connection between 'Genitive subjects' in negated existential constructions and n-words. If 'Genitive subjects' were to be explained with help of the mechanism of Existential Closure, could the very same mechanism be used as an explanation of the interpretation of such n-words? There is a clear distributional difference between 'Genitive subjects' and n-words. The former concerns only the underlying internal argument of the existential 'be'. N-words, however, are not restricted to existential constructions. Nor are they restricted to internal argument positions, cf. (57). (57)

Nigdy *(nie) dostaiam od nikogo zadnych prezentow. never NEG got-l.PS from no one no presents 'I have never got any gifts from anyone.'

And here precisely we approach the problem of the analysis of such elements in Polish. If were to analyze n-words in a similar manner to existential Genitive subjects, i.e., by means of the mechanism of Existential Closure, we would have to assume that n-words are nothing but Negative Polarity Items (= NPIs) (i.e., elements whose distribution is limited to negative contexts, see Chapter 3 and the following for details) understood here as indefinites in the sense of Heim (1982). As Heimian indefinites they would not have a quantification a) force of their own. They would merely introduce a variable and and a predicative condition that has to be met by that variable. In order to be licensed, this variable would have to be bound by an appropriate operator. As NPIs they would always be interpreted in the scope of the licensing operator, here negation. These both components taken together would give us the sought-after licensing mechanism, namely the mechanism of Existential Closure in the scope of negation. However, appealing as this assumption might be, it immediately encounters several problems. The most important problems are of the distributional kind. Firstly, we would expect that if n-words were NPIs they should always occur in the scope of negation. In

24

The mechanism of .Existential Closure (or the modified version of it, "negative closure of events") is used, e.g., by Brown (1996, 1999) andBailyn (1997) to analyze the phenomenon of Genitive of Negation in Russian.

Chapter 1

29

other words, we would predict not to find them outside the overt scope of negation, e.g. in a preverbal subject position, just as in the case of English NPIs, cf. (58). Secondly, we would predict to find n-words in all contexts in which NPIs are licensed, e.g. questions, antecedents of conditionals, adversative predicates, etc.; cf. (59) and (60). (5 8)

* Anyone didn't read this paper.

(59)

Have anyone read this paper?

(60)

If anyone read this paper, I will be surprised.

However, none of these expectations is fulfilled. (61) shows that an n-word may occur in a preverbal subject position. (62) and (63) on the other hand show that n-words are not licensed in any other negative polarity environments but negative sentences. (61)

Nikt nie przeczytal tego artykulu. nobody NEG read-3.SG.PAST this paper-GEN 'Nobody read this paper.'

(62)

* Czy przeczytal nikt ten artykul? whether read-3.SG.PAST nobody this paper-ACC

(63)

* Jesli nikt przeczytal ten artykul, b^d? zdziwiona. if nobody read-3.SG.PAST this paper-ACC be- l.SG.FUT surprised

This does not mean that we have to give up our initial hypothesis that n-words are NPIs analyzed in sense of Heimian indefinites. In the next section, I will briefly show what we may do about this.

1.5 Sketch of the analysis To recapitulate the facts: We started with the observation that in negated sentences a preverbal 'bare' subject NP is normally interpreted as definite or specific, i.e., outside the scope of negation. Then we asked how an indefinite/existential interpretation of a subject NP within scope of negation can be obtained. We observed that there are two means that serve this purpose, namely existential constructions with a 'Genitive subject' and the use of n-words. Next, we saw that there may be reasons to believe that the existential interpretation of 'Genitive subjects' is due to the mechanism of Existential Closure. This led us to the hypothesis that n-words may be accounted for in a similar way. To this end we

30

Introduction

assumed that n-words are in fact NPIs analyzed as indefinites in the sense of Heim. However, we saw that there are arguments that speak against this assumption. Our first task would be then to show that these arguments are in fact not counterarguments at all. A thorough discussion of the arguments cited in the literature against treating n-words as NPIs with a simultaneous examination of crosslinguistic facts will serve this purpose. In the next step, the distribution of n-words will be subjected to a detailed examination. What is sought is firstly, the answer to the question of why n-words do not occur in other negative polarity environments except for negative sentences, and secondly the answer to the question of what kind of elements occur in all the environments n-words are banned from. More importantly, we want to know how these other elements -non-n-words- are to be analyzed. If they happen to be NPIs, then we have to come up with an explanation of what makes nwords different from non-n-words. The more general question is as follows: Is it possible to offer a unified account of indefinites in Polish, say in terms of Heimian indefinites, that is nevertheless flexible enough to capture the differences between them? Or do normal indefinites, n-words and other NPIs require each a separate account? This investigation is dedicated to answering these questions.

1.6 The way in which this dissertation is organized An attentive reader may probably have already noticed that this dissertation is not devoted to a specific semantic or syntactic theory. On the contrary, it makes use of different theoretical approaches. The interesting question is thus not how a problem P can be explained or described in a framework Y, but what can theories X, Y, and Z contribute to the understanding of the problem P. In this sense, what this investigation does is to test different theories for their contribution to the problem of the interplay between indefinites and negation, as one aspect of the broader question of the interaction between nominals and the clause. Since the main focus lies of negation, chapter 2 takes up the structure of negative sentences in Polish. The aim is to establish how sentential negation is realized and what the position of the negative marker is relative to other major constituents of the clause. The most important question is what syntactic consequences result from the way sentential negation is realized. The subject of chapter 3 are n-words in Polish. It starts with a short etymological note, then it turns to the problem of the distribution of n-words in Polish in comparison with other languages that have Negative Concord. Apart from a general discussion of problems of Negative Concord, this chapter presents several approaches to n-words from the perspective of their suitability for Polish facts. The analyses discussed are: (i) the NEGCriterion analysis (cf. Haegeman and Zanuttini 1991, Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1995), (ii) Giannakidou's (1998) analysis of n-words as universal quantifiers sensitive to negative

Chapter 1

31

polarity, and (iii) the analysis of n-words in terms of indefinites (cf. Ladusaw 1992, 1995, Acquaviva 1993, Giannakidou 1997). Chapter 4 presents an analysis of n-words in terms of NPIs. It discusses arguments in favor of treating n-words as NPIs and points out problems resulting from this assumption. It proposes a binding analysis as a way of accounting for the complementary distribution of nwords and non-words. The chapter ends with a presentation of problems of a binding approach. Chapter 5 takes up the problematic side of the binding analysis as a starting point for looking for alternative accounts. The aim of this chapter is to find an explanation for the complementary distribution of n-words and non-n-words. It concentrates on the semantic properties of licensing environments and tries to find out what is the exact semantic property n-words and non-n-words are sensitive to. The relevant notions are here: the 'strength' hierarchy of downward entailing functions, 'antimorphicity' and 'antiverdicality'. Once again the problem of the complementary distribution of n-words and non-n-words are discussed in the light of these notions. Chapter 6 finally summarizes the discussion presented in the preceding chapters. It formulates the main conclusions of the dissertation as well the main 'open ends'.

CHAPTER SECOND: Structure of negative sentences

2.1

Introduction

The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, it reviews the leading approaches to negation, focusing on the question of the representation of negation in the clausal structure. Second, it aims at establishing the syntactic structure of negative sentences in Polish. The leading questions are (i) whether negation in Polish is syntactically realized via a functional projection, and if so, (ii) what is the position of negation in the syntactic tree. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2.2 presents some typological facts regarding the ways of realization of negation in the languages of the world. Section 2.3 reviews the leading approaches to negation. They may be divided in two main groups: the opponents of the NegP and the adherents of the NegP. The representatives of the former group deny the existence of an independent functional Neg projection, claiming that negation is realized in some other way (e.g., as an adverb, cf. Baker 1991, Ernst 1992). The advocates of the latter group claim that negation is syntactically realized as an independent functional projection, i.e., a NegP. They differ, however, as to the question of what is the exact position of such a NegP in the syntactic tree and how a NegP is realized. This latter question concerns the issue of whether a negative marker (particle) in a given language is the head of a NegP or the specifier of such a projection. The related question is whether both the head and the specifier must be realized. After giving the necessary theoretical background, in section 2.4 I turn to the question of how negation is realized in Polish. Section 2.4.1 povides the basic facts. Section 2.4.2 briefly discusses two negation-related phenomena, i.e., Genitive of Negation and Negative Concord, which have been used as diagnostics for sentential negation in Polish (cf. among others Spiewak and Szymanska 1995, Witkos 1996, 1998, Przepioikowski and Kupsc 1997a, Dziwirek 1998; see also King 1994, 1995, Bailyn 1995, Brown 1996, Brown and Franks 1995, 1997 for Russian). Section 2.4.3 elaborates on the issue of what is the precise

Structure of negative sentences

34

position of negation in the syntactic tree. The subsequent section 2.5 is devoted to the question of whether there is a NegP in Polish. Arguments in favor and against such an assumption are reviewed. The outcome of this discussion is that sentential negation in Polish is syntactically realized as a NegP. The assumptions made in this section will be crucial to the subsequent analysis in the next chapters. The last section (2.7) summarizes the main points.

2.2 Negative sentences from a typological point of view Negation has long been a focus of interest of linguists, logicians, methaphysicians, and philosophers. The history of the study of linguistic negation begins presumably with Plato's "Sophist" (cf. Horn 1989: Iff), where some thought is given to the idea that nonexistent things are real, i.e., they exist: When we say not-being, we speak, I think, not of something that is the opposite of being, but only of something different. ["Sophist" 257B; cited from Horn (1989:5)]

However, it was Aristotle who shifted the locus of the study of negation from pure ontology to the domains of language and logic (cf. Horn 1989:1;6), thus starting the never ending dispute among logicians, linguists and philosophers about the nature of negation and its realization and representation in the language. This dispute is real since No agreement exists as to the possibility of defining negation, as to its logical status, function, and meaning, as to its field of applicability ...., and as to the interpretation of the negative judgement. [Heinemann (1944:135), cited from Horn (1989:1)]

or as Horn accurately notes .... negation is to the linguist and linguistic philosopher as fruit to Tantalus: waving seductively, alluringly palpable, yet just out of reach, within the grasp only to escape once more. [Horn (1989:xiv)]

Maybe it is precisely due to this 'seductive' and 'out-of-reach' nature of negation that it presents such an interesting object of investigation that can be studied from various points of view. Negation has been the favourite topic not only for philosophers and logicians. Language typologists too have been concerned with it.1 Quite a large body of typological

As justification of the claim that negation is an ideal study for typological study may serve a citation form Horn (1998b:552): "Every known human language and no known natural nonhuman communication system contains negative expression; this fact, combined with the mismatch between the logical simplicity of the negation and the complexity and variety of its representation, renders it an ideal subject for typological study."

Chapter 2

35

work on negation now exists, to mention a few: Dahl (1979), Payne (1985), Dryer (1988), Croft (1991), Kahrel and van den Berg (1994), Bernini and Ramat (1996 and the references cited there). Typological studies on negation are of particular interest since they give substantial (almost 'palpable') evidence that the problem is real. Negation (i.e., sentence negation) turns out to be a kind of universal: "every language will have one or more ways of negating the truth of an utterance: It is not the case that P" (Bernini and Ramat 1996:1). In other words ... it is a fact that there is no known language which does not have some means or another of expressing negation. What we are dealing with, then, is a 'pragmatic universal' which is related to the behavioural and cognitive functions encountered in every language (Ramat 1987:48), and which is realized at the discourse level, as is the case with, e.g., interrogatives or imperatives. [Bernini and Ramat (1996:1)]

If it is true that every language has some means of expressing sentential negation, then the question arises as to how negation is realized at the sentence level in structural terms. This is precisely the question I want to examine now. First, I give a brief overview of the existing possibilities of expressing negation from the typological perspective, focusing in particular on the question of what position negation occupies in the syntactic structure. Having given this typological background, I will turn to the existing linguistic accounts of negation.

2.2.1

Different ways of realization of negation

As Bernini and Ramat (1996:7ff) point out, various ways of expressing negation can be found in the languages of the world. Principally, they can be reduced to four basic types. First, a negative verb can take the entire positive clause as its complement, as this is for instance the case with the Tongan negative verb 'ikai, cf. (1)? (1) a.

b.

Na'e 'alu 'a Siale Tongan (Austronesian family) PERF.ASP go ABS Charlie 'Charlie went.' Na'e 'ikai [ F ke 'alu 'a Siale] PERF.ASP NEG ASP go ABS Charlie 'Charlie didn't go.'

Second, negative markers can occupy "a position defined in relation to clause-level constituents, more specifically to the verbal predicate". So for instance, in Somali NEG invariably occurs in the focus part of a sentence, whereby focus is marked by means of a

This and the following examples are cited from Bernini and Ramat (1996:7ff).

Structure of negative sentences

36

special grammatical marker. Note that Somali has a special negative verbal conjugation, cf. (2).

(2) a.

b.

Axmed ima arkin Axmed me.NEG see:NEG.PRET 'Axmed did not see me.' Axmed baan i arkin Axmed NEG.FOC me seefNEG.PRET 'It is not Axmed who saw me.'

Somali (Cushitic family)

Third, negation may be realized as a special (quasi-)auxiliary negative verb which is added to the predicate and which "assumes, or may assume, all or some of the (morphological) properties characteristic of the main semantic verb in the corresponding positive sentence" (cf. Bernini and Ramat 1996:8). The case at hand is e.g. Finnish, cf. (3). (3) a.

b.

En juno kahvia Finnish NEG:1SG drink coffee:PART 'I do not drink coffee.' Emme voineet odottae NEG:1PL be.able:PL.PERF.PARTC wait 'We couldn't wait.'

Fourth, negation may be realized as a bound morpheme within the verbal inflection as in Turkish, cf. (4). (4)

gor-mu-yor-um see-NEG-PRES-1SG 'I don't see.'

Turkish

To put it in more precise terms, sentence negation can be realized as either (i) a constituent morpheme of the verbal complex (or in Dahl's (1979) terms as "a morphological category on verbs"), as a suffix (as in the Turkish example above, cf. (4)) or as a prefix (as e.g. in Berber, cf. (5)), (ii) a clitic (on the verb or separated from the verb by pronominal clitics (as e.g. in Italian, cf. (6)), (iii) a negative auxialiary (cf. the Finnish example (3) above), or (iv) "an adverb-like particle" (cf. Dahl 1979) as e.g. in Swedish, where the negative marker inte behaves like an adverb with respect to its order in

Chapter 2

37

relation to the verb, i.e., it follows the verb in a matrix clause (cf. (7)),3 or in Arabic where the negative particle maa, analyzed as a kind of negative adverb adjoined to TP, does not interact with head categories in a way another negative element laa does, i.e., it does not block V-to-T movement and does not merge with Tense (cf. Ouhalla 1994:49-52); cf. (8). (5)

Ur-ad-y-xdel Mohand dudsha. Berber [Ouhalla (1990:189, (9b)] NEG-will(TNS)-3ms(AGR)-arrive Mohand tomorrow 'Mohand will not arrive tomorrow.'

(6)

Non me l'ha detto. NEG to-me it has said 'He hasn't said that to me.'

Italian [Zanuttini (1991:16, (13b))]

(7)

Jan kopte inte boken. Jan bought NEG the book 'Jan didn't buy the book.'

Swedish [Ouhalla (1990:189)]

(8)

maa tawaqqa'-tu haadaa NEG expect-Is this 'I did not expect this. '

Arabic [Ouhalla (1994:50, (14b))]

Despite this crosslinguistic variability, not all devices for expressing sentence negation are equally frequent. According to Dahl (1979), who examined about 240 languages belonging to all of the world's language families, "NEG is most frequently expressed by either bound morphemes as part of the predicate (45%) or by separate particles (44.9%)" (cited from Bernini and Ramat 1996:11).

2.2.2 Different positions of negation in the clause In the previous subsection we saw that there is much crosslinguistic variation as far as the possibilities of realization sentence negation are concerned. Equal diversity may also be detected with respect to the positions negative markers occupy relative to other clause-level constituents, as shown in Dryer (1988), even if not all conceivable positions of negative

However, in embedded clauses the negative marker precedes the verb (cf. (i)), which is however argued to be due to V-to-C movement in matrix clauses (cf. verb-second-phenomena in Germanic). The verb fails to move to C in embedded clauses, (i) Om Jan inte kopte boken if Jan NEG bought the book(cited from Ouhalla 1990:198, (10b))

Structure of negative sentences

38

markers are equally common. Dryer's findings, based on a sample of 345 languages, can be summarized as follows: (i)

(ii)

(iii)

In SVO languages all four possible subtypes with respect to the position of a negative marker, i.e., NegSVO, SNegVO, SVNegO, and SVONeg, exist. The most common subtype is, however, the SNegVO type, which is represented by 47 languages (whereby the total number of SVO languages in this sample is 67). The most common patterns of negation among SOV languages are SOVNeg and SONegV. However, the other two patterns, i.e., NegSOV and SNegOV are also attested. A different situation arises in verb-initial languages. Dryer finds out that all of the VSO languages in his sample are NegVSO, and all of the VOS languages are NegVOS, which makes him formulate the following universal: "If a language is verb-initial, then the negative will precede the verb" (Dryer 1988:97).4

As shown in the table below, despite the diversity of possible attested patterns of negation across languages, the most common patterns are those in which negation appears in an immediate neighbourhood of the verb (to the right or to the left of the verb). Table 1 : Summary of frequency of different subtypes (Dryer 1988:98) VOS SOV SVO VSO Neg-first uncommon uncommon common common Neg-second uncommon common unattested?5 unattested Neg-third common uncommon unattested unattested common uncommon unattested Neg-fourth unattested However, upon closer examination it turns out that the above characterization about the postions occupied by a negative marker requires further clarification. It has been claimed (cf. e.g., Zanuttini 1991, 1997, Cinque 1997) that negation can occur in several distinct positions in the clause which in some cases can even be realized simultaneously. So e.g.,

He admits, however, that this universal may turn out not to be exceptionless. So e.g. Cariri, an Equatorial language spoken in Brazil, is also a verb-initial language, but the negative marker follows the verb, cf. (i) cited from Dryer (1988:97), who takes himself this example from Adam (1897:29). (i) netso-kie di-de i-na. be.seen-NEG his-mother him-by ' His mother has not been seen by him.' See however remarks in the previous footnote about the possible counterexample.

Chapter 2

39

Zanuttini (1997) argues in her study of negation in Romance that there exist (at least) four distinct positions where NegP can be generated within the clause. Cinque (1997) takes this as evidence for the claim that negation "stands out as rather special among the other functional elements" in that it violates the otherwise rigid hierarchy of functional projections imposed by UG.

2.3 Approaches to negation The two important conclusions from the previous section are: (i) sentence negation can be realized in various ways, i.e., the status of a negative marker may differ in that in some languages it shows head-like properties whereas in others it behaves rather as a phrasal (adverb-like) element, and (ii) the position of negative markers varies across languages (and even in the same language, cf. Cinque 1997), though one can observe a tight connection between negation and verb. There are several proposals in the literature as to how these 'negation facts' can be accounted for. They may be classified according to the following criteria: (i) the assumption of a functional projection NegP (ii) the status of the negative marker (iii) the position of the negative marker(s) with respect to other constituents. In the following sections I present some of the leading approaches to sentence negation. I start in section 2.3.1 with analyses that reject the existence of a special functional NEG projection and claim that negation may be accounted in some alternative way. In section 2.3.2,1 discuss the opposite view according to which negation facts can be best accounted for if one assumes a special functional projection, namely a NegP.

2.3.1 The opponents of the NegP Since Pollock's (1989) 'Split-INFL'-hypothesis it has been a common procedure in the linguistic literature to assume various functional projections and among them an independent NegP. Pollock argues that English not and French ne head their own X-bar projections, he assumes thus three separate functional projections (beside CP), i.e., TP, AgrP and NegP.6 7 The order in which these projections appear is assumed by Pollock (1989:397) to be CP-TP NegP-AgrP (VP). Note, however, that evidence for a NegP in Italian and French has been provided independently of Pollock's arguments by Kayne (1987). Kayne's arguments are based on the distribution of clitics in Romance languages. In these languages negation blocks clitic climbing, a fact that can

Structure of negative sentences

40

Subsequent linguistic literature has quickly adopted these ideas for other languages, showing that various 'functional nodes' are needed in these languages as well. However, Pollock himself cautiously remarks in a footnote Naturally, the idea that there is a NegP in English and Romance does not commit me to the view that there is one universally: languages could differ precisely in that some could have a NegP and others could have a purely adverbial Neg. (....) In other languages Neg might be a specifier of Tense. Many other typological variations concerning the status of Neg readily come to mind.' [Pollock(1989:421), fii. 50]

Not all linguists, however, have followed Pollock in his assumptions concerning the clause structure. Even his idea that English has a separate NegP has been a matter of disagreement. So for instance, both Baker (1991) and Ernst (1991) claim that Pollock's NegP in English is unnecessary and undesirable. Baker (1991) proposes a transformational account which is based on the assumption that not is a preverbal adverb and as such is attached to a V' as a left sister, yielding a larger V'. Another preverbal adverb can be adjoined in turn to this larger V'. In addition, an English-particular transformational rule is assumed which moves a finite verb to the left of not. These and a few other additional assumptions make it possible "to cover a broad range of English data" (cf. Baker 1991:401). Ernst (1991) argues against the existence of any NegP in English, both against a NegP in which not is the head and against a NegP in which not is the specifier. His argumentation against the assumption that not heads a NegP in English is based on the fact that this assumption in fact violates several principles of Phrase Structure theory. So for instance, the grammatical example (9) below presents a problem for the Head Movement Constraint given Pollock's (1989) assumption that have and be originate under V and must raise to Agr and then to Tense. If nothing more is said, either this example must be taken to violate the Head Movement Constraint or otherwise, not cannot be a head. (9)

Paul has not left.

As Ernst argues, Pollock's solution to this problem in terms of assuming that not is "intrinsically inert for government" and thus does not block antecedent government by the moved auxiliary verb shows severe theoretical problems (see Ernst 1991:116 for details). An alternative solution to the above problem in terms of not being the Spec of a NegP with an empty head (cf. Pollock 1989:421, Belletti 1990), even if it respects the Head Movement Constraint -as Ernst (1991:123) points out- "runs into trouble by retaining the maximal projection NegP, with its obligatorily filled Spec, obligatorily empty head, and the problems raised by unconstrained use of the configuration containing Ihem." Thus, the claim is that even if not is technically treated as a Spec, the use of NegP forces it in some be accounted for by assuming that ne in French or non in Italian is a head. A similar conclusion has also been reached by Ouhalla (1988) on the basis of Berber data.

Chapter 2

41

sense or other to act like a head. So for instance, not, unlike other Specs, would be obligatory. Obligatoriness is however a typical property of heads, not Specs. Moreover, the assumption that the Neghead is empty would force not in Spec to be the semantic center of NegP, which is again a typical property of heads. Ernst proposes then that all these problems can be avoided by assuming that not in English is not the head of a NegP, but instead is an adverb which may occur in the Spec position of tensed VPs. The analyses mentioned above follow thus in some sense the traditional view according to which the negative marker of predicate negation is adjoined to the VP and thus has the scope over it at surface structure (cf. among others Klima 1964)? Alternative analyses that also do without a NegP have been proposed by Piñón (1993) and King (1994). These analyses make a contrary claim to that of Pollock (1989). While Pollock argues that the structure of IP is "more highly articulated" and that INFL should not be considered as one constituent consisting of two different sets of features [±Tense, ±Agr], proposing instead that each of these features has to be considered as an independent category, analyzed as the syntactic head of a maximal projection, TP and AgrP respectively, and that in addition there is a third maximal projection, namely NegP, in the INFl-area, both Pifión (1993) and King (1994) propose a more 'condensed' structure that again contain composite projections. Justification for this claim comes from the conceptualtheoretical concern, namely from the question of what justifies a functional projection as an independent projection (with a special focus on the status of NegP). Piñón (1993:388) proposes what he calls a "strong condition on functional projections in terms of the 'identifiability' of the specifier, head, and complement positions". The postulate of identifiability of the specifier requires that "the specifier of each functional projection be distinguishable from others with respect to some salient property." Given the above requirements, Piñón argues on the basis of Hungarian data (with a possible extension to Romance) that NegP is not distinct from TP, hence the assumption of an independent NegP is not justified. He proposes instead that NegP forms a composite projection with TP which he calls the E(igma) Phrase. Thus, the feature structure of EP accommodates (minimally) both [+tense] and [+neg]; in other words, the negative marker does not head its own maximal projection, but instead projects with the [+tense] head to EP (Piñón 1993:389,393),' cf. (10).

An analysis along similar lines has been proposed for German too, see among others Webelhuth (1989) and the references cited there. According to this analysis, sentence negation in German is an adverb-like element generated as a left-adjunct to VP. See however Grewendorf (1990) for criticism and an alternative analysis in terms of NegP; cf. also Hafka (1994) for an analysis of sentential negation in German in terms of Pos(itions)Phrase that includes [+ NEG] features, a variant of Pollock's Assertion Phrase (cf Pollock 1989:421, fii. 51); see also footnote 12. Piñón (1993:392-3) assumss that in Hungarian the specifier position of EP is an A-bar position that is "inherently associated with a E FEATURE, which is roughly like a [+focus] or [+contrastive] feature marking." In Romance, on the other hand, the Spec ofEP is argued to be

Structure of negative sentences

42

(10)

Head of IP

Sig ([+neg])

Sig [+tense]

A similar poposal has also been made by King (1995), who argues that in Russian the negative marker does not head a separate NegP projection either. In addition, it is claimed that it cannot be analyzed as an adverb adjoining to IP (or some other projection). She argues, instead, that the negative marker is just part of a complex node which contains both the information associated with 1° and negation (King 1995:41f.), cf. (11). I

(11)

NEG

I TNS

I will come back to King's proposal in more detail in section 2.5.2.1.

2.3.2 The advocates of the NegP In the previous section we have seen that there are basically two kinds of 'counter-NegP' approaches: (i) various versions of the traditional view in terms of 'adverbial Neg', and (ii) an analysis in terms of a composite EP projection including both negation and tense.10 Despite the existence of alternative approaches, an analysis in terms of the 'NegP Hypothesis' seems to have become meanwhile a standard way of analyzing negative sentences. Subsequent reasearch is abundant in analyses making use of NegP.11 12 The an A-position. This difference is supposed to explain "the optional nature of EP in Hungarian and its nearly obligatory character in Romance" (Piñón 1993:403). Yet another version of the latter kind of analysis assumes that negation is an inflectional feature that can be realized either on a Neg head or an Asp(ect) head. So for instance in Bengali, there are two kinds of negative morphemes: na and ni. Na carries [+neg] feature which is expressed on Neg-head, the ni form, on the other hand, in addition to [+neg]-feature also carries aspectual and temporal information in form of [+bound] and [+past] features, respectively. This latter negation is realized on Asp-head, cf. Ramchand (199B). To mention a few: Belletti (1990) for Italian, Laka (1990) for Basque (Spanish and English), Zanuttini (1991,1994, 1997), Acqaviva (1993, 1995, 1996), Cinque (1997) for Romance, Moritz and Valois (1992) for French, Sufier (1995) for Spanish, Martins (1997) for Romance from a diachronic point of view, Haegeman (1995) for Germanic and Romance languages with a particular focus on West Flemish, Grewendorf (1990), Haftka (1994) for German, Ouhalla

Chapter 2

43

common trait of these analyses is the assumption of an independent projection NegP in the syntactic structure of negative sentences. The 'NegP Hypothesis' itself, however, is not uniform. On the contrary, the assumptions concerning the NegP vary along two dimensions: (i) the structure of NegP itself, and (ii) the position of NegP with respect to other major constituents. Before proceeding with these points, let me make a comment on the 'universality' of the NegP projection. Even authors who assume an independent NegP in the clausal structure in their analyses are rather cautious as to the apparent universal status of such a projection. I have already noted earlier in the text that Pollock (1989:421; fii 50) explicitly leaves open the possibility that a NegP is not universal as he states that "the idea that there is a NegP in English and Romance does not commit me to the view that there is one universally". The idea that there might be no NegP in the syntactic tree is also taken into consideration by Hornstein (1995:244; fn. 53): "It is possible that negation involves different kinds of NegPs (or even no NegPs) across languages." Even Chomsky (1993:7) while discussing the basic structure of the clause omits a NegP, mentioning only the possibility of the existence of "a phrase headed by the functional element Neg(ation), or perhaps more broadly, a category that includes an affirmation marker and others as well".13 Neg as a functional category is not even mentioned in Chomsky (1995, Ch.4), where only T, C, and D are considered as functional categories (after Agr has been rejected). Also Haegeman (1995:127, 1996:3) in her analysis in terms of NEG-criterion gives some thought to the idea that sentential negation need not always be expressed by the functional projection NegP, since "it is conceivable that the NEG-feature is also parasitic on another

(1990) for Turkish, Berber, English and French, Ouhalla (1994) for Arabic, Benmamoun (1997) for Morrocan Arabic, DeGraff (1993) for Haitian, Rivero (1991), Borsley and Rivero (1994) for Slavic, Brown (1996), Brown and Franks (1995, 1997), Bailyn (1995), Junghanns (1995) for Russian, Leko (1996) for Bosnian, Domisch (1995), Witkos (1996) for Polish. Laka (1990) actually claims "that natural languages do not have a separate syntactic category for negation, but rather include this element in a broader, more abstract category" which she calls E. This abstract category includes apart from negation also emphatic affirmation; cf. also Pollock (1989:421, fn. 51), Chomsky (1993:7) for suggestions along similar lines. Pollock suggests, e.g., that so in sentences like (i) below may be analyzed as another (positive) specifier of the same maximal projection, which he dubs Ass(ertion)P. (i) He did so faint. See also Haegeman (1995:183), Zanuttini (1994) for suggestions regarding the functional projection of Pol(arity) Phrase, where the [Neg]/[Pos] 'polarity' of the sentence is encoded. Note, however, that in Chomsky (1991) a NegP is not omitted from the basic structure of the clause.

Structure of negative sentences

44

functional head". Agruably, sentences with negative inversion might not have a functional projection NegP. Pollock's or Haegeman's view contrasts with the view advocated, e.g., by Ouhalla (1990) who assumes that the NegP projection is universally associated with negative sentences as he states (p. 191): "(...) the conclusion which seems to emerge is that generally sentence negation is expressed in terms of a NegP category which consists of a head element and a specifier." To account for the crosslinguistic variation, two parameters are proposed. Firstly, languages may differ as to what element of NegP is lexically realized (specifier or head or both), and secondly, the differences in the position of NEG among languages may reflect different selectional properties of the NEG category. The following subsections take a closer look at these parameters. 2.3.2.1 Status of a negative marker Regarding the first parameter, recall from section 2.2.1 that typological works show that languages differ exactly in that some of them express sentence negation via 'light negators' (prefixes, suffixes, clitics) whereas others tend to use 'heavy adverb-like negators'. Ouhalla (1990:191f.) correlates the different categorial status of negation markers with different elements of NegP. So e.g., in languages like Turkish or Berber, in which the negation marker appears as a constituent morpheme of the verbal complex, it is assumed that the head of NegP is realized lexically while the specifier is realized as an empty operator. An adverb-like negation marker in languages like Swedish, German, Colloquial French14 is related to the specifier of NegP. In the latter case the head of NegP is taken to be realized as an abstract morpheme. Finally, in some languages both the head and the specifier of NegP might be realized lexically. This is, e.g., the case in Standard French, wherewe is analyzed

Note that in Colloquial French ne tends to be dropped. This situation differs from that in Standard French, in which both ne and pas are realized. Note, however, that there are contexts in which ne is obligatory. DeQraff (1993:68; fn. 11) mentions the observation by Ashby (1981) that "ne is retained categorically when the grammatical subject is a negative noun phrase", cf. the examples below cited from DeGraff (1993:68; fn. 11): (i) Rien ne me surprend, nothing ne l.SO surprise 'Nothing surprises me. ' (ii) Personne n'est ici. nobody ne+is here 'Nobody is here.' Haegeman (1995:301; fh. 11) points out -referring to Muller (1991)- that ne in French "can sometimes express sentential negation on its own in stylistically restricted contexts." Notice that in West Flemish the negative clitic en -similarly as the French negative cliticne- may be omitted in some contexts, e.g. in finite clause (cf. Haegeman 1995:120ff).

45

Chapter 2

as the head and pas as the specifier of NegP (cf. Pollock 1989),15 cf. (12). A similar analysis has been proposed in Haegeman and Zanuttini (1991) and Haegeman (1995) for West Flemish, which also uses the bipartite negation productively, cf. (13). En in WF is taken to head NegP, nie is assumed to occupy the specifier of NegP (cf. Haegeman 1995:125; but see Haegeman 1995:157-9 for alternative suggestions). (12)

Jean ne mange pas de chocolat. Jean ne eats not of chocolate 'John does not eat any chocolate. '

Spec pas

(13)

French [Haegeman (1995:124)]

Neg' I Neg0 ne

Valére en-eet nie s'oavends. Valére en eats not evening's 'Valére does not eat in the evening'

West Flemish [Haegeman (1995:124)]

Two points play a role in the above discussion. Firstly, the status of the negative marker as 'light' versus 'heavy' is taken to correspond to its function as head versus specifier of NegP respectively. Secondly, it is assumed that both specifier and head of NegP are realized even in cases in which only one position is lexically expressed. The 'light' versus 'heavy' distinction is not without importance, as the availability versus nonavailability of Negative Concord in a given language may follow from it. I will come back to this issue in Chapter 3 (section 3.5.2). At this point let me briefly comment on the assumed status of a given negative marker as the specifier or head of NegP. Whereas in some languages the status of the negative marker seems to be undisputable, as e.g. in Italian where is standardly assumed that non is the head of NegP (cf. among others Kayne 1989, Belletti 1990, Zanuttini 1991, Acquaviva 1993, Haegeman 1995), in other languages the status of a given negative marker as a head or specifier is a matter of disagreement. And this is so not only among cognate languages (as e.g. French and Haitian Creole or Standard French and French Québécois, or Standard German and Bavarian), but also within one and the same language (as e.g. English). In the former case, e.g., DeGraff proposes that the Haitian negative marker pa -a cognate of French pas- has to be analyzed as the head of NegP, thus making an opposite claim to that This latter assumption, however, may be contestable, see e.g., Hirshbuhler and Labelle (1994), Acquaviva (1995:80).

Structure of negative sentences

46

in previous work on negation in Haitian where pa was taken to occupy the Spec of NegP since it was assumed that it is structurally similar to Fenchpas. In a similar vein, while Bayer (1990) seems to assume that the negative marker in Bavarian (German) has a head status (since he proposes that "in the unmarked case [it] adjoins to V° The element NEG and V together form a new V; Bayer 1990:17), Acquaviva (1995:94) suggests that it rather occupies a specifier position (cf. also Haegeman 1995:191f.). Similarly, while Weiß (1998:392) and Haftka (1994:139f., 156, fii. 5) assume that the negative particle ned in Bawarian and nicht in Standard German respectively must be the head of NegP (due to the missing moveability; so e.g.,we or nicht cannot occupy the 'Vorfeld' position, i.e., the first position before the finite verb, the Spec, CP position), Btiring (1994:85f.) argues that nicht in Standard German must be analyzed as the Specifier of NegP, as argued for French pas by Pollock (1989). He refers to Grewendorfs (1990:86ff) observation that in Old German there was a clitic negation on the finite verb (as is still the case in Standard French) (cf. also Lehmann 1978). This latter was then the now missing head of the NegP in Modern German, cf. (14). (14) shows that in Old High German a single negation particle occurred in a preverbal position in front of a finite verb. In Middle High German the 'double negation' in form of a preverbal negation particle ne-/en- and a postverbal negative marker niht became the standard way of expressing negation. Finally, in Modern German only the postverbal negative marker is used. (14) a.

b. c.

dhazs ... siin fleisc ni chisah enigan unuuillun. daß sein Fleisch nicht sah irgendein Verfall that his flesh NEG saw any decay Ich entuons niht. I NEG do NEG Ich komme nicht. I come NEG 'I'm not coming.' / 'I will not come.'

Old High German

Middle High German Modern German

The situation is even more drastic in the case of English. The original proposal by Pollock (1989) (cf. also Chomsky 1991) that not in English is the head of NegP has not been uniformly accepted.16 The subsequent literature does not agree upon the status of not in English. The view that not is the head of NegP is defended among others by Ouhalla (1990), Laka (1990), Zanuttini (1991), and more recently by Potsdam (1997), who presents a novel argument in favor of not being the head of NegP which is based on the licensing of VP-ellipsis in subjunctive clauses.17

Note however that Pollock himself considers the possibility of analyzing not as specifier of NegP with an empty head (cf. Pollock 1989:421). Recall that the principal motivation for the view that not in English is the head of NegP projection have been cases of the Head Movement Constraint violation. Given the Head

Chapter 2

47

Ail opposite view is advocated, e.g., by Belletti (1990), Rizzi (1990), Haegeman (1995), Acquaviva (1995), who assume that not is the specifier of NegP. Haegeman (1995:189f.) points out that the specifier status of not is confirmed by the contrast in (15). The negative marker n't analyzed as the overt realization of Neg° is moved along with the inflected auxiliary in I-to-C movement, cf. (15a). However, not, being the specifier of NegP can be stranded, cf. (15b). Notice however that, as Haegeman herself observes, cases like(16) are problematic for the above analysis.18 (15)a. b.

Hasn't John left? Has John not left?

(16)a. b. c.

Has not John been there too? Is not history a social science? Does not everything we see about us testify to the power of Divine Providence?

Rizzi (1990) bases his argumentation on the observation that not appears to block the movement of adverbial/adjunct phrases. Thus, for example, in the affirmative(17a) below the defied adverb it is for this reason can be construed either with the matrix clause or with the embedded one. However, in the negative sentence (17b) the long construal of the clefted adverb is not possible ('This is the reason such that I do not believe that Bill was fired for that reason'). Only the interpretation of the reason adverb with the matrix sentence is allowed (i.e., "This is the reason that motivates the fact that I do not believe that Bill was fired'). Given the Relativized Minimality assumption that only an A-bar- specifier can block the movement of an XP to an A-bar position, Rizzi concludes that «of must be in the specifier of NegP rather than in the head position. (17)a. b.

It is for this reason that I believe that Bill was fired. It is for this reason that I don't believe that Bill was fired.

As noted above, Ouhalla (1990) assumes that in cases where only the head of NegP is lexically realized the Spec position contains an empty operator (cf. also Acquaviva 1993, Haegeman 1995, Rowlett 1997 for assumptions along these lines). More precisely

18

Movement Constraint (Travis 1984) and assuming that not is the head ofNegP, which intervenes between the inflectional head and the main verb, the ungrammaticality of cases like (i) below can be accounted for. (i) a. * He not reads books, b. * He reads not books. Examples (16b,c) are from Quirk et al. (1985:809), here cited fromHaegeman (1995:306; fii. 17).

Structure of negative sentences

48

The operator category in the Spec position is the equivalent of French pas and the Swedish inte. Generally, the idea is that universally both positions of N E G P are filled, with the specifier acting as a negative operator. The latter can be assumed to be the element which moves to a higher position in the clause at LF to define its scope in relation to the rest of the constituents of the sentence, on a par with other operators such as wh-phrases and quantifiers which are also maximal projections. [Ouhalla (1990:220)]

This move allows Ouhalla to account for the Relativized Minimality effects observed by Rizzi (i.e., the fact that negation blocks movement of adjunct phrases) while maintaining at the same time the other blocking effect of negation in English, viz. V-movement (see also fii. 17). The assumption of an empty operator is also necessary for reasons of the NEG-criterion (cf. among others Haegeman and Zanuttini 1992, Haegeman 1995, Acqaviva 1993, Rowlett 1997, Leko 1996, Suner 1995). A detailed discussion of these facts will be presented in Chapter 3. At this point let me note only that the Relativized Minimality effects described by Rizzi may presumably be accounted for in an alternative way, see e.g., Szabolcsi and Zwarts (1993) for a semantic analysis of weak islands effects (see section 2.5.2.4 for more discussion). Further complications emerge when one takes into account Reinhart's (1998) observation that wh-adverbials are only interpretable in Spec,CP, perhaps requiring their own Q operator. She suggests (p. 45) that such adverbials are, in fact, base generated in Spec, CP. If this assumption is correct, the blocking effects in the case of 'adverbial phrases movement' may be only apparent.

2.3.2.2 Position ofNegP in relation to other constituents In section 2.2 (in particular 2.2.2) we saw that languages differ not only as to the status of a negative marker but also as to the position of such a marker in the clause. Pollock (1989) proposes both for English and French the following structure of negative sentences, cf. (18). This structure has also been assumed in Chomsky (1991, 1993) with the difference that the Agr-projection (identified as AgrsP for subject agreement) is higher in the clause structure than TP and NegP and a second Agr-projection (dubbed AgrJ 1 for object agreement) is included in the position immediately above VP, cf. (19).

(18)

(Pollock 1989:397) C NP T

NegP

(Aâv)~~ V

Chapter 2

(19)a.

49

Chomsky (1991) [here cited from Chomsky (1995:147)] IP I' Agrs F' Neg AgrR. V I ^ Agi^ dV) > (Adv)

"where Agrs= I, the head of I' and IP, and F is [± finite] b.

Chomsky (1993:7), cf. also Marantz (1995:364) ^CR. Spec A> S P SpicT' "Agr, A g f ^ ^TP AgrJ3 SpetT~~^Agr 0 ' AgrT

Ouhalla (1990:194), however, assumes that languages can differ with respect to the position of NegP in the clause. Moreover, he claims that the difference in the position of NEG "reflects a difference in the value of a parameter involving the selectional properties of the NEG category", cf. (20). (20)

The NEG parameter a. NEG selects VP b. NEG selects TNS(P)

English and French are taken to belong to two different typological groups of languages which instantiate different values of the above parameter. While in English NegP selects VP (leading to the following order of functional categories: AgrP [TP [NegP [VP]]]19), in

19

Note that Ouhalla, in contrast with Chomsky (1991, 1993) (cf. (19)), does not include Agrcprojection in the clausal structure. This projection was crucial for Pollock and Chomsky in order to account for word order differences in French and English with respect to the adverb (the socalled 'short verb movement'), an observation which goes back to Emonds (1976, 1978), cf. (i) below cited from Pollock (1989:367, (4)). Ouhalla (1990:200) argues, however, "that the same

Structure of negative sentences

50

French it selects TP (in consequence, the order of functional categories is as follows: AgrP [NegP [TP [VP]]]). In the same vein, it is proposed for Turkish and Berber that they differ exactly with respect to the value of the NEG parameter: in Turkish, Neg immediately dominates VP, while in Berber it immediately dominates TP (cf. Ouhalla 1990:193f.). In the subsequent literature there seems to be agreement on the assumption that the position of NegP can be subject of parametrization. Rivero (1991) argues that there are two types of Slavic languages with respect to the position of Neg. The first type is represented by Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian. In these languages Neg takes TP as complement. In the second type of languages (e.g. Czech and Slovak), Neg is complement of T. Similarly, Zanuttini (1991) in her study based on Romance languages argues that the functional projection NegP can be realized in two distinct syntactic positions, to wit as NegP-1 or NegP-2.20 NegP-1 occurs in a position above TP as e.g. in Italian or Spanish (cf. also Belletti 1990, Haegeman 1995), cf. (21). NegP-2 on the other hand, occurs in a positin lower than TP. This is, for example, the case in French, Piedmontese (a variety of Romance spoken in northern Italy) or Occitan (a variety of Romance spoken in southern France), cf. (22). In some cases both instances of NegP might be instantiated as e.g. the English example (23). (21)

(22)

(23)

Maria non ha telefonato a sua madre. Maria NEG has called her mother 'Maria hasn't called her mother.' Maria a mangia nen. Mary cl-SUBJ eats NEG 'Mary doesn't ea.t'

Italian

She hasn't always not agreed with you.

[Zanuttini (1991:3-6)]

Piedmontese

facts can be accounted for in terms of an alternative analysis which makes the presence of an AGR-O category unnecessary, if not problematic." See Ouhalla (1990) for details, (i) a. * John kisses often Mary. b. Jean embrasse souvent Marie. c. John often kisses Mary. d. * Jean souvent embrasse Marie. In Zanuttini (1997), it is argued that there are four distinct positions where NegPs can be generated in the clause. The highest NegP is located below C° and it hosts a negative head that precedes the finite verb (e.g. non in Italian). The other three NegPs have a specifier filled with a negative XP (e.g. mica in Italian,pas in Catalan, nen in Piedmontese, no in Milanese). These negative XP elements usually follow the finite verb. The particular position of these NegPs is determined in relation with adverbs. Note also that different positions o f N e g P correlate with diferent properties of negation in terms of 'presuppositionality'; see Zanuttini 1997 for details. Cf. also Cinque 1997.

Chapter 2

51

A more elaborated version of this 'parametrized' view of NegP is that the position of NegP in the clause varies not only across languages, but is flexible even within one and the same language. Grewendorf (1990:88) claims that the position of NegP in German is variable in that it can be generated both above and below TP. In the same vein, Cinque 1997, following Zanuttini (1997), claims that negation can occur in several distinct positions in the clause which in some cases might be realized simultaneously. In his analysis Cinque assumes that there is a fixed order of adverbial projections. In other words, "the various classes of adverbs (AdvPs) enter a rigidly ordered sequence; the same across languages" (Cinque 1997:229). The only elements that "stand out as rather special among the other functional elements" are agreement and negation, precisely because of their distribution. In contrast with rigidly ordered adverbs, the position of NegPs in a clause is more flexible, in fact it is "possible to 'base generate' a NegP on top of each adverb-related projection within a certain 'space' " (Cinque 1997:208). Another version of the latter view is represented in Acquaviva (1995, 1996). He reinterprets the idea that NegPs may be generated in distinct structural positions in the clause by saying that these multiple NegPs are in fact functional projections generated to host negative adverbials and negative markers. "The negative characterization is simply the value taken by the relevant node(s) in negative sentences" (Acquaviva 1995:81). Thus the underlying idea of Acquaviva's analysis is the assumption that it is possible to generate several functional (non-inflectional) projections among inflectional projections. What we get is a structure like (24) below, where functional (non-inflectional) projections are interspersed with inflectional nodes, cf. Acquaviva (1995:81). (24)

FP1

InflPl FP2

InflP2 FP3

VP

These FPs are interpreted as the multiple syntactic realization of an interpretively unique object, in other words, they form a set. Negative markers and adverbials which fill the specifiers of some member of the FP set are interpreted as restriction in the quantification structure created by the negative operator. Acquaviva argues that there is no reason for thinking that negation should occupy a fixed place or that it could be interpreted in only one particular position (since negation does not have a fixed scope with respect to modal auxiliaries21 or VP-level adverbials, though it is always within the scope of interrogative or imperative operators). In his own words (ibid.; p. 84): A Boolean negative operator -i has a syntactic realization as a functional projection with negative formal features: FP. In principle FP can appear anywhere, subject to morphological and other requirements. Sentential negation corresponds to a structure where the negative

Acquaviva (1995:84) mentions here the observation by Williams (1994b: 194-200) that the English negative modal auxiliaries can't and mustn't differ in that negation takes scope over the modal in the first case only. He also notices that the sequence may not is in principle ambiguous, even though the reading NOT MAY seems to be preferred.

Structure of negative sentences

52

operator is above existential closure. For this interpretation to obtain, a FP must be present at LF above VP. It does not have to visibly c-command all elements inside its scope: subjects and other elemetns represented by chains whose tails is in VP are (or can be) in the scope of negation: [A bomb]; shall [FP not [Vp t; fall on our sacred soil]]

Thus what is important for the interpretation of negation as sentential negation is that it be generated above VP. What is not important though is where exactly 'this above VP' is. The assumption that sentential negative markers occur in different structural positions across languages (or within the same language, cf. the discussion above) leads to another question, viz. "whether negative clauses which employ different syntactic means for the expression of sentential negation nevertheless share a common syntactic structure at some level of representation." This is precisely the question that Zanuttini discusses in her 1994 paper, in which she proposes a uniform treatment of negative markers across languages. The basic idea of her proposal is that even though the negative markers are base generated in different structural positions in different languages, there is a uniform position in which they are interpreted at LF, to wit, the PolP, i.e., a projection is which the polarity value of the clause is established. This projection is located structurally higher than TP22 (see also Martins 1997, Pereltsvaig 1998 for a more recent discussion of this idea). Consequently, the structure of a negative clause looks like (25) below, cf. Zanuttini (1994:430). (25)

PolP

^ P In (25), NegP is a position in which negative markers are generated. The precise structural position of NegP is subject to crosslinguistic variation. PolP on the other hand is the functional projection specified for the negative or affirmative value. For a clause to be interpreted as negative, the [+negative] feature present in the PolP projection must be checked. Following Chomsky (1993), Zanuttini assumes that checking requires the movement of an appropriate morpheme or lexical item to the checking position. The movement/checking itself is subject to parametrization. In some languages, as e.g. Italian, the negative feature of PolP is strong and must be checked in the overt syntax, whereas in other languages, as e.g. Piedmontese, the PolP has weak negative features that will be 22

Zanuttini remains agnostic as to where precisely PolP is located in the clausal structure. She simply assumes that PolP is structurally higher than TP while NegP is structurally lower than TP (cf. Zanuttini 1994:430).

Chapter 2

53

checked in the covert syntax. Accordingly, in the former languages the negative marker must raise overtly to PolP, thus it appears in pre-verbal position while in the latter languages the negative marker will not move before Spell-out to PolP, thus is will appear in post-verbal position. These assumptions are corroborated by Romance data, cf. Zanuttini (1994) for details.

2.4 Negation in Polish The preceding sections have provided the necessary factual and theoretical background to sentence negation and to the structure of negative sentences in particular. Section 1 offered an overview of various devices for expressing sentence negation in the world's languages. Section 2 reviewed the most important approaches to the syntax of negative clauses. The present section narrows down the subject of inquiry to Polish. The overall goal of this section is to provide an analysis of the syntactic structure of negative clauses in Polish. The assumptions made here will serve as point of departure for the subsequent analysis in the next chapters. I will proceed in the following way. First, in subsection 2.4.1,1 describe the device for expressing sentence negation in Polish, characterizing briefly the properties of sentence negation as opposed to those of constituent negation. Next, in subsection 2.4.2, I discuss two phenomena in Polish related to the presence of sentence negation, namely, Genitive of Negation (henceforth GoN) and the occurrence of negative pronouns (= nwords). Subsection 2.4.3 tries to establish what precisely is the position sentence negation occupies in a clause. To this end, different types of verbal predicates (among others auxiliary and main verbs) are taken into consideration and it is examined on what kind of verbal elements the negative marker can appear, whereby the diagnostics for sentence negation discussed in the preceding subsection are used to make sure that in a given case we are dealing with sentence negation. After discussing these facts, I will come in section 2.5 to the question of the analysis of sentence negation in Polish. To this end, I discuss the existing analyses proposed in the literature for Polish and other Slavic languages. These can be roughly divided into two groups, namely (i) analyses that assume a NegP and (ii) analyses that dispense with NegP and propose alternative ways of accounting for sentence negation. After considering the arguments in favor and against a NegP in Polish, I will come to the conclusion that there is a NegP in the syntactic structure of negated clauses in Polish. Finally, the last section (2.6) makes a proposal as to the precise syntactic structure of a negative clause in Polish.

Structure of negative sentences

54

2.4.1 Realization of negation Sentence negation is expressed in Polish by means of the negative marker nie (cf. (26)), which is formally identical to the exponents of absolute negatiorf3 (cf. (27)), constituent (or contrastive) negation (cf. (28)), and lexical negation (negative affix) (cf (29)), respectively. Despite this formal identity, there are clear distinctions between these different types of negation in terms of phonological or distributional properties. So for instance, while the absolute negation is always stressed, the sentence negation is proclitic as we will see in more detail below. In the following, I will not discuss the properties of absolute and lexical negation,24 as they present clearly different types of negation from sentence negation. However, I will contrast the properties of sentential negation with those of constituent negation. (26)

Piotr nie przyjechal na weekend do domu. Peter NEG come-3.SG.PAST for weekend to home 'Peter didn't come home for the weekend.'

(27) A: Czy Piotr przyjechal? whether Peter come-3.SG.PAST 'Did Peter come?' B: Nie. /Nie, nie przyjechal.. No /No, not come-3.SG.PAST 'No.' /'No, he did not' (28)

Piotr przyjechal nie na weekend, ale tylko na sobot?. Peter come-3.SG.PAST not for weekend but only for Saturday 'Peter did not come for the whole weekend, but only for Saturday.'

(29)a.

niepewny not-certain 'uncertain' b. nielegalny not-legal 'illegal'

The term 'absolute negation' is used to refer to a negative reaction to the contextually preceding yes/no question or statement. In other words, the negative element may constitute the whole of a response utterance (hence the name 'absolute negative'); cf. Cygan (1973:299f.), Fisiak et al. (1978:192f.). The issue of lexical negation will be taken up in Chapter 3 in connection with the discussion about the licensers of n-words.

Chapter 2

c.

55

nieistniej^cy not-existent 'non-existent'25

2.4.1.1 Sentence negation versus constituent

negation

Sentence negation differs from constituent negation in many respects, including the position of the negative marker, the behavior with respect to two diagnostics of negation, i.e., GoN and NC. These differences are discussed in turn in the following subsections. 2.4.1.1.1

Position of the negative marker

The Polish marker of sentence negationnie originates from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) negative morpheme *ne and has retained its characteristic placement in front of the verb26 (cf. Bernini and Ramat 1996:28 for the observation that sentential negation was normally placed in front of the verb in PIE27). In simple clauses of the kind illustrated in (30), i.e., clauses containing only one verbal predicate (the main verb), the negative marker nie always appears in front of the finite verb, cf. the ungrammatical example (30b) in which the negative marker follows the verb. Moreover, it must immediately precede the verb. In other words, nothing can separate the negative marker from the verb. An intervening adverb (cf.(31a)) or object (cf. (31b)) leads to ungrammaticality. Notice further that not even another clitic (e.g. a reflexive clitic) can separate nie from the verb, cf. (32) (see also Willim 1991:212). In this respect Polish

As observed in Fisiak et al. (1978:194f.), in contrast with English, the set of Polish negative affixes is rather small. In addition to the negative prefixm'e- illustrated in (29) in the text above, there are also other negative prefixes in Polish systematically used for lexical negation, as e.g. bez- (lit. 'without', equivalent to English suffix -less) ora- (also anti-); cf. (i). See alsoBestersDilger (1988) for a detailed discussion of lexical negation in Polish and Russian, (i) a. bezsilny lit. without-power (+Adjectival suffix) 'powerless' b. asymetryczny asymmetric For diachronic development and reinforcement of negation see Chapter 3 in which the problem of Negative Concord is discussed. Bemini and Ramat (1996:23) discuss and reject Lehmann's (1974:153) claim that sentential negation in PIE was originally postverbal as it had to comply with the basic OV (Object + Verb) order requiring the sentential qualifier to be postponed to the verb. As they point out, data from earlier attested languages do not seem to support this claim

Structure of negative sentences

56

differs, e.g., from Italian which has also preverbal negation, nevertheless pronominal clitics can intervene between the negative marker and the verb, cf. (33)28 (30)a.

Wczoraj Jan nie czytal tej ksi^z.ki. yesterday John NEG read-3.SG.PAST this-GEN book-GEN 'John didn't read this book yesterday.' b. * Wczoraj Jan czytal (nie) tej ksiqzki (nie). yesterday Johnread-3.SG.PAST (NEG) this-GEN book-GEN (NEG)

(31)a. * Jan nie wczoraj czytal tej ksi^zki. John NEG yesterday read-3.SG.PAST this-GEN book-GEN b. * Wczoraj Jan nie tej ksi^zki czytal. yesterday John NEG this-GEN book-GEN read-3.SG.PAST (32)a.

Ewa nie interesuje siq muzyk^. Ewa NEG interest-3.SG-PRES REFL music-INSTR 'Ewa is not interested in music.' b. Ewa siq nie interesuje muzyk^. Ewa REFL NEG interest-3.SG-PRES music-INSTR c. * Ewa nie siq interesuje muzyk^. Ewa NEG REFL interest-3.SG-PRES music-INSTR

(33)

Non me /'ha detto. NEG to-me it has said 'He hasn't said that to me.'

Italian

Zanuttini (1991:16) In contrast with the obligatory pre-verbal position of the sentence negation, constituent negation can in principle occur in any position in the clause. In other words, it adjoins

Zanuttini (1991:15f.; fii. 8) observes that in Romance also other elements apart from pronominal clitics can intervene between the negative marker and the verb, e.g. the adverb mai 'more' in Romanian (cf. (i)) or rien 'nothing' in French infinitives (cf. (ii)) (The examples are cited from Zanuttini 1991:15f.; fn. 8). (i) Tinerii nuse mai due asades la cinema, the young not cl more go so often to cinema 'Young people don't go so often to the cinema.' (ii) Ne rien faire est dangereux. not nothing to do is dangerous 'It's dangerous to do nothing.'

Chapter 2

57

immediately to a constituent it has scope over, cf. (34).29 Notice, however, that it is also possible to express constituent negation by using the normal verbal negation. The narrow scope of negation is marked in this case (just as in the previous ones) by an obligatory contrastive intonation. In addition, the sentence must be followed up by a 'correction phrase' introduced by tylko/Iecz 'but'; cf. (35a) (see also Gliwiriski 1981:56f.). Otherwise, the verbal negation would be interpreted as a normal sentence negation, cf. (35b). (34)a.

Przyszla nie Ania, tylko Basia. come-3.SG.PAST NEG Ania but Basia 'Lit.: Not Ania but Basia came.' / 'It is not Ania who has come, but Basia.' b. Ania przyszla nie w poniedzialek, tylko we wtorek. Ania come-3.SG.PAST NEG on Monday but on Tuesday 'Lit.: Ania came not on Monday but on Tuesday.' / 'It was not on Monday that Ania came but on Tuesday. ' c. Ania spotkala siç nie z Janem, tylko z Piotrem. Ania meet-3.SG.PAST REFL NEG with Jan-INSTR but with Piotr-INSTR 'Lit. : Ania met not Jan but Peter. ' / 'It was not Jan Ania met but Peter. '

(35)a.

Jan nie pojechal. do Warszawy, tylko do Krakowa. John NEG go-3.SG.PAST to Warsaw but to Cracow 'Lit. John did not go to Warsaw but to Cracow' / 'It was not Warsaw John went to but Cracow.' b. Jan nie pojechal do Warszawy. John NEG go-3.SG.PAST to Warsaw 'John did not go to Warsaw. '

While the marker of sentence negation cannot be separated from the verb, as we have seen above, nie as constituent negation can appear dislocated from the negated element by its modifier, cf. (36).

Interestingly, as observed by Kubitowna (1977:369), children often put the negative particle«¡'e in front of a constituent that is to be negated, that is, they do not use the verbal negation (which is the normal case in the adult speech), cf. (i) adopted from Kubitowna (1977:369): (i) Jas 2;9,6 (Nie chce spac, mowi, ze wyjdzie z lozka). The little John 2;9,6 (He doesn't want to sleep and says that he will come out of the bed.) A: Babcia: "Dlaczego?" Grandmother: 'Why?' B: Jas: "Bo nie spi^cy jestem." instead of: "Bo nie jestem spi^cy." John: because NEG sleepy be-1 .SG.PRES because NEG be-1 .SG.PRES sleepy The little John: 'Because I am not sleepy.'

Structure of negative sentences

58

(3 6) a.

b.

2.4.1.1.2

Kupilam nie sukienk^, tylko plaszcz. buy-l.SG.PAST NEG dress-ACC but coat-ACC 'Lit.: I bought not a dress but a coat.' Kupilam nie czarn^ sukienk?, tylko czarny plaszcz. buy-l.SG.PAST NEG black dress-ACC but black coat-ACC 'Lit.: I bought not a black dress but a black coat.' Genitive of Negation

(GoN)30

Another difference between sentence negation and constituent negation arises with respect to the Case marking of the direct object. In the case of the negative marker immediately preceding the finite verb the direct object is obligatorily marked for Genitive, compare the contrast between (37a) and (37b). Example (37c) shows that constituent negation has no influence on the case of the object.31 The direct object is marked for Accusative just like a direct object in affirmative clauses, cf. (37a). (3 7) a.

b.

c.

Ewa kupila tg ksi^zk?. Ewa buy-3.SG.PAST this-ACC book- ACC 'Ewa bought this book.' Ewa nie kupila tej ksiqzki. Ewa NEG buy-3.SG.PAST this-GEN book-GEN 'Ewa did not buy this book.' Ewa kupila nie ksi^zkg, tylko gazet?. Ewa buy-3.SG.PAST NEG book-ACC but newspaper-ACC 'Lit.: Ewa bought not a book, but a newspaper.' / 'Ewa did not buy a book but a newspaper.'

The term 'Genitive of Negation' is used in the literature to refer to the Genitive Case marking of the internal argument of a negated verb that otherwise is marked for Accusative (or Nominative). As expected, in cases in which constituent negation is expressed by using the preverbal negation the direct object appears in Genitive, cf. (i) (i) Ewa nie kupila ksiqzki, tylko gazettj. Ewa NEG buy-3.SG.PAST book-GEN but newspaper-ACC 'Ewa did not buy a book but a newspaper.'

Chapter 2

2.4.1.1.3

59

(Co-)Occurrence

of n-words

Sentential negation and constituent negation also differ as to whether they license negative pronouns.32 As illustrated in the examples below, only sentential negation allows negative pronouns (cf. also Przepiorkowski and Kupsc 1999 for similar observation). (38)a.

Ewa nie opiekuje si? niczyimi dziecmi. Ewa NEG look after-3.SG.PRES no-INSTR children-INSTR 'Ewa does not look after any children.' b. * Ewa opiekuje si? nie niczyimi dziecmi, tylko swoimi. Ewa look after-3. SG.PRES NEG no-INSTR children-INSTR but self s Lit.: 'Ewa does not look after anybody's children, but her own.' 'What Ewa looks after are not anybody's children, but her own.'

2.4.1.2 Partial

conclusions

The discussion so far has shown that sentential negation appears to form an unseparatable unit with the finite verb that cannot be broken up by any other constituent. Moreover, its presence has syntactic (and semantic) effects: the change of the Case marking on the direct object from Accusative to Genitive and the licensing of negative pronouns. Constituent negation on the other hand can adjoin to any constituent it takes scope over; it does not appear to form an unseparatable unit with the constituent it is adjoined to. Moreover, it takes only narrow scope over some constituent. Consequently, it does not have syntactic (and semantic) effects in terms of Case marking or negative pronoun licensing. As a first approximation one could assume that constituent negation is just a kind of negative adverb or negative particle (or maybe a kind of focus operator) that adjoins directly to a constituent it scopes over.33 But if constituent negation is treated as a kind of base generated adjunct to some constituent, what do we have to say about sentential negation to account for (i) its preverbal position, (ii) proclitic properties, (iii) influence on Case marking, and (iv) licensing of negative pronouns? Could we just assume that sentential negation might be treated in a similar way to constituent negation, i.e., it would be a kind of adjunct? But an adjunct to what? Observe that this assumption would bring us in a kind of dilemma. In order to account for the wide scope of sentence negation, we would have to assume that sentence negation is generated as an adjunct to some larger 'constituent', let say a VP or TP. However, such an assumption would not account for the fact that the negative marker nie in Polish always immediately precedes the finite verb; in

In this subsection, I only briefly mention negative pronouns aa a diagnostics for sentential negation without going into discussion how negative pronouns are actually licensed. For a detailed discussion of negative pronouns see Chapter 3 and the following. Cf. Iatridou (1990:574) for the assumption that constituent negation is generated "in some sense on the constituent it negates."

Structure of negative sentences

60

other words, it seems to pro-cliticise onto the verb. Assuming however, in order to account for this latter fact, that the negative marker is just base generated as an adjunct to the finite verb, would not help either. If nothing more is said, it is difficult to see how such an assumption could explain the wide scope of sentence negation. In approaching a solution to this dilemma, let us consider in more detail the two diagnostics for sentence negation, i.e., GoN and negative pronouns, and see whether they can shed more light on the properties of sentence negation in terms of its position in the syntactic structure.

2.4.2 Negation related phenomena: two diagnostics for sentential negation

2.4.2.1 Genitive of Negation

(GoN)

GoN is by no means a peculiarity of Polish.34 In fact, Berneker (1901:375; here cited from Baumann 1994) points out Dass das object im negierten satz in den genitiv tritt, ist eine uralte erscheinung, die über das Slavische hinaus im Baltischen, ja im ältesten Germanischen verbreitet ist. (that the fact that the object in a negated clause occurs in Genitive is an ancient phenomenon which is found not only in Slavic but also in Baltic, even in the oldest Germanic; my translation; J.B.)

However, Polish is unique among Slavic languages (maybe except for Sloveniaii5) as far as the phenomenon of GoN is concerned. In contrast with other Slavic languages which have almost) lost the rule of GoN, e.g. Serbo-Croatian or Czech,36 or use it optionally, e.g. Russian,37 in Polish the rule of GoN is syntactically mandatory.

See Baumann (1994) for a detailed discussion of the GoN phenomenon in various languages and in the history. King (1995:31; fn. 15) points out that in some Slavic languages GoN is obligatory. As examples she gives Polish and Slovenian; see also Borovikoff (1997:77) for the statement that in Slovene (Slovenian) the GoN "is fully productive and even obligatory, very much like Polish." However, GoN is still obligatory in Serbo-Croatian in existential copular constructions, cf. Bailyn (1997:110; fh. 16). In Czech, GoN is still possible in constructions with the negated existential verb neni 'there is no', cf. (i), and in negated constructions with abstract or mass nouns, cf. (ii) and (iii); the examples are cited from Baumann (1994:4), who himself takes them from Bauemoppel et al. (1989:168). (i) Neni vychodiska. NEG-is way out-GEN.SG 'There is no way out.' (ii) a. Jan nema penez.

Chapter 2 2.4.2.1.1

61 Objects

of negated

transitive

verbs

Direct objects o f transitive verbs normally receive Accusative Case.38 However, when the verb is negated, the Case o f the direct object obligatorily changes to Genitive, cf. (39). 39 Examples (40) and (41) show that GoN does not apply to indirect objects and prepositional objects (even if they happen to be marked for Accusative). (39)a.

Ewa karmi ptaki. Ewa feed-3.SG.PRES birds-ACC 'Ewa feeds birds.'

b.

Ewa nie karmi ptakow / *ptaki. Ewa NEG feed-3.SG.PRES birds-GEN / *birds-ACC ('Ewa isn't feeding birds.')

Jan NEG-has money-GEN.PL 'Jan has no money.' but: b. On nema sestru. he NEG-has sister-ACC.SG 'He has no sister.' (iii) pri praci neznal unavy at work NEG-knows tiredness-GEN.SG 'Lit.: He knew no tiredness at work.' / 'He had never been tired while working.' / 'He had no idea tiredness while working.' Russian has the option of using Accusative or Genitive objects in negated sentences. However, GoN is obligatory in existential copular constructions, cf. footnote 36. In the literature various proposals have been put forth as to the question what factors determine the ACC/GEN (or NOM/GEN) alternation. Timberlake (1975) presents an exhaustive study of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors resricting GoN; see among others Babby (1980), Pesetsky (1982), King (1994), Brown and Franks (1995), Brown (1996), and Bailyn (1997) for a more recent discussion. This rule has several exceptions. So e.g., direct objects of the following verbs are Genitive marked: (i) verbs of'negative' meaning (e.g.,odmawiac 'to refuse', zabraniac 'to forbid'), (ii) verbs denoting need, request, desire (e.g., szukac 'to s e e k p o t r z e b o w a c 'to need', chciec 'to want'), verbs denoting emotions (e.g.,nienawidziec 'to hate', zazdroscic 'to envy'); cf. Fisiak et al. (1978:65). Interestingly, it has been observed that in modem Polish (especially in colloquial use) Accusative objects instead of Genitive ones may be used after some of these verbs, e.g. szukac 'to seek',potrzebowac 'to need'; cf. Fisiak et al. (1978:85; fn. 8), see also Butler et al. (1971:305-319), Harrer-Pisarkowa (1959). Notice that the distribution of GoN in Polish differs from that in Russian. In Russian, apart from the direct objects of transitive verbs, also subjects of unaccusative intransitive verbs (including 'passive subjects') are affected by the rule of GoN; cf. among others King (1994), Brown and Franks (1995), Brown (1996), Bailyn (1997) and the references cited there.

Structure of negative sentences

62

(40) a. Jan pomogl Ewie. Jan help-3.SG.PAST Ewa-DAT 'Jan helped Ewa.' b. Jan me pomogl Ewie / *Ewy. Jan NEG help-3.SG.PAST Ewa-DAT / *Ewa-GEN 'Jan didn't help Ewa.' (41)a.

Jan czeka na Ew?. Jan wait-3.SG.PRES for Ewa-ACC 'Jan is waiting for Ewa.' b. Jan me czeka na Ew? / *Ewy. Jan NEG wait-3.SG.PRES for Ewa-ACC /*Ewa-GEN 'Jan doesn't wait for Ewa.'

2.4.2.1.2

Internal arguments of negated unaccusative verbs

The internal argument ('subject') of unaccusative verbs is Nominative marked in Polish, cf. (42a). Negation does not affect the Case marking of such arguments, as shown in(42b). In other words, the Genitive marking of the unaccusative subjects is ungrammatical unlike in Russian (see footnote 39). Likewise, the rule of GoN does not affect the Case of the underlying object of passives (however, this is possible in Russian; cf. Bailyn 1997:85f.), cf. (43). Again, the Nominative marking is here obligatory. The only exceptions are negated existential and existential-locative constructions with the verb bye 'be'40 in which the logical subject -otherwise Nominative marked- obligatorily appears in Genitive, cf. (44). Note that the verb in negated existential constructions appears in the default form (third person, neuter, singular). However, the default agreement does not improve the first two sentences. In other words, even if the default form of the verb is used, the Genitive marking of the internal argument is still not possible, cf. (45)41 (42)a.

Studenci przyszli na wyklad. students-NOM come-3.PL.PAST to lecture 'The students came to the lecture.'

In present tense the verb 'have' has to be used in negated existential constructions, cf. (i) (i) Nie ma wody. NEG have-3.SG.PRES water-GEN 'There is no water.' Notice that in Russian when the internal argument of the unaccusative verb is Genitive marked, the verb obligatorily appears in the default form, cf. (i) cited from Brown (1996:11). (i) Detej ne prislo na sobranie. children-GEN NEG come-3.SG.NEUT.PAST 'No children come to the meeting.'

Chapter 2

b.

63

Studenci / *Studentow nie przyszli na wyklad. students-NOM / *students-GEN NEG come-3.PL.PAST to lecture 'The students didn't come to the lecture.'

(43)a.

Gazety zostaly dostarczone. newspapers-NOM be-3.PL.PAST delivered 'The newspaper have been delivered.' b. Gazety / *Gazet nie zostaly dostarczone. newspapers-NOM / *newspapers-GEN NEG be-3.PL.PAST delivered 'The newspapers have not been delivered.'

(44)a.

Na stole byly gazety. on table be-3.PL.PAST newspapers-NOM 'There were newspapers on the table.' b. Na stole nie bylo gazet / *gazety. on table NEG be-3.SG.NEUT.PAST newspapers-GEN / *newspapers-NOM 'There were no newspapers on the table.' c. * Na stole nie byly gazety. on table NEG be-3.PL.PAST newspapers-NOM 'There were no newspapers on the table.'

(45)a. * Studentow nie przyszlo na wyklad. students-GEN NEG come-3.SG.NEUT.PAST to lecture b. * Gazet nie zostalo dostarczonych. newspapers-GEN NEG be-3.SG.NEUT.PAST delivered-PL.GEN 2.4.2.1.3

External arguments of negated verbs

The rule of GoN does not affect the external argument either of a transitive verb (cf.(46)) or an unergative verb (cf. (47)). Both in affirmative and negated sentences the external argument of such verbs occurs in Nominative. As shown in (48), the Genitive marking of the external argument leads to ungrammatically despite the default form of the predicate. The same observation holds for Russian, cf. Brown (1996:10ff). (46) a.

Ludzie karmi^ ptaki. people-NOM feed-3.PL.PRES birds-ACC 'People feed birds.' b. Ludzie / *Ludzi nie karmi^ ptakow. people-NOM / *people-GEN NEG feed-3.PL.PRES birds-GEN 'People don't feed birds.'

Structure of negative sentences

64

(47) a.

Ludzie spi^. people-NOM sleep-3.PL.PRES 'People sleep.' b. Ludzie / *Ludzi me spi^. people-NOM / *people-GEN NEG sleep-3.PL.PRES 'People don't sleep.'

(48)a. * Ludzi nie karmi ptakow. people-GEN NEG feed-3.SG.NEUT.PRES birds-GEN b. * Ludzi nie spi. people-GEN NEG sleep-3.SG.NEUT.PRES 2.4.2.1.4

Partial

conclusions

The results of the discussion in the previous subsections are summarized in the table below. Table 2: Distribution of GoN in Polish argument/verb type otherwise marked - external arguments of * a) transitive verbs Nominative * b) unergative verbs Nominative - internal arguments a) (underlying) direct objects of transitive verbs existential be unaccusative verbs passive verbs b) other internal arguments indirect objects prepositional objects

ok ok *

*

* *

Accusative Nominative Nominative Nominative Dative 'Prepositional Case'

GoN in Polish seems to be a purely syntactic phenomenon. Only direct objects of transitive verbs are subject to the rule of GoN. Two important consequences follow immediately: firstly, GoN will never affect the Case marking of external arguments of transitive or unergative verbs; secondly, putting aside negated existential constructions for a moment, only internal arguments of transitive verbs that are structurally assigned Accusative will obligatorily occur in Genitive in negated sentences. This latter consequence immediately excludes from the GoN-rule firstly, internal arguments of unaccusative verbs (including passive verbs) since they are assigned Nominative Case, and secondly, internal arguments marked for some oblique Case.

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65

What can these facts tell us about the structural position of negation? Taking into consideration (i) that GoN affects only internal objects otherwise marked for Accusative and (ii) that Accusative -in contrast with oblique Case- is a structural Case, and assuming furthermore -contra Chomsky (1995:350ff)- that Accusative is checked/assigned within the functional projection of Agr0P (or Asp(ect)P, cf. Brown and Franks 1995 and Brown 1996 following proposals by Travis 1991, Borer 1993, Yadroff 1994 among others), it has been proposed that sentential negation must be located in its neighbourhood, cf. among others Witkos (1996b), Brown and Franks (1995), and Brown (1996). The next question to be answer is the following: how is this 'being in the neighbourhood of the Accusative Case-checker' is to be defined? Assuming that AgrpP (or AspP) is located above VP, it is still open where sentential negation is located for it might occur below or above AgroP (or AspP). Actually, there are various ways of approaching this question, two of them I will discuss in more detail in the subsequent sections. Firstly, recall from section 2.4.1.1.3 that negative pronouns are licensed by sentential negation. I will postpone the discussion of what this licensing mechanism is and what sort of elements negative pronouns are until Chapter 3. For the purposes of the present discussion it suffices to assume that, for negative pronouns to be licensed, negation must have scope over them (to be qualified, see Chapter 4). Given this assumption, one could say more about the position negation occupied in the clause structure just by examining in what functions/positions negative pronouns may occur and from what functions/positions they are excluded. I discuss this question in section 2.4.2.2 below. Secondly, so far the discussion has been based on simple clauses with only one verbal predicate (i.e., the main verb). One could gain more insight into the structural position of negation by extending the data to include auxiliaries and complex predicates ('verbal clusters'). Examining the relative position negation occupies in such cases and using the diagnostics for sentential negation established in the previous sections, it is possible to detect the position of negation in the syntactic tree. In the final step one can compare the position of sentential negation in relation to adverbs. These questions are discussed in sections 2.4.3 and 2.5.2.3. 2.4.2.2 Negative pronouns Let us first look at the inventory of negative pronouns in Polish. The following table shows that Polish has a considerable number of negative pronouns at its disposal. Table 3 lists only those negative pronouns for which autonomous lexemes exist, that is, analytic (often descriptive) expressions which make use of autonomous negative pronouns forms (such as e.g. w zaden sposob, ¿adnq miarq 'by no means',podzadnym pozorem, w tadnym wypadlcu 'under no circumstances', 'in no case') are excluded here from consideration; cf Haspelmath (1993:262) and Bernini and Ramat (1996:152f.).

66

Structure of negative sentences

Table 3: The inventory of negative pronouns in Polish negative pronouns person nikt 'nobody' thing nic 'nothing' 'never' time nigdy place nigdzie 'nowhere' direction: donik^d '(to) nowhere' a) movement to a place b) movement from a place znik^d '(from) nowhere' manner nijak 'nohow' nijaki quality 'no whatever' niczyj possessive determiner 'nobody's' determiner42 zaden 'no, none' Accordingly, negative pronouns may be found in all argument functions, i.e., as subject, cf. (49), direct object, cf. (50a), indirect or prepositional object, cf. (50b) and (50c) respectively, further as time, place and manner adverbials, cf.(51). However, negative pronouns are normally not found in the function of reason (causal) adverbials and another structure with bez 'without' is used instead, cf. (52b). In other words, (52a) is regarded by the native speakers of Polish I consulted as ill-formed or as difficult to interpret. In addition, the wide scope reading of negation in (52a) does not seem to be available for any of the consulted speakers. Thus, (52a) cannot be readily interpreted as 'He didn't do that for any reason'43 In order to express the wide scope reading of negation in the example at hand a structure like that in (53 a) may be used, in which it is explicitly denied both the event of doing and the fact that there was a reason for this 'not doing'; in a structure like (53b), it is denied that there was a particular reason for his (not) doing that, cf. also French and Italian examples in footnote 43. Russian has two more autonomous negative pronouns, to wit those corresponding to quantity neskotko 'in no quantity' and cause/purpose tiipocëm 'for no reason'; cf. Bemin and Ramat (1996:152f.), Pereltsvaig (1998). The latter, however, is only colloquially used. Note that the same appears to be true for English. In other words, examples with a negative reason adverbial cannot be interpreted with negation taking wide scope over the matrix predicate, cf. (i) taken from Acquaviva (1997:40f.). (i) John would eat that stuff for no reason (whatsoever). * 'John would not eat that stuff for any reason. ' However, according to Acquaviva (1997), the wide scope negation reading is available with negative reason adverbials in Italian or French, cf. the examples below cited from Acquaviva (1997:40). (ii) a. Gianni non ha scritto questo libro per nessun motivo particolare. Italian b. Jean n'a écrit ce livre pour aucune raison particulière French ' John has [neg] written this book for no particular reason. '

Chapter 2

(49)

67

Nikt mnie nie odwiedza. nobody me-GEN NEG visit-3.SG.PRES 'Nobody comes to visit me.'

(50)a.

Ewa nikogo nie odwiedza. Ewa nobody-GEN NEG visit-3.SG.PRES 'Ewa doesn't visit anybody.' / 'Ewa doesn't pay anybody a visit.' b. Ewa nie daje nikomu presentow. Ewa NEG gove-3.SG.PRES nobody-DAT gifts-GEN 'Ewa gives nobody a gift.' c. Ewa nie mysli o nikim. Ewa NEG think-3.SG.PRES about nobody 'Ewa doesn't think about anybody.'

(5 l)a.

Ona mnie nigdy nie odwiedza. she me-GEN never NEG visit-3.SG.PRES 'She never visits me.' / 'She never pays me a visit.' b. Ona nie wyjechala nigdzie / donikqd w tym roku. she NEG go-3.SG.PAST nowhere in this year 'She didn't go anywhere this year.' c. Nijak nie mog? tego zrobic. nohow NEG can-l.SG.PRES this-GEN do-INF 'I cannot do it by any means/in any way.'

(52)a. ??On nie zrobil tego z zadnego powodu.44 he NEG do-3.SG.PAST this-GEN for no reason (intended meaning: 'He did that for no reason.') b. On zrobil to bez zadnego powodu. he do-3.SG.PAST this-ACC without no reason 'He did that without any reason.' / 'He did that for no reason.'

Adam Przepiorkowski (p.c.) pointed out to me that example (52a) may have an interpretation 'not exists x [reason (x)] [he did it for x]', provided that the quantification domain is more precisely stated, cf. (i) (i) On nie zrobil tego z zadnego z powodow, ktore wymieniles (ale zrobil to, bo ...) (? on w ogole tego nie zrobil.) he NEG do-3.SG.PAST this for none of reasons that mention-2.SG.PAST (but do3.SG.PAST that because) / (? he at all that NEG do-3.Sg.PAST) 'He didn't do that for any of the reasons you have mentioned .... (but he did that because ) / (? He didn't do that at all).'

Structure of negative sentences

68

(53)a.

On nie zrobil tego, / przy czym nie bylo ku temu zadnego powodu./ / przy czym nie mial ku temu zadnego powodu./ he NEG do-3.SG.PAST this-GEN / whereby NEG be-3.SG.PAST for that no reason-GEN// whereby NEG have-3.SG.PASZ for that no reason-GEN/ 'He didn't do that and there was no reason for that / and he didn't have any reason for that.' b. On nie zrobil tego z jakiegos szczegolnego powodu / ?* z zadnego szczegolnego powodu. he NEG do-3.SG.PAST this-GEN for some particular reason / ?* for no particular reason 'He didn't do that for any particular reason.'

Interestingly, the wide scope reading of negation is also available in the case in which instead of 'true reason adverbials' idiomatic expressions such as e.g.za nic w swiecie 'not for anything', za iadne skarby/za skarby tego swiata 'not for worlds'/'not for the world'/'not for love or money' are used (cf. 'idiomatic Negative Polarity Items', 'maximizers' (cf. Haspelmath 1993), see Chapter 3 and the following for more details), cf. (54). Notice however that these idiomatic expressions require that there be some sort of modality in the clause (be it a modal verb (cf. (54a)), conditional mode (cf. (54b)) or future (cf. (54c)); cf. the contrast betweem grammatical examples in(54) and the ungrammatical ones in (55). In the latter case no modality whatsoever is detectable for prototypical 'realis' contexts are used in form of past (cf. (55a)) and (ongoing) present (cf. (55b)); cf. Haspelmath (1993:40f.). Thus, it seems that also in structural terms examples with such idiomatic expressions differ from the examples with 'normal' reason adverbials discussed above in that the former seem to involve more structure (so e.g. in the case of the verb chciec 'to want' there are presumably two clauses ivolved, see section 2.4.3 for details). In any case, negation occurs high enough in the structure to have the idiomatic expresssions in its scope (as it either appears on the higher modal verb or is associated with some kind of modal head in the structure; the latter in turn is presumably located in the COMP-arei 5 ). We will see later on that being in the scope of negation is a sufficient condition for licensing of idiomatic Negative Polarity Items in contrast to that of negative pronouns (= nwords). For the latter being in the scope of negation will turn out to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for licensing.

45

Cf. among others Chomsky (1998:15) for the assumption that C is the core functional category expressing force/mood; cf. also Rizzi's (1995) assumptions concerning the 'fine structure of the left periphery'.

Chapter 2

69

(54) a.

On nie chcial tego zrobic za nic w swiecie / za zadne skaiby / za skaiby tego swiata. he NEG want-3.SG.PAST this-GEN do-INF for nothing in world / for no treasures/ for treasures (of) this world 'He didn't want to do that for anything / not even for the world / not even for love or money.' 'Not for anything / not for the world / not for love or money / did he want to do that.' b. On nie zrobilby tego za nic w swiecie / za zadne skaiby / za skaiby tego swiata. he NEG do-3.SG.COND this-NEG for nothing in world / for no treasures / for treasures (of) this world 'He wouldn't do that for anything / not even for the world / not even for love or money.' 'Not for anything / not for the world / not for love or money / would he do that.' c. On nie zrobi tego za nic w swiecie / za zadne skarby / za skaiby tego swiata. he NEG do-3.SG.FUTURE this-GEN for nothing in world / for no treasures / for treasures (of) this world 'He won't do that for anything / not even for the world / not even for love or money.' 'Not for anything / not for the world / not for love or money / will he do that.'

(55)a. * On nie zrobil tego za nic w swiecie / za zadne skaiby / za skaiby tego swiata. he NEG do-3.SG.PAST this-GEN for nothing in world / for no treasures / for treasures (of) this world b. * On nie robi tego za nic w swiecie / za zadne skaiby / za skaiby tego swiata. he NEG do-3.SG.PRES this-GEN for nothing in world / for no treasures / for treasures (of) this world What do the grammatical uses of negative pronouns have in common and what distinguishes them from the contentious one in (52)? In all the grammatical cases negative pronouns are thematically related to an eventuality either qua being an argument of that eventuality or qua being a modifier directly related to that eventuality. Thus, in a sense, negative pronouns occurring in these functions may be viewed as 'participants in an event', cf. Tovena (1996). This is obvious in the case of external and internal arguments of a verb, maybe less clear in the case of adverbials. However, if one takes into account that temporal and local adverbials "contribute to set spatio-temporal parameters of an eventuality" (Tovena 1996:72), or if one accepts the Davidsonian treatment of adverbial phrases as predicates of events, the assumption that also adverbials may be thematically related to (or selected by) verbal predicates (cf. also Alexiadou 1997 for the latter assumption) in the sense that they may be regarded as 'participants of an event' ceases to be strange any more.

70

Structure of negative sentences

What about reason adverbials? The first thing to note is that reason adverbials are not thematically related to (or selected by) verbal predicates. Consequently, it is difficult to see that they could be viewed as participants in an event. Reason adverbials only describe a reason for which an event may or may not occur. However, the reverse does not hold. The absence of a reason does not automatically result in an event being negated as it might be the case that the even took place, though there was no reason for that. These assumptions are also reflected in the respective structural position assumed for such adverbials. So e.g., Alexiadou (1997) treats temporal, local and manner adverbials as VPadverbs, which she calls 'complement-type adverbs', and which are taken to be generated within the complement domain of the verb, i.e., VP-internally, in contrast with sentence adverbs and aspectual/frequency adverbs (the so-called 'specifier-type adverbs') that are taken to be generated in the left periphery of the VP. Also Cinque (1997:42ff) notes that place, time, manner or reason adverbs (the so-called 'circumstantial' adverbials) differ form the adverbs 'proper' in several respect. To mention a few: while the AdvP proper show a strict relative order, 'circumstantial adverbs' are not ordered with respect to each other; furthermore, there is also a semantic distinction between the two classes of adverbs in that AdvP proper "are characteristically operators (functions mapping propositions to propositions, or predicates to predicates, circumstantial adverbials can be seen (after Davidson 1967) as modifiers predicated of an underlying variable" (Cinque 1997:42). To capture these differences, Cinque also proposes that in contrast to the AdvP proper which occupy the specifier position of distinct functional projections above VP, circumstantial adverbials are generated within VP; see Cinque (1997:43f.) for some assumptions regarding the exact position such adverbials are generated in; see also Chomsky (1995: 333). We can then take the assumption that local, temporal and manner adverbials are generated VP-internally for granted. What about reason adverbials? Although Cinque (1997:42) takes reason adverbials to belong to the class of circumstantial adverbs, given what we said above the thematic relation of reason adverbials to the verbal predicate, there may be reasons not to regard them as generated VP-internally. This view is reflected in Rizzi's (1990) position based mainly on extraction facts though- that reason adverbials are adjoined to TP?6 In other words, they are generated higher in the syntactic structure than, e.g., manner adverbs. The latter Rizzi takes to be adjoined to VP. Given this assumption, the Polish facts mentioned at the outset of this section will become understandable if we assume that sentence negation in Polish must occupy a position above VP -in order to have scope over all 'participants in an event', i.e., thematically related arguments or modifiers- but presumably not as high as TP. This assumption also nicely squares with another fact observed by Przepiorkowski (1998), namely that negative pronouns embedded in 'according to' phrases are not licensed by 46

However, it is possible to base-generate reason adverbs in Spec CP, cf. Acquaviva (1997:39ff) for discussion of reason adverbials based on Rizzi's (1990) assumptions.

Chapter 2

71

negation either, of. (56). Notice that such phrases function as proposition modifiers; in other words, they do not belong to the class of VP-modifiers. Accordingly, they are cannot be base-generated VP-internally. (56)

* [Wedlug / zdaniem zadnego rosyjskiego polityka] Polska me powinna pizyst^pic do NATO. [according to none Russian politician] Poland not should join to NATO 'According to no Russian politician should Poland join NATO.'

In the previous section, basing on GoN-facts, we came to the conclusion that sentential negation seems to be located in the neighbourhood of the Accusative Case-checker. In this section we saw that sentential negation must be above VP, but presumably not as high as TP. To make this statement more precise, let us take auxiliary verbs into account and investigate what position negation occupies with respect to the auxiliary and the main predicate.

2.4.3

Position of negation in Polish

In section 2.4.1.1.1, while discussing the position of the negative marker, I noted that in Polish the marker of sentence negation always immediately precedes the verb, i. e., it cannot be separated from it by any other element (not even a clitic one). However, the examples discusses in that section concerned exclusively the main verb predicates. The question that will be investigated now is thus what happens in the case of an auxiliary verb? Does the negative marker precede or follow it? To answer this question, I will first review the inventory of auxiliary verbs in Polish, focusing especially on the question of the positions in which the respective auxiliary verbs are base-generated, and then I will examine the position of the negative marker with respect to such verbs. The results we will arrive at at the end of this section will be that negation follows auxiliaries that are generated in positions higher than vP (conditional auxiliary, past auxiliary, subject agreement clitic) and follows auxiliaries that are generated inside vP (future auxiliary). As far as modal verbs are concerned, it will be proposed that modal constructions involve more structure, i.e., they are in principle biclausal structures. Negation can appear in the infinitival clause (CP in the case of root modals and TP in the case of epistemic modals), occurring then -like in normal clauses- abovevP/VP. It can also occur above the modal verb.

Structure of negative sentences

72

2.4.3.1 Auxiliary verbs and the position of negation 2.4.3.1.1

The inventory of auxiliaries in Polish

The inventory of auxiliaries in Polish is rather modest. In contrast with e.g. English, there is a small number of 'true' auxiliary verbs, whereby 'true' means here 'not showing properties of lexical verbs', thus having the status of a functional category. So for instance, as we will see later in the text, modal verbs in Polish are claimed to have status of main (i.e., lexical) verbs (cf. Zabrocki 1979; see also Fisiak et al. 1978:125f, Witkos 1996b:82). As for other auxiliaries, remarkably, there seems to be little agreement in the Polish literature as to what auxiliaries Polish has at all and where they are generated. The opinions are unanimous as to the fact that overtly periphrastic constructions -future tense, pluperfect tense (cf. 'czas zaprzeszly') and past conditional- contain a form of an auxiliary verb bye 'be' (the future auxiliary and the past auxiliary, respectively). The relevant examples are given below. Example (57) shows that the (imperfective) future tense47 is constructed as a combination of the verb bye 'be' in the future tense with either the past participle (the socalled /-participle) which is itself inflected for gender and number (see footnote 48) (cf. (57a)) or the infinitive (cf. (57b)). In both cases only participles and infinitives of imperfective verbs may be used. There is no difference in meaning between the two forms (cf. Fisiak et al. 1978:106). It should be noted that in Polish, unlike in English, there is no modal meaning detectable on the auxiliary^, thus its future form has only the function of a future tense auxiliary. (5 7) a.

Ona b^dzie czytala / *przeczy tala ksi^zk?. she be-3.SG.FUT read-IMPERF.PAST PRT.SG.FEM / *read-PERF.PAST PRT book 'She will read a book.' b. Ona b^dzie czytac / *przeczytac ksi^zk?. she be-3.SG.FUT read-IMPERF.INF / *read-PERF.INF book 'She will read a book.'

In contrast with the future tense, the two other constructions, i.e., the pluperfect and the past conditional, are rarely used in present-day Polish and sound rather antiquated. The pluperfect consists of the verb bye 'be' in the past tense and past participle (+ the

In Polish the future tense has different forms for imperfective and perfective verbs respectively. In the latter case the future tense is formed on the basis of the present tense base (cf. Fisiak et al. 1978:106); cf. (i) (i) present tense base of a perfective verb + present tense inflection umyj+ / -esz/ -e /- my/ -cie/ 'wash' + 1 .SG/2.SG/3.SG/1 .PL/2.PL/3.PL

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inflectional ending), cf. (58). The past conditional constructions on the other hand are formed with the verb bye 'be' in the past tense and a form of the so-called conditional I, consisting of the past participle and the mood suffix -by, cf. Fisiak et al. (1978:119), but see the discussion below. In main clauses, the mood suffix -by (which always co-occurs with the (person + number) subject agreement suffix) may be attached to the auxiliary as in (59a) or precede the auxiliary as in (59b). (58)

czytalembyl read-PAST PRT+l.SG be-(3).SG.PAST 'I had read/had been reading.'

(59)a.

bylbymkochal be-(3).SG.PAST+COND+l.SG love-PAST PRT 'I would have loved.' b. bymbylkochal COND+l.SG be-(3).SG.PAST love-PAST PRT 'I would have loved.'

The opinions vary, however, as to the question whether there are other auxiliaries in Polish apart from those mentioned above. While for instance Fisiak et al. (1978:99ff) speak about the past tense as formed on the basis of the past participle form to which the inflectional endings are attached and about the conditional construction as marked by the mood suffix -by, Borsley and Rivero (1994) (cf. also Witkos 1996a, b) speak about the past tense as a combination of a past participle and a perfect auxiliary and about the conditional sentences as employing a conditional auxiliary. In other words, what are taken to be 'the inflectional endings' and 'the mood suffix' by the former authors are analyzed as 'the perfect auxiliary' and 'the conditional auxiliary' by the latter. Let us look at some examples illustrating these contentious points. (60) illustrates the case of the past tense. As shown there, the past tense in Polish is formed with the past participle (= /-participle) of both perfective and imperfective verbs and the inflectional ending (= person and number subject agreement morphology8). The interesting point about

Note that the inflectional ending contains only person and number features. Gender is marked on the /-participle; cf. Dornisch (1997:185ff). Below, the foil paradigm of the person and number agreement morphology (for the past tense) (cf. (i)) as well as the paradigm of participle endings (cf. (ii)) are given. Table (iii) gives some examples for illustration, (i) The paradigm of the person and number agreement (for the past tense) PERSON/NUMBER

1. 2. 3.

SINGULAR -m -s -0

PLURAL -smy -scie -0

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Structure of negative sentences

this construction is that the agreement morphology may form one complex with the /participle (cf. (60a)) or it may appear separately to the left of the participle. In the latter case it attaches to some preceding element, for example, a wh-phrase as in(60b)) or to the subject pronoun as in (60c)). It cannot however appear in sentence initial position which indicates that it is a clitic (cf. (60d)). It should be noted, however, that all the cases in which the subject agreement morphology appears separately from the past participle have a clear colloquial or dialectal character. (60) a.

Widzieli+smy Ewç. see-PAST PRT+l.PL Ewa 'We saw Ewa.' b. Kogo+scie widzieli? who-ACC+2.PL see-PAST PRT 'Who did you see?' c. My+smy widzieli Ewç. we+l.PL see-PAST PRT Ewa 'We saw Ewa.' d. * Smy widzieli Ewç. l.PL see-PAST PRT Ewa

In (61) below relevant examples illustrating the use of conditional forms are provided. As it is the case with the past tense, also in the conditional constructions a form of the past participle (= /-participle) of both perfective and imperfective verbs is used. In addition, (ii) The paradigm of participle endings GENDER/NUMBER SINGULAR MASC -1 FEM NEUTR

-la -lo

GENDER/NUMBER

PLURAL

MASC (VIRILE) NON-MASC (NONVIRILE)

-li -ly

(iii) Examples of past tense forms Infinitive Past tense base myc (to wash) myczytac (to read) czytanosic (to carry) nosi-

Participle Agreement ending morphology

Resulting form

li-li -la

you washed-PL they read-MASC I carried-FEM

-scie -0 -m

Chapter 2

75

there is marker of the conditional mood, namely the particle by which always co-occurs with the (person and number) subject agreement morphology, i.e., it cannot be separated from it (cf. the paradigm given in footnote 48). The conditional constructions are similar to the past tense constructions in terms of the distribution of the relevant element (i.e., the element suspected of being an auxiliary). Accordingly, the complex òy+agreement morphology can occur in two different positions: firstly, it can be attached to the /-participle (i.e., form one complex with it) (cf. (61a)), or secondly, it can appear separately to the left of the participle as in (61b). However, as (61c) shows, a structure with ¿y+AGR in sentence-initial position is not well-formed (cf. also Dornisch 1997:186 contrary to the opinion advocated in Borsley and Rivero 1994:375f.). (61 ) a. Napisali+fry+scie ten artykul. write-PERF.PAST PRT+COND+2.PL this paper 'You would write this paper. ' b. Wy ¿y+scie napisali ten artykul. you COND+2.PL write-PERF.PAST PRT this paper 'You would write this paper.' c. *?5>H-scie napisali ten artykul. COND+2.PL write-PERF.PAST PRT this paper Borsley and Rivero (1994) regard the separable and seemingly 'moveable' element in(60) and (61) as 'the perfect auxiliary' and 'the conditional auxiliary', respectively. Thus for example, what is usually taken to be a simple past tense form is in fact identified by Borsley and Rivero (1994) as a complex construction consisting of a past participle and a perfect auxiliary and as such being the result of syntactic incorporation in the sense of Baker (1988). This makes the Polish past tense construction (cf. (62a)) looks similar to participle plus auxiliary sequences (so-called 'periphrastic past tense' consisting of a present tense form of the verb 'be' (i.e., an auxiliary element) and a past participle; cf. Veselovska 1995:127) in other Slavic languages such as e.g. Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak,49 cf. (62b,c) or to the Old Polish participle plus ¿«-auxiliary constructions ('czas przeszly zlozony' (periphrastic past tense)) (attested approximately until the 15th century) (cf. Rospond 1979:306-7), cf. (62d). (62) a. Napisal+em list. write-PAST PRT+l.SG lettter 'I wrote a letter.'

Polish

There is however one crucial difference between Polish and other Slavic languages. As argued by Borsley and Rivero (1994), Polish examples are the result of syntactic incorporation whereas in other Slavic languages such constructions are due to Long Head Movement.

76

Structure of negative sentences

b. Napisal som list. write-PAST PRT be-PRES+l.SG letter 'I wrote a letter'

Slovak

from Borsley and Rivero (1994:382) c. jsem dal be-PRES+l.SGgive-PAST PRT

Czech from Veselovska (1995:127)

d. byl jesm be-PAST PRT be-PRES.l.SG 'I was.'

Old Polish (14" century)

byli jesmy be-PAST PRT be-PRES. 1 .PL 'We were. ' from Rospond (1979:307) In a similar vein, Polish conditional constructions (cf. (63a)) look very much like their cognate constructions in other Slavic languages, cf. (63b,c)), or again like related Old Polish conditional constructions which were clearly periphrastic (cf. Rospond 1979:308), cf. (63d). (63)a.

Czytal+bym ksi^zk?. read-PAST PRT+COND+l.SG book 'I would read a book.'

b. citao bih knjigu. read-PAST PRT COND+l.SG book 'I would read a book.'

Polish

Serbo-Croatian

from Borsley and Rivero (1994:383) c.

bychom dali COND+l.PL give-PAST PRT from Veselovska ( 1995:128)

Czech

Chapter 2

d. bych chwalil50 COND+1. SG praise-PAST PRT 'I would praise.'

77

Old Polish (14th -16 th century)

byscie robili COND+2.PL do-PAST PRT 'You would do.' from Rospond (1979:308) Whereas it is not disputed that Polish has a conditional auxiliary51 (cf. Witkos 1996a,b, Dornisch 1997), the assumption that the 'floating inflection' in the case of the past tense should be regarded as a perfect auxiliary emboding the past tense feature is not generally accepted.52 So e.g., Dornisch (1997:187f.) -following Franks and Greenberg (1994) and Szczegielniak (1991)- rejects Borsley and Rivera's position, assuming instead that what is identified by Borsley and Rivera as the perfect auxiliary is merely the subject agreement morphology without any past tense feature. As the /-participle itself does not contain the past tense feature either (for it also combines with, e.g., the future auxiliary and in that case it cannot (and it does not indeed) contribute any past time interpretation), Dornisch (1997:188) assumes that the past time interpretation comes from a covert (null) past tense auxiliary. Assuming this to be correct we arrive with Dornsich at the following inventory of auxiliaries in Polish: (i) the future auxiliary (recall (57)), (ii) the conditional auxiliary by (recall (61)), (iii) the covert past auxiliary (cf. (60)), and finally (iv) the overt past auxiliary (recall the pluperfect and past conditional constructions in (58) and (59), respectively).

Notice that the conditional used to be a clear periphrastic construction in Old Church Slavic. It consisted of inflected conditional forms of the verb 'be' and a past participle. The original Old Church Slavic forms of the conditional auxiliary had not been retained in Old Polish for they had been replaced with aorist forms used in the function of conditional mood; cf. Rospond (1979:308). The opinions vary, however, as to whether the complex: COND particle iy+agreement morphology should be regarded as just one element (an 'inflected auxiliary') generated as such in one position as this is assumed in Borsley and Rivero (1994:389f.) (see however footnote 4 in Borsley and Rivero (1994:390) for some alternative suggestions), or whether it should rather be taken to consist of two separate elements, to vit the actual conditonal auxiliary by and the personnumber subject agreement morphology, which are accordingly generated in two different positions. This latter view is advocated, e.g., by Dornsich (1997). See also the subsequent discussion in the text. See Banski (1999) for a recent discussion.

Structure of negative sentences

78

2.4.3.1.2

Syntactic positions of the auxiliaries

The next question to be asked is where the auxiliaries are generated. This question is also answered differently in the relevant literature. Opposing opinions are represented by Borsley and Rivero (1994) and Dornisch (1997), respectively. The former authors make a distinction between lexical auxiliaries (such as the future auxiliary) and the functional auxiliaries (i.e., their perfect auxiliary and conditional auxiliary). This distinction is motivated by selectional properties of the auxiliaries in question -for example, the future auxiliary shows selectional properties in that it can combine only with VP-complements headed by an imperfective verb (recall the discussion above). No comparable selectional properties are observed in the case of functional auxiliaries; recall that they can combine both with perfective and imperfective verbs. This difference is also mirrored in the assumed position in which the respective auxiliary type is generated. For the lexical auxiliaries (i.e., the future auxiliary) the assumption is that they are generated in the V-slot. The functional auxiliaries on the other hand are generated in a position higher than the future auxiliary, namely in Io (stated in the pre-split-INFL fashion). In other words, the assumption is that both the perfect auxiliary and the conditional auxiliary are generated in one and the same position.53 Dornisch (1997) on the other hand advocates rather a different analysis. In her analysis auxiliaries are generated in functional projections to which they correspond semantically. This means that the conditional auxiliary is not simply generated in I°-slot, but in Mod0, the head of the Mood Phrase (ModP), and the tense auxiliaries are generated in T°. This latter assumption holds thus for both the overt future auxiliary and the past auxiliary (overt and covert). Recall from the text above that according to Dornisch, the 'floating inflection' is to be identified as the (person and number) subject agreement morphology (clitic) which is then taken to be generated in Agrs°. Given these assumptions, the emerging picture of the clause structure in Polish looks like (64) below (cf. Dornisch 1997:195).

See also Veselovska (1995) for an assumption along similar lines with respect to Czech auxiliaries clitics which are also used for the formation of the past tense and the conditional, respectively, and which also lack selectional properties. Veselovska (1995:136), however, takes the base position for these auxiliaries to be Agrs.

Chapter 2

(64)

79

AgrsP

Agi s -scie

ModP

-T\ VP bqdzie/0

v° (V)-scie The decisive argument against Borsley and Rivera's assumption that the 'floating inflection' is an auxiliary (more precisely a tense auxiliary, recall 'perfect auxiliary') generated in the same position as the conditional auxiliary is based on the distribution patterns of object clitic pronouns with respect to such elements; cf. Dornisch (1997:191) (see also Witkos 1998). In past tense clauses, when the 'floating inflection' is attached to the past participle (i.e., in past tense clauses with an incorporated past tense verb in Borsley and Rivera's parlance), a pronoun clitic can both precede or follow the verb; cf. (65). However, if the 'floating inflection' appears to the left to the past participle (i.e., in nonincorporated forms), the clitic pronoun can only take a position between the 'floating inflection' and the participle, i.e., it cannot precede the 'floating clitic'; cf. (66). (65)a.

My go widzieli+smy wczoraj. we him-CL.ACC see-PAST PRT+l.PL yesterday 'We saw him yesterday.' b. My widzieli+smy go wczoraj. we see-PAST PRT+l.PL him-CL.ACC yesterday 'We saw him yesterday.'

Structure of negative sentences

80

(66)a.

My+smy go widzieli wczoraj. we+l.PL him-CL.ACC see-PAST PRT yesterday 'We saw him yesterday.' b. * My go +smy widzieli wczoraj. we him-CL.ACC +1.PL see-PAST PRT yesterday

This latter observation also holds for conditional clauses in which the conditional auxiliary appears to the left of the participle, cf. (67). The decisive distinction between past tense clauses and conditional clauses lies in incorporated forms of conditionals (i.e., those in which the conditional auxiliary attaches directly to the participle). In this case, in contrast to what we have observed in (65), the clitic pronoun can only follow the (incorporated) conditional, cf. (68). (67) a.

Jan by go spotkal jutro. Jan COND him-CL.ACC meet-PAST PRT tomorrow 'Jan would meet him tomorrow.' b. * Jan go by spotkal jutro. Jan him-CL.ACC COND meet-PAST PRT tomorrow

(68)a.

Jan spotkal+by go jutro. Jan meet-PAST PRT+COND him-CL.ACC tomorrow 'Jan would meet him tomorrow.' b. * Jan go spotkal+ by jutro. Jan him-CL.ACC meet-PAST PRT+COND tomorrow

This difference may be explained on Dornisch's assumption that unlike the subject agreement clitic the conditional particle by is an auxiliary verb generated in a fixed position (here: Mod0, cf. (64)). Accordingly, the incorporated form of the conditional can only be achieved via verb (i.e., participle) raising to Mod0, but then there is no position left for the clitic pronoun to occur to the left of the so formed conditional for the ModP is above the Agr0P, cf. (64). However, the subject agreement clitic (by being not an auxiliary verb but merely a clitic element containig subject agreement features) has so to speak the option of either being generated in the Agrs°-slot (i.e., separately from the verb) and thus making the verb raising to this postion for feature checking unnecessary, or being inserting directly under V° (which is tantamount to saying that the incorporated past tense form is one word generated as such in the lexicon; cf. also Witkos 1998a for a similar assumption), cf. (64). This difference between the agreement morphology generated directly on the verb or inserted under Agrs° is reflected then in different possible orders of a clitic pronoun with respect to the participle and the subject agreement clitic. When the agreement clitic is generated directly under Agrs°, the object clitic can be only located to its right (as the AgroP is below the AgrsP), cf. (64); however, when the subject agreement clitic is directly

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81

generated on the verb, we predict that the object clitic has the option of appearing on each side of the verb depending on the actual position of the verb in the "clause; see Dornisch (1997) for details. As we saw in (65), this is indeed the case. 2.4.3.1.3

Position of negation with respect to the auxiliaries

Let us take Dornisch's assumptions concerning the inventory of auxiliaries in Polish and their base-positions in the clause to be basically correct and consider what position the negative marker occupies with respect to these auxiliaries. I start with the undisputed overt auxiliaries in the periphrastic constructions, i.e., the future tense auxiliary and the overt past auxiliary in the pluperfect and past conditional, proceeding then to the conditional auxiliary and the controversial 'floating' subject agreement clitic. 2.4.3.1.3.1 Negation in the periphrastic

constructions

Example (69) shows that the position of the negative marker with respect to the future auxiliary is the same as in the case of main verbs, i.e., the negative marker immediately precedes the future auxiliary. Moreover, as (70) shows, the marker of sentence negation cannot be located on the /-participle or the infinitive. (69)a.

Ona (si?) me (*si?) bqdzie (si?) smiala. she (REFL) NEG (*REFL) be-3.SG.FUT (REFL) laugh-PAST PRT.SG.FEM ' She will not laugh.' b. Ona (si?) nie (*si?) bqdzie (si?) smiac. she (REFL) NEG (*REFL) be-3.SG.FUT (REFL) laugh -INF ' She will not laugh.'

(70)a. * Ona (si?) bqdzie (si?) nie smiala. she (REFL) be-3.SG.FUT (REFL) NEG laugh -PAST PRT.SG.FEM b. * Ona (si?) bqdzie (si?) nie smiac. she (REFL) be-3.SG.FUT (REFL) NEG laugh -INF In negated variants of the pluperfect and past conditional the most acceptable position of negative marker seems to be that one immediately preceding the participle. The position immediately preceding the past auxiliary is not acceptable in the case of the pluperfect, cf. (71b). In the case of the past conditional the situation is more complicated for the negative marker can occur in other position than immediately preceding the participle, cf. (72d). In the latter case however the past auxiliary and the conditional auxiliary form a complex auxiliary. If correct, this would show that the negative marker has the option of cliticizing onto a higher verbal element if the movement of a lower verb fails to take place. I have no explanation why this should not be possible in the case of the pluperfect.

Structure of negative sentences

82

nie czy talem byi54 NEGread-PAST PRT+l.SG. be-(3).SG.PAST 'I had not read/had been reading.' b. ?*czytalem nie byl read-PAST PRT+l.SG NEG be-(3).SG.PAST

(71) a.

(72)a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

byibyra. nie kochal be-(3).SG.PAST+COND+l.SG NEG love-PAST PRT 'I would not have loved.' bym byi nie kochal COND+l.SG be-(3).SG.PAST love-PAST PRT 'I would not have loved.' nie kochal byfbym NEG love-PAST PRT be-(3).SG.PAST+COND+l.SG 'I would not have loved.' nie byibym kochal NEG be-(3).SG.PAST+COND+l.SG love-PAST PRT 'I would not have loved.' ?*bym nie byl kochal COND+l.SG NEG be-(3).SG.PAST love-PAST PRT

2.4.3.1.3.2

Negation and the conditional

auxiliary

Example (73) illustrates the case of negated conditional clauses. It shows that the negative marker cannot precede the conditional auxiliary, but must occur on the participle. Only in (74) the negative marker appears to the left of the conditional auxiliary. However, it does not immediately precede the auxiliary, but is separated from it by the participle, cf. the contrast between (74a) and (74b). This shows that the cases where the negative marker precedes the conditional must be derived via movement (or 'incorporation' in Borsley and Rivera's terms) of the negated past participle to the position occupied by the conditional auxiliary, i.e., Mod 0 in Dornisch's analysis. (73) a.

Jan by nie napisal tego artykulu. Jan COND NEG write-PAST PRT this paper-GEN ' Jan wouldn't write this paper.' b. * Jan nie by napisal tego artykulu. Jan NEG COND write-PAST PRT this paper-GEN

Notice that also in affirmative variants of the pluperfect constructions the participle (normally) precedes the past auxiliary; cf. (i) (i) czytalem byl / ?? byl czytalem

(74) a.

Jan me napisaliy tego artykulu. Jan NEG write-PAST PRT+COND this paper-GEN 'Jan wouldn't write this paper.' b. * Jan napisal me by tego artykulu. Jan write-PAST PRT NEG COND this paper-GEN

2.4.3.1.3.3 Negation and the subject agreement clitic Turning now to the subject agreement clitic, (75) shows that it cannot be immediately preceded by negation. In other words, in cases in which the subject agreement clitic is generated directly in Agrs°, the negative marker occurs to its right, namely on the participle. As expected, the 'incorporated' past tense verbs (i.e., those which come from the lexicon already with the subject agreement clitic, recall the discussion above) behave as normal main verbs as far as the position of the negative marker is concerned, i.e., the marker of sentence negation immediately precedes them, cf. (76). (75)a.

Mysmy nie widzieli Ewy. we+l.PL NEG see-PAST PRT Ewa-GEN 'We didn't see Ewa.' b. * My nie smy widzieli Ewy. we NEG l.PL see-PAST PRT Ewa-GEN

(76) a.

My nie widzielivmy Ewy. we NEG see-PAST PRT+l.PL Ewa-GEN 'We didn't see Ewa.' b. * My widzieli nie smy Ewy. we see-PAST PRT NEG l.PL Ewa-GEN

2.4.3.1.3.4 Partial conclusions: problem of the future

auxiliary

Summarizing the discussion so far, the following conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the negative marker immediately precedes main verbs and the future auxiliary in contrast with the past auxiliary in the pluperfect and past conditional as well as with the conditional auxiliary and the subject agreement clitic. Thus, it seems that the future auxiliary patterns more with (or is much more like) lexical verbs than other auxiliaries (cf. Borsley and Rivero 1994 for a similar observation; see the text above). Secondly, the observation is that the marker of sentence negation cannot precede elements generated higher in the syntactic tree than TP; this is the case with the conditional auxiliary (generated in Mod0, recall(64)) and the 'floating' subject agreement clitic (generated in Agrs°). Thirdly, and most importantly, the assumptions made so far and the assumed syntactic structure in (64) in particular make us predict that all tense auxiliaries generated in T° (i.e., the future auxiliary and the past auxiliary according to Dornisch) should pattern uniformly with respect to

84

Structure of negative sentences

negation; in other words, the expectation would be that the negative marker either precedes or follows these auxiliaries. This expectation is however not fulfilled. As it was demonstrated in the text above, the tense auxiliaries do not pattern uniformly with respect to negation. While the negative marker obligatorily precedes the fixture auxiliary, it must occur on nothing but the participle in the case of the pluperfect and past conditional. Here we get to the bottom of the problem, namely the position of the negative marker with repect to TP. The clear cases of elements generated higher than TP (i.e., the conditional auxiliary in Mod0 and the 'floating' subject agreement clitic in Agrs°) let us conclude that the position of negation must be somewhere lower than AgrsP and ModP. The position of the negative marker with respect to the future auxiliary -on the condition that the future auxiliary is generated in T° as this is assumed in Dornisch (1997)- would us lead to the conclusion that negation must be higher than TP. However, if the past auxiliary is also generated in T°, then the position of the negative marker is this case would make us conclude that negation must be located somewhere lower than TP. So following either route we arrive at contradictory conclusions. There are in fact two possible solutions to this problem. Firstly, the assumption that the future auxiliary and the past auxiliary are generated in the same position, i.e., T°, might be not correct. Or secondly, if these auxiliaries are indeed generated in T°, then the future auxiliary must differ from the past auxiliary in terms of some property that in turn allows it to pattern with lexical verbs. This property might be for instance the selectional restrictions imposed on verbal complements in the case of the future auxiliary. Recall that the future auxiliary can combine only with imperfective verbs. This fact led Borsley and Rivero to the conclusion that the future auxiliary is a lexical auxiliary generated in the V-slot. Which of these hypotheses is right? To decide this, one might want to look at modal verbs in Polish for they too have been claimed to have properties of lexical verbs. This makes them in a sense similar to the future auxiliary. The question would thus be whether they pattern with the future auxiliary in all relevant respects and consequently, whether they may be assumed to be generated in the same position as the future auxiliary or whether some other structure has to be assumed for them. These questions are examined in the next section to which I turn now. 2.4.3.2 Modal verbs and the position of negation 2.4.3.2.1

General remarks on the nature of modal verbs in Polish

Polish modal verbs differ from English ones in several important respects that make them more similar to lexical main verbs rather than to auxiliary verbs. While English modals show formal features distinguishing them from lexical verbs (e.g., they have only finite forms, they pattern with auxiliary verbs with respect to negation and subject inversion (e.g.

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85

in questions); they have no person and tense inflection),53 Polish modals with some minor exceptions of 'defective modals' (such as e.g. wolno meaning something like 'one may'/'one is allowed/permitted' or powinien 'should'; see Fisiak et al. 1978:125ff for details) do not differ formally from lexical verbs. So for instance, they have nonfinite forms such as infinitives and participles, they are normally inflected for person, number, they have tense inflection. These facts made, e.g., Zabrocki (1979:57) conclude that "Polish equivalents of English modals (...) are regular main verbs dominated by VP node" (see also references cited in Zabrocki 1979; cf. also Witkos 1996b for a similar conclusion). Also negation facts seem to further corroborate the above conclusion. Exactly as in the case of main verbs the negative marker precedes a modal verb, cf. (77). (77)

Jan nie musi jutro pracowac. Jan NEG must-3.SG.PRES tomorrow work-INF 'Jan does not have to work tomorrow.'

However, as we saw above, the same pattern also occurs in the case of the future auxiliary so that this fact alone does not help us any further with the clarification of our initial problem, i.e., the question of what is the position of negation with respect to TP. Since the future auxiliary is assumed to be generated in T°, nothing follows from the fact that it patterns -as far as negation is concerned- with modals (and main verbs for that matter) since we do not know yet whether this is because the future auxiliary and modals occupy the same position or because there are some other factors responsible for this (even despite the fact that they might be structurally different). Is there any way to decide which assumption is correct? In what follows I will suggest that there is, and show what can be done to overcome this impasse. 2.4.3.2.2

Problem: position of modals and the future auxiliary

First of all the question must be raised as to whether it is justified to assume that the future auxiliary and modal verbs occupy the same position (because of the fact that they pattern uniformly with respect to negation). If it can be shown that modals differ structurally from constructions with the future auxiliary, then remaining question would be what the syntactic structure must be like to do justice to the fact that firstly, the future auxiliary and modals are preceded by the negative marker, yet they have different structure (to be shown presently), and secondly, the tense auxiliaries (i.e., the future auxiliary and the past Notice, however, that even in English the question whether modals have status of auxiliary verbs or that of main verbs has been matter of dispute for a long time. While for instanceChomsky (1957 and the following works) advocated the idea that modals belong to a separate category of auxiliary elements, generative semanticians (e.g. Ross in his paper from 1969 "Auxiliaries as main verbs") argued in favor of their being main verbs; see Zabrocki (1979) for a critical discussion of these two positions.

Structure of negative sentences

86

auxiliary), claimed to be generated in the same position (i.e., T°), do not behave uniformly as far as negation is concerned. I start with the first question. 2.4.3.2.2.1 Arguments against assuming the same position for modals and the future auxiliary 2.4.3.2.2.1.1

No complementary

distribution

At the outset of the previous section I mentioned that modal verbs in Polish are inflected for tense. This means that besides modal verbs in present tense and past, we also have future forms of modal verbs, cf. (78). Thus on the assumption that modal verbs and the future auxiliary are in the same position, example (78c) looks very suspect. This fact calls for different base-positions for the future auxiliary and modals, respectively. (78) a. Jan musi ter az pracowac. Jan must-3.SG.PRES now work-INF 'Jan must work now.' b. Jan musial wczoraj pracowac. Jan must-3.SG.PAST yesterday work-INF 'Jan had to work yesterday.' c. Janb^dzie musial pracowac jutro. Jan be-3.SG.FUT must-PAST PRT work-INF tomorrow 'Jan will have to work tomorrow.' 2.4.3.2.2.1.2

Negation facts

Another difference between future constructions and modal constructions emerges when we look more closely at negation facts once again. So far we have examined negated future sentences like (69) and (70) and modal sentences like (77) and noted that in both cases the negative marker precedes the future auxiliary and the modal verb, respectively. The question that arises now is what happens when the negative marker appears not on the future auxiliary or the modal verb but on a lower verb (here: infinitive). The structures to be investigated now are given in (79) and (80) below. (79) * Janek bqdzie nie czytac. Janek be-3.SG.FUT NEG read-INF Lit.: 'Jan will not read.' (80)

Jan moze nie czytac. Jan may-3.SG.PRES NEG read-INF Lit.: 'Jan may not read' (intended meaning: 'Jan is allowed not to read.')

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In contrast to (79), which as such is ungrammatical, example (80) with negation appearing on the infinitive is a well-formed sentence. The only possibility to make (79) an acceptable sentence is to interpret the negation on the infinitive in a contrastive way (i.e., as a constituent negation) as indicated in (81). (81)

Jan bqdzie me czytac, ale pisac. Jan be-3.SG.FUT NEG read-INF but write-INF Lit.: 'Jan will not read but write.' 'What Jan will is not read but write.'

It should be noted that the negation in example (80) does not have any contrastive interpretation. Recall from section 2.4.1.1 that we have at least two diagnostics at our disposal that allow distinguishing sentence negation from constituent or contrastive negation. The diagnostics in question are Genitive of Negation and negative pronouns. Sentence negation, but not constituent negation, allows for both GoN and negative pronouns. Let us use these diagnostics to see whether negation occurring on the infinitive in (79) and (80) is of the same type. Example (82) shows that with a regular negation preceding the future auxiliary only Genitive marking of the direct object is grammatical. However, with a negation occurring on the infinitive (on the contrastive interpretation) the object has to be marked for Accusative, as example (83) shows (cf. Dziwirek 1998:83f. for similar observations). The Genitive marking of the direct object is in this case ungrammatical. (82)

Jan nie bqdzie czytac tej ksi^zki / *t? ksi^zk?. Jan NEG be-3.SG.FUT read-INF this-GEN book-GEN / *this-ACC book-ACC 'Jan will not read this book.'

(83)

Jan bqdzie nie czytac t? ksi^zk? / *tej ksi^zki, ale j ^ ogl^dac. Jan be-3.SG.FUT NEG read-INF this-ACC book-ACC / *this-GEN book-GEN but it-ACC look at-INF 'Jan will not read this book but look at it.' 'What Jan will do with this book is not read it but look at it.'

Examples (84) and (85) illustrate the use of negative pronouns. With a regular negation on the future auxiliary as in (84) below negative pronouns are perfectly acceptable. In the case negation occurs on the infinitive negative pronouns cease to be acceptable any more, cf. (85). (84)

Jan nie bqdzie nic czytac. Jan NEG be-3.SG.FUT nothing read-INF 'Jan will not read anything.'

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(85)*

Jan

bqdzie nic nie czytac, ale ogl^dac. Jan be-3.SG.FUT nothing NEG read-INF but look at-INF

I conclude from the examples above that only in the case in which the negative marker precedes the future auxiliary we have to do with sentence negation. Otherwise, the negation -if acceptable at all- can be interpreted only as constituent (contrastive) negation. This means at the same time that Ihe marker of sentence negation must appear higher than the position in which the future auxiliary is generated. In other words, the position of sentence negation cannot lie somewhere between the future auxiliary and the infinitival (or past participle) complement. Let us turn to modal verbs to see what type of negation the negative marker on an infinitive represents. In the case the negative marker precedes a modal verb as in below it clearly shows properties of sentence negation: the direct object obligatorily occurs in Genitive (cf. (86)) and negative pronouns are allowed (cf. (87)). However, in contrast with negated infinites in future tense constructions, negation occurring on an infinitive in the case of modal constructions displays effects of sentence negation: the Case marking of the direct object is obligatorily Genitive (cf (88)) and examples with negative pronouns are well-formed (cf. (89)). (86)

Jan me mote czytac tej ksi^zki / *t? ksi^zk?. Jan NEG may-3.SG.FUT read-INF this-GEN book-GEN / *this-ACC book-ACC 'Jan may not read this book.' 'Jan is not allowed to read this book.'

(87)

Jan nie moze nic czytac. Jan NEG may-3.SG.FUT nothing read-INF 'Jan may not read anything.' 'Jan is not allowed to read anything.'

(88)

Jan moze nie czytac tej ksi^zki / *t? ksi^zk?. Jan may-3.SG.FUT NEG read-INF this-GEN book-GEN / *this-ACC book-ACC Lit.:' Jan may not read this book.' 'Jan is allowed not to read this book.'

(89)

Jan m 0 z e nic nie czytac. Jan may-3.SG.FUT nothing NEG read-INF 'Jan may not read anything.' 'Jan is allowed not to read anything.'

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In light of these examples the conclusion to be drawn is that negation occurring on an infinitive has a different status in the future tense constructions and in modal constructions, respectively. In the former case the negation in question is nothing but constituent (contrastive) negation, while in the latter case it has properties of sentence negation. Regarding the last statement, it should be noted that sometimes in the literature (e.g., in Witkos 1996b) the distinction is made between the auxiliary negation (in the cases at hand this means the negation occurring on a modal verb) and the main verb negation. The former negation is viewed as 'clausal negation', whereas the latter is called 'local negation'; cf. Witkos (1996b:80). Also Fisiak et al. (1978:188ff) make a similar distinction: they speak about sentence negation and phrasal negation. The evidence for this distinction comes from the so-called ani nawet nie 'not even' or ani tez nie 'and neither' tags. The assumption is that only a negative sentence can be followed by these tags. Applying this test to the sentence in which the negative marker occurs on the infinitive (cf. (90a)), Fisiak et al. (1978:190) conclude that in (90a,b) we have to do with a phrasal negation, i.e., the sentence as a whole is positive.56 (90)a.

On mògi nie isc. he may-3.SG.PAST NEG go-INF 'He was allowed not to go.' b. * On mògi nie isc przyj^cie ani nawet wychodzic z domu. he may-3.SG.PAST NEG go-INF to party not even leave of home c. On nie mògi isc przyj^cie ani nawet wychodzic z domu. he may-3.SG.PAST NEG go-INF to party not even leave of home 'He was not allowed to go to the party not even to leave home. '

Notice however that this test shows only that a sentence as a whole is negative or positive. A sentence as a whole means a complex sentence (consisting possibly of two sentences; see the discussion below); in other words, a statement that a sentence as a whole has a negative or positive character does not tell much about the internal structure of such a sentence and more importantly, it does not deny that such a sentence may have a complex internal structure. Even if there might be differences between 'auxiliary negation' and 'local negation' (cf. Witkos 1996b:80f. for a detailed discussion), I will continue to regard the two phenomena, i.e., GoN and negative pronouns, as being characteristics of sentence negation. Consequently, the negation preceding an infinitive in a modal construction will be treated

Note however that the not even-tag is possible in examples like those given in (i) (due to Chris Wilder, p.c.). (i) a. John is supposed not to go to the party, not even to leave the house, b. John is obliged not to go to the party, not even to leave the house.

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as involving sentence negation (cf. also Dziwirek 1998 for an assumption along similar lines). 2.4.3.2.2.2 Structure of modal clauses Assuming that in the case of negated infinitives in modal constructions we have to do with sentence negation, and taking furthermore into account that there might be just one sentence negation per clause, the direct consequence of this is that a modal sentence in fact consists of two clauses. This is tantamount to saying that both the modal verb and the main verb project each a clause (or clause-like structure), i.e., they are treated as two separate predicates. Supporting evidence for this assumption comes from the facts relating to licensing of negative pronouns that are discussed below. 2.4.3.2.2.2. Negative pronouns in modal clauses Firstly, in some cases it is possible to negate both the modal verb and the infinitival complement as indicated in (91a) below. The resulting meaning is whereby a positive one; in other words, the polarity value of a complex sentence is positive as the result of the interpretation of two negated predicates. Notice however that despite the fact that the polarity value of the complex sentence is as such positive, negative pronouns are still acceptable, cf. (91b).57 This latter observation is understandable if we take into consideration firstly, that negative pronouns are licensed by sentence negation and secondly, that both modal verb and the infinitive are treated as two separate predicates projecting each a clause that in turn contains a sentence negation. This means that negative pronouns are licensed by the sentence negation of the lower clause ('infinitival clasue') before these two negations cancel each other at the level at which the interpretation of the complex sentence takes place. (91) a. Jan me moze me znac Ewy. Jan NEG may-3.SG.PRES NEG know-INF Ewa-GEN Lit.: 'Jan may not not know Ewa.' meaning: 'Jan must know Ewa.' / 'Jan surely knows Ewa.' b. Jan me moze nie znac nikogo. Jan NEG may-3.SG.PRES NEG know-INF nobody-GEN It is worth noticing in this connection that in contexts of double negationNPIs are allowed. So for instance, Hoeksema and Klein (1995:149) observe that "for unknown reasons, negationcancellation appears to allow for positive polarity items, without however blocking the licensing of negative polarity items. (...) Hence in contexts of double negation, there is no complementary distribution for some and any" (see also the references cited in Hoeksema and Klein 1995). I will return to the relevance of this fact later on when the problem of n-words and Negative Concord is discussed.

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Lit.: 'Jan may not not know anybody.' meaning: 'He must know someone.' / 'He surely knows someone.' Secondly, the statement that negation in the lower clause (i.e., negation occurring on the infinitive in modal constructions) can license n-words must be specified yet for not all negative pronouns can be licensed by such negation. What we observe is the following: negation in the lower clause may license any negative pronoun-argument but the subject one, cf. (92) (see Przepiorkowski and Kupsc 1997a for a simiar observation and similar judgements as to the grammaticality of the examples at hand, but contra Witkos 1996b: 80, according to whom local negation on the infinitive licenses negative pronouns "in the object [ ], adjunct [ ] and subject [ ] positions"). (92)a.

Ewa moze nic nie robic. Ewa may-3.SG.PRES nothing NEG go-INF 'Ewa is allowed not to do anything.' b. Ewa moze nikomu nie pomagac. Ewa may-3.SG.PRES nobody-DAT NEG help-INF 'Ewa is allowed not to help anybody.' c. ?*Nikt moze teraz nie isc do domu. nobody may-3.SG.PRES now NEG go-INF to home

but: c.' Nikt nie moze teraz isc do domu. nobody NEG may-3.SG.PRES now NEG go-INF to home 'Nobody may go now home.' 'Nobody is allowed to go now home.' As far as negative pronouns adverbials are concerned, they too may be licensed by the negation in the lower clause, cf. (93 a). On the other hand, a negative pronoun temporal adverb will be not licensed by the lower negation when it belongs to the higher clause as in (93b). (93) a.

Ewa moze nigdzie nie wychodzic. Ewa may-3.SG.PRES nowhere NEG go out-INF 'Ewa is allowed not to go out anywhere.' b. ?*Ewa nigdy moze nie wychodzic. Ewa never may-3.SG.PRES NEG go out-INF

but: b.' Ewa nigdy nie moze wychodzic. Ewa never NEG may-3.SG.PRES go out-INF 'Ewa may never go out.' 'Ewa is never allowed to go out.'

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2.4.3.2.2.2.2

Similarities with other infinitival constructions

These facts strongly resemble the situation found in other types of construction that also involve infinitival complements, namely 'want+infinitive' constructions and object control constructions. In these constructions too the negation occurring on the infinitive license negative pronous (and Genitive objects for that matter). The first type of construction is extensively discussed in Przepiorkowski and Kupsc (1997a). The authors observe that negation on the lower verb (i.e., on the infinitive) licenses negative pronouns except for one case, namely: "negative pronoun in the subject position requires negation on the highest verb only", cf. (94) cited from Przepiorkowski and Kupsc (1997a:29-30). Note in passing that in a smilar vein, a negative pronoun temporal adverb cannot be licensed by the negation of the lower clause when it modifies the higher predicate (here: 'want'), cf. (95). (94) a.

Jan chcial niczego nie kupowac. Jan want-3.SG.PAST nothing-GEN NEG buy-INF 'Jan wanted not to buy anything.' b. * Nikt chcial nie kupic tego domu. nobody want-3.SG.PAST NEG buy-INF this-GEN house-GEN

but: b'. Nikt nie chcial kupic tego domu. nobody NEG want-3.SG.PAST buy-INF this-GEN house-GEN 'Nobody wanted to buy this house.' (95)a.

Jan nigdy nie chcial kupic tego domu. Jan never NEG want-3.SG.PAST buy-INF this-GEN house-GEN 'Jan never wanted to buy this house.' b. * Jan nigdy chcial nie kupic tego domu. Jan never want-3.SG.PAST NEG buy-INF this-GEN house-GEN

A similar observation also holds for object control constructions. As observed by Dziwirek (1998), negative pronouns may be licensed by negation in the lower clasue, i.e., on the infinitive, cf. (96) cited from Dziwirek (1998:83f.). (96)

Jan kazal Ewie nie chodzic nigdzie. Jan order-3.SG.PAST Ewa-DAT NEG go-INF nowhere 'Jan ordered Ewa not to go anywhere.'

The relevant observation (not noted by Dziwirek herself) is that a negative pronoun is acceptable in the Dative object position when the higher predicate is negated, but not when negation occurs on the infinitive in a lower clause. This is illustrated in (97) below.

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(97)a.

Jan nie pozwolil nikomu czytac tej ksi^zki. Jan NEG allow-3.SG.PAST nobody-DAT read-INF this-GEN book-GEN 'Jan didn't allow anyone to read this book.' b. * Jan pozwolil nikomu nie czytac tej ksi^zki. Jan allow-3.SG.PAST nobody-DAT NEG read-INF this-GEN book-GEN

What do these examples have in common which makes them comparable as far as licensing of negative pronouns in the subject position is concerned? 2.4.3.2.2.2.3

Possible analysis of infinitival

constructions

The answer to this question suggests itself in the case of object control constructions. Such constructions -as their name already indicates- involve control. In other words, the Dative object of the matrix clause is simultaneously the contoller of the subject of the complement clause (i.e., the infinitival complement). Arguably, such examples contain a subject PRO in the infinitival clause (cf. Dziwirek 1998 for discussion). Accordingly, the lexically expressed Dative object belongs to (i.e., is the argument of) the matrix clause. When the matrix predicate is negated as in (97a), a negative pronoun in the function of the Dative object is acceptable since it can be licensed by this negation. When negation appears only in the infinitival clause as in (97b), it is not able to license the negative pronoun Dative object of the higher clause; in other words, it can only license arguments belonging to the same clasue (i.e., base-generated in the same clause). Since the subject position in the infinitival clause is filled by a PRO (controllee), the negative pronoun cannot have been generated in this position so that it falls outside the licensing domain of the negation of this clause.58 This is schematically indicated in (98) below. (98)

[Subject NEG V DAT-Object; ] [PRO; M

*

NEG V Object Adverb] II ok

^

In a similar vein, the 'want+infinitive' constructions may be argued to involve subject control (cf. among others Zabrocki 1981 and Char^zinska 1996). The explanation of the unacceptability of a negative pronoun in the subject position in the case negation is expressed on the infinitive proceedes along the same lines. These constructions in fact consist of two clauses: the matrix clause and the complement (infinitival) clause. The lexically realized subject of the matrix clause is at the same time controller of the subject (PRO) of the infinitival clause. As in the previous case, the negation in the infinitival clause can only license negative pronouns base-generated in this clause. As the lexically realized

Note that this explanation loses somewhat of its initial plausibility on the assumption that control in fact involves A-movement; cf. e.g. Hornstein (1996) and Manzini and Roussou (1997) for proposals along such lines.

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Structure of negative sentences

subject (the negative pronoun in the case at hand) belongs to the matrix clause (it cannot be generated in the infinitival clause as this position is occupied by a PRO subject), it will not be licensed by the negation in the lower clause. The schema in (99) illustrates this. (99)

[Subject; NEG V Object Adverb ] [PRO,


ÇG V Object Adverb] ok •

What about modal constructions discussed above? Is there any way of making them structurally similar to subject control and object control constructions? This is possible on the assumption made occasionally in the literature that in the case of root modals a control-like structure may be involved (cf. Diesing 1992:28 referring to Zubizarreta 1982). In contrast with root modals, epistemic modals may be analyzed as raising verbs (cf. Diesing 1992:28 referring to Jackendoff 1972, McCawley 1988; see also footnote 55). Once the assumption is made that root modals involve control-like structures, the reason why (92c) repeated here as (100) is not well-formed is obvious. (100) ?*Nikt moze teraz [PRO nie isc do domu] nobody may-3.SG.PRES now NEG go-INF to home The complement clause (i.e., the infinitival clause) has a PRO subject. By analogy to the subject and object control constructions discussed above, it might be argued that negation in the infinitival clause can license only those negative pronouns that are base-generated in that clause. In consequence, a negative pronoun in the subject position of the matrix clause will not be licensed by negation of the complement clause, because it does not originate in that clause. A supporting piece of evidence that this assumption might be on the right track comes from the comparison of root modals with epistemic modals. If it is true that epistemic modals unlike root modals- may be analyzed as raising verbs, then the prediction would be that negative pronouns should be licensed in the subject position for they originate in the infinitival clause and then raise to the matrix clause. Consequently, it should be possible for the negation in the infinitival clause to license a negative pronoun subject (or assuming a copy theory of Chomsky 1995, a lower copy of the raised negative pronoun subject is still in the infinitival clause, thus accessible to the negation in that clause). As example (101) shows, this prediction is indeed borne out. On the epistemic reading a modal construction with a negative pronoun in the subject position and negation in the complement clause is an acceptable sentence.59 59

As far as other subject raising constructions are concerned (e.g., constructions with the verb wydawac / zdawac siq 'to seem'), it seems that -to the extent to which such constructions are accepted at all by the native speakers of Polish- a negative pronoun in the subject position might

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(101)

95

Nikt moze nie przyj sc. nobody may-3.SG.PRES NEG come-INF 'Nobody may come.' meaning: 'It is possible that nobody will come.'

In sum, assuming that the assumptions made above are correct, modal constructions actually involve two predicates, each projecting a clause. Consequently, they consist of a matrix clause and a complement (infinitival) clause. Each of these clauses may contain a sentence negation. In the case of root modals, on their analysis as control verbs, the complement clause is a control infinitival, thus a CP that is assumed to "fall together with finite clauses, headed by C selecting nondefective T (with tense-modal structure and a full complement of ((»-features (....) " and that has "structural Case [i.e., null Case; J.B.] ( ) assigned to the subject of T" (Chomsky 1998:19), cf. (102a). If epistemic modals are analyzed in terms of raising predicates, then their complement clause is a raising infinitival that is -according to Chomsky (1998:19)- "headed by T&f [= defective; J.B.], lacking C and tense structure and assigning no Case to subject (...)"; cf. (102b). (102)

a. b.

2.4.3.2.3

Sub Modal ROOT [CP C [ t p PRO, T t, V w ] ] ] Subi MODALFIPISTEMIC [TP t,T [VP ti Vow]] Partial conclusions: back to the problem of the future auxiliary

Thus, in each case a complement clause contains at least as much as a TP projection. When negation is present in an infinitival clause, then it is still possible that it is located above TP. Recall that while discussing the properties of negation occurring on an infinitival complement of the future auxiliary and a modal verb, the observation was made that in the former case the negation has properties of a constituent (contrastive) negation, whereas in the latter case it is a sentence negation. On the assumption that the future auxiliary takes a VP complement (cf. Domisch 1998:89; fii. 40, following Zagona 1988 and Picallo 1990), be licensed by the negation in the infinitival clause, or at least it does not cause ungrammatically; in any case, such constructions are more acceptable than modal sentences of the type presented in (100); cf. (i) and (ii) below. It should be noted that constructions of the type given in (i) are more frequently used and are felt 'more Polish' or 'more natural' by the consulted native speakers. (i) Zdawalo si?, ¿e nikt nie docenia znaczenia tej chwili. seem-3. SG.NEUTR.PAST REFL that nobody-NOM NEG appreciate-3.SG.PRES importance (of) this moment 'It seemed that nobody appreciated the importance of that moment.' (ii) ? Nikt zdawalsi? nie doceniac powagi tej chwili. nobody-NOM seem-3.SG.PAST REFL NEG appreciate-INF importance (of) this moment 'Nobody seemed to appreciate the importance of that moment.'

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Structure of negative sentences

this would mean that sentence negation must be located above TP. This latter assumption, however, will immediately encounter problems, if one takes into consideration the fact that the past auxiliary generated in T° cannot be preceded by negation, at least not in the case of the pluperfect constructions, recall examples (71) and (72). I think that it is possible to have one's cake and eat it. To make this work we need to reconsider the assumption that the future auxiliary is generated in T°. The ingredients of this new conception are the following: Firstly, overt lexical material can be inserted (or base-generated) only in those positions for which it has corresponding features (cf. also Veselovska 1995:136 for a similar claim). Secondly, and most importantly, an overt element X base-generated in a functional projection Y can reflect only features corresponding to Y; in other words, it cannot reflect features corresponding to a lower projection Z. On the other hand, an element W basegenerated in Z can certainly have features corresponding to Z and to some higher projection Y. Applying these assumptions to the case at hand, we will find a certain asymmetry between auxiliary elements. This asymmetry reflects in some sense what Borsley and Rivero (1994) use as a criterion for the differentiation between functional and lexical auxiliaries, namely the lack versus existence of selectional properties. Recall that the functional auxiliaries (i.e., the perfect auxiliary and the conditional auxiliary in Borsley and Rivera's analysis) may combine both with perfective and imperfective verbs, thus differing from the future auxiliary that can take only a VP complement headed by an imperfective verb. Let us consider the auxiliaries discussed in this section one by one with respect to the requirements postulated above. Borsley and Rivera's 'perfect auxiliary' has been identified -following Dornisch (1997)- as a subject agreement clitic, thus as spell-out of the (personnumber) subject agreement morphology. Accordingly, this clitic does not have any tense features. In an analysis that assumes agreement projections in the clausal structure, this clitic -in cases where it is not generated on a verb; recall the discusssion above- will be inserted under Agrs°. In an analysis that relinquishes agreement projections -following Chomsky (1995, Chapter 4.10) or Chomsky (1998)- this subject agreement clitic must be generated in T°. This latter assumption is in fact a plausible one, since the subject agreement clitic and the past auxiliary are in complementary distribution. Notice that it is precisely in the pluperfect and past conditional constructions (recall examples (58), (59), (71), and (72)), i.e., in cases in which the past auxiliary is overt and -if our assumptions are correct- generated in T°, that the subject agreement clitic appears on the past participle or the conditional auxiliary, respectively, but not directly on the past auxiliary. This plausibility notwithstanding, there is a problem as far as the conditional auxiliary is concerned. Following the assumptions made above, this auxiliary bears merely a mood feature, thus it should be generated in a kind of Mod0 (or following Chomsky (1998) in C° since this functional category is the locum of force and mood). Yet this auxiliary appears always inflected for person and number. This led Borsley and Rivero -contra Dornisch (1998)- to the assumption that the conditional particle by plus the agreement morphology

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should be regarded as just one element, to wit an 'inflected auxiliary' generated as such in one position, namely in 1° (cf. footnote 51). On the assumption that the subject agreement clitic and the conditional auxiliary are generated in two different projections, however, the sequence COND 6y+AGR must be the result of some process of incorporation of the Mod 0 to Agrs°, if -as in Dornisch's analysis- the AgrsP is above the ModP (cf. (64)) or some process of cliticization of two adjacent heads, Mod0 and T°, if the subject agreement clitic is generated in T° and ModP is located above TP. According to this latter view, T° would have to contain both person and number subject agreement features and tense features that might be realized overtly, i.e., as the subject agreement clitic and the past auxiliary, respectively. There might be however some complications with this assumption, see Borsley and Rivero (1994) for discussion. Turning now to the future auxiliary, it has not only a tense feature and person and number agreement feature, but also shows selectional properties in terms of combining only with imperfective verbs. According to the requirements postulated above, the future auxiliary must appear in some projection which would reflect all these features, and above all the fact that the periphrastic future tense is marked as [+imperfective]. Assuming that Aspect is a functional category, it might be the case that the future auxiliary is generated in Asp0, the head of an Asp(ect)Phrase (cf. Veselovska 1995:136-7 for an assumption along these lines; but see Dornisch 1997:184-5 for an alternative suggestion). Given that the AspP is located above VP but below TP (cf. Brown and Franks 1995 and references cited there; see also Veselovska 1995:105ff and Spiewak and Szymanska 1995:139ff for some discussion), all the features of the future auxiliary will be satisfied: the aspect feature by being generated in Asp0, and tense and agreement features by a subsequent movement to corresponding higher functional heads. Most importantly, this assumption will account for the observed NEG+future auxiliary order if negation is located above AspP (cf. the discussion from the section 2.4.2.1 where the same conclusion has been suggested on the basis of Genitive of negation facts). On this assumption the ungrammaticality of NEG+past auxiliary/conditional auxiliary/agreement clitic sequences is accounted for since all of these elements are generated in higher positions than NEG. It seems to me, however, that one can account for the selectional properties of the future auxiliary (and for the NEG+future auxiliary order) by assuming that the future auxiliary is actually a lexical category, a lexical (light) verb taking a VP complement headed by an imperfective verb (cf. also Borsley and Rivero 1994). Notice that the future auxiliary is not the only element selecting imperfective verbal complements. Also aspectual verbs (or verbs of temporal aspect) such as zaczqc 'to begin', skonczyc 'to finish' or przestac 'to stop' which are subgategorized for bare infinitival complement require this complement to be imperfective (cf. Veselovska 1995:98f., see also Char^zinska 1996). This makes the future

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auxiliary more similar to lexical verbs rather than to purely functional categories.60 Assuming furthermore that the external argument is generated outside the VP as a specifier of an extra functional projection: either the light verb projection vP (cf. Kratzer 1994, Chomsky 1995, Chomsky 1998) or the Predication Projection PredP (cf. Bowers 1993, Bailyn 1995), the structure of the periphrastic future construction would be as follows: (103) "x.NEG

\.vP

/-participle / infinitive If negation is present, then it will be located above vP (or if one assumes an AspP or an AgroP above vP, negation will be located above these projections as well). In other words, sentence negation cannot be located within the vP, for instance above the first or the second VP. This is justifiable since sentence negation must have scope (at least) over the verbal predicate and all its arguments (cf. section 2.3.2.2, see also section 2.4.2.2). 2.4.3.3

Conclusions

Thus, we may conclude that negation may be located above the first completed predicate, e.g. in the case at hand above a verb phrase in which all theta roles are assigned (including local, temporal or manner adverbials, provided that such are present; cf. the discussion in section 2.4.2.2). This means that negation will be located above vP (again modulo the presence of AspP or Agr^) in transitive structures or just above VP in unaccusative structures. Another consequence of this assumption is that sentence negation may in fact appear not only above clearly verbal predicates (vP or VP), but also above any completed predicate (in the sense of a predicate with all its theta roles assigned) as e.g. a small clause (also as secondary predication). This assumption will turn out to be helpful for accounting for cases of seeming lexical negation that nevertheless licenses negative pronouns (cf. Chapter 4, section 4.3.3.3).

60

See however Wurmbrand (1998:142), who points out that aspectual verbs, modal verbs and motion verbs have been proposed in the literature to be anayzed not as full lexical verbs but rather as auxiliaries (e.g., Napoli 1981) or light verbs (Rosen 1990).

Chapter 2

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Yet another nice result of the proposed analysis is that it offers a way of accounting for the differences between the periphrastic future tense constructions and other constructions with verbs taking infinitival complements (as e.g. modal constructions, object control constructions, 'want'+infmitive constructions) as far as the properties of the negation occurring on the infinitve are concerned. Recall that in the former case negation occurring on the infinitival complement has been identified as constituent (or contrastive) negation whereas in the latter cases as sentence negation. Given the assumption that sentence negation may be located above the first completed predicate and assuming futhermore following the previous discussion that modal constructions, object control constructions, 'want'+infmitive constructions involve more structure than a bare VP,61 the observed difference follows straightforwardly. In the cases at hand -in contrast to the periphrastic future tense constructions- the negative marker occurring on an infinitive is in fact sentence negation located like in regular clauses above the completed predicate (i.e. vP), cf. (104). In the case of the future auxiliary on the other hand, the negative marker occurring on the infinitival complement can be located only above the lowest VP which as such is not a completed predicate, cf. (105). Thus it can be interpreted only as a constituent negation. (104)

a.

root modal constructions

SUBJ (NEG)

CP

vP

61

See however Wurmbrand (1998) for the assumption that restructuring infinitives are bare VPs.

Structure of negative sentences

100 b.

epistemic modals (SUBJ) ••••