Negation and the Functional Sequence
Karen De Clercq, Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
March 2018
 

There exists a general restriction on admissible functional sequences which prevents adjacent identical heads. We investigate a particular instantiation of this restriction in the domain of negation. Empirically, it manifests itself as a restriction on the stacking of multiple negative morphemes. We propose a principled account of this restriction in terms of the general ban on immediately consecutive identical heads in the functional sequence on the one hand, and the presence of a Neg feature inside negative morphemes on the other hand. The account predicts that the stacking of multiple negative morphemes should be possible provided they are separated by intervening levels of structure. We show that this prediction is borne out.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003794
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (vol. 37, pp. 425--460)
keywords: cartography; functional sequence; negation; adjectives; nanosyntax, morphology, syntax
previous versions: v3 [March 2018]
v2 [March 2018]
v1 [December 2017]
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