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● Negative indefinites featuring wala („not/no‟) in post-
verbal position must move to the scope position if there
is no closer negative marker to target that position.
● Universal Grammar must have the option of negative
Determiner-Raising to account for the Palestinian Arabic
(PA) data.
● N(egative) C(oncord) (i.e., multiple morphosyntactic instances
of negation yield jointly one semantic negation) is not a
uniform phenomenon across natural languages and must be
subject to Intervention Effect in PA, parallel to the Negative
Polarity licensing (cf. Linebarger 1987) to account for the PA
data.
● UG must allow interpretation-driven movement besides
feature-checking movement.
● Syntactic structure fully determines the exact identity of wala-
phrase.
Main Puzzling Data
Unlike English, PA disallows negative universally quantified phrases in object position.
(1)* zida:n ˀakal wala iši
Zidane eat-Pst-3ms no thing
“Zidane ate nothing.”
PA „rescues‟ the string in (1) by two types of movement:
a. Movement of the negative determiner into the preverbal position
(2) zida:n wala ˀakal iši
Zidane no eat-Pst-3ms thing
“Zidane didn‟t eat a thing.”
Movement as a Strategy to Rescue Negative Strings in PA
b. Movement of the whole negative phrase into the preverbal position
(3) zida:n wala iši ˀakal
Zidane no thing eat-Pst-3ms
“Zidane ate nothing.”
(4) wala iši zida:n ˀakal
no thing Zidane eat-Pst-3ms
“Zidane ate nothing.”
Negative Concord Phenomenon in PA
a. Negative Concord in Object Position
(5) zida:n ma-ˀakal-š iši
Zidane Neg-eat-Pst-Neg thing
“Zidane didn‟t eat a thing.”
(6) zida:n ma-ˀakal-š wala iši
Zidane Neg-eat-Pst-Neg no thing
“Zidane didn‟t eat any thing.”
b. Negative Concord in Subject Position
(7) ma- ˀakal-iš wala ḥada mo:z
Neg-eat-Pst-Neg no one banana
“No one ate banana.”
Double Negation
● Movement of the negative phrase wala iši into the preverbal
position creates Double Negation reading.
(8) zida:n wala iši ma-ˀakal-iš
“Zidane didn‟t eat nothing/ate every thing.”
(9) wala iši zida:n ma-ˀakal-iš
“Zidane didn‟t eat nothing/ate everything.”
The Main Characteristic of the Negative Element Wala in PA
(A)Wala usually functions as negative reinforcement in the scope
of sentential negation. The stronger declarative in (6) entail
the „neutral‟declarative (5).
(B) Wala can split from its restrictor noun (e.g. (2)).
(C) Wala is licensed in the complement of the negative verb
baṭṭal („quit‟):
(10) zida:n baṭṭal yi- štri-li wala iši
Zidane quit-Pst-3ms 3ms-buy-me no thing
“Zidane quitted giving me anything.”)
(D) Wala-Phrases in Fragment Answers
(11) (a) Q: šu ˀakal zida:n?
What eat-Pst-3ms Zidane
“What did Zidane eat?
(b) A: wala iši
no thing
“Nothing.”
(E) Widening of Quantification Domain
● Wala evokes the widening of quantification domain. It
indicates that the set of options under consideration has been
widened. It can be used appropriately when widening has
informational impact, just as NPIs (cf. Kadmon & Landman
1993).
(F) Noun Selection
● The negative determiner wala selects a singular count noun as
its restrictor.
(i) wala tuffa:ḥ- a
no apple-mass-sing
(ii) * wala tuffa:ḥ
no apples-mass
Puzzling Questions
● What is the syntactic mechanism that regulates/licenses the
dependency between the sentential marker and the negative
element wala in post-verbal position?
● Why does no theory of Negative Concord predict the existence
of linguistic expressions such as those that employ the wala–
raising option to pre-finite verb position, as in (2)?
● Why does PA use two morphemes in some contexts to express
one propositional negation?
Puzzling Questions
● What is the nature of the relation betweenthe negative element ma and the enclitic –š?
● What is the best syntactic analysis of suchrelation?
The Proposal
● Our proposal is couched in terms of the current minimalist
theory of generative grammar (Chomsky 1995, 2001, 2005).
● Natural language (NL) semantic negation is mainly read off the
scope position of the syntactic structure of the sentence, which
is projected in the left edge of the T(ense) P(rojection) and
commonly realized by the morphosyntactic negative markers
(such as the PA wala). NL Double negation in natural
languages is available when there is a negative quantifier
adjoined (by movement) to the syntactic structure specified for
semantic negation.
The Proposal● NL Negation must lexicalize a syntactic position in pre-(finite)
verb position (at the relevant level) which we refer to as ascope position (cf. Zanuttini 1997). Being a Neg(ative)OP(erator) it must c-command and unselectively bind the freevariables in its scope (such as the event variable/ time variableor the variable introduced by the indefinite noun in objectposition). The notion of scope is conceived in terms of thetraditional c(onstituent)-command relation at Logical Form(LF).
● Negative indefinites featuring wala („not/no‟) in post-verbalposition must move to the scope position if there is no closernegative marker to target that position, as illustrated in (2).
The Proposal
● The copy theory of movement can in principlederive the NC phenomenon in NPA. D(eterminer)-raising of wala to the left edge of the tensed sentencecan license the possible lexicalization of the copy ofthe raised negative in its original position when thenegative force of the sentence is strengthened andfocused, parallel to the N(oun)-raising of the cognateobject to the left edge of the head tense, through thelight verb v, as shown in (a) and (c). The headmovement of both N and negative D is schematicallyrepresented in (b) and (d), respectively.
The Proposal● Lexicalization of the Copy of the Moved D and N in Emphatic
Context
(a) zida:n wala ˀakal wala iši
(Emphatic negative assertion)
(b) …[Neg-OP Tns-v-N [… <wala> iši …<N>]]
(c) zida:n ˀakal t-tufa:ḥa ˀakil
(Emphatic positive assertion)
(d) …[ Tns-v-N [… t-tufa:ḥa …<ˀakil>]]
The Proposal
● NC in PA is subject to Intervention Effects, on a par with NPIs:
● (a) zida:n ma-ˀinta:-š raši:d (wala) iši
● (b) * zida:n ma-ˀinta:-š kull walad wala iši
● (c) * zida:n ma-ˀinta:-š kull walad ˀayya(ta) iši
● (d) *…[Neg-OP…XP(intervener)…wala indefinite N…]
The Proposal
● ma: = ma… š.
● Functional categories originally are derived from lexicalcategories.
● -š originally is a negative intensifier derived from theminimizer šwayyi („little thing‟) or the general predicativenoun (i)ši („thing‟) or the Emphatic Negative intensifier ši:li(„at all‟).
● The negative force of the sentence resides in the morpheme mawhen the complex ma…š embraces the tensed verb.
● The shortening of the emphatic negative particle ma:morphologically necessitates the presence of the strengtheningenclitic –š to satisfy the principle of strength preservation.
The Proposal
● Therefore, -š has a parasitic licensing status by the overt or
covert ma:
(a) *(ma-) 7ada:- š vs. (ma)bi-štri: š vs.* (ma) štara: š
(b) ma- štara: š vs. *ma:štara: š
● The reinforcement of the weak negative morpheme ma by -š
gave birth to the independent negative morpheme miš („not‟).
(c) …NEG Tns-v-N [vP Neg [vP Subj v [NP N Obj]]]
Theoretical Implications
● Any theory of UG must posit movement of negative
determiners to account for (some of) the PA negative
sentences. The mere assumption (of Watanabe (2004) that
negative indefinites in NC languages carry an uninterpretable
focus feature [uFoc] and hence enter AGREE relation with the
sentential negative marker is not an adequate explanation for
the PA data, since the determiner wala in post-verbal position
can raise to the scope position, irrespective of the multiple
instantiation of negative markers with one semantic negation.
Theoretical Implications
● Movement is not exclusively driven by formal feature-checking(of the target), but can be driven by the interpretabilityprinciple of NL expressions.
● Syntactic structure fully determines the exact identity of lexicalitems (such as wala) in NL. The different senses of wala in thedata substantiate this claim. These senses are still members ofthe same semantic field of negative context.
● Parametric variation across languages boils down to theidiosyncratic lexical properties of the negative markers (andtheir internal structure).
● NC phenomenon in PA is subject to Intervention Effects,parallel to NPIs.
