Journal Article

On the status of NCIs: An experimental investigation on so-called Strict NC languages

ETXEBERRIA, URTZI, TUBAU, SUSAGNA, ESPINAL, M. TERESA, PUIG-MAYENCO, ELOI

2024

Overview

This paper investigates the status of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in three so-called Strict Negative Concord (NC) languages (namely, Greek, Romanian, and Russian). An experimental study was designed to gather evidence concerning the speakers’ acceptability and interpretation of sequences with argumental NCIs in subject, object, and both positions when dhen/nu/ne were not present. Our results show that NCIs are negative indefinites whose presence in a clausal domain is enough to assign a single negation reading to the whole sequence, thus arguing in support of the hypothesis that in NC structures the minimal semantic requirement to convey single negation is that one or more NCIs encoding a negative feature appear within a sentential domain. We argue that in these structures dhen/nu/ne are the instantiations of a negative feature [neg] disembodied from an indefinite negative NCI in order to obey a syntax–phonology interface constraint.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press,Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Subject: Acceptability / Encoding / Grammatical agreement / Greek language / Humanities and Social Sciences / Languages / Negation / Phonological rules / Phonology / Reference (Semantic) / Romanian language / Rule ordering / Russian language / Semantics / Sequences / Syntax / Syntax phonology relationship