In this paper we study the diachronic development of expletive negation from Indo-European to Fre... more In this paper we study the diachronic development of expletive negation from Indo-European to French, through Latin. We show that the negative expression (from Indo-European) is found in two contexts in Latin: imperatives and priority attitudes. We propose a unified semantics for these contexts, that leaves room to accommodate a distinction between positive (e.g. order/wish) and negative (e.g. forbid/fear) priority attitudes. We argue for an ambiguity account of driven by these two types of attitudes, and argue for a distinction of a prohibitive acting as a true negation in the context of imperatives and positive priority attitudes and an expletive , reversing the value of the ordering source of trigger with negative priority attitudes. We show that, in French, only expletive negation survives the Jespersen Cycle and offer a principle explanation for the distributions observed. We also show how our account can be extended to expletive negation in the context of epistemic attitudes c...
Prior research has shown that the interpretational possibilities of the temporal connective befor... more Prior research has shown that the interpretational possibilities of the temporal connective before range from factual to non-factual. In this paper, I look at how context-dependent inferences can enrich the meaning of non-factual before ('avant que') clauses in French. My proposal is that, in a sentence like [q [before p]], non-factual before may receive two pragmatically enriched uses (i) an apprehensive use, where the agent responsible for q has the goal of avoiding p (after Anderbois & Dabkowski 2020); (ii) a frustrative use, where it is contrary to the expectations of the agent responsible for q that p. Going further, I address the question of expletive negation in avant que clauses, arguing that its role is to put emphasis on the connective's invited inferences of negative (teleological or stereotypical) preference. Finally, I generalize the account to other contexts where expletive negation occurs in French.
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018. Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 32, Utrecht, 2021
This paper investigates the distribution of expletive negation in the complement clause of craind... more This paper investigates the distribution of expletive negation in the complement clause of craindre ('fear') in French. Building on [Anand and Hacquard, 2013]'s proposal that fear verbs are hybrid attitude verbs, featuring both a doxastic and a (dis)preferential component , I argue that these components are conveyed by different layers of meaning (in line with [Giannakidou and Mari, 2020]). More precisely, I argue that, in actual discourse context , craindre may receive two main interpretations: a volitive (dispreference-related) or an epistemic-apprehensive (belief-related) interpretation, depending on whether the verb asserts or presupposes dispreference. Based on a diachronic corpus study of the distribution of expletive negation, I show that this negation marker places semantic restrictions on the main verb which are met when the interpretation of craindre foregrounds the (dis)preferential component.
In this paper we propose an analysis of prohibitive and expletive negation that relies on two way... more In this paper we propose an analysis of prohibitive and expletive negation that relies on two ways of building negative priorities. Our empirical ground is the diachronic development of expletive negation from Latin to French. We show that the negative expression ne (from Indo-European me) is found in two contexts in Latin: imperatives and priority attitudes. We propose a unified semantics for these contexts, that leaves room to accommodate a distinction between positive (e.g. order/wish) and negative (e.g. forbid/fear) priority attitudes. We argue for an ambiguity account of ne driven by these two types of attitudes, and argue for a distinction of a prohibitive ne acting as a true negation in the context of imperatives and positive priority attitudes and an expletive ne, reversing the ordering relation encoded in the lexical semantics of negative priority attitudes. We extended the analysis to expletive negation in the context of epistemic attitudes conveying a meaning of contrariness such as doubt or deny thus establishing a unified semantics for negative attitudes that cuts across priority and epistemic ones.
Doctoral Dissertation, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, 2022
Expletive negation is a singularity in the field of polarity sensitivity. In many ways, expletive... more Expletive negation is a singularity in the field of polarity sensitivity. In many ways, expletive negation resembles a negative polarity item (NPI). In particular, its distribution parallels that of NPIs, which are known to be acceptable only in the scope of certain so-called semi-negative predicates (such as "doubt", "before", "without"), among other contexts. In other ways, expletive negation seems to participate in a negative concord relation. Indeed, it has the particularity of apparently not contributing to any negative meaning, in the scope of semi-negative predicates. Yet, unlike NPIs (e.g. "any") and Neg-words (e.g. "nobody") that participate in a negative concord relation, expletive negation does not belong to the class of indefinite expressions. As such, it deserves to be studied in its own right. This dissertation aims at shedding some diachronic light on the issue of expletive negation. The first issue is to determine which diachronic processes are behind the use of expletive negation from one context to another. I show that the use of expletive negation, initially restricted to the complement clause of attitude verbs, becomes productive in the adverbial clause of connectives such as "à moins que" (unless) and "avant que" (before), starting in the 17th century. Based on a fine-grained corpus study, I conclude that the generalization of expletive negation to adverbial connectives is motivated by the expression of a discourse attitude of dispreference. The second issue is to determine which mechanism underlies the loss of expletive negation's syntactic and semantic independence. I argue that French expletive negation descends from Latin prohibitive negation, while canonical negation ("ne ... pas") descends from another negation marker. I propose that the expletive negation results from the grammaticalization of the prohibitive negation, resorting to the notion of modal concord.
In this paper we study the diachronic development of expletive negation from Indo-European to Fre... more In this paper we study the diachronic development of expletive negation from Indo-European to French, through Latin. We show that the negative expression (from Indo-European) is found in two contexts in Latin: imperatives and priority attitudes. We propose a unified semantics for these contexts, that leaves room to accommodate a distinction between positive (e.g. order/wish) and negative (e.g. forbid/fear) priority attitudes. We argue for an ambiguity account of driven by these two types of attitudes, and argue for a distinction of a prohibitive acting as a true negation in the context of imperatives and positive priority attitudes and an expletive , reversing the value of the ordering source of trigger with negative priority attitudes. We show that, in French, only expletive negation survives the Jespersen Cycle and offer a principle explanation for the distributions observed. We also show how our account can be extended to expletive negation in the context of epistemic attitudes c...
Prior research has shown that the interpretational possibilities of the temporal connective befor... more Prior research has shown that the interpretational possibilities of the temporal connective before range from factual to non-factual. In this paper, I look at how context-dependent inferences can enrich the meaning of non-factual before ('avant que') clauses in French. My proposal is that, in a sentence like [q [before p]], non-factual before may receive two pragmatically enriched uses (i) an apprehensive use, where the agent responsible for q has the goal of avoiding p (after Anderbois & Dabkowski 2020); (ii) a frustrative use, where it is contrary to the expectations of the agent responsible for q that p. Going further, I address the question of expletive negation in avant que clauses, arguing that its role is to put emphasis on the connective's invited inferences of negative (teleological or stereotypical) preference. Finally, I generalize the account to other contexts where expletive negation occurs in French.
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018. Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 32, Utrecht, 2021
This paper investigates the distribution of expletive negation in the complement clause of craind... more This paper investigates the distribution of expletive negation in the complement clause of craindre ('fear') in French. Building on [Anand and Hacquard, 2013]'s proposal that fear verbs are hybrid attitude verbs, featuring both a doxastic and a (dis)preferential component , I argue that these components are conveyed by different layers of meaning (in line with [Giannakidou and Mari, 2020]). More precisely, I argue that, in actual discourse context , craindre may receive two main interpretations: a volitive (dispreference-related) or an epistemic-apprehensive (belief-related) interpretation, depending on whether the verb asserts or presupposes dispreference. Based on a diachronic corpus study of the distribution of expletive negation, I show that this negation marker places semantic restrictions on the main verb which are met when the interpretation of craindre foregrounds the (dis)preferential component.
In this paper we propose an analysis of prohibitive and expletive negation that relies on two way... more In this paper we propose an analysis of prohibitive and expletive negation that relies on two ways of building negative priorities. Our empirical ground is the diachronic development of expletive negation from Latin to French. We show that the negative expression ne (from Indo-European me) is found in two contexts in Latin: imperatives and priority attitudes. We propose a unified semantics for these contexts, that leaves room to accommodate a distinction between positive (e.g. order/wish) and negative (e.g. forbid/fear) priority attitudes. We argue for an ambiguity account of ne driven by these two types of attitudes, and argue for a distinction of a prohibitive ne acting as a true negation in the context of imperatives and positive priority attitudes and an expletive ne, reversing the ordering relation encoded in the lexical semantics of negative priority attitudes. We extended the analysis to expletive negation in the context of epistemic attitudes conveying a meaning of contrariness such as doubt or deny thus establishing a unified semantics for negative attitudes that cuts across priority and epistemic ones.
Doctoral Dissertation, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, 2022
Expletive negation is a singularity in the field of polarity sensitivity. In many ways, expletive... more Expletive negation is a singularity in the field of polarity sensitivity. In many ways, expletive negation resembles a negative polarity item (NPI). In particular, its distribution parallels that of NPIs, which are known to be acceptable only in the scope of certain so-called semi-negative predicates (such as "doubt", "before", "without"), among other contexts. In other ways, expletive negation seems to participate in a negative concord relation. Indeed, it has the particularity of apparently not contributing to any negative meaning, in the scope of semi-negative predicates. Yet, unlike NPIs (e.g. "any") and Neg-words (e.g. "nobody") that participate in a negative concord relation, expletive negation does not belong to the class of indefinite expressions. As such, it deserves to be studied in its own right. This dissertation aims at shedding some diachronic light on the issue of expletive negation. The first issue is to determine which diachronic processes are behind the use of expletive negation from one context to another. I show that the use of expletive negation, initially restricted to the complement clause of attitude verbs, becomes productive in the adverbial clause of connectives such as "à moins que" (unless) and "avant que" (before), starting in the 17th century. Based on a fine-grained corpus study, I conclude that the generalization of expletive negation to adverbial connectives is motivated by the expression of a discourse attitude of dispreference. The second issue is to determine which mechanism underlies the loss of expletive negation's syntactic and semantic independence. I argue that French expletive negation descends from Latin prohibitive negation, while canonical negation ("ne ... pas") descends from another negation marker. I propose that the expletive negation results from the grammaticalization of the prohibitive negation, resorting to the notion of modal concord.
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