Negative Constructions

Abstract

The present chapter analyzes constructions involving negative elements, specifically, Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) and so-called N-words. We argue that these provide further cases of split constructions. Motivation for this claim comes from the fact that such constructions exhibit intervention effects. Since the scopal elements responsible for the blocking effects in negative constructions turn out to be the same elements responsible for intervention effects in interrogatives, as seen in the last chapter, a unified analysis is called for. It is known independently that negative and interrogative sentences share certain properties (Klima, 1964; Lasnik, 1974; Haegeman, 1995). The present chapter can thus be seen as further motivation for supposing that the two sentence types are related. It is structured as follows: §3.2 introduces the phenomena; §3.3 reviews the literature on NPIs and intervention effects; §3.4 considers what N-words really are; §3.5 introduces our split construction proposal; §3.6 summarizes.