On the Locus of the Interpretable Negative Feature in a Negative Sentence

Abstract

Kramer and Rawlins (K & R 2009) analyze short answers yes and noto a polar question as sentence fragments involving TP ellipsis alongthe similar lines of Merchant’s (2001, 2004) treatment of short answersto a content question. Their TP ellipsis analysis was mainly groundedon the following two factual claims in (i) and (ii) and the theoreticalassumption in (iii): (i) Short answers to an outer negative question carrythe same meaning as short answers to an affirmative question; (ii)Short answers yes and no to an inner negative question are neutralizedas a negative meaning, which K & R (2009) dub as negative neutralization;and (iii) the interpretable negative feature of a negative sentencemay reside in the higher or lower Σ. This paper, however, refutes thefactual claim in (ii) (negative neutralization) and the theoretical assumptionin (iii). It is shown that (ii) is not (at least not always) empiricallysupported, when corpus data is considered, and that (iii) facesnon-trivial theoretical problems. This paper instead proposes that theinterpretable negative feature resides in the higher Σ, treating an overt orcovert negation morpheme in the lower Σ as pleonastic. The proposedhigher negative theory draws further support from the scope wideningeffects of negation and polarity reversals displayed in NPI/N-wordfragmental answers to a content question.