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

Abstract

Kramer and Rawlins (K & R 2009) analyze short answers yes and no to a polar question as sentence fragments involving TP ellipsis along the similar lines of Merchants (2001, 2004) treatment of short answers to a content question. Their TP ellipsis analysis was mainly grounded on the following two factual claims in (i) and (ii) and the theoretical assumption in (iii): (i) Short answers to an outer negative question carry the same meaning as short answers to an affirmative question; (ii) Short answers yes and no to an inner negative question are neutralized as a negative meaning, which K & R (2009) dub as negative neutralization; and (iii) the interpretable negative feature of a negative sentence may reside in the higher or lower Σ. This paper, however, refutes the factual claim in (ii) (negative neutralization) and the theoretical assumption in (iii). It is shown that (ii) is not (at least not always) empirically supported, when corpus data is considered, and that (iii) faces non-trivial theoretical problems. This paper instead proposes that the interpretable negative feature resides in the higher Σ, treating an overt or covert negation morpheme in the lower Σ as pleonastic. The proposed higher negative theory draws further support from the scope widening effects of negation and polarity reversals displayed in NPI/N-word fragmental answers to a content question.