Clausemate Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Persian Dennis R. - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Clausemate Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Persian

Dennis R. Storoshenko and Mahyar Nakhaei

University of Calgary

April 19, 2019

Persian Negation

Persian negation is expressed with the prefix na-

Example

Sarah Sarah in this ketˆ ab-ro book-acc na-xarid. neg-buy.past.3sg ‘Sarah didn’t buy this book.’ Ali Ali ketˆ ab-ro book-acc pˆ are torn na-kard. neg-do.pst.3s ‘Ali didn’t tear the book.’ Armita Armita na-bˆ ayad neg-should film-ro film-acc be-bin-e. subj-see-3s ‘Armita shouldn’t watch the film.’

With no fixed position, placing a Neg head in the syntax is a challenge

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Not Just Persian

Two of these look more or less like Korean (Hagstrom, 1995)

Example

Chelswu-ka Chelswu-nom chayk-ul book-acc an-ilk-ess-ta. neg-read-pst-decl ‘Chelswu did not read the book.’ Chelswu-ka Chelswu-nom chayk-ul book-acc ilk-ci read-ci ani neg ha-yess-ta. do-pst-decl ‘Chelswu did not read the book.’

No, these are not directly analogous to Persian complex predicates, but these are still considered light verb constructions

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Existing Analysis

Taleghani (2006) and Kwak (2010) argue for high negation: The key evidence for this is from the licensing

• f subject negative polarity items (NPI):

Example

Hichkas anybody be to in this mehmni party na-raft. neg-go.past.3sg “Nobody went to this party.” Having Neg probe the highest verbal element gives the variable spellout positions

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Our Question

For Korean and Japanese, NPI licensing has been shown not to rely

• n C-Command

To be valid proof of high negation, we should independently test whether C-Commanding negation licenses an NPI in Persian

Spoilers

We argue that while we can’t just make a simple statement of “subject NPIs imply high negation” there’s still room to allow the existing analysis to survive (though this would mean moving heavily into LF)

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Outline

1

The Issue

2

NPI Licensing in Head-Final Languages

3

Our Study

4

Placing Persian Negation

5

Head-Finality and NPIs

Dennis R. Storoshenko and Mahyar Nakhaei (UofC) Persian NPIs April 19, 2019 6 / 28

Outline

1

The Issue

2

NPI Licensing in Head-Final Languages

3

Our Study

4

Placing Persian Negation

5

Head-Finality and NPIs

Dennis R. Storoshenko and Mahyar Nakhaei (UofC) Persian NPIs April 19, 2019 7 / 28

Common Starting Ground: English

English NPIs require C-Command from a negative (or irrealis) head:

Example

I *(don’t) know anything.

This licensing can extend across clauses:

Example

I didn’t say [that he broke anything].

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Korean NPIs: No C-Command Part 1

Sells and Kim (2006) note that embedded clause NPIs are not licensed by matrix negation in Korean:

Example

* Na-nun I-top [Chelswu-ga Chelswu-nom amwu any chayk-to book ilk-ess-ta-ko] read-pst-decl-comp sayngkakha-ci think-ci anh-nun-ta. neg-pres-decl ‘I do not think that Chelswu read any books.’

An embedded clause NPI is better for some speakers in subject position (but not universally accepted)

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Korean NPIs: No C-Command Part 2

Han et al. (2007) notes that Korean negation scopes under an NPI:

Example

* Ku-nun he-top celtaylo absolutely kukos-ey there-to ka-ss-ta. go-past-decl “He absolutely went there.” Ku-nun he-top celtaylo absolutely kukos-ey there-to an neg ka-ss-ta. go-past-decl ✦ “It is absolutely true that he did not go there.” ✪ “It is not the case that he absolutely went there.”

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The Clausemate Condition

This is known as the Clausemate Condition on NPI licensing: negation must be in the same clause as an NPI, but need not C-Command it. Sells and Kim note that this is trivial to implement in HPSG, but somewhat more challenging in a framework where C-Command is our primary tool for licensing The same facts have been observed for Japanese (Nakao and Obata, 2007) and Turkish (Kelepir, 1999)

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Outline

1

The Issue

2

NPI Licensing in Head-Final Languages

3

Our Study

4

Placing Persian Negation

5

Head-Finality and NPIs

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Testing Persian

We tested bi-clausal sentences in Persian to determine whether the same clausemate condition applies If it does, we cannot use the existence of subject NPIs to motivate a high position of negation

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Sentence Comparison Task

Rather than collecting judgements, we used a sentence comparison task Method of convenience; these were distractor items in another study which needed that method The coach drank some water. The player drank some water. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 If both sentences are equally acceptable, participants select 4. The poles of the scale represent preference for one sentence over the other.

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Matrix NPI Stimuli

Example

Ali A. be to hichkas anyone na-goft neg-say.3.sg.pst [ke that Sohrˆ ab S. keyk-ra cake-ra xord]. eat.3.sg.pst ‘Ali didn’t tell anyone that Sohrab ate the cake.’ Ali A. be to hichkas anyone goft say.3sg [ke that Sohrˆ ab S. keyk-ra cake-ra na-xord]. neg-eat.3.sg ‘Ali told anyone that Sohrab didn’t eat the cake.’

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Embedded NPI Stimuli

Example

Ali Ali be to Goli Goli ettela inform na-dad neg-gave.3.sg [ke that Atash Atash hichchiz anything gom miss kard]. did.3.sg ‘Ali didn’t inform Goli that Atash missed anything.’ Ali Ali be to Goli Goli ettela inform dad gave.3.sg [ke that Atash Atash hichchiz anything gom miss na-kard]. neg-did.3.sg ‘Ali informed Goli that Atash didn’t miss anything.’

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Rating Scheme and Predictions

While study items were counterbalanced in presentation, we normalize the scores so that matrix negation is always a 7. For the Matrix Clause NPIs:

◮ C-Command and Clausemate Licensing both predict ratings around 7

For the Embedded Clause NPIs:

◮ C-Command licensing predicts that ratings should be around 4 ◮ Clausemate licensing predicts that ratings should be around 1 Dennis R. Storoshenko and Mahyar Nakhaei (UofC) Persian NPIs April 19, 2019 17 / 28

Participants and Results

20 adult participants in Tehran saw eight pairs of each NPI position, mixed in among a total of 97 trials Presentation was on a laptop with all instructions (written and verbal), forms, and labelled keys in Persian In the semantic bias trials, participants were very willing to use the middle of the scale Not for these trials:

◮ Matrix NPI: mean 6.75, significantly different from 4 ◮ Embedded NPI: mean 1.69, significantly different from 4

This suggests that we have clausemate licensing, and cannot straightforwardly use subject NPI licensing as a diagnosis for the position

• f negation.

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Outline

1

The Issue

2

NPI Licensing in Head-Final Languages

3

Our Study

4

Placing Persian Negation

5

Head-Finality and NPIs

Dennis R. Storoshenko and Mahyar Nakhaei (UofC) Persian NPIs April 19, 2019 19 / 28

So Where is Negation Then?

If we stick with the theme of seeing what has been done for Korean and Japanese, then we get to an interesting place Han et al. (2007) and Han et al. (2008) report that for Korean and Japanese, respectively, there is inter-speaker variation in the placement of Neg, detectable by scope relations Shafiei and Storoshenko (2017) reports similar studies for Persian, with less conclusive results, but a clear demonstration that negation can take narrow scope (more so with objects than subjects)

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Can we Compare NPIs Cross-Linguistically?

Another of the Sells and Kim tests for the scope of NPIs involves a three-way interaction with an NPI, negation, and always They show that not only is negation in the scope of the NPI (interpreted as universal), but it must be immediately in that scope Persian seems to replicate this as well:

Example

Hichkas anyone hamishe always puldar rich n-ist. neg-is.3.sg ‘Nobody is rich all the time.’ (∀ > Neg > Always)

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Resorting to LF

While we have not run the full battery of tests, Persian is lining up as a (possibly) narrow scope of negation language Nakao and Obata attribute the wide scope of Japanese NPIs to LF movement of the NPI However, there is also considerable evidence that Japanese and Korean are scope rigid, and our prior tests with Persian seem to echo this, so LF movement needs to be carefully thought through

The Caveat

If we are going to start using scope to diagnose the position of negation, we can’t ignore the sentence-medial modal position (which means introducing another scopal element), because this is a big departure from Japanese/Korean

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Outline

1

The Issue

2

NPI Licensing in Head-Final Languages

3

Our Study

4

Placing Persian Negation

5

Head-Finality and NPIs

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The Typological Elephant in the Room

Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Persian. Clausemate NPI licensing is not an areal feature, this seems like it’s something that is common to head final languages Even if this turns out to be a property of the NPIs, rather than something in the verbal projection, this seems like a typological avenue worth pursuing

Ways of Framing the Question

Why is negation in these languages scoping so variably (and low)? OR Why are the NPIs in these languages able to scope so high? OR Why is NPI Licensing different in these languages?

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Sideline to Sorani Kurdish

Yup.

Example

Vrya Vrya ba to Hiwa-y Hiwa-3sg kot said [ka comp Avin Avin hich-i nothing-3.sg na-xward]. neg-eat ‘Vrya said to Hiwa that Avin ate nothing.’ * Vrya Vrya ba to Hiwa-y Hiwa-3sg na-kot neg-said [ka comp Avin Avin hich-i nothing-3.sg xward]. neg-eat ‘Vrya did not say to Hiwa that Avin ate anything.’

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Last Minute Left Turn to German

Of course, Persian is not as strictly a head final language as Japanese and Korean In terms of positioning an embedded clause, having prepositions, and allowing that medial modal, there’s a surface-level kinship to German

Example

Hans Hans glaubt believes *(nicht), neg [daß that Peter Peter sonderlich very gl¨ ucklich happy sein be wird]. will ‘Hans does not believe that Peter will be very happy.’

Despite the English gloss, Lichte and Kallmeyer (2006) report that the matrix negation here scopes under the matrix verb, in the embedded clause

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Conclusion

1 Persian has the hallmarks of a clausemate condition language for NPI

licensing; we cannot just use subject NPIs as evidence for high negation C-Commanding the subject

2 More examination of the scope properties of NPIs, and consideration

• f possible LF movement, might yet allow syntactically high negation

to survive (and solve the original morphological problem)

3 Persian and Sorani Kurdish appear to occupy a middle ground on a

German-to-Korean spectrum of head final languages; there may yet be room to link this with the NPI/negation facts

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Acknowledgements and References

Thanks to our participants in Tehran, and to Elias Abdollahnejad for the Sorani Kurdish examples.

Hagstrom, Paul. 1995. Negation, focus, and do-support in korean. Manuscript, MIT. Han, Chung-hye, Jeffrey Lidz, and Julien Musolino. 2007. Verb-raising and grammar competition in korean: Evidence from negation and quantifier scope. Linguistic Inquiry 38:1–47. Han, Chung-hye, Dennis Ryan Storoshenko, and Yasuko Sakurai. 2008. An experimental investigation into the syntax of negation in Japanese. Language Research 44:1–31. Hojatollah Taleghani, Azita. 2006. The interaction of modality, aspect and negation in Persian. Doctoral Dissertation, University

• f Arizona.

Kelepir, Meltem. 1999. Scope of negation: Evidence from Turkish NPIs and quantifiers. In Proceedings of the Nanzan GLOW , 213–230. Kwak, Saera. 2010. Negation in Persian. Iranian Studies 43:621–636. Lichte, Timm, and Laura Kallmeyer. 2006. Licensing German negative polarity items in LTAG. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms, 81–90. Nakao, Chizuru, and Miki Obata. 2007. Parametric variations in NPI-licensing and the role of LF X0 movement. In Proceedings

• f the 9th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar, ed. Doo-Won Lee, 135–152.

Sells, Peter, and Shin-Sook Kim. 2006. Korean NPIs scope over negation. Language Research 42:275–297. Shafiei, Nazila, and Dennis Ryan Storoshenko. 2017. Scope as a diagnostic for the position of negation in Persian. In University

• f Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of the 40th Penn Linguistics Colloquium, volume 23. University
• f Pennsylvania.

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