Carson Schutze: "light" verbs in English

[Martha McGinnis]

Now that the list has sprung back to life, here's a question I've been
wondering about for a while. It has to do with possible explanations for
the fact that in English, 'be' and (some uses of) 'have' are the only
verbs (as opposed to modals) that can appear to the left of negation.

Almost the entire literature on this topic follows the line that these verbs
can "raise across" negation in some way that other verbs cannot, a view
that seems to me to raise more questions than it answers.

There is an alternative, under which one can maintain that the Head Movement
Constraint (or whatever underlies it) actually blocks all head movement
across Neg in English, and what's special about 'be' and 'have' is that
they can be inserted/generated above Neg. The only place I can recall
seeing this pursued at all is in Ouhalla's work, including his 1991 book
on functional categories. My question for the list is: why haven't more
people followed this approach? Does it have some fatal flaw that Jamal (and I)
have not noticed?  [I would grant that he doesn't work out many details,
including perhaps crucial ones, but my impression was that they could be
worked out.]

Why is this a question for the DM list? Well, it seems particularly natural
on a late insertion view that follows a 'be-support' approach and claims that
'be' is the last resort (default) spell-out when you need a V node and it has
no properties, i.e. no encyclopedic meaning. (Getting 'have' is perhaps a
little trickier, but conceivable if one believes that 'have'='be+P'.)

I would be happy to hear about either arguments against this approach or
references to where it is worked out.

	Carson