NEG Raising

[David Gil]

Dear Björn (and all),

Björn's comments have made it clear to me that I need to qualify my 
previous statement to the effect that colloquial Indonesian "lacks NEG 
raising".  Whereas for the equivalents of 'think' (which would be 
/ingat, kata, rasa, kira/ or /fikir/ depending on region) I'm still 
pretty sure that NEG raising is unavailable, for some of the other verbs 
that he, or rather Mickey Noonan cite, I suspect NEG raising is indeed 
possible.  In particular, I'm pretty sure that it is possible for the 
equivalent of 'want' (/mau/), in examples corresponding to (216b) 
below.  My feeling remains that NEG raising is significantly more 
restricted in colloquial Indonesian than in, say, English, but I think 
Björn is right that one needs to examine a range of different predicates.

(BTW, contrary to the implicature in Björn's message, I am not a native 
speaker of any variety of colloquial Indonesian; the claims I make about 
it are based on years of immersion, plus the usual research methods of 
corpus collection and elicitation.)

David




On 17/05/2013 19:24, Bjoern Wiemer wrote:
> Dear Christopher (and all),
> thanks for raising the issue of NEG-raising! In light of your mail and 
> the response by David Gil I would like to make two comments and one 
> request on what you two observed.
>     In his classical paper on complementation Noonan (2007 [1985]: 
> 100f.) gave examples with NEG-raising in English with the CTP-verbs 
> "think, believe, want". He gave the examples cited below, the first 
> pair coincides with yours. Now, in a footnote (f. 21) Noonan remarked 
> that sentence (214b) is ambiguous, since it allows for both a reading 
> with and without NEG-raising (i.e. in the latter case there would only 
> negation of the CTP). He added that this ambiguity might be 
> conditioned by "a commitment/non-commitment interpretation of the 
> speaker's evaluation of the complement proposition" (with further 
> references).
>
> (214a)    I think that Floyd didn't hit Roscoe.
> (214b)    I don't think that Floyd hit Roscoe.
>
> (215a)    Zeke believes that Martians don't live in caves.
> (215b)    Zeke doesn't believe that Martians live in caves.
>
> (216a)    Hugh wants Mary Ann not to win.
> (216b)    Hugh doesn't want Mary Ann to win.
>
> David Gil wrote that "'I don't think John is a werewolf' cannot mean 
> 'I think that John is not a werewolf'". Would other native speakers 
> judge the same way?
>
> Thus, two questions arise (in my view). First, wouldn't this judgment 
> depend on how much commitment you ascribe to your epistemic attitude 
> toward the proposition in the complement? Second, do such ambiguities 
> (and possible differences in judgments between native speakers of the 
> same language) show up with other verbs of the same conceptual domain 
> (epistemic attitude, report on speech acts, volition, etc.)? Noonan 
> made his remark quoted above only with respect to "think", "believe" 
> seems to behave differently. What about other verbs denoting epistemic 
> attitudes in English?
>     From this my request arises: Has anybody  worked on such 
> ambiguities and tried to make up a classification of CTP-verbs (of 
> epistemic attitude, volitional, etc.) within ONE language, and be it 
> English. That is to say: apart from _cross_linguistic variation with 
> respect to the liability toward complementation in general (and the 
> way complementation is marked syntactically or by lexical means), it 
> would be interesting to understand whether predicates denoting 
> epistemic attitudes show variation within even one language, and what 
> are the conditions.
>     I would be ready to collect such information and make a small 
> digest out of it, if anybody sends me pertinent references or reports. 
> Anyway, I'd be grateful to know more about this issue.
>
> Best regards,
> Björn Wiemer.
>
>
>> Dear Typologists,
>>
>> Could you tell me if there are languages that you know or know of 
>> that do not permit NEG Raising.
>> On a NEG Raising reading of (a), it is felt to mean the same thing as 
>> (b):
>>
>> a. I don't think John is a werewolf
>> b. I think that John is not a werewolf
>>
>> Also, strict NPIs are licensed:
>>
>> c. John won't be here until 6:00
>> d. I don't think John will be here until 6:00
>>
>> In these sentences 6:00 is a strict NPI, and it needs a negation.
>> (d) contrasts with (f):
>>
>> e. I regret that John won't be here until 6:00
>> f. *I don't regret John will be here until 6:00
>>
>> Other NEG Raising predicates include: think, believe, imagine, 
>> intend, want.
>>
>> Chris Collins
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Björn Wiemer
> Professor für Slavische Sprachwissenschaft
> Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität
> Institut für Slavistik
> Jakob-Welder-Weg 18
> D- 55099 Mainz
> tel. ++49/ 6131/ 39 -22186
> fax ++49/ 6131/ 39 -24709
> e-mail:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de
> http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/wiemerb/

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/

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