NEG Raising

[Christopher T Collins]

Dear Bjoem,

Thank you for the Noonan reference! Very helpful.

The opus classicus is:

Horn, Laurence R., 1978. Remarks on neg-raising. In *Pragmatics*. Peter
Cole (ed.)129-220. New York: Academic Press.

He talks about which predicates allow NEG Raising and which do not. For
example, "hope" does not:

a. I hope that he is not a werewolf.
b. I don't hope that he is a werewolf

Also, "certain" does not:

a. I am certain he is not a werewolf
b. I  am not certain he is a werewolf

He also has a pragmatic theory of which predicates allow NEG Raising and
which do not (he calls the ones that
do allow it, mid-scalars). Although he is careful to note that there are
exceptions.

I do not think that there has been a serious typological investigation of
the issue,
and the results would be really interesting.

Chris

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 6:24 AM, Bjoern Wiemer <wiemerb at uni-mainz.de> 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.dehttp://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/wiemerb/
>
>
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