NEG Raising

Fri May 17 22:14:00 UTC 2013

Dear Chris,

The Tai-Kadai languages in Southeast Asian countries and southern part of
China do not permit NEG Raising. The Sinitic languages in China also lack
such a process. Besides, the scope of negation at different positions of
such a sentence would render different meanings in these languages.

Regards,

Tianqiao Lu
School of Linguistic Sciences
Jiangsu Normal University
57 Heping Road, Xuzhou, China
Email: tianqiao.lu at gmail.com Website: http://maonan.org

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 9:43 PM, Christopher T Collins <cc116 at nyu.edu>wrote:

> 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/
>>
>>
>

-- 
注：Gmail最近常打不开，请发邮件到 "lutianqiao at maonan.org"。
Note: Gmail is unaccessible in my area recently. Please send emails to  "
lutianqiao at maonan.org" if convenient.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20130518/41e7e7ad/attachment.htm>