NEG Raising

Sat May 18 04:56:14 UTC 2013

Funny, both in Danish and German the b. sentence for hope (hoffen/håbe) are OK, so NEG raising is possible.
Hartmut Haberland

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Den 17/05/2013 kl. 15.45 skrev "Christopher T Collins" <cc116 at NYU.EDU<mailto:cc116 at NYU.EDU>>:

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<mailto: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<tel:%2B%2B49%2F%206131%2F%2039%20-22186>
fax ++49/ 6131/ 39 -24709<tel:%2B%2B49%2F%206131%2F%2039%20-24709>
e-mail: wiemerb at uni-mainz.de<mailto:wiemerb at uni-mainz.de>
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/wiemerb/

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