Two challenges for existentialist approaches to strict negative concord

Rudnev, Pavel. 2024. “Two challenges for existentialist approaches to strict negative concord.” TABU: Bulletin voor Taalwetenschap 2024 Special Issue ‘Festschrift for Jack Hoeksema – Festschrift voor Jack Hoeksema’, 312–328.

doi:10.21827/tabu.2023.41269

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I present two challenges for the popular approach to the meaning of negative concord items, or neg-words, as existential quantifiers or indefinites. The first challenge concerns the interaction of that analysis with the approaches to fragment answers as instances of clausal ellipsis. The second challenge stems from the ability of multiple neg-words within one clause to be modified by almost, which is unexpected if they are existentials or indefinites.

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I’m Pavel Rudnev, and this is my personal website. I’m a research fellow and lecturer in linguistics at HSE University in Moscow. My main area of interest is syntax and its interfaces with sound and meaning. In particular, my current research revolves around the structure of nominal expressions, agreement, case and verbal morphosyntax in East Caucasian languages, and the syntax-to-phonology mapping in Russian Sign Language.

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