Some People Think There Is Neg Raising, and Some Don’t: Neg Raising Meets Ellipsis

Neg-Raising and Polarity

The representation of Neg-Raising in the grammar is a matter of controversy. I provide evidence for representing Neg-Raising as a kind of presupposition associated with certain predicates by providing a detailed analysis of NPI-licensing in Neg-Raising contexts. Specific features of presupposition projection are used to explain the licensing of strict NPIs under Neg-Raising predicates. Discussi...

Neg{raising: Negation as Failure?

Neg-raising and Aspect: Evidence from Mandarin

Two canonical negatives in Mandarin, mei and bu, display an asymmetry with respect to the presence of negraising inferences. In particular, mei prefers non-neg-raising readings, while bu, unless attaching to a functional category, is forced to be interpreted as neg-raising. This paper aims to explore an approach to address this asymmetry based on interactions between negation and aspect in both...

Obligatory Neg-raising in Mandarin: Negatives and Aspects

This paper offers an explanation to the obligatory neg-raising (NR) phenomenon with Mandarin negative bu. This explanation follows Xiang’s (2014) exhaustification-based account for (non-)NR, that non-NR readings are derived via local exhaustification or double exhaustification. Based on mixed evidence from both syntax and semantics, especially the interactions between negatives and aspects, I a...

A scalar implicature-based approach to Neg-raising

In this paper, I give an analysis of neg-raising inferences as scalar implicatures. The main motivation for this account as opposed to a presupposition-based approach (Bartsch 1973 and Gajewski 2005, 2007) comes from the differences between presuppositions and neg-raising inferences, noticed by Gajewski (2005, 2007) and Homer (2012). In response to this issue, Gajewski (2007) argues that neg-ra...