Language evolution seminar

Speakers: Mora Maldonado and Jennifer Culbertson (CLE, University of Edinburgh)

Title: Ain't no sunshine. A brief excursion into negative dependencies

Abstract: Languages vary quite a bit in how they express negation. Many languages use negative markers, such as English not, or negative indefinites such as nobody. In some languages, each of these negative elements clearly contribute one semantic negation (e.g. Dutch); in other languages (e.g. Spanish), negative elements seem to agree with each other when they appear together in a sentence, showing what is known as Negative Concord. The cross-linguistic variation in the behaviour of negative indefinites has drawn a lot of attention in the linguistics literature. In this talk, we will review the literature and propose some ideas for future experiments.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Andres Karjus

Centre for Language Evolution