The interaction of negation with focus: ne…ne… phrases in Turkish

Lingua 113 (2003) 1089–1117 www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua

The interaction of negation with focus: ne. . .ne. . . phrases in Turkish§ . Serkan S¸enera,*, Selc¸uk Is¸ severb a

U-1145, Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-1145, USA b Department of Linguistics, Ankara University, 06100 Sıhhiye-Ankara, Turkey Received 9 October 2002; accepted 24 October 2002

Abstract This article is an attempt to investigate subject and object phrases coordinated with ne. . .ne ‘neither . . .nor’ in Turkish. Arguing against the common Turkological practice, it is suggested that the use of subject or object ne. . .ne phrases with negative predicates, in addition to those with non-negative predicates, is well-motivated in terms of their information structure. In other words, ne. . .ne phrases with negative and non-negative predicates differentiate for their focal properties and this is reflected in their information structures. In accordance with the generalizations reached in terms of their information structures, the syntactic behavior of subject and object ne. . .ne phrases in matrix and embedded clauses is given an account within the minimalist framework of Chomsky (Chomsky, N., 1995. Categories and transformations. In: The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi’s [Ling. Inquiry 29 (1998) 347] arguments for lowering at LF are also adopted to overcome the problems raised by the ne. . .ne phrases in embedded clauses. # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Syntax; Information structure; Negation; Focus; Negative polarity item (NPI); Checking theory; Lowering

We would like to thank the editors of this issue, Asli Go¨ksel and Sumru O¨zsoy, for their encouragement and discussion, and an anonymous reviewer of Lingua for his/her valuable comments. We also thank the audience at the Focus Workshop held at Bog˘azic¸i University in March 2000. We would like to mention the names of the following people for their numerous comments and suggestions they provided . during the preparation of the paper: Duk-Ho An, Yasemin Aydemir, O¨zgu¨r Aydın, Iclal Ergenc¸, Seda Go¨kmen, Il joo Ha, Kamil Is¸ eri, Meltem Kelepir, Sarah Kennelly, Yılmaz Kılıc¸aslan, Gu¨ls¸ at Aygen, Engin Uzun, Leyla Uzun, and especially to Zˇeljko Bosˇ kovic´ and Howard Lasnik. Needless to say, we take full responsibility for any possible errors and shortcomings. * Corresponding author. . E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. S¸ener), [email protected] (S. Is¸ sever). §

0024-3841/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0024-3841(03)00014-7

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1. Introduction This paper aims at investigating the relation between focus and negation in Turkish with specific reference to subject and object phrases containing the coordinator ne. . .ne ‘neither. . .nor’, which co-occurs with both negative morphology on the predicate and with morphologically non-negative predicates. A systematic analysis of subject and object ne. . .ne phrases reveals that their co-existence with morphologically negative and non-negative sentences is not optional, contrary to general claims. We propose that the syntactic behavior of subject/object ne. . .ne phrases in negative and non-negative sentences is crucially related to the focal and informationstructural properties of the construction in question. Constructions with ne. . .ne may have various functions. It is possible for ne. . .ne to conjoin two or more phrases which function as subjects, objects or adjuncts, as shown in (1)–(3), respectively. As (4) demonstrates, it can also conjoin clauses:1 (1)

[Ne Ali ne Ays¸ e] kitap oku-du. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e book read-past ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e read a book.’

(2)

Ali [ne s¸ iir ne o¨yku¨] oku-r. Ali neither poem nor story read-pres ‘Ali reads neither poetry nor short stories.’

(3)

Ali [ne du¨n ne (de) onceki gu¨n] sinema-ya gitti. Ali neither yesterday nor (also) the-day-before movies-dat go-past ‘Ali went to the movies neither yesterday nor the day before yesterday.’

(4)

[Ne kadın-ın konus¸ -tug˘-u-nu duydum] [ne (de) adam-ın ______ ]. neither woman-gen speak-noml-poss-acc hear-past nor (also) man-gen ‘ I had heard neither the woman nor the man spoke.’

Of the possible occurrences of structures with ne. . .ne, we limit the present study to subject and object ne. . .ne phrases due to space constraints. This study is laid out as follows. Section 2 gives a brief outline of the issues dealt with in this paper. In Sections 3 and 4, the main body of the data is considered from the information structure viewpoint (Section 3) and then a syntactic analysis of the facts is proposed within the minimalist framework of Chomsky (1993, 1995) (Section 4). Finally, Section 5 concludes the discussion. 1

Except for the examples taken from other sources, all Turkish sentences used in the text are our own examples and are attested for (un)acceptability by other native speakers.

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2. The problem It has been observed in the previous literature (see Gencan, 1979; Go¨ksel, 1987, among others) that a ne. . .ne phrase can occur with both a negative and an affirmative predicate as (5) shows:

(5)

(a)

Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e gel-di.2 neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-past ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

(b)

Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e gel-me-di. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home- dat come-neg-past ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

The existence of (5b), in fact, presents a challenge to common belief concerning the structure of sentences with ne. . .ne phrases stemming from traditional grammars, such that a sentence involving a ne. . .ne phrase should be morphologically affirmative.3 Notice, however, that among other conditions on the structure of ne. . .ne phrases that we will present as we proceed it is observed in the literature that there are some specific cases where ne. . .ne phrases must co-occur with morphological negation (see, Lewis, 1967; Go¨ksel, 1987, among others). These observations can be formulated as follows:

(6)

If there is a negative polarity item (NPI) in the sentence, in addition to a ne. . .ne phrase, the predicate must be marked for negation:

a.

Bu yılki toplantıya ne Ali ne Ays¸ e kimseyi davet et-me-mis¸ . This year’s meeting- dat neither A. nor A. anybody-acc invite-neg-hearsay ‘*Neither Ali nor Ays¸e invited anybody to this year’s meeting.’

b.

*Bu yılki toplantıya ne Ali ne Ays¸ e kimseyi davet et-mis¸ . This year’s meeting- dat neither A. nor A. anybody-acc invite-hearsay ‘*Neither Ali nor Ays¸e invited anybody to this year’s meeting.’ 2

Focus will not be marked in the examples containing ne. . .ne phrases up to Section 3 of the paper. These grammars prescribe that phrases with ne. . .ne should be placed in a sentence where the predicate is affirmative, and its use with a negative predicate is unacceptable (see Ediskun, 1985; Underhill, 1980, among others), as (i) illustrates: 3

(i)

Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e gel-di-Ø /*gel-me-di-Ø neither mom-1sg nor dad-1sg home-dat come-past-3sg / *come-neg-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

This argument is mainly based on the claim that ‘logically two negatives equals a positive.’

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(7)

If the predicate is morphologically non-negative, a ne. . .ne phrase can never be right dislocated:

a.

Bu yılki toplantıya seni davet et-me-mis¸ ne Ali ne Ays¸ e. This year’s meeting-dat you-acc invite-neg-hearsay neither A. nor A. ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e invited you to this year’s meeting.’

b.

*Bu yılki toplantıya seni davet et-mis¸ ne Ali ne Ays¸ e. This year’s meeting-dat you-acc invite-hearsay neither A. nor A. ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e invited you to this year’s meeting.’

Some scholars, who maintain that phrases made up with ne. . .ne may occur both with affirmative and negative predicates, claim that the former is ‘preferable’ over the latter (see Gencan, 1979, among others). Go¨ksel (1987), with the observation that either use of ne. . .ne is acceptable, suggests that the occurrence of a ne. . .ne phrase with a negative predicate is subject to some syntactic and stylistic restrictions. According to her claim, while the use of ne. . .ne with the negative or affirmative morphology on the verb in (8a) is optional, no such optionality is available in the case of (8b–c), where the ‘distance’ between the ne. . .ne phrase and the predicate forces the predicate to be marked for negative morphology. Notice that (8c) is judged as odd:

(8) a. Ne yas¸ lı kadınları ne de Tu¨rk is¸ c¸ilerini go¨r-e-me-m/go¨r-u¨r-u¨m. neither old women nor also Turkish laborer-pl-poss-acc see-abil-(neg)-pres-1sg ‘I see neither old women nor Turkish laborers.’ (Go¨ksel, 15) b.Ne yas¸ lı kadınları ne de yaz tatili ic¸in u¨lkelerine gitmeden o¨nce tu¨m mag˘azaların en gereksiz mallarını satın alan Tu¨rk is¸ c¸ilerini go¨r-e-me-m. ‘I can see neither old women nor Turkish laborers who buy all the unnecessary things from all the shops before they go to their countries.’ (Go¨ksel, 16a) c. ?Ne yas¸ lı kadınları ne de yaz tatili ic¸in u¨lkelerine gitmeden o¨nce tu¨m mag˘azaların en gereksiz mallarını satın alan Tu¨rk is¸ c¸ilerini go¨r-u¨r-u¨m. (Go¨ksel, 16b)

It is obvious that Go¨ksel’s (1987) analysis which is based on a criterion like distance does not extend to capture the facts given in (8a) and thus such cases are left unexplained as optional. We will reconsider the data given here under the proposal we will present in Section 3.1. The fact that there are contexts as in (5b), where the predicate is marked for negative morphology and thus the uses

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of ne. . .ne phrases are not restricted to the conditions mentioned in (6) and (7) or to a condition of distance stimulates the following question: What are the underlying motivations for ne. . .ne phrases to co-occur with both morphologically negative and affirmative predicates? The next section aims to provide an answer to this question with the aid of Turkish data under the perspective of information structure.

3. [ne. . .ne. . .] and information structure 3.1. Focusing conditions on [ne. . .ne. . .] It is widely accepted that sentences with the same logico-semantic meaning may have different informational meanings (Choi, 1996, 1997; Komagata, 1999; Lambrecht, 1994; Vallduvı´, 1992, among others). (9a–b) below show clearly that this is indeed the case. Although they have the same logico-semantic meaning, (9a) and (9b) have different informational meanings:4,5

(9)

a.

b.

Ali [F OKUL-A] git-ti. Ali school-dat go-past . Okul-a [F ALI ] git-ti. school-dat Ali go-past ‘Ali went to school.’

(9a) and (9b) share the same logico-semantic meaning that ‘Ali went to school’ whereas they have different informational meanings due to the difference in their information structures. In (9a), the speaker presupposes that the hearer knows that Ali went somewhere but s/he does not know exactly where. So, uttering (9a), the speaker informs the hearer that the place where Ali went is ‘school’. On the other hand, in (9b), the speaker informs the hearer that it is Ali who went to school, presupposing that the hearer knows someone went to school. Similarly, in sentences with ne. . .ne phrases, which differ only in terms of the presence or the absence of negative morphology, the verbs have the same logico-semantic meaning as well. 4 Turkish has both syntactic and phonological focusing strategies (Vallduvı´ and Engdahl, 1996; . Is¸ sever, 2000, 2001). It is possible for any preverbal constituent to be focused including the verb itself. Thus, the sentence-initial elements and the verbs can also be focused in (9a) and (9b). 5 In Turkish, word. order variation and phonological prominency are the only means of information structure realization (Is¸ sever, 2000). Word order is used to present topics and tails whereas phonological prominency shows that a constituent is in focus. However, because the facts considered here concern mainly the relationship between ne. . .ne and focus, we leave the discussion of other (presuppositional) informational constituents, i.e. topic and tail, aside.

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(10) a. Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e gel-di. neither mom-1sg nor dad-1sg home-dat come-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’ b. Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e gel-me-di. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-neg-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

Parallel to (9), we suggest that the availability of both affirmative and negative is simply due to having different information structures. Leaving the discussion of the differences in informational meanings between the two sentences aside for the moment, we would like to concentrate on the structural aspects which, we suggest, are related to informational requirements. A comparison of the sentences in (10a) and (10b) in terms of their focal properties indicates that they are, in fact, not identical. Compare the sentence in (11a) with (11b–c):

(11)

a.

[F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M] ev-e gel-di. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

b.

*Ne annem ne babam [F EVE] geldi.

c.

. *Ne annem ne babam eve [F GELDI].

In (11a), the subject ne. . .ne phrase receives heavy stress and thus is focused. Here, it is the ne. . .ne phrase which has the function of expressing sentential negation. Focusing any other constituent than the ne. . .ne phrase results in ungrammaticality, as (11b–c) indicate. In contrast, in (12) the only constituent to be focused is the verb: . (12) a. Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e [F GEL-ME-DI ]. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-neg-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’ b. *[F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M ] ev-e gel-me-di. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-neg-past-3sg

In (12a), it is not the ne. . .ne phrase but the morphological marking on the verb that renders the sentence negative. The assignment of heavy stress to any other element including the ne. . .ne phrase leads to unacceptability, as (12b) illustrates. The sentences in (11) and (12) clearly show that a ne..ne phrase can negate a sentence only when it is focused. In other words, it is not the ne. . .ne phrase itself but

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the combination of the ne. . .ne phrase and focus which exhibits the ability to negate a sentence. On the other hand, a ne. . .ne phrase is not allowed to be in focus when the sentence is negated through negative morphology on the verb. Vallduvı´ (1992), Bu¨ring (1998), and Kural (1992), among others, study similar facts in various languages and independently report that there is a direct relationship between sentential negation and focus. We would like to formulate our observations we have presented so far in (13) below:6

(13) Focusing conditions on [ne. . .ne] phrases a.

If a ne. . .ne phrase is focused, the predicate must be morphologically affirmative; [if the predicate is morphologically affirmative no element other than a ne. . .ne phrase can be focused (cf. 11)] [F ne. . .ne] _ Vaff

b.

If the predicate is morphologically marked for negation, the ne. . .ne phrase cannot be focused. (cf. 12). ne. . .ne _ [F Vneg]

Supporting evidence for the generalization in (13) comes from postverbal constituents in Turkish. As observed by Erguvanlı-Taylan (1984) among others, constituents scrambled to postverbal positions cannot receive stress, hence none of the postverbal constituents can have information associated with focus. Accordingly, as shown in (14), a focused ne. . .ne phrase in the postverbal field is ruled out and consequently it cannot serve to negate the sentence, unlike its negating function in the preverbal field, as seen in (11a) above. (14) and (15) below demonstrate that the focusing conditions in (13) are borne out by the data:

(14) a. *Ev-e gel-me-di, [F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M]. home-dat come-neg-past-3sg neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg b. *Ev-e geldi, [F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M]. home-dat come-past-3sg neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg 6 It should be noted that although we starred the sentences in (12b), (15b) and (16b), they all seem to rank higher in the acceptability scale than the other starred ones [cf. (11b–c) and (15c–d)]. These additional observations may motivate a further condition to be added to (13):

c. if the predicate is marked for negation and, any other element rather than the ne. . .ne phrase or the predicate is focused, the sentence should be interpreted as an ‘echo sentence’ (=an answer to an echo question). Note that the extended condition in (c) implies that (12b), (15b) and (16b) are unacceptable only if they are not echo sentences.

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. (15) a. Ev-e [F GEL-ME-DI ], ne anne-m ne baba-m. home-dat come-neg-past-3sg neither mother-1sg-poss nor father-1sg-poss b. *[F EVE] gelmedi, ne annem ne babam. . c. *Ev-e [F GEL-DI ], ne anne-m ne baba-m. home-dat come-past-3sg neither mother-1sg-poss nor father-1sg-poss d. *[ F EVE] geldi, ne annem ne babam.

Sentences including a NPI such as hic¸ ‘ever, never’ also provide further support for the claim that there is a relation between ne. . .ne phrases, focus and negation. Since the predicate of a sentence with a NPI must be morphologically marked for negation (cf. Section 4), following our claim, we expect that a ne. . .ne phrase in such a sentence cannot be focused. Consider the sentences in (16): . (16) a. Ne anne-m ne baba-m bugu¨n ev-e hic¸ [F GEL-ME-DI ]. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg today home-dat ever come-neg-past-3sg b. *[F NE ANNEM NE BABAM] bugu¨n eve hic¸ gelmedi. ‘Neither my mother nor may father ever came home today.’

In (16a) the presence of the NPI is only possible under the licensing of negation (morphological negation -mE7 in this context) and the attachment of the negative marker -mE automatically causes the predicate to receive heavy stress, hence allowing it to be marked for focus. As we stated above, the fact that the predicate is marked for focus eliminates the possibility of, at least, a ne. . .ne phrase to be focused through heavy stress. This prediction is borne out once again as the unacceptability of the sentence in (16b) shows. Now we can see more explicitly that the presence of a negative marker in sentences including a ne. . .ne phrase is neither a stylistic issue in Gencan’s (1979) sense, nor the result of a condition imposed by the distance factor as Go¨ksel (1987) proposes. Notice that Go¨ksel’s (1987) example in (8b) is rendered ungrammatical when ne. . .ne is focused, as illustrated in (17):

(17) *[F NE YAS¸LI KADINLARI NE DE yaz tatili ic¸in u¨lkelerine gitmeden o¨nce tu¨m mag˘azaların en gereksiz mallarını satın alan Tu¨rk is¸ c¸ilerini] GO«R-E-ME-M. ‘I can see neither old women nor Turkish laborers who buy all the unnecessary things from all the shops before they go to their countries.’ 7

The capital letters used for suffixes indicate phonological variants.

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Finally, we would like to discuss briefly the behavior of ne. . .ne phrases in embedded clauses, which is also discussed in detail in Section 4.2. A focused ne. . .ne phrase in an embedded clause semantically negates the matrix predicate instead of the embedded predicate. Even in this case, the matrix predicate cannot be morphologically negated as was the case with simple sentences. Nevertheless, the embedded verb seems to be free to carry the negative particle although its interpretation can change with respect to negation.8 Namely, the embedded predicate is construed as negative when the negative particle appears on the embedded predicate, otherwise no negative interpretation is expected. On the other hand, the matrix predicate must be marked for negation if the embedded ne. . .ne phrase is not focused as in (18b). . . . (18) a. Osman [F NE ALI-NIN NE AYSE-NIN kitap oku-dug˘-u/oku-ma-dıg˘-ı]-na O. neither Ali-gen nor Ays¸ e-gen book read-(neg)-nom-poss-acc hear-past-3sg inan-dı-Ø /*inan-ma-dı-Ø. believe-(neg)-past-3sg lit: ‘Osman did not believe that either Ali or Ays¸e read/did not read a book.’ b. Osman [ ne Ali-nin ne Ays¸ e-nin kitap oku-dug˘-u/oku-ma-dıg˘-ı]-na inan-ma-dı O. neither Ali-gen nor Ays¸ e-gen book read-(neg)-nom-poss-acc believe-(neg)-past-3sg lit: ‘Osman did not believe that either Ali or Ays¸e read/did not read a book.’

To summarize, the facts observed so far show that there is a strict relation between the ne. . .ne phrases, focus and negation. In cases where a ne. . .ne phrase is available, sentential negation may be obtained by the focused ne. . .ne phrase plus the affirmative verb or by negative marking on the verb without focusing the ne. . .ne phrase. It is observed from the data that there is no difference in simple and complex sentences in this respect. The data also show that in complex sentences a ne. . .ne phrase negates not the embedded but the matrix predicate when focused. When not focused, it cannot extend its scope over the main sentence and the matrix predicate should necessarily reflect morphological negation similar to simple sentences. 3.2. Informational differences As has already been mentioned, our main observation is that the co-occurrence of ne. . .ne phrases with affirmative and negative predicates is not optional but rather is 8 Note that embedded predicates are not dependent on ne. . .ne phrases regarding their [
foc] features, due to the fact that ne. . .ne phrases seem to interact with matrix predicates in terms of negation [cf. (18)]. This predicts that whether the embedded predicate is marked for morphological negation or not, in other words, whether it is semantically negative or not, is irrelevant. We should, however, point out that some native speakers regarded sentences in which embedded predicates have morphological negation on them as uninterpretable. It should be noted that the intonation pattern, in addition to high pitch accent falling on ne. . .ne phrases, that these sentences exhibit is quite complex and deviations from the natural pattern results in considerably odd sentences. Therefore, we will restrict the attention to simpler embedded clauses and leave controversial ones for future research (see Section 4.2 for the syntactic analysis).

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dependent on the informational needs they meet. This, in fact, is what motivates the two forms to co-exist in the language. The difference between these two structures is simply that there are different focused and presuppositional elements in each. If we assume that negative predicates receive unmarked focus (following Vallduvı´, 1992; Bu¨ring, 1998; Kural, 1992), then this amounts to suggesting that the remaining part of the sentence is presupposed. This statement is valid for sentences with or without a ne. . .ne phrase. Consider the sentences below: . . (19) a. Ali okul-a [F GI T-ME-DI ]. Ali school-dat go-neg-past-3sg ‘Ali did not go to school.’ . . b. Ne Ali ne Ays¸ e okul-a [ GI T-ME-DI ]. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e school-datF go-neg-past-3sg ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e went to school.’ In both (19a) and (19b), the speaker presupposes that the hearer knows there is a relation between the element(s) of the subject set and okul ‘school’ with respect to the predicate git- ‘to go’ but that s/he does not know whether the action took place. Thus, the new information given in these sentences is that the action has not taken place. Hence, in this regard, sentences with ne. . .ne do not differ from those without a ne. . .ne. On the other hand, in a sentence like (20) where the ne. . .ne phrase is in focus, the information of the sentence is conveyed through the elements in the ne. . .ne phrase while the remaining part of the sentence (i.e., the VP) is being presupposed. In (20), contrary to (19b), the hearer does know that the action of ‘going to school’ took place but does not know who in the subject set went to school:

(20)

. [F NE ALI NE AYS¸E] okul-a git-ti. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e school-dat go-past ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e went to school.’

As a natural reflection of this informational divergency, it is possible to view these two forms as the answers to different questions, similar to those in (21):

(21) a. A: Ali ve Ays¸ e okul-a git-ti mi? Ali and Ays¸ e school-dat go-past q ‘Did Ali and Ays¸e go to school?’ B:

. . Ne Ali ne Ays¸ e okul-a [F GI T-ME-DI ]. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e school-dat go-neg-past ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e went to school.’

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b. A: Ali mi Ays¸ e mi okul-a git-ti? Ali q Ays¸ e q school-dat go-past ‘Did Ali or Ays¸e go to school?’ . B: [ F NE ALI NE AYS¸E] okula gitti. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e school-dat go-past ‘Neither Ali nor Ays¸e went to school.’ As the two forms above, namely (21aB) and (21bB), have the same logico-semantic meaning, both of them have the same function in negating the sentence. To put it differently, in both (21aB) and (21bB) the speaker informs the hearer that his presupposed information (that is, Ali and Ays¸e’s going to school) is false. This logico-semantic equality of these forms leaves a misleading impression that the two can be used interchangeably. For example, B’s utterance in (21a) cannot answer A’s question in (21b) and vice versa, because in (21b) A thinks that either Ali or Ays¸ e went to school and wants to know which one did it; his point is not whether they went to school or not. The reason for the fact that B’s answer in (21a) seems to be used in the same context is that it has the same logico-semantic meaning as B’s answer in (21b). With B’s response in (21a) to the question in (21b) the hearer is informed that the information he supposed he could get is irrelevant; namely, this response is possible since it aims to cancel the presupposition of A’s question as a whole. This is like responding to the question ‘‘Did you go to France or Italy on your vacation?’’ with the sentence ‘‘I did not go on a vacation’’. As in the former context, this response, too, cancels the presupposition of the question as a whole. The data presented in (22) and (23) provide support for our claim that the two forms of ne. . .ne sentences cannot be used interchangeably. As shown below, the ne. . .ne phrase cannot be omitted in (22) while it can be in (23):9

(22)

9

A:

Anne-n mi baba-n mı okul-a git-ti? mother-2sg-poss q father-2sg-poss q school-dat go-past ‘Did your mother or your father go to school?’

B1:

[F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M]________. neither mother-1sg-poss nor father-1sg-poss ‘Neither my mother nor my father [went to school].’

B2:

#

B20 :

#

. . Evet. (# [F GI T-TI-LER]. Yes go-past-3pl ‘Yes. (They went.)’ . . Hayır. (# [F GI T-ME-DI -LER] ) no go-neg-past-3pl ‘No. (They did not go.)’

# is used to indicate contextual infelicity.

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(23)

A:

Anne-n ve baba-n okul-a git-ti mi? mother-2sg-poss and father-2sg-poss school-dat go-past q ‘Did your mother and father go to school?’

B1:

Evet. ( [F git-ti-ler].) yes go-past-3pl ‘Yes. (They went.)’

B10 :

Hayır. [F git-me-di-ler].) no go-neg-past-3pl ‘No. (They did not go.)’

B2:

#

[F ne annem ne babam]. neither mother-1sg-poss nor father-1sg-poss ‘Neither my mother nor my father.’

To summarize, it is demonstrated that the two forms of ne. . .ne phrases need to be distinguished from one another on the basis of their information structures. This provides evidence favoring the claim that the forms displaying a logico-semantic equality may have different information structures. The topic of the next section will be the syntactic analysis of the facts discussed so far.

4. Syntactic analysis of [ne. . .ne. . .] 4.1. The proposal In the syntactic analysis of the ne. . .ne phrases we will assume the basic principles of the minimalist framework outlined in Chomsky (1993, 1995). The main question adressed in this section is the following: How can the generalization in (13) be accounted for within the framework of the minimalist program? Recall that (13) expresses the presence of a correlation between negation and focus. This is, in fact, not surprising given that similar observations involving association of focus with negative constituents and interrogatives are discussed in the literature (see Jackendoff, 1972, among others). To provide an account for the licensing of constituents with focus properties, it has been proposed that such constituents must occupy the specifier position of a functional projection called F(ocus) P(hrase) (cf. Brody, 1990; Rizzi, 1995). Brody (1990) argues that focused constituents move to FP in order to satisfy the Focus Criterion. 4.1.1. Postverbal [ne. . .ne] phrases a. At S-structure and LF, the Spec of an FP must contain a +f-phrase. b. At LF, all +f-phrases must be in an FP.

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The Focus-Criterion is aimed at accounting for the crosslinguistic variation with respect to focus.10 It states that languages like Hungarian satisfy the criterion overtly whereas others like English satisfy it covertly. As discussed in Horvath (1995), however, not all languages pattern with Hungarian and English with respect to the properties of the focused constituents. Go¨ksel and O¨zsoy (2000) suggest that the only indicator of focus in Turkish is stress and it can be assigned to any preverbal constituent. As we have argued so far, a ne. . .ne phrase becomes an effective negative category only when it is associated with focus and it is only licensed in the preverbal field. Pinon (1993) also argues that negation does not constitute a category in its own right and that it should co-occur with focus. Drawing on Laka (1990), Pinon posits a phrase P (sigma phrase) for Hungarian and notes that that phrase reflects the features of negation and focus simultaneously. Similarly, Kiss (1994) claims that wh-phrases and/or negative constituents obligatorily occupy the immediately preverbal focus position in Hungarian. Besides, these elements are crucially associated with phonological as well as semantic features in immediately preverbal position. We will argue here that focus in Turkish is more closely related to ne. . .ne phrases than it is to other negation categories in the language and as has been implied in the previous sections, an association of this sort has to do with the morphosyntactic structure of the language. Recall from Sections 2 and 3 that a ne. . .ne phrase can express sentential negation on its own and that there is no comparable structure to ne. . .ne in Turkish. The more specific proposal is that ne. . .ne phrases inherit the function to negate sentences through the association with focal properties. Another observation given in the preceding sections was that ne. . .ne can also remain unmarked for focal properties in some contexts but in such cases its behavior as a negative category is distinct from its counterpart with focal properties. When ne. . .ne is not associated with [+foc], sentential negation can only be fulfilled by the negative morphology on the predicate. Therefore, when ne. . .ne phrases are unmarked for focus, they can be treated as NPIs since they can only appear within negative sentences, similar to typical NPIs.11 We will return to this proposal below, but first see the differences between NPIs and ne. . .ne phrases with focus features. The ungrammaticality of (23a) and 10 May (1985) proposed a condition which he called ‘Wh-Criterion’ to account for the distribution of wh-elements cross-linguistically. This criterion is formulated as the following:

Wh-Criterion a. Every [+WH] COMP must dominate a wh-phrase. b. Every wh-phrase must be dominated by a [+WH] COMP (May, 1985: 17). It is obvious that all previously proposed criteria like the Focus-Criterion (Brody, 1990), or the NegCriterion (Haegeman and Zanuttini, 1996) are in the spirit of May’s proposal. 11 Negative Polarity Items are shown that they need to be licensed under negation, question and conditional operator in Italian (Manzini, 1997: 145) and modals can also be added to this list from Albanian (see Turano, 1998: 157). Turkish NPIs seem to be licensed at least by negation and question operators (cf. Kelepir, 1999). If we treat [foc] ne. . .ne phrases as NPIs, then why it is that [foc] ne. . .ne phrases are not licensed under question operators, unlike other typical NPIs in the language, is not clear.

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(23b), as opposed to (23a0 ) and (23b0 ), indicate that NPIs are not allowed in contexts in which they remain unlicensed (see Kornfilt, 1985, among others):

(23) a. *Ali kimse-yi go¨r-du¨. vs. a0 . Ali kimse-yi go¨r-me-di. A. anybody-Acc see-Past A. anybody-Acc see-neg-Past ‘*Ali saw anybody.’ ‘Ali did not see anybody.’ b. *Ali hic¸ uyu-r A. ever sleep-Aor ‘*Ali ever sleeps.’

vs. b0 . Ali hic¸ uyu-ma-z A. ever sleep-neg-Aor ‘Ali never sleeps.’

In her study on NPIs in Turkish, Kelepir (1999) claims that the lack of double negation reading of multiple NPIs in Turkish casts a serious doubt on the possibility that the constituents in question are inherently negative.12 She provides further support for her claim by investigating whether a NPI like kimse ‘anybody’ contributes its negative character to an interrogative clause and demonstrates that no such contribution is available in Turkish. She concludes that elements like kimse ‘anybody’, hic¸ ‘never’ cannot have the feature [neg] in their lexical specifications, hence they are more likely to be NPIs, and Turkish seems not to have negative quantifiers. Kelepir (1999) presents evidence that when the suffix-sIz ‘without’ is attached to NPIs in Turkish, it licenses them yielding not double negation, but negative concord.

(24)

Biz bu u¨lke-ye hic¸birs¸ ey-siz gel-di-k we this country-dat anything-without come-past-1pl ‘We came to this country without anything.’

(from Kelepir, 1999)

This suffix can be used to uncover the status of ne. . .ne phrases as well (at least, those with [+foc] features). Consider the sentence in (25) below:

(25)

. . . Bu parti [F NE ALI-SIZ NE AYS¸E-SIZ] yap-ıl-abil-ir-Ø this party neither Ali-without nor Ays¸ e-without do-pass-abi†l-pres-3sg. Lit.: ‘This party cannot be organized without Ali and Ays¸e’

As the intended reading of (24) clearly shows ne. . .ne and –siz together yield an interpretation of double negation, unlike the combination of the NPI hic¸birs¸ey 12

Note that Kelepir (1999) does not consider ne. . .ne phrases at all, yet her study aims to analyze some well-known NPIs in Turkish, like kimse ‘anybody’, hic¸birs¸ey ‘anything’ etc.

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‘anything’ and the suffix -siz in (24). We take this as evidence that ne. . .ne is an effective negative category, particularly when it is associated with focus. With this much discussion on the status of ne. . .ne phrases as a category of negation, now we will spell out the main assumptions of the syntactic analysis. We would like to assume that a ne. . .ne phrase (to be precise, its [neg] and [foc] features) should occupy the Spec(ifier) position of Neg at LF (see Chomsky, 1993; Haegeman and Zanuttini, 1996, among others). This needs to be explicated in two respects. Firstly, we will assume that ne. . .ne phrases are base-generated in the relevant positions where they are assigned the matching y-roles, namely within the v/VP, and their features are attracted by the relevant features of the Neg during the derivation. The second point has to do with the more general facts of negation in Turkish. Based on the observations given in Sections 2 and 3, we will suggest that Neg is a functional head projecting to accommodate only sentential negators with [+foc] features. This suggestion is different from Ouhalla’s (1991) proposal of Neg(P) for Turkish, which is invoked to account for the distribution of the negative marker -mE suffixed to the verb. We suggest that the features of ne. . .ne ends up in Spec of Neg at LF if it is associated with [foc] and -mE (possibly, deg˘il ‘not’ and yok ‘the negative existential’ as well) is checked against the Neg head through Vraising up to functional categories, under the proposals of Chomsky (1995). As they are also involved in sentences where ne. . .ne phrases occur, we will further suggest that NPIs cannot be licensed in the Spec of Neg, contra Tosun (1998), rather some other mechanism is operative in their licensing.13 That NPIs are excluded from Spec of Neg is not just a simple assumption, rather it follows from the facts of Turkish given that ne. . .ne phrases and NPIs can occur in sentences simultaneously [cf. (6a) and (16a)]. Notice that for a ne. . .ne phrase and some NPI to co-occur the following conditions should be met: as a NPI needs to be licensed by a Neg head, say -mE, in Turkish, ne. . .ne phrase will necessarily be [foc] following the generalization we stated in (13). If that is correct, we will expect neither a ne. . .ne phrase to occupy Spec of Neg nor a NPI as we assume that c-command by negation is sufficient for their licensing. To summarize, we are suggesting that all negative elements involving sentential negation have to be associated with either the Neg head or the Spec of Neg, and [foc] ne. . .ne phrases and NPIs have to be outside of the domain of Neg. We will discuss the possible consequences of the assumptions and suggestions we have made so far as we go through this section and in Section 4.2. Having presented the assumptions of the analysis to be suggested in this section, we would like to proceed with the theoretical framework that the analysis is couched in. We will basically stick to the versions of minimalist framework proposed in Chomsky (1993, 1995). One relevant notion of the theory to be discussed here is the licensing/checking of features. According to the checking theory proposed in 13 Kural (1993) argues that s-structure c-command by negation is the condition for NPI licensing with the assumption that the V moves up to C picking up (or checking) negation and it reaches to a position where it can c-command subject NPIs in the Spec of TP. Zidani-Erog˘lu (1997) suggests that m-command is sufficient for subject NPIs to be licensed as she assumes that the highest position that the V ends up in is Agrs (see also Kelepir, 1999, whose analysis of NPIs considerably differs from those traditional analyses mentioned above). Adopting Kural (1993) would be sufficient for our purposes, as we are not mainly interested in giving an analysis of NPIs in this paper.

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Chomsky (1995) only categorial/formal features trigger movement and focus is not a categorial/formal feature to induce movement. On the other hand, since the above observations involve focus as one of the basic components of the derivation of sentences in which subject/object ne. . .ne phrases occur, we would like to suggest that focus has to be incorporated into the theory somehow even though it appears controversial with respect to checking theory. There are various approaches seeking ways to reconcile focus features with the checking theory. Motapanyane (1998: 235– 236) notes that when [focus] has an impact on syntax (referring to languages with fronting to focus strategies), it is necessarily associated with some other feature, and she claims that [focus] associates with [tense] in Romanian and with [wh] in English. She provides further support to the claim that [focus] does not enter the syntax as a separate element, based on the fact that Bulgarian has morphology for focus, li, indicating that the morpheme is specified for both [focus] and [wh] features. We follow Motapanyane (1998) in assuming that the same line of reasoning can be extended to capture the nature of the relation between ne. . .ne and focus. In Motapanyane’s (1998: 236) proposal the association of focus with [wh] features is obtained by the following mechanism: in keeping with the above descriptions, focus needs to be converted to a formal feature and this is handled in the lexicon when it merges with [wh] or [tense]. Thus, the complex features [wh/focus] or [tense/focus] enter the derivation as formal features. Consequently, focus is located either in C or I, according to its host categorial feature, and may not access the derivation independently. If we adopt Motapanyane (1998) that this is the way for focus to become a formal feature, it will be reasonable to suggest that it merges with ne. . .ne in the lexicon and since we suggest that the features of ne. . .ne have to move (or in terms of Chomsky, 1995, be attracted) to the specifier position of Neg to check its [neg] features, focus too becomes related to the host categorial feature of ne. . .ne. The association of focus with a ne. . .ne phrase is completed before the lexical choices are made to create a Numeration. Numeration provides the substance that Chl operates with. Note that the proposals we are making here require further consideration given that the theory imposes a distinction between overt and covert movement (see Chomsky, 1995). The specific proposal we make with regard to that issue will be presented below. As suggested in the beginning of this section ne. . .ne is an effective negative category if it is associated with [+foc] features. This implies that the merger of ne. . .ne with focus in the lexicon has further consequences considering its effect over the sentence in which it occurs. The merger of focus with a ne. . .ne phrase is significant since it checks its features against Neg and the derivation converges only if Neg has the matching features with ne. . .ne phrase. We suggest that the proper establishment of the checking relation between Spec and Head positions also accounts for the correlation in question. What is more significant is the relevance of focus to the category Neg here. Recall that we have mentioned in Section 3 that a ne. . .ne phrase is not permitted to be associated with focus when the sentence is negated by negative morphology on the predicate, following similar observations on the relationship between sentential negation and focus by Vallduvı´ (1992), Bu¨ring (1998), and Kural (1992) for Turkish. This leads us to take the following position: before Numeration is set up, depending on whether the sentence to be derived is negative, one of the two

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possible sentential negators comes to be associated with focus: either the ne. . .ne phrase or the verbal complex with the negative suffix -mE.14 This operation is mutually exclusive since we claim that there is only one (contrastively) focused constituent and the association of two elements with focus yields unacceptable sentences.15 Note the unacceptability of the sentence below: (26)

*[F ne annem ne babam] eve [f gel-me-di]. neither my-mom nor my-father home-dat come-neg-past

Now we will consider first the cases where ne. . .ne is associated with focus. To begin with the relevant notions of the minimalist framework, Chomsky (1995: 297) offers to reinterpret the operation of movement of Chomsky (1993) as attraction where movement is viewed as triggered by particular features of a target head K. Notice that the notions of Minimal Link Condition (MLC) and Last Resort are incorporated into the following definition: Attract F. K attracts F if F is the closest feature that can enter into a checking relation with a sublabel of K. With this in mind, another suggestion by Chomsky (1995) is relevant for our proposals. Chomsky (1995: 265) proposes that raising of a feature F of a lexical item LI automatically carries along FF(LI), where FF(LI) is the set of formal features of LI. The operation Move/Attract F, hence, is conceived as an operation involving FF(F).16 Chomsky (1995: 268–269) further proposes that in addition to the feature F of the raised/attracted element, other features of FF(F) may also enter into checking relations as free riders. Chomsky provides examples of such a case where the f-features of an LI are raised/attracted as free riders following the movement/ attraction of the Case feature of this LI. Now let us consider the analysis of the ne. . .ne phrases in simple matrix clauses. We assume that [neg] features of ne. . .ne phrases are weak. In other words, [neg] features of ne. . .ne phrases are not required to be checked in the overt syntax. Weak features do not trigger overt movement as opposed to strong features. It is suggested 14

An anonymous reviewer raises an objection at this point. According to his/her point, the claim that sentential negation should always be associated with focal features brings up the issue of differentiating neutral negative sentences from negative sentences with a presuppositional reading. Although this is a correct point to reconsider, there is one important observation we wish to mention here. Leaving aside the theoretical problems that the above statement raises, we believe that the phonologically prominent element in neutral negative sentences in Turkish is the verb itself. In other words, there is no distinction, at least on the phonology side, on the basis of the neutral/presuppositional readings. More importantly, phonological prominency seems to be the most important factor in addition to the apparent focal properties of the immediate preverbal position provides. We believe that providing a solution to this problem goes beyond the limits of the present study and as is also pointed out by the anonymous reviewer is not an easy task to handle in a short paper. Therefore, we will leave it for further research as an open issue. 15 Similar observations are also reported in Rizzi (1995). 16 See Lasnik (1995) where he argues against this proposal and claims that Move/Attract F does not involve FF(F) of an LI, but only the relevant feature F of it to be checked by the target.

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in Chomsky (1995: 232) that ‘‘. . .a strong feature always calls for a certain category in its checking domain (not, say, Case or f-features).’’ To put it in a different way, strong features always motivate the movement of the category itself along with the FF(LI) for reasons of PF-convergence.17 In addition to what we assume for the [neg] features of ne. . .ne phrases, we will assume that Neg head also does not have strong features. This amounts to saying that overt movement/attraction of ne. . .ne phrases is not likely to occur as there is no strong feature triggering overt displacement of ne. . .ne phrases. Thus, LF-checking of the relevant features would be sufficient for the derivation to converge. At this point, some problems seem to emerge in terms of the cyclicity of the movement/attraction operation. We have suggested above that a subject ne. . .ne phrase is merged at the Spec of vP. It has some [+interpretable] features like categorial features and f-features, in addition to a [interpretable] feature like Case. As Nom Case feature of the subject ne. . .ne phrase is strong, it needs to be checked in overt syntax, however, it is higher than the checking domain of [neg] (and also [foc]) features of the Neg head. It is commonly assumed that there is a natural ordering between overt and covert movement/attraction, such that the former precedes the latter. If this is true, then the problem has to do with another assumption in the minimalist framework: derivation proceeds in a bottom-up fashion and cyclicity effects are observed (cf. Chomsky, 1993, for Extension Condition, and also Chomsky, 1995). According to the notion of cyclicity, Merge and (overt) Move apply at the root only. Covert movement, however, is not subject to cyclicity, that is there are cases of acyclic movement in the covert component. Considering these points, the problem we hinted at becomes apparent: checking of the strong Case feature of the ne. . .ne phrase requires category movement, yet the [neg] features of the ne. . .ne phrase are weak, by assumption, and f-movement at LF is sufficient. Before going into the details, let us mention one more significant point relevant to our analysis. According to Chomsky (1995), covert movement involves the adjunction of features to X positions. As we are assuming that there is no reason for an overt displacement analysis of ne. . .ne phrases based on the word order facts of Turkish, the head adjunction analysis of [neg][foc] features for checking purposes will be adopted. This argument is provided support in Section 4.2 based on the word order facts of ne. . .ne phrases in embedded clauses. Now we would like to illustrate the problem we have discussed so far in configurational terms:18 (27)

[F Ne annem ne babam] eve geldi.

17 Chomsky (1995) states that the proposal that the minimal operation involves the features and the pied-piping of the category is only required when the movement is overt, provides a natural move towards explaining procrastinate, which favors covert movement over overt movement (Chomsky attributes this observation to Hisatsugu Kitahara and Howard Lasnik). In a sense, only f-movement is more economical than f-movement plus pied-piping of category. 18 We are simply using IP instead of a decomposed IP structure as it does not affect the analysis proposed here. Not all the features checked by I are indicated in the tree, but the Case and the EPP features, because they are assumed to be strong and hence trigger overt movement of a ne. . .ne phrase. This constitutes an important part of our analysis. Movement of the V is also ignored in (29), but that does not necessarily mean that it is unimportant. See below for the relevance of V-movement to our proposal.

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(28)

The syntactic configuration in (28) above does not follow from the theory we have outlined so far. To clarify, the phrase structure configuration in (28) imposes that either only covert movement or the overt movement of the relevant features is possible. The former is problematic for strong Case or EPP features of ne. . .ne phrases as they need to be checked before LF, and the latter is problematic since the [neg][foc] features of the ne. . .ne phrase need not be checked in overt syntax as they are assumed to be weak.19 In order to overcome this problem, we will argue for a theory in which LF-lowering is permitted. In fact, this line of reasoning is taken up in Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi (1998). Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi (1998) suggest that since there is no clear evidence against (covert) lowering within the minimalist framework, assuming that it simply does not exist is problematic, in fact would be very stipulative. Therefore, ‘‘. . .lowering should be allowed to the extent that its results do not violate independently motivated conditions of the grammar’’ (Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi, 1998: 19 Bosˇ kovic´ (1997b) discusses some superiority violations triggered by object wh-phrases, which are assumed to be base-generated in a lower position in the structure than the subject wh-phrases (and also some adjunct wh’s presumably adjoined to VP), yet end up in a higher position than the latter at s-structure (or more properly, before the Spell-Out applies). Bosˇ kovic´ (1997b) proposes to analyze the behavior of object wh-phrases in the following way: Acc wh-phrases attracted by the C are required to move to AgroP, in order to check the Case feature and this step obviously places them in a position higher than subject (and/or adjunct) wh-phrases. Hence, the object wh-phrases, but not subject/adjunct wh-phrases, are attracted by the strong features of C under an economy approach. Although it is theoretically very appealing, this analysis does not hold for the phenomena presented in this paper. As we are assuming that the [neg][foc] features of the Neg (and ne. . .ne phrases as well) are weak, they have to be checked after Spell-Out, that is at LF. Moreover, assuming that the features of the Neg is weak allows us to account for the word order facts of [+foc] ne. . .ne phrases in embedded clauses (see Section 4.2. for more on this issue). We are not going to adopt Bosˇ kovic´ (1997b) as we are suggesting that these arguments against an overt movement (and checking) analysis of ne. . .ne phrases are preferable.

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348).20 We suggest that there is independent motivation for LF-lowering given the syntactic structure of the matrix clause with a ne. . .ne phrase in (28). Assuming that lowering operation at LF is an option provided by UG and it could be invoked when required, then it becomes possible to resolve the apparent discrepancy we encountered. We are, now, ready to argue for the analysis we would like to propose. So far we have mentioned two specific mechanisms in the grammar having to do with our proposals. One is feature checking as a free rider and the other is covert lowering. We propose, in accordance with the above assumptions, that strong Case (and also EPP) features of the ne. . .ne phrase are checked in overt syntax as the movement/attraction of the category is required for reasons of PF-convergence.21 No PF-condition is imposed on weak features, therefore they involve solely the movement/attraction of features, that is no pied-piping is needed. As the second step of the checking process, then, lowering of the matching features takes place.22 Recall that we have proposed above following Motapanyane (1998) that ne. . .ne phrases are associated with focus in the lexicon through a merger process. Based on this suggestion, LF-lowering process should involve both [neg] and [foc] features, where [foc] feature of the subject ne. . .ne phrase enters into a checking relation as a free rider. The following tree diagram in (29) illustrates the derivation we are proposing here: (29)

20 There are some lowering cases, however, not permitted by independent principles of the grammar. Among others, one of them is important for our purposes, namely, the ban on overt lowering. We will not discuss the details of this proposal here but note in passing that Chomsky (1995) rules this process out for reasons of linear ordering in line with Kayne (1994). 21 The categorial features of the attracted phrase, i.e., its D features and f-features, are also attracted as free riders. 22 We should note here that we are following Lasnik and Saito (1992), and Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi (1998), in assuming that movement does not necessarily leave a trace, unless it is required.

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The derivation of object ne. . .ne phrases with [+foc] features, obviously, does not independently require a covert lowering process. Strong [Acc] Case features of ne. . .ne phrases are attracted by the v head and this needs to be overt as the category is pied-piped to the features to be checked. No overt movement operation to Spec of Neg is expected then, because [neg] features of the Neg head are weak and they can wait until LF. Obviously, no LF-lowering is needed with object ne. . .ne phrases. Note that [foc] feature of the ne. . .ne phrase is checked as a free rider as we proposed earlier. Recall that object ne. . .ne phrases associated with focus can also negate sentences without the presence of the negative marker -mE on the predicate.23 Having proposed a possible account for ne. . .ne phrases associated with [+foc] features in the lexicon, we would now like to consider the behavior of the [foc] ne. . .ne phrases. Recall that we have previously argued that either a ne. . .ne phrase or the negative morpheme -mE is associated with focus, but not both. Based on that observation, we have suggested that sentential negation is carried out only by the elements associated with focus features. In order to make explicit the relevance of this observation to our analysis, we will repeat example (12a) below in (30):

(30) Ne anne-m ne baba-m ev-e [F gel-me-di]. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home- dat come-neg-past ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

That ne. . .ne is not associated with [foc] and sentential negation is rendered by mE means that ne. . .ne will never occupy Spec of Neg given our assumptions. This can be given a simple account within the minimalist framework adopted here. Let us clarify one point to be important for the analysis we propose. Here is the definition of checking relation as it is given in Collins (1997) (see also Chomsky, 1995):

(31) Checking Relation F1 and F2 enter a checking relation iff F2 is in the checking domain of F1 and F1 is deleted (F2 may also be deleted).

Regardless of whether F2 is deleted, F1 should be deleted (note that Collins, 1997, uses the term delete for both delete+erase of Chomsky, 1995). This is a case of an 23 The unacceptability of a sentence as in (i) below indicates that subject and object ne. . .ne phrases are not allowed to co-occur in sentences.

(i)

*[Ne Ali ne Ays¸ e] [ne kitab-ı ne defter-i] go¨r-du¨-Ø. neither Ali nor Ays¸ e neither book-acc nor notebook-acc see-past-3sg

The absence of such a paradigm implies that the Spec of Neg is never occupied by multiple elements in Turkish, hence an analysis favoring multiple-Specs for Neg is not preferable (cf. Chomsky, 1995).

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asymmetric checking relation and it is necessary to account for cases of successive cyclic movement, ECM and multiple feature checking (cf. Collins, 1997: 20). That V always has to move up to functional categories in Turkish is mentioned before. As the [neg] and [foc] features of the Neg head will be checked by the matching features of the V, they will be deleted in the sense of Chomsky (1995), that is Neg head will not attract any other category or the features of a category to its checking domain. This ensures that no other category (or the features of this category) occupies Spec of Neg during the derivation. Therefore, that the [neg][foc] features on the V are checked (and deleted) against Neg , ne. . .ne phrases are prevented from being occupied in Spec of Neg . Furthermore, their features are also not expected to adjoin the Neg head in LF, as the [neg][foc] features of the Neg are deleted and hence nothing will be attracted by it. Before turning to ne. . .ne phrases in the postverbal position, we will point out to another fact relevant to the analysis above. As the generalization in (13) reveals, if there is -mE on the predicate ne. . .ne is not supposed to be associated with [foc] and fulfill a sentence negation function. In other words, when -mE appears a ne. . .ne phrase is simply not effective in terms of negation as discussed earlier. Therefore, in accordance with our assumptions, a ne. . .ne phrase will never be attracted by the Neg as the former lacks the relevant matching features of the latter. Differently put, whether the V moves to the Neg in the overt syntax seems not to be the main issue at least for the above explanation, that is the correlation fixed up within the lexicon is sufficient to explain the behavior of the ne. . .ne phrase in (30). Note, however, that the assumption that V-movement is overt in Turkish turns out to be an important one for the validity of our analysis when embedded ne. . .ne phrases are concerned. So far we have been arguing why the [foc] ne. . .ne phrase does not enter a checking relation with the Neg head. Hence, the next question is how [foc] ne. . .ne phrases are licensed. Assuming that ne. . .ne phrases display a dual character depending on their focal properties, we have suggested that they become NPI when they are not associated with focus. On the basis of this suggestion we will contend that they are licensed in a similar fashion as the NPIs, that is c-command under negation is the relevant mechanism (cf. fn. 13). This small subsection aims to emphasize the relevance of focus to negation once more based on the facts of ne. . .ne phrases in the postverbal domain discussed in Section 3.1. Recall that we mentioned a well known fact about Turkish, namely, that the postverbal domain rejects constituents marked for focus (see Erguvanlı-Taylan, 1984; Kural, 1992, 1993; Go¨ksel, 1998, among others). In other words, the fundamental condition for a constituent to occupy the postverbal domain is that it be [foc].24 The example in (32), which is repeated here for the sake of convenience, illustrates the non-existence of sentences in which a [+foc] ne. . .ne phrase is scrambled to the postverbal domain:

24 Other conditions listed in the literature (see Kural, 1992, among others), which also seem to be related with focal properties, will not be considered here as they would take as far afield.

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(32)

1111

*Eve geldi, [F NE ANNEM NE BABAM]. home-dat come - neg-past neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

We appealed to sentences like (32) to demonstrate that only [+foc] ne. . .ne phrases can negate sentences and when this option is independently obviated (in this case, by the special properties of the postverbal domain in Turkish), no negation reading is possible. The acceptability of (33) below provides further evidence for the merger analysis of ne. . .ne and focus in order a ne. . .ne phrase to become an effective negative category.

(33)

. Eve [F GELMEDI], ne annem ne babam. home-dat come-neg-past-3sg neither mother-1sg.poss nor father-1sg.poss ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

As the ne. . .ne phrase is not associated with focus in the lexicon simply because mE is the one selected for this property in (33), the ne. . .ne phrase is permitted to be right-dislocated, in compliance with the properties of the postverbal field. In terms of the theory assumed here, as the features of the Neg head are checked by the features of -mE on the V (and notice that the ne. . .ne phrase has no matching features at all), the ne. . .ne phrase will just raise to the checking domain of I as I has a strong Case (and, the EPP) feature. The Case feature of ne. . .ne will be checked against I in this configuration. Obviously, nothing blocks the ne. . .ne phrase to be right-dislocated.25 As for the ungrammaticality of (32), the presence of a category with focus properties in the postverbal field seems to be the determining factor. Unlike the sentence in (33), the ne. . .ne phrase in (32) is associated with focus and its [neg][foc] features are not checked (and deleted) before it is right-dislocated. Given the fact that the postverbal field is free of focused constituents is not provided a satisfactory analysis in Turkish syntax, the analysis we offer here is not more than a stipulation. We will leave a detailed analysis of these facts for future research. 4.2. On [ne. . .ne. . .] phrases within embedded clauses We stated in Section 3 that subject/object ne. . .ne phrases in embedded clauses can render a matrix predicate negative only if they are associated with focal properties. If the matrix predicate is marked for morphological negation, the ne. . .ne phrase (in the embedded clause) should be unmarked for focus, something which is quite 25 We are following here Kural (1992) for his arguments concerning the landing site of constituents scrambled to the right periphery. According to Kural (1992) rightward scrambled constituents are adjoined to CP, therefore they are in an A0 -position. We are not going to repeat his arguments here. See Kural (1992) for an extensive discussion of these and other scrambling facts of Turkish.

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similar to the facts identified for ne. . .ne phrases in matrix contexts. Consider the sentences in (34) which illustrate the descriptions given: (34) a.

. . . Osman [NE ALI-NIN NE AYS¸E-NIN okul-a git-tig˘-i]-ni duy-du-Ø O.-Nom neither A.-Gen nor A.-Gen school-dat go- noml-poss-acc hear-past-3sg

b.

. . . *Osman [NE ALI-NIN NE AYS¸E-NIN okul-a git-tig˘-i]-ni duy-ma-dı-Ø. O.-Nom neither A.-Gen nor A.-Gen school-dat go-noml-poss-acc hear-neg-past-3sg

c.

Osman [ne Ali’nin ne Ays¸ e’nin okul-a gittig˘i]-ni duymadi. O.-Nom neither A.-Gen nor A.-Gen school-dat go- noml-poss-acc hear-past-3sg

The sentences in (34) are interesting in that a ne. . .ne phrase with focal properties negates the matrix predicate rather than the predicate of its own clause and no such relation with the matrix predicate is observed when it is not associated with focus. As a consequence, the main observation we make here is that the statements concerning matrix clauses carry over to complex sentences with at least one embedded clause. Now, compare sentences in (34) with sentences (11a), (12b) and (12a), respectively.

(11)

a.

[F NE ANNE-M NE BABA-M] ev-e gel-di. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

(12)

b. *[F NE ANNEM NE BABAM ] eve gelmedi. neither mother-1sg nor father-1sg home-dat come-neg-past-3sg . anne-m ne baba-m ev-e [F GEL-ME-DI]. neither mother-1sg-poss nor father-1sg-poss home-dat come-neg-past-3sg ‘Neither my mother nor my father came home.’

(12) a. Ne

It is obvious that the interaction of ne. . .ne phrases with negation in matrix clauses is similar to complex sentences exemplified in (34) except that the ne. . .ne phrases in the latter interact with the predicate of the higher clause. Before turning to the analysis, we would like to remind the reader that it is pointed out in Section 3.1 (see also fn. 8) that a [+foc] ne. . .ne phrase which takes matrix scope is independent of the presence of a morphologically negative embedded predicate. This is a crucial point and a sentence which exhibits these properties will be discussed and will be given an analysis (cf. 40). Having presented the relevant facts, we would now like to extend the analysis we proposed to account for the behavior of ne. . .ne phrases in matrix contexts to

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embedded ne. . .ne phrases. Our main proposal concerning ne. . .ne phrases in embedded contexts with a wide-scope interpretation is that they come to occupy the Spec of Neg of the matrix clause during the derivation. This proposal needs to be elaborated with the following assumption: Neg(P) (or any other projection to be relevant) is projected only when it is required, otherwise it is missing.26 Adopting this assumption allows us to give an account for the facts observed in (34) and (36) below. (34a) above presents a typical example of this case. Subject ne. . .ne phrase in the embedded clause is associated with [+foc] features, and it negates the matrix predicate. Recall that we are assuming the [neg] features (and the [+foc] features as free riders) of the ne. . .ne phrases do not have to be checked before Spell-Out. Note, however, that this time there is no independent evidence for an LF-lowering process, since the only NegP projected is in the higher clause and the overt movement/ attraction of the subject ne. . .ne phrase for Case checking reasons will not cross over the Spec of Neg in the higher clause. Under the Attract F framework of Chomsky (1995) we are adopting, matrix Neg is the closest attractor sharing the same features with the ne. . .ne phrase. We would like to discuss one critical point regarding our assumption that ne. . .ne phrases need not move/be attracted before LF. One might question this assumption on theoretical grounds but there is reason to believe that empirical evidence favors an LF-movement approach. Consider the sentence in (36) where there is an object ne. . .ne phrase extending its scope over the matrix predicate:

(35) Osman [Ali-nin ne kitabi ne (de) defteri al-dıg˘-ı]-nı duy-du-Ø O. Ali-gen neither book-acc nor (also) notebook-acc buy-noml-poss-acc hear-past-3sg Lit.: ‘Osman had not heard that Ali bought either the book or the notebook.’

If we suppose that the object ne. . .ne phrase in (35) involves the pied-piping of the category as a result of the attraction by the matrix Neg , this means that it will end up in a position higher than the embedded subject. In linear terms, the ne. . .ne phrase will be to the left of the embedded subject, namely Ali-nin ‘Ali-Gen’. We will illustrate this below in (36), where only the relevant parts of the representation are included:

26 This assumption is based on Bosˇ kovic´ (1997a). Bosˇ kovic´ (1997a) proposes an economy condition on representations which he calls The Minimal Structure Principle. The definition of this principle given in Bosˇ kovic´ (1997a: 25) is as the following:

(i) The Minimal Structure Principle Provided that lexical requirements of relevant elements are satisfied, if two representations have the same lexical structure and serve the same function, then the representation that has fewer projections is to be chosen as the syntactic representation serving that function. We will not discuss the details of this proposal, yet it should be noted that it will rule out Neg(P)s in embedded clauses (and, of course, matrix clauses) unless they are required.

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(36)

The surface word order of constituents in (35) would change as it is represented in (36), if overt movement/attraction of ne. . .ne phrase were required (with the assumption that operations feed the PF component only if they take place before Spell-Out.) This is, obviously, what we do not want to have for the derivation of the sentence in (35).27 Sentences of this kind favor our earlier assumption that ne. . .ne phrases are not subject to category movement as they lack strong [neg][foc] features. Recall also that the [neg] and [foc] features of the Neg head have been assumed to be weak. Therefore, feature movement at LF is sufficient for ne. . .ne phrase licensing. The derivation of (35), then, will be as in (37) (non-relevant parts are omitted): (37)

Having Merged at the VP-internal position, the ne. . .ne phrase is attracted to Spec of v in overt syntax (leaving its copy in the lower position) to check its Acc Case features against v . After Spell-Out, only the matching features of the ne. . .ne phrase (i.e., the [neg] and [foc] features) will be attracted by the Neg , as no pied-piping of the category is necessary. Therefore, the pronounced copy of the ne. . .ne phrase is the one in the lower Spec of v . There are two more complex sentences yet to be considered. One is already given in (34c), which will be repeated as (38) below: (38) Osman [ne Ali-nin ne Ays¸ e-nin okul-a git-tig˘-i]-ni [F duy-ma-di]. O.-Nom neither A.-Gen nor A.-Gen school-dat go-noml-poss-acc hear-past-3sg As is proposed for the matrix counterpart of this sentence (cf. 30), (38) too involves the overt attraction of the subject ne. . .ne phrase (that is, the category along with the related features) to the Spec of I position of the embedded clause for 27 Note that, given that Turkish is a scrambling language, the order of constituents in (35), in fact, does not yield an unacceptable sentence. See (i):

(i)

Osman [ne kitab-i ne (de) defter-i] I Ali-nin ti al-dıg˘-ı-nı duy-du O. neither book-acc nor (also) notebook-acc Ali-gen buy-noml-poss-acc hear-past-3sg

Given that we are proposing an LF-movement analysis for ne. . .ne phrases, the sentence in (i) seems not to pose any problems for our proposals. The object ne. . .ne phrase moves/scrambles into an A-position (as an instance of short-scrambling, see Saito, 1992) after the overt Case checking in the Spec of vP. The third step involves the movement of [neg][foc] features to Neg head (resulting in an adjunction operation). Yet, crucially, we are not concerned with the derivation of a sentence like (i) as it is completely different than the one in (35).

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checking (and deletion) purposes, yet it gets stuck at this position due to the absence of any other motivation to move in overt and/or covert syntax. No covert lowering is expected as there is no Neg(P) projected in the embedded clause under the assumptions we have made earlier. Covert raising to the Neg head in the higher clause is also excluded as an option because the relevant features of the Neg head are checked by the negative suffix -mE on the V and hence deleted. Notice that even if the features of the Neg head were not deleted, no raising would be expected since ne. . .ne phrase has no features to check against the Neg head. Finally we will consider sentences involving a ne. . .ne phrase in an embedded clause with a morphologically negative predicate as in (40): (39) Ali [ne ahmet-in ne de osman-in askerlik yap-ma-dıg˘-ı]-nı bil-iyor-du. A. neither A.-Gen nor (also) O.-Gen military do-neg-noml-poss-acc know-cont-past-3sg

As we stated earlier in this subsection, ne. . .ne phrases do not interact with the embedded predicate in terms of negation, particularly when they are associated with [+foc] features. In fact, ne. . .ne phrases either negate the matrix predicate (when they have [+foc] features) or they are totally ineffective for the negation function (when they have [foc] features). Thus, the explanation should take into account the fact that ne. . .ne phrases have to do with the matrix predicate, regardless of whether they are [+foc] or [foc]. Unlike the sentence in (35) which we have proposed an analysis for, the sentence in (39) contains morphological negation on the embedded predicate. This forces a Neg to be projected in the embedded clause, in addition to the matrix clause. Given our assumptions, the ne. . .ne phrase is not supposed to be attracted by (any) Neg head until the derivation reaches at LF as the [neg] and [foc] features are not strong. Given that V-movement takes place in the overt syntax (as we have mentioned earlier) and the relevant features of the lower Neg is checked against -mE on the predicate, we are suggesting that the Neg in the higher clause can, therefore must, attract the features of the ne. . .ne phrase triggering LF-raising. This is the only option for Neg to check its features because the matrix predicate is not associated with negation in the lexicon, and the movement of V does not result in checking of features of the Neg . The syntactic analysis of the sentence in (37) naturally follows from the analysis we have proposed to account for other sentence types involving ne. . .ne phrases.

5. Conclusion This paper basically dealt with the interaction of the negative coordinator ne. . .ne with focus and the effects of this interplay on the information structure and the syntax of sentences. The major concern of the paper has been [+foc] ne. . .ne phrases and their ability to express semantic negation without the existence of a sentential negation marker. It is suggested that only [+foc] ne. . .ne phrases can express sentential negation. [-foc] ne. . .ne phrases, on the other hand, are different with respect to negation function: they are suggested to be negative polarity items in Turkish.

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It is claimed in this study that the list of sentential negators in Turkish consists of only the negative suffix -mE (and possibly negative predicates deg˘il ‘not’, yok ‘existNEG’) and [+foc] ne. . .ne. The close relation of focus with ne. . .ne phrases and negation in general led us to make the strong claim that sentential negation should always be associated with focal features. The observations made through the information structure analysis set the stage for the syntactic analysis of the constructions in question. In line with the observations, it is suggested that the Neg head in the syntax has [focus] features associated with it in addition to its [neg] features. With the assumption that these features of the Neg head are weak, it is suggested that it only requires covert movement of the relevant features of the negative categories for checking/licensing. In order to come over the problems caused by the order of feature-checking in matrix sentences where ne. . .ne phrases are associated with [+foc] features, we adopted Bosˇ kovic´ and Takahashi’s (1998) LF-lowering analysis in addition to the standard minimalist framework proposed in Chomsky (1995). Another important fact analyzed along similar lines has been the behavior of ne. . .ne phrases within embedded clauses. The fact that a [+foc] ne. . .ne phrase negates the matrix predicate despite its appearance within the embedded clause, is given an explanation in line with the analysis proposed for ne. . .ne phrases in matrix clauses.

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