Negation Licensing and Clausal Organization

大多数（如果不是全部的话）语言都有需要“否定许可”的结构，这些结构的出现取决于句中其他地方否定表达的出现。本项目探讨了几种具有不同子句结构的语言中的否定许可现象，强调了这些语言表达否定的普遍语义和语用范畴的不同方式所导致的否定许可的差异。该研究为现有的句子句法结构与语义结构关系理论提供了富有成效的试验场。大量证据表明，否定许可现象的跨语言差异很大程度上归因于不同语言中否定的表面位置。研究者以否定许可模式为探针，考察了否定成分在从句句法组织中的作用。除了增加我们对世界语言中分句结构类型学的总体理解外，该项目还将对几种英语方言、爱尔兰语方言和其他几种语言中的否定系统进行详细分析。

ABSTRACT Most, if not all, languages have constructions which require 'negative licensing', constructions whose occurence depends on the appearance of an expression of negation somewhere else in the clause. This project explores the phenomenon of Negative Licensing in several languages with differing clause structures, highlighting the differences in Negative Licensing which follow from the different ways in which these languages express the universal semantic and pragmatic category of negation. The Research provides a fruitful testing-ground for current theories of the relationship between the syntactic structure of a sentence and its semantic structure. There is considerable evidence that much of the crosslinguistic variation in Negative Licensing phenomena can be attributed to the surface position of negation in different languages. The investigators use the pattern of Negative Licensing as a probe in the investigation of the role played by the negation-element in the syntactic organization of the clause. The project will result in detailed analyses of the system of negation in several dialects of English, in Irish, and in several other languages in addition to increasing our general understanding of the typology of clause structure in the languages of the world.