Abstract
Negation in TsouAbstractThe principal aim of the thesis is to describe the linguistic facts concerning Tsou negations from the Principles-and-Parameters point of view. It consists of two main parts. The first part includes the descriptive discussion of the syntactic and semantic properties of negative markers. In this section, data concerning NEG elements are presented in detail. The second part concerns analysis of negative markers and the argumentation for two kinds of negative markers in Tsou. O’a is an A’-specifier of NegP projection, which c-selects and scopes over IP. It initiates sentences and is a sentence negation. The other kind of negative markers such as o’te always occur sentence-medially. They are categorical negations, and are located at the adjunct position of VP.Pursuing Kayne’s (1989) clitic climbing analysis and Rizzi’s discussion of ‘inner island’ effect, we adopt that o’a in Tsou is A’-specifier of NegP projection because it does not block clitic climbing but stops the extraction of adjuncts. The same analysis is adopted to analyze the sentence-medial negative marker o’te, and we conclude that it is an adjunct of VP, which blocks subject cliticization in this language. By viewing the interactions between negative markers and quantifiers as well as adverbials, we gain support for our claims that two types of negative markers exist in Tsou.It is hypothesized that a large class of rules can be reduced to a single one. Languages differ and it could be accounted for by parametric differences of NEG elements. That is, the c-selectional and m-selectional properties of NEG determine the position of the NEG elements in the clause. In Tsou, sentence-initial negative marker c-selects IP and sentence-medial negative markers c-selects VP.