Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

(33a), “Maria didn’t leave with anything,” corresponds to “it is not the storm that is no
longer there (that they see),” whereas the interpretation in (33b), “Maria didn’t leave with
nothing, i.e., she left with something,” corresponds to “it is the light (of the land) (that
they see).”
In all of the examples of the *XP nam bi-√ construction including the example from
line 410 of the Ur Lament, the main verb occurs to the right of the copula and is
presupposed, while the constituent immediately to the left of the copula is negated under
contrastive focus. Here, however, in the example from line 410 of the Ur Lament, the
extensional meaning of the two contrastive interpretations, namely “it is not the storm
(u 4) that is no longer there (that they see)” and “it is the light of the land (u 4 kalam.ma)
(that they see),” is the same. Due to the peculiar nature of verbs of direct perception such
as igi-√du 8 and the context at issue, the act of “not seeing the storm” is equivalent to the
act of “seeing Nanna in the clear evening sky.” Recall the discussion of the thetic
character of direct perception complements [DPCs] and the similarities between DPCs
and HIRCs outlined in section 3.5. If DPCs are thetic, it should not be possible, under
ordinary circumstances, to distinguish two entities in a thetic statement and bring them
into contrast. But here in line 410 of the Ur Lament, we find a rather unordinary situation
in which two contrastive intensions are equivalent in extensional terms, thereby allowing
contrastive focus and the thetic semantics of a DPC to coexist in a single construction.
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