North Germanic Negation - Munin

INTRODUCTION
(11) a. Dermed har Jon ikke tullet (Norwegian)
thereby has John not messed
b. Dermed har ikke Jon tullet
thereby has not John messed
‘Thereby, John didn’t mess’
(12) a. Jon så den ikke (Norwegian)
John saw it not
‘John didn’t see it’
b. Jon har ikke sett den
John has not seen it
‘John hasn’t seen it’
The interpretation of (11a,b) is more or less equal under the reading of ikke as sentential negation,
both meaning that John did not mess. In (11b) the subject may however be contrastively focalised,
meaning that it was not John, but some other person who was messing. In (12a,b) both examples
assert that John did not see it, but they differ in tense.
Tightly connected to negation and scope is Negative Polarity Items (henceforth NPI). An NPI is
licensed under negation (and some NPIs also in questions and conditionals), and in negative contexts
it must have been in the scope of negation at some stage of the derivation (Radford 2004: 167).
Typical NPIs are adverbs, like the Norwegian heller (‘either’) and overhodet (‘at all’), but they can
also belong to other categories. On the other hand, some elements can only appear in positive
contexts, such as the positive counterpart også (‘too’) of heller (‘either’, ‘nor’). The adverb heller
seems to be a strong NPI and can only occur in the scope of negation, whereas overhodet also can
occur in questions.
(13) a. Jon har heller (*ikke) sett den (Norwegian)
John has either not seen it
‘John has also not seen it’
b. Jon har overhodet (*ikke) sett den
John has over.head.DEF not seen it
‘John hasn’t seen it at all’
c. Har Jon overhodet sett den?
has John over.head.DEF seen it
‘Has John seen it, at all?’
d. *Har Jon heller sett den?
has John either seen it
(13a,b) show that the items heller and overhodet cannot occur in a declarative clause unless
negation is present. In (13c) we see that the item overhodet can occur in a question, whereas (13d)
demonstrates that the item heller cannot.
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