Volume 28, Fall 2014

Permanent URI for this collection

https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/100060

Browse

Browsing Volume 28, Fall 2014 by Author "Filonik, Svitlana"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Negative concord in multiple negative constituent configurations in Ukrainian: a minimalist approach
    (University of Calgary, 2014-09) Filonik, Svitlana
    This study provides a minimalist account of derivation and interpretation of Ukrainian multiple negative constituent configurations, which have a Negative Concord (NC) reading. I argue that negative constituents, i.e., n-words, are Negative Quantifiers rather than Negative Polarity mechanisms, and provide an analysis of the mechanisms for checking their uninterpretable [NEG] features against the interpretable [NEG] features of the negative particle in structures with different word order. This analysis led me to the conclusion that both the operations Move/Move F and the operation Attract can adequately account for the considered Ukrainian data, while fitting into the economical mechanism of the Minimalist Program. However, I relied on the analysis of feature checking via the operations Move/Move F in the course of my further discussion on two approaches to interpretation of multiple negative constituents in NC languages. In this discussion, I used Ukrainian data to argue for the approach proposed by Brown (1999), which relies on the notions of indefinites as variables, feature deletion, copies, and reconstruction, as opposed to the approach proposed by Haegeman & Zanuttini (1991) and Haegeman (1995), which relies on the notion of Negative Absorption. Finally, I discovered that while differing in many respects from some NC languages, like Italian and West Flemish, Ukrainian NC configurations are derived and interpreted in the same way as those in other Slavic languages, namely Russian and Serbian/Croatian.