# Negative Concord and TAM: a new perspective *

Karen De Clercq

► To cite this version:

Karen De Clercq. Negative Concord and TAM: a new perspective *. Negative concord: a hundred years on, 2024, 10.1515/9783111202273-004. hal-04856331

HAL Id: hal-04856331

https://hal.science/hal-04856331v1

Submitted on 26 Dec 2024

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
# Negative Concord and TAM:
a new perspective*

Karen De Clercq

LLF/CNRS/Université Paris Cité

karen.de-clercq@cnrs.fr

## Abstract

It has been proposed in the syntactic literature on Negative Concord (NC) that Negative Concord Item(s) (NCIs) move to a particular position in syntax, i.e. SpecNegP (Haegeman 1995, Zanuttini 1997), to give rise to concord. SpecNegP is also the position for (some) Standard Negators (SN). Under another theory, the syntactic agreement approach to NC (Zeijlstra 2004), NCIs are licensed by an abstract negative operator that also licenses the standard negator. In other words, in both accounts NCIs and SNs seem to be related, either because they end up in the same position, or because they share the same licenser. This raises the question whether the allomorphy that arises due to the conditioning between TAM (tense, aspect, mood/modality) and the standard negator (SN), also arises between TAM and NCIs. This paper explores this question by focusing on Quebliyeen Tamazight (Ouali 2012) and Egyptian Arabic (Benmamoun et al. 2013), two Semitic languages from the Afro-Asiatic phylum. The investigation shows that, while both languages display allomorphy conditioned by the interaction between TAM and SN, NCIs are not conditioned by TAM or do not condition TAM. On the basis of this, I conclude that theoretical accounts that make use of the same mechanism to capture the sentential negativity of NCIs and SNs may be in need of revision. I show how Nanosyntax can account for why the interaction between TAM and NCIs differs from the interaction between TAM and SNs, and how NC is a byproduct of the size of lexically stored trees, phrasal lexicalisation and the Superset Principle.

<footnote>*This paper will appear in: J. Van der Auwera and C. Gianollo (eds.), *A hundred years of negative concord*, De Gruyter.</footnote>
# 1 Introduction

## 1.1 NEG-TAM allomorphy

There<fnref n="1" /> are at least four logical ways in which TAM-morphology and Standard Negators<fnref n="2" /> (henceforth SN) may morphologically interact, summarised in (1).

(1) **Type A** TAM ⇔ SN Bengali
**Type B** TAM ⇒ SN Albanian
**Type C** TAM ⇐ SN Abkhaz
**Type D** TAM SN English

A first possible situation is one in which TAM and the SN mutually condition each other (Type A). This is the situation in Bengali (Ramchand 2004, Ullah 2007, Banerjee 2021). The Standard Negator (SN) *na* (2), becomes *ni* in the context of the perfective (3).

(2) Ami amṭa kha- cch- i **na**
I.NOM mango.CLF eat PROG/PRS 1SG NEG
‘I am not eating the mango.’

(3) Ami amṭa kha- i **ni**
I.NOM mango.CLF eat 1SG NEG
‘I didn’t eat the mango.’

However, not only the negator changes, the verbal morphology also changes. While the root in the negated perfective is the default root *kha*, without negation, the root in the perfective is *kheye* (4), showing that there is a bidirectional conditioning between SN and TAM.

(4) Ami amṭa kheye- ch- i
I.NOM mango.CLF eat.PFV PRS 1SG

<footnote n="1">¹This work has been carried out within the framework of the ANR-22CE28-0006 SNAG project supported by the French National Research Agency. I want to thank Johan van der Auwera and Chiara Gianolla for their work on this volume, and for their support and input. I also want to thank the participants and audiences at the followings workshops and conference for their feedback: *A hundred years of negative concord* (SLE 2022, Bucharest), *Diachronies of Negation* at SALT 33 and SinFonIJA 16 in Brno. In addition, I would like to thank Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Anne-Li Demonie and the reviewers of my paper for their very useful comments. All errors are of course mine.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²I adopt the term from Miestamo (2005), referring to the main negator a language has, and if there are several negators, it refers to the negator used in simple present declarative clauses.</footnote>
‘I have eaten the mango.’

Type B is the type of languages where TAM-morphology conditions the SN (Dahl 1979, Kahrel 1996, De Clercq 2020b), (Horn 2001:367/446-452). This is the case in Albanian, which has 's/nuk as a SN (5)<fnref n="3" />, but the suppletive marker mos in the context of the subjunctive, optative and imperative mood (Turano 2000).<fnref n="4" /> I refer to this type of negator, as well as to the negative allomorph ni that appears in the perfective in Bengali, as Allomorphs In Sentential Negation conditioned by Tense, Aspect, and Mood/Modality, henceforth AINTs.

(5) 'S/Nuk vajta (më) në bibliotekë.
NEG went-1s (anymore) in library
'I didn't go to the library (anymore)’

(6) a. Merr çadrën që të mos lagesh
Take.2S umbrella that MOOD NEG wet.2S.SUBJ
‘Take the umbrella, so that you don’t get wet’

b. **Mos** lexo këtë libër.
NEG READ.2S.IMP this book
‘Don’t read this book!’

c. **Mos** vdeksh kurrë.
NEG die.2S.OPT never
‘May you never die’

In Type C languages, the presence of the SN conditions the TAM-marking on the verbal predicate, a topic studied extensively in Miestamo (2005). This is the case in Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979), where the SN -m has an impact on how the different tenses and aspects are morphologically expressed. For instance in the 1SG.PRS.AFF of the verb ‘stand up’ s’gəlɔjt’ becomes s’gəlɔm, with the negative marker m not only adding negation but also replacing the finite ending -(y)t (Miestamo 2005:120)

A last logical option is one in which neither TAM nor the SN seem to interact
morphologically, as is the case in English (Type D): (7) shows clearly how regard-
less of TAM the same negator can be used in Standard English. Moreover, the
TAM-marking is the same with or without negation.<fnref n="5" />

<footnote n="3">³Both 's/nuk are treated in Miestamo (2005), Turano (2000) as if they are interchangeable, with no meaning differences or other distributional differences associated to them. This was confirmed to me by Bujar Rushiti.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Mos also negates gerunds and infinitives. See Turano (2000) for more details on Albanian negation.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵The example here is about Standard English and does not include substandard varieties which</footnote>
<table><tr><td>(7)</td><td>a. He is not talking to her father.</td><td>PROG</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>b. He has not talked to her father.</td><td>PFV</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>c. He did not talk to her father.</td><td>PST</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>d. He would not talk to her father.</td><td>MOD</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>e. ...</td><td></td></tr></table>

The typological hypothesis in (1) has been checked for 50 languages picked from Miestamo (2005) sample (see De Clercq 2020a for more explanation), yielding—after some recent updating and fine-tuning—the tentative result in (8) for the different types.<fnref n="6" />

<table><thead><tr><th>(8)</th><th>TAM</th><th>NEG<sub>AINT</sub></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Type A</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>Type B</td><td>-</td><td>+</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Type C</td><td>+</td><td>-</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>Type D</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>19</td></tr></tbody></table>

The question that arises at this point is whether this typology also holds when negative concord items (henceforth NCIs) are involved.<fnref n="7" /> Do we expect NCIs to interact with TAM, i.e. can their presence condition the TAM-domain, or can they be conditioned by the TAM-domain? As far as I know, this question has not yet been explicitly addressed in the literature. One can come up with multiple reasons for this: this connection has not been mentioned in the typological literature on negative indefinites that looked for any parameter that may impact negative indefinites (Alsenoy 2014, Van der Auwera & Van Alsenoy 2016, Van der Auwera 2017, Van der Auwera & Alsenoy 2018); argumental NCIs and SNs have a very different merge position; the allomorphy between SN and TAM is in general understudied; the semantic problems related to NCIs are considered far more important than the morphosyntactic issues, etc...

In spite of this, it is not unthinkable that there is conditioning between NCIs and the TAM domain. Both under the negative quantifier-approach to NCIs (Zanutini 1991, Haegeman & Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1995, Zanuttini 1997) and the syntactic agreement approach to NCIs (Zeijlstra 2004, 2008, Penka 2011, and

<footnote>definitely include all kinds of allomorphy conditioned by NEG or by TAM, like the use of *dontcha* (Van der Auwera 2006), the use of *aint* (Yang 2016) and *amn’t* (Bresnan 2001) to name just a few.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶While De Clercq (2020a) still distinguished between 6 types, the current paper makes use of a simplified typological hypothesis to get a less fine-grained, but clearer picture of the available patterns in the languages of the world.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷For an introduction to negative concord items I refer the readers to the introduction of this volume, and to the references cited there.</footnote>
many others), the SN and NCIs are at some point in the derivation either in the
same position or treated equally. In order to investigate this question in more
detail we will first discuss the aforementioned syntactic theories for NC in more
detail, and the two core types of NC, i.e. Strict and Non-Strict Negative Con-
cord (Giannakidou 1997).<fnref n="8" /> Next, we will move on to the empirical study of the
question that we just raised.<fnref n="9" />

## 1.2 Syntactic Theories of Negative Concord

Before we move on to the data that are crucial to the investigation at hand, we
need to zoom in on the two syntactic theories mentioned in the previous section,
and discuss the issue relevant for the current paper in a bit more detail.

The first approach that we zoom in on is the NEG-criterion approach (Haege-
man & Zanuttini 1991, Zanuttini 1991). Under this approach, NCIs are negative
quantifiers, i.e. they are inherently negative. They need to move (overtly or
covertly) to the specifier of a Neg° for concord to arise. The idea is that thanks
to the movement to this position NEG-absorption can take place, leading to con-
cord. The absorption is a consequence of the NEG-criterion: a head has only one
 specifier (in line with Kayne 1993) and hence movement to this one specifier will
bring all NCIs/SNs in a position in which the head Neg° absorbs or factors out all
other NEGs. If this movement does not take place, then the NCIs, which are neg-
ative quantifiers, each contribute their own negation. Crucially for our present
purposes, the SN may also sit in Spec,NegP, like for instance French pas or West
Flemish nie.<fnref n="10" />

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

<footnote n="8"><sup>8</sup>We will not discuss less well-known patterns of non-strict negative concord, as described for Persian in Van der Auwera & Koohkan (2022). In Persian the non-strict pattern is different in the sense that the negator always needs to be present, but the indefinite can vary from being a negatively polar indefinite to a neutral indefinite.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹While this study focuses only on NCIs due to the scope of the volume, it would be relevant to investigate this question also on the basis of languages that have negative quantifiers of the English type, i.e. *no* and *nothing*. I leave this issue for future research.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Italian *non* would be in *Neg°*, as well as Flemish *en*, and French *ne*. I refer the reader to the aforementioned works for more details.</footnote>
Given that NCIs and SNs can sit in the same position under the NEG-criterion approach, to be licensed by the same [NEG] feature, and given the idea that NCIs are intrinsically negative quantifiers, it seems a valid question to ask whether NCIs can condition TAM or be conditioned by TAM, and if they can, whether this conditioning happens in the same way as with SN.

The other syntactic theory that we want to consider is the syntactic agreement approach (Zeijlstra 2004, 2008). Under this approach NCIs are negative indefinites, i.e. they are semantically non-negative, but syntactically marked for negation by means of a feature [uNeg]. In order to explain how concord is derived in this system, we need to make a distinction between two types of Negative Concord: Strict and Non-Strict NC (Giannakidou 1997, 2001).

If a language has Strict Negative Concord (henceforth SNC), like Czech for instance, NCIs need to be accompanied by the SN regardless of whether the NCI is in pre- or post-verbal position, as illustrated for Czech in (10).

(10) a. **Nikdo** ženě peníze **ne-dal**
nobody woman.DAT money.ACC NEG-gave
‘Nobody gave the money to the woman’

b. Ženě **ne-dal nic**
woman.DAT NEG-gave nothing
He gave nothing to the woman. [Czech] (p.c. Lucie Janků)

Zeijlstra (2004) captures the SNC pattern by proposing that all NCIs and the SN are marked as [uNeg] and a covert (semantically) negative operator (OP in table (11)) licenses all [uNeg]-marked constituents in its scope. This is visualized in line (a) of the table in (11).

<table><thead><tr><th>(11)</th><th>OP</th><th>SN</th><th>NCI</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>a. SNC</td><td>iNeg</td><td>uNeg</td><td>uNeg</td></tr><tr><td>b. Non-SNC</td><td>—</td><td>iNeg</td><td>uNeg</td></tr><tr><td>c. Non-SNC</td><td>iNeg</td><td>—</td><td>uNeg</td></tr></tbody></table>

If a language has non-strict negative concord, like Standard Italian for instance, a NCI in post-verbal position requires the presence of the SN (12a), but cannot be combined with it when in preverbal position (12b) (unless double negation is aimed for).<fnref n="11" />

<footnote n="11">¹¹The fact that there is the requirement to have SN present with the NCI in postverbal position in Italian is not equally strict in all substandard varieties of Italian. See the introduction to this volume by Van der Auwera and Gianollo.</footnote>
<table><tr><td>(12)</td><td>a. <b>Non</b> ha telefonato <b>nessuno</b><br/>NEG has called nobody<br/>'Nobody called'</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>b. <b>Nessuno</b> (<b>*non</b>) ha telefonato<br/>nobody NEG has called<br/>'Nobody called'</td></tr></table>

For this pattern Zeijlstra (2004) proposes that the SN comes with an interpretable [NEG], i.e. [iNeg], thus licensing the [uNeg] on the NCI in post-verbal position. This is illustrated in line (b) of the table in (11). However, when the NCI is in preverbal position, Zeijlstra (2004) argues that the presence of [uNeg] on an NCI allows for a self-licensing mechanism, i.e. the uninterpretable syntactic negative feature allows for the appearance of a negative operator that licenses the [uNeg] on the NCI (see also Penka 2011). This is shown in line (c) of the table in (11).

Crucial for our purpose is the fact that the NCI and the SN are licensed by the same negative operator in a SNC language, raising the issue of whether these elements share other properties, like the way they interact with the TAM-domain. For non-SNC languages, the syntactic agreement approach suggests that NCIs and SNs are different: SNs are self-licensing and really negative, while NCIs are not negative.

In the next section, we will dive into the question of how NCIs interact with TAM on the basis of two languages, Berber and Egyptian Arabic.

## 2 The data

De Clercq’s (2020b) 50 language sample consists of 31 languages which are of type A/B/C with respect to the SN marker. The 19 languages of type D were not considered in this paper, since there is no clear NEG-TAM interaction with the SN. Eleven languages of the A/B/C type seem to have some type of Negative Concord (NC), as shown in table 1. For some languages in the sample the data at my disposal were insufficient to establish whether there is NC, or what type the NC is. If there is *NC*? in the table, then this means that I am not sure about the type of concord, but that it looks as if there is negative concord. For the full overview of the 50 languages with the type and concord pattern, see section 4.

Most languages for which I have access to good data are SNC languages. In SNC languages, as outlined in section 1.2, the SN is argued to be always present when a NCI is used, making these languages—at first sight—less suitable to investigate the research question at hand, i.e. investigate the interaction between NCIs and
<table><caption>Table 1: Negative concord in the sample</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Genus</th><th>Type</th><th>NC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Abkhaz</td><td>West caucasian</td><td>C</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Albanian</td><td>Indo-European</td><td>B</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Armenian (Eastern)</td><td>Indo-European</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Awa Pit</td><td>Barbacoan</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Aymara</td><td>Aymara</td><td>C</td><td>(optional) NC</td></tr><tr><td>Bagirmi</td><td>Nilo-Saharan</td><td>C</td><td>NC, type?</td></tr><tr><td>Bambara</td><td>Mande (Niger-Congo)</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Berber (Middle Atlas)</td><td>Berber</td><td>C</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Burmese</td><td>Burmese (Sino-Tibetan)</td><td>C</td><td>NC</td></tr><tr><td>Comanche</td><td>Numic</td><td>C</td><td>NC?</td></tr><tr><td>Egyptian Arabic</td><td>Semitic</td><td>B</td><td>Non-SNC</td></tr></tbody></table>

TAM. If the interaction or effect of the NCI on TAM would be the same as the effect of SN, then these languages would not be revealing anything, since the SN would also always be present and prevent us from knowing what the effect of the NCI is. The effect can therefore be best studied in Non-SNC languages. However, if TAM were able to condition allomorphy on the NCI, then both SNC and Non-SNC languages should be equally good to show this effect. Therefore, we will look at one language of the SNC type and one language of the Non-SNC type. For SNC languages, we will look at Berber, and for Non-SNC we will look at Egyptian Arabic. We will start the discussion with the SNC language.

## 2.1 Berber

Berber is a continuum of dialects or languages, some not mutually intelligible, which are spoken in Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt. This paper focuses on one dialect group, Tamazight, and more in particular on Quebliyeen Tamazight Berber (QTB), a Zemmour dialect spoken in the Middle Atlas Mountains in Central Morocco. The data are mainly drawn from Ouali (2012:ch. 8).

QTB is a Type C language (cf. table (1)), which means that the SN conditions TAM: under negation the perfective form of the verb, which denotes past tense, changes from what we see in a positive environment. While *idda* ‘he left’ is the form in a positive clause (13a), *iddi* is the form used under negation (13b).

(13) a. **Idda** ☰li. go.PFV.3.SG.M Ali Ali left.'
b. ur iddi

NEG go.NEG.PFV.3.SG.M

‘He didn’t leave.’ (Ouali 2012:160-161)

QTB uses *ur* as a SN, but the SN often co-occurs with an optional additional marker, as illustrated in (14). Because of this marker, Berber is often described as having a bipartite negation system. However, for the dialect under investigation this marker is optional (cf. Ouali 2012:146), and so we will not discuss the optional bipartite status of QTB further in this paper.

(14) **ur** swix (sha)

NEG1 drink-pfv.1s NEG2

‘I didn’t drink.’

QBT is traditionally considered a SNC language, since the SN *ur* needs to be present with NCIs (15), regardless of whether the NCI is in postverbal (15a), or preverbal position (15b). <fnref n="12" />

(15) a. **ur** iddi **agidʒ**

NEG go.3SM.NEG.PFV no.one

‘No one left.’

b. **agidʒ** ur iddin γərskeela

no.one NEG go.3SM.NEG.PFV.PART to.school.

‘Nobody went to school.’

These SNC data do not seem to show us any interesting changes compared to what we see under SN: just as with SN, the verb takes the negative perfective form *iddi(n)*.

Before we move on, I want to point out that *agidʒ* can be used in fragment answers as in (16) (from Ouali 2012:152), supporting the idea that *agidʒ* really is a NCI and not a NPI. For more tests in support of this claim I refer the reader to Ouali (2012:150-155)).

(16) a. Q: Ma ag didan?

Who COMP come.PFV.PART

‘Who came?’

<footnote n="12">¹²When the subject is extracted across the verb, the marking on the verbal form is different, tak-
ing an *-n*. Ouali (2012) considers this an Anti-Agreement effect, and glosses this as Part, referring
to Participle, in line with the traditional grammars on Berber. I follow his example, but I do not
analyse the Anti-Agreement Effect in this paper.</footnote>
b. A: agidʒ
   no-one
   ‘No one’

Concerning the interaction between NCIs and TAM, an important piece of data
can be observed in QTB. While (15b) is described as the neutral pattern in Ouali
(2012), it is also possible to drop the SN when agidʒ is in preverbal postion. Cru-
cially, in that case the regular TAM-allomorphy on the verb is not visible (17).

(17) **agidʒ** (ag) iddan / *iddin
no.one COMP go.3SM.PFV.PART / go.3SM.NEG.PFV.PART
‘Nobody left.’

While the examples in (15a) and (15b) do not allow us to see what the role is
of the NCI, because the SN is also present, the example in (17) shows that when
the SN is no longer present there is no negative allomorphy on the verb. In other
words, QTB shows that it is not just any [NEG] that can condition verbs in the
perfective, but that only the [NEG] present in the SN can condition the perfective
form of the verb. Moreover, QTB also shows that agidʒ ‘no-one’ remains unaltered
regardless of when the SN is present or not.

## 2.2 Egyptian Arabic

We will now take a closer look at the only Non-SNC language in the sample,
Egyptian Arabic. Egyptian Arabic (also discussed in Miestamo 2005, Benmamoun
et al. 2013, Ouali & Soltan 2014, Alqassas 2021) is a type B language ((1)), which
means that in the context of particular TAM the SN changes to an allomorph, a
so-called AINT (cf. sect. 1.1 above). For Egyptian Arabic this AINT is *mif*, which
is the only possible negator in the context of the future tense (also called the *ha-*
imperfect) (19), instead of the SN *ma... f* (18b), which is the SN used for the past
tense (also referred to as the perfect) (18a).<fnref n="13" />

(18) a. katab
write.PST.3SG.M
‘He wrote.’

<footnote n="13">¹³I am simplifying the picture here, because *mif* is also used in questions and is optionally used in the imperfect. However, due to the optional nature of its appearance under imperfect aspect I decided to focus on its obligatory appearance in the future tense.</footnote>
b. **ma-katab-ʃ**
   NEG-write.PST.3SG.M-NEG
   ‘He didn’t write.’

(19) Howa miʃ ha-yroh el welayat el motaheda
he NEG FUT-go the states the united
‘He will not go to the United States.’ (p.c. Dia Awaad and Amgad Farrag)

Egyptian Arabic is Non-SNC, which means that the NCI needs to be accompanied by the SN when the NCI is in postverbal position (20a), but cannot be accompanied when the NCI is in preverbal position (20b).

(20) a. **ma-šuf-t-i-ʃ** walaa waaḥid.
   NEG-saw-1SG-EV-NEG no one
   ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

b. **walaa waaḥid** gih.
   no one came.3SG.M
   ‘Nobody came.’ (Ouali & Soltan 2014:162)

When the AINT is used with the future tense, the exact same pattern can be observed: the same AINT is present in the context of postverbal NCIs, (21) and the AINT disappears in the context of preverbal NCIs (22).

(21) Howa miʃ ha-yešzem walaa waaḥid.
he NEG FUT-invite no one
‘He will not invite anybody.’

(22) **Walaa waaḥid** ha-yroh el welayat el motaheda.
no one FUT-go the states the united
‘Nobody will go to the United States.’ (p.c. Dia Awaad and Amgad Farrag)

Crucial for our present purposes is the observation that the absence of *mif*, the AINT that was needed in the context of the future tense, does not need to be compensated for in any possible way by any marking on the NCI or anywhere else in the sentence. This suggests that the allomorphy that arises in the context of future tense does not affect all types of NEG, but only the NEG associated with the SN. The Egyptian data hence show that the NCIs themselves are not conditioned by the future tense, unlike the SN. Conversely, the NCI also do not condition tense.
## 2.3 Discussion

Both QTB and Egyptian Arabic suggest that the interactions that we see between the SN and the TAM-domain disappear in the context of NCIs: NCIs are not conditioned by TAM nor do they condition TAM. It thus seems that on the basis of the morphosyntactic properties it is very important to keep SNs and NCIs apart and to treat them differently, unlike what is done under the NEG-criterion approach or the syntactic agreement approach (with respect to the treatment of SNC). The Berber data also suggested that even in SNC languages NCIs can give rise to semantic negation, outside the context of fragment answers ((16)), as in (17). For the latter it could be argued that the NCI can get licensed due to the presence of a negative operator in the ellipsis site, but this option is not available for the fronted NCIs in the Berber data. One could of course propose—in line with Zeijlstra (2004, 2008)—that this type of fronted NCIs are self-licensing, i.e. that the presence of a [uNeg] presupposes the presence of a semantic negative operator that licenses it. If there is no overt one, a covert one will appear. But would this not boil down to saying that NCIs are semantically negative after all? How else could the presence of a semantically non-negative indefinite (a [uNeg]) give rise to the appearance of a covert, semantically negative operator ([iNeg])?

Summarizing, the data from Berber and Egyptian Arabic support the idea (i) that NCIs are really intrinsically negative (as under the Neg-criterion approach), and (ii) that the [NEG] of NCIs and SNs cannot be the same [NEG]. The question that we want to address next is whether it is feasible to set up a proposal that captures (i) the allomorphy that we see between SN and TAM, (ii) the absence of allomorphy between NCIs and TAM, and (iii) the schizophrenic behaviour of NCIs in Strict and Non-Strict Negative Concord Languages. We will argue in the next section that this is feasible and that this can be done within Nanosyntax. We will illustrate this for the Berber data that we discussed in section 2.1.

# 3 A Nanosyntactic view on allomorphy and NC

In this section we will explain how the conditioning between SN and the TAM-domain in Berber can be captured in Nanosyntax, and why we do not see this interaction with NCIs. In the meantime, the proposal will also account for the ambiguity NCIs give rise to in different positions in the clause, more concretely for the concord puzzle that we described in section 1.2 in general, and in section 4 with respect to Berber and Egyptian Arabic. Before we embark on this, we will briefly explain Nanosyntax.
## 3.1 Nanosyntax: the basics

Nanosyntax (Caha 2009, Starke 2009) is a late-insertion theory that lexicalizes the output of Syntax after each step of Merge, making use of phrasal lexicalisation. The consequence of the extremely cyclic nature of lexicalisation is that Syntax interfaces with the lexicon at every Merge step, allowing for an immediate interaction between the two. Thanks to this, there is no need for post-syntactic operations, nor for an independent morphological component. The lexicon consists of lexical items that not only come with phonology (between slanted brackets) and conceptual information (in capitals), but also with stored lexical tree structures, as illustrated for the noun sheep in (23).<fnref n="14" />

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

After each Merge step, the syntax is checked against the lexicon and a matching lexical item is searched for. The matching condition<fnref n="15" /> that mediates between the Syntax and the Lexicon is informally referred to as the Superset Principle, and its definition is in (24).

(24) A lexically stored tree matches a syntactic node iff the lexically stored tree contains the syntactic node. (Starke 2009:3)

To understand what (24) can do, consider the lexical item in (23) again. Thanks to (24), (23) is a candidate for insertion both for the syntax in (25), without the plural, and for the syntax in (26), when syntax merged the [Pl] feature.

(i) A lexically stored constituent L matches a syntactic phrase S iff S is identical to L.

The Superset Principle in (24) is actually a theorem that follows from the matching condition. If a syntactic tree is identical to a stored L tree, then the consequence of this is that the S tree may also be contained in the L tree, with the L tree being bigger in structure. This is explained in detail in Caha et al. (to appear).

<footnote n="14">¹⁴The * in the lexical structure indicates that we assume that the nominal structure is internally more fine-grained. However, for the purpose of this explanation, we do not go deeper into that.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵The matching condition can be defined as in (i).</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

With this much in place about NS, we continue our discussion of the Berber data under consideration. More technicalities about Nanosyntax will be explained as we go along. For a more detailed introduction to Nanosyntax I refer the reader to Baunaz & Lander (2018), Starke (2018), Caha et al. (2019, to appear).

## 3.2 Berber

The first thing we want to take a look at is how we can understand the fact that SN conditions the TAM categories on the verb, and why this is not the case with NCIs. Second we want to have a closer look at the structure of NCIs.

In order to capture the fact that SNs can condition TAM and vice versa, a functional category NEG and the relevant TAM category must be in an extremely local relation in Nanosyntax, i.e. they must be contiguous in the structure.<fnref n="16" /> The table in (27) is a lexicalisation table illustrating in an informal way phrasal lexicalisation for the lexical items relevant to our discussion of Berber. The top line is a simplification of what we assume are the relevant parts of the functional sequence (henceforth fseq): what is most to the left in the table is the top of the syntactic tree. For the discussion of the contrast between *idda* ‘he left’ and *ur iddin* ‘he didn’t leave’ it suffices to assume a simplified fseq.

<footnote n="16">¹⁶Nanosyntax differs in this way from other approaches to allomorphy and suppletion, in which strict contiguity is not required and looser implementations of locality are proposed. I refer the reader to Choi & Harley (2019) for an overview of different morphosyntactic approaches to allomorphy and suppletion.</footnote>
<table><thead><tr><th>(27)</th><th>NEG</th><th>T</th><th>ASP<sub>PFV</sub></th><th>INIT</th><th>PROC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>a.</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>idda</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b.</td><td>ur</td><td></td><td></td><td>iddi</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

We follow Ouhalla (1991) and Ouali (2012:67-68) in proposing that the position for the SN must be higher than tense in the syntax of Berber. One of the reasons for this is the fact that the SN always precedes the auxiliary, as illustrated in (28).

(28) **ur** dað aɣəx ibəttan
NEG FUT buy.1SG clothes
‘I will not buy clothes’

The idea that NEG is higher than Tense is also present in the work by Holmberg & Platzack (1988), Haegeman (1995), Zanuttini (1996), De Clercq (2020b) and many others. TP then is higher than the features related to viewpoint Aspect, in this case the perfect, and viewpoint aspect is higher than the features relevant to the lexical aspect of the verb, captured here by means of Init, which stands for the Initiator of the Process, which is abbreviated by PROC (Ramchand 2008).

What the table shows is that we assume that the form *idda* cannot only lexicalize features relevant to the verbal domain, but also features relevant to the aspectual and the tense domain. The reason for adopting this idea is not far-fetched: *idda* gives rise to a past tense reading, as was illustrated in section 4. When it comes to line (b) in table (27), it is shown how we can capture the allo-morphy that we see under the SN if we adopt the idea that there is another lexical item stored in the lexicon, *iddi*, which is smaller in structure, and a negator which is not only lexicalizing [NEG], but also T. The reason that *iddi* will only be used in the context of the negator is that if there is no negation present and you want to lexicalize *he left*, *iddi* will not be able to lexicalize the Tense layer, but will only reach up to perfect aspect, it being insufficiently big to lexicalize a fully inflected positive verb. Consequently, *idda* will be called for. However, in the context of negation, *iddi* will be the best possible match at the level of perfect aspect, since the SN *ur* will lexicalize the relevant T-layer together with NEG. In other words, if we adopt the idea that *ur* is a portmanteau lexicalizing tense and negation, then root conditioning under perfect aspect follows naturally. While the idea to look at *ur* as a portmanteau is new, the idea that Negation interacts with Tense (and Agreement) in Arabic and Berber is not new (see Ouali 2012).

What is intuitively captured by the lexicalisation table boils down to having the lexical items (29)-(31) in the lexicon of Berber (phonology and conceptual
information are left out for simplicity's sake):<fnref n="17" />

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>

Our next task is to explain why NCIs in Berber do not interact with TAM. However, we can only understand this by addressing another issue first. We first need to find an answer to the question how it is possible that an NCI in a SNC language can give rise to what looks like real negation when it is in clause-initial position (see (17) above).

In order to answer this question, we will have another look at a lexicalisation table. This time the table we started out with in (27) is slightly modified to also host the NCI in preverbal position. In (32) this position is uninformatively labelled NCI (the brackets around agidʒ 'no-one' indicate that it can occur both pre- and post-verbally). The table shows the two patterns that we were confronted with in (15)-(17). Even though we understand now why the presence of *ur* leads to the presence of *iddi*, it still remains a mystery why *ur* needs to be present in line (b), but can be absent in line (a).

<table><thead><tr><th>(32)</th><th>NCI</th><th>T</th><th>NEG</th><th>ASP</th><th>INIT</th><th>PROC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>a.</td><td>agidʒ</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>idda</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b.</td><td>(agidʒ)</td><td></td><td>ur</td><td></td><td>iddi</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

This issue takes us to the heart of the NC-puzzle. As we explained before, it is not

<footnote n="17">¹⁷One idea that is present in the way the lexical items are set-up is that we—for now at least—assume that roots are not lexicalized independently, but together with their vowels. So instead of having the root *k-t-b* in the lexicon of for instance Arabic, the idea would be that there are different lexical items for *kitab* ‘book’ and *kataba* ‘he wrote’. This idea is not new for Semitic nor for Berber and is present in the work of Moktadir 1989, Dell & Elmedlaoui 1991, Bensoukas 2001. However, this proposal is by no means a final stance on how I think root and pattern morphology (McCarthy 1979) should be dealt with in NS.</footnote>
only in this particular context for QTB that NCIs can give rise to real negation: they can also give rise to negation in the context of an elliptical answer, as in (16), repeated here in (33) (Ouali 2012:152).<fnref n="18" />

(33) a. Q: Ma ag didan?
Who COMP come.PFV.PART
‘Who came?’

b. A: agidʒ
no-one
‘No one’

In order to understand why NCIs in QTB can give rise real sentence negation in these environments, we need to take a closer look at example (17) again, repeated here in (34).

(34) **agidʒ** (ag) iddan / *iddin
no-one COMP go.3SM.PFV.PART / go.3SM.NEG.PFV.PART
‘Nobody left.’

What we did not pay attention to in section 2.1 is the presence of the complementizer *ag*. Upon careful consideration of Ouali’s (2012)’s data it seems that the pattern without *ur*, shown on line (a) of (32), is only possible when the (optional) complementizer follows the NCI, while with the regular concord patterns, the NCI is below the complementizer, (35).<fnref n="19" />

(35) a. **agidʒ** (ag) iddan
no-one COMP go.PFV.PART
‘Nobody left.’

b. (ag) **agidʒ** ur iddin yərskeela
COMP no.one NEG go.PFV.PART to.school.
‘Nobody went to school.’

This means that we can now update the table in (32) to the table in (36), where we see that the disappearance of the SN is linked to the appearance of the NCI in a position above a complementizer.

<footnote n="18">¹⁸See also the introduction for discussion of NCIs in elliptical answers.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹One cannot argue that *agidʒ* in (34) is part of a cleft sentence, with the negative reading of the NCI following from the deletion of a regular SN, because the Anti-Agreement effect (see footnote 12) on the main verb shows that *agidʒ* must have been fronted.</footnote>
<table><thead><tr><th>(36)</th><th>NCI<sub>1</sub></th><th>C</th><th>NCI<sub>2</sub></th><th>NEG</th><th>T</th><th>ASP</th><th>INIT</th><th>PROC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>a.</td><td>agid<sub>3</sub></td><td>(ag)</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>idda</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b.</td><td></td><td>(ag)</td><td>(agid<sub>3</sub>)</td><td></td><td>ur</td><td></td><td>iddi</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

Since (i) it must be clear that NCIs have more internal features than just [N], and since (ii) we have already seen when we determined the inner structure of *ur* 'not' that the position of a morpheme in the functional sequence is indicative of the feature structure of this morpheme, we are now at a point to propose that the different positions of *agidz* go hand in hand with the fact that the NCI is lexicalizing different amounts of structure in different positions in the fseq.

To make this idea more explicit we first take a look at what the feature structure of NCIs could be like. A first component is, in the case of *agidz*, definitely a nominal element, N. In order to capture the idea that this nominal is a quantifier of some sort, we assume that the feature Q will also be needed. This feature structure will allow for the lexicalisation of a positive indefinite (like for instance *some(one)*). However, we also need an ingredient that will allow the lexicalisation of a negative polarity item (like for instance *any*). We will use the feature σ for that (in line with work by Chierchia (2006) and the syntactic implementation by Labelle & Espinal (2014)).<fnref n="20" /> Next, we want to propose, in line with work by Watanabe (2004), that a Focus feature is an inherent and necessary part of the internal structure of NCIs (as opposed to NPIs), forcing it to be in the scope of a [NEG]. Ouali (2012:157) shows for Berber—in line with Watanabe (2004)—that *ag-idz* literally means ‘not even-one’, and that hence focus is morphologically contained inside the NCI. Finally, I want to propose that the morpheme responsible for Focus, i.e. *ag-*, is also syncretic with the complementiser *ag*. We know from Baunaz & Lander (2018) that cross-categorial syncretisms between nominal elements and complementizers is typologically widespread. We take this syncretism to be meaningful and propose that NCIs must consist of a property shared with complementisers. For convenience sake, I will refer to this feature by means of [C]. Since the data in (34) clearly show that the NCI can give rise to negation on its own, in spite of the fact that the language is SNC, I propose that the NCI also consists of a NEG at the top of its internal structure. All these ingredients, that are all based on fairly regular assumptions in the literature and the empirical properties of NCIs in Berber, yield the lexical structure in (37).<fnref n="21" />

<footnote n="20">²⁰We realize that σ (and the associated mechanism of exhaustification) can probably not do justice to the complex distribution and behaviour of NPIs (Giannakidou 2018). However, we adopt σ to capture the fact that positive indefinites are different from NPIs and to be able to regulate the competition between them. We hope to come back to this in future work.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹One could also imagine decomposing *agidz* in *idge* 'one', which lexicalizes the structure up</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

Thanks to the Superset Principle (24), the lexical item (37) can also lexicalize the structures in (38)-(39):

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /></figure>

Crucially, when NCIs are merged in postverbal position, they will have a syntax as in (38): only a subset of the features of the lexical structure of the NCI will be present in the derivation at that point. FocusP will only be merged with the NCI when the NCI moves to a position above the vP-domain. This proposal is in line with syntactic approaches to Focus that argue for a FocusP for New Information Focus in a low left periphery, above vP (Belletti 2004), and one for Contrastive Focus in the high left periphery (Rizzi 1997). NEG will not be part of the internal syntax of the NCI when (38) is merged in syntax, accounting for why *ur* needs to be present to give rise to Sentential Negation. However, thanks to the Superset Principle, the lexical item in (37) will be able to lexicalize this structure. Also

until QP, and *ag-* which lexicalizes the rest of the feature structure.
when the NCI appears in preverbal position, below the complementizer, as shown
in (40), the syntax of the NCI will not reach up to the NCI-internal NEG and hence
again the SN will be needed to project a NegP in the clausal syntax. The internal
syntax may reach up to FocP in this case, but given the internal structure of NCIs
in Berber, this structure will not be able to project a NegP in the main spine.

<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>

However, when the NCI appears in a position before the complementizer, the syntax of the NCI can grow to its full potential, as illustrated in (41), and hence the LI in (37) will be a perfect match. This time however the NCI can also project a Neg, higher in the structure, and hence the SN is not needed to give rise to Sentential Negation, giving rise to the unexpected pattern that we discussed for QTB.
(41)

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>

The underlying idea in the current proposal is that for a language like Egyptian Arabic, which is Non-SNC, the internal structure of the NCI differs in the sense that the NCI-internal NEG feature takes a different position, below the C-element, just above the Foc-element, accounting for why Egyptian Arabic does not need a SN as soon as the NCI is in a position above vP. The structure for Egyptian Arabic *walaa waaḥid* is in (42).<fnref n="22" />

<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>

<footnote n="22">²²As with *agidz* in Berber it would be an option to argue that the NCI is not stored as one chunk in the lexicon, but that the sequence in (42) is lexicalised by multiple lexical items. One could namely further decompose *walaa waaḥid* into the positive indefinite *waaḥid*, that could possibly lexicalize the structure up until QP, and then *walaa*, which literally consists of a coordinator *wa* and a negator from Classical Arabic *laa*, which could be argued to lexicalize the upper part of the structure. We will not decide on this, since nothing crucially hinges on it.</footnote>
In other words, the current proposal suggests that NC is a side-effect of an interaction between the Superset Principle and how lexical items are stored in the lexicon of a particular language. If the NCI-internal NEG sits high in the lexical structure of an NCI, as we saw for Berber, then it is only in the context like (34) or the elliptical contexts, typical of SNC languages, that the NEG can project in the main spine (tree structure (43a)). However, if the NCI-internal NEG sits lower, below the C-layer, then the NCI will be able to project its own NEG as soon as it moves to a position higher than vP (43b). Finally, when a language has quantifiers that have a structure in which NEG sits just above QP, as in (43c), then the system will not be Negative Concord, but will be of the Negative Quantifier type, like English.

(43)

a.

<figure><img src="image_15.png" /></figure>

b.

<figure><img src="image_16.png" /></figure>

c.

<figure><img src="image_17.png" /></figure>

The advantage of this hypothesis for concord is that it does not require us to postulate two different lexical items for the NCI in the lexicon of a particular language to capture the ambiguity that NCIs give rise to (see amongst others (Herburger 2001)).<sup>23</sup> Under the current proposal, the ambiguity arises as a natural consequence of the Superset Theorem, a matching principle that is independently needed to guarantee lexicalisation. The current proposal for concord also brings us back to the issue this paper started out with, i.e. the question whether NCIs can condition TAM and be conditioned by it. If allomorphy in SNs and TAM arises due to what we proposed for Berber, i.e. as a consequence of SN “eating” into the structure of the TAM domain, and if the structure that we just proposed for NCIs is on the right track, then it follows why NCIs and the TAM domain do not condition each other: their functional sequences simply do not share features, apart from the feature NEG. The only interaction that we see therefore, is that the NCI can replace the SN, because both can satisfy the need of projecting a NEG in the main spine.

<footnote n="23"><sup>23</sup>See also the introduction of this volume for an elaborate discussion of ambiguity in various proposals for NCIs.</footnote>
# 4 Conclusion

This paper started from two mechanisms - proposed in the syntactic literature - to capture NC: 1) moving the NCI to the same position as the position for SN in syntax (NEG-criterion approach), or 2) licensing NCIs and SNs by the same semantic operator (syntactic agreement approach for SNC). The observation related to the discussion of these mechanisms was that in both approaches SN and NCIs are - in terms of negativity - treated similarly and associated with the same position. This led to the question whether there are also morphosyntactic reasons from the domain of allomorphy to treat NCIs and SNs in the same way. On the basis of a small crosslinguistic investigation, and a more detailed discussion of Egyptian Arabic and Berber we concluded that it does not seem to be the case that NCIs condition TAM or are conditioned by TAM in the way SNs do this. This conclusion supports the typological work by Alsenoy (2014), Van der Auwera & Van Alsenoy (2016), Van der Auwera (2017), Van der Auwera & Alsenoy (2018), which considered any parameter that could be related to (negative) indefinites, and didn't find any. Since the SNC language Berber provided us with a strong argument to consider NCIs as intrinsically negative (in line with the NEG-criterion approach), we concluded that the [NEG] in SNs and the [NEG] in NCIs must be a different [NEG]. We developed a Nanosyntactic account to capture (i) the allomorphy that arises between SN and TAM, (ii) the absence of allomorphy in the presence of NCIs, and (iii) the fact that NCIs in SNC languages can give rise to negation. The current paper gave rise to a new perspective on NC: under this approach NC is a side-effect that arises due the interaction of the Superset Principle with stored lexical items. It goes without saying that this new perspective is also a research hypothesis that needs to be tested against more languages.

# References

Alqassas, Ahmad. 2021. *A unified theory of polarity sensitivity. comparative syntax of Arabic*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Alsenoy, Lauren Van. 2014. *A new typology of indefinite pronouns, with a focus on negative indefinites*: University of Antwerp dissertation. https://zenodo.org/records/8085994.

Banerjee, Neil. 2021. Two ways to form a portmanteau: Evidence from ellipsis. In Patrick Farell (ed.), *Proceedings of the linguistic society of america*, vol. 6 1. 39–52.
Baunaz, Lena & Eric Lander. 2018. Deconstructing categories syncretic with the nominal complementizer. *Glossa: a journal of general linguistics* 3(1). 31.1–27.

Belletti, Adriana. 2004. Aspects of the low IP area. In Luigi Rizzi (ed.), *The Structure of IP and CP*, vol. 2 The Cartography of Syntactic Structures. 16–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Benmamoun, Elabbas, Mahmoud Abunasser, Rania Al-Sabbagh, Abdelaadim Bidaoui & Dana Shalash. 2013. The location of sentential negation in Arabic varieties. In *Brill's annual of Afro-Asiatic languages and linguistics*, vol. 5. Leiden: Brill.

Bensoukas, Karim. 2001. *Stem forms in the nontemplatic morphology of Berber: Université´ Mohammed 5, Rabat dissertation*.

Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Explaining morphosyntactic competition. In Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds.), *Handbook of contemporary syntactic theory*. 1–44. MA: Blackwell.

Caha, Pavel. 2009. *The nanosyntax of case*. Tromsø: University of Tromsø dissertation.

Caha, Pavel, Karen De Clercq, Michal Starke & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. to appear. Nanosyntax: state of the art and recent developments. In Pavel Caha, Karen De Clercq & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (eds.), *Nanosyntax and the lexicalisation algorithm*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Caha, Pavel, Karen De Clercq & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2019. The fine structure of the comparative. *Studia Linguistica* 73(3). 470–521. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12107.

Chierchia, Gennaro. 2006. Broaden your views: Implicatures of domain widening and the ‘logicality’ of language. *Linguistic Inquiry* 37(4). 535–590.

Choi, Jaehoon & Heidi Harley. 2019. Locality domains and morphological rules. Phases, heads, node-sprouting and suppletion in Korean honorification. *Natural Language & Linguistic Theory* 37. 1319–1365.

Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. *Linguistics* 17. 79–106.

De Clercq, Karen. 2020a. *The morphosyntax of negative markers. A nanosyntactic account*. Mouton de Gruyter.

De Clercq, Karen. 2020b. Tense and sentential negation: a typological perspective. In Elena Tribushinina & Mark Dingemanse (eds.), *Linguistics in the Netherlands*, vol. 37. 71–89. Benjamins.

Dell, François & Mohamed Elmedlaoui. 1991. Clitic ordering, morphology and phonology in the verbal complex of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber. *Journal of Afroasiatic languages* 3. 89–125.
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1997. *The landscape of polarity items*. Groningen: University of Groningen dissertation.

Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2001. The meaning of free choice. *Linguistics and Philosophy* 24. 659–735.

Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2018. A critical assessment of exhaustivity for negative polarity items. The view from Greek, Korean, Mandarin, and English. *Acta Linguistica Academica* 65(4). 503–545.

Haegeman, Liliane. 1995. *The syntax of negation*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Haegeman, Liliane & Raffaella Zanuttini. 1991. Negative heads and the NEG-criterion. *The Linguistic Review* 8. 233–51.

Herburger, Elena. 2001. The negative concord puzzle revisited. *Natural Language Semantics* 9(3). 289–333.

Hewitt, Brian. 1979. *Abkhaz*. North Holland Publishing Company.

Holmberg, Anders & Christer Platzack. 1988. On the role of inflection in Scandinavian syntax. *Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax* 42.

Horn, Laurence. 2001. *A natural history of negation*. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press 2nd edn.

Kahrel, Peter. 1996. *Aspects of negation*. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University dissertation.

Kayne, Richard. 1993. Toward a modular theory of auxiliary selection. *Studia Linguistica* 47. 3–31.

Labelle, Marie & M. Teresa Espinal. 2014. Diachronic changes in negative expressions. the case of French.

McCarthy, John. 1979. *Formal problems in Semitic phonology and morphology*. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.

Miestamo, Matti. 2005. *Standard negation. The negation of declarative verbal main clauses in a typological perspective*. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Moktadir, Khalid. 1989. *The passive form in Tashlhiyt Berber: A prosodic approach*. Rabat, Morocco: Université Mohammed 5 dissertation.

Ouali, Hamid. 2012. *Agreement, pronominal clitics and negation in Tamazight Berber: A unified analysis*. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Ouali, Hamid & Usama Soltan. 2014. On negative concord in Egyptian and Moroccan Arabic. In Samira Farwaneh & Hamid Ouali (eds.), *Perspectives on Arabic linguistics XXIV-XXV*, vol. 13 Studies in Arabic Linguistics. 159–180. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ouhalla, Jamal. 1991. *Functional categories and parametric variation*. New York: Routledge.
Penka, Doris. 2011. *Negative indefinites*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ramchand, Gillian. 2004. Two types of negation in Bengali. In Veneeta Dayal & Anoop Mahayan (eds.), *Clause structure in South Asian languages*. 39–66. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. *Verb meaning and the lexicon*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), *Elements of grammar. Handbook in generative syntax*. 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. *Nordlyd* 36. 1–6.

Starke, Michal. 2018. Complex left branches, spellout, and prefixes. In Lena Baunaz, Karen De Clercq, Liliane Haegeman & Eric Lander (eds.), *Exploring nanosyntax*. 239–249. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Turano, Giuseppina. 2000. On clitics and negation in Albanian. *Rivista di Grammatica Generativa* 25. 81–117.

Ullah, Rashad. 2007. Not perfect. In *Chicago linguistics society*, vol. 43.

Van der Auwera, Johan. 2006. Why languages prefer prohibitives. *Journal of foreign languages* 1. 2–25.

Van der Auwera, Johan. 2017. Englishes, English Creoles and their negative indefinites. In D. Ziegeler & Z. Bao (eds.), *Negation and contact: with special reference to Singapore English*. 115–149. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Van der Auwera, Johan & Lauren Van Alsenoy. 2018. More ado about nothing. on the typology of negative indefinites. In K. Turner & L.R. Horn (eds.), *Pragmatics, truth and underspecification: toward an atlas of meaning*. 107–146. Brill.

Van der Auwera, Johan & Sepideh Koohkan. 2022. Extending the typology: negative concord and connective negation in persian. *Linguistic Typology at the crossroads* 2(1). 1–36.

Van der Auwera, Johan & Lauren Van Alsenoy. 2016. On the typology of negative concord. *Studies in Language* 40(3). 473–512.

Watanabe, Akira. 2004. The genesis of negative concord: Syntax and morphology of negative doubling. *Linguistic Inquiry* 35(4). 559–612.

Yang, Charles. 2016. *The price of linguistic productivity*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1991. *Syntactic properties of sentential negation: A comparative study of Romance languages*: University of Pennsylvania dissertation.
Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1996. On the relevance of tense for sentential negation. In Adriana Belletti & Luigi Rizzi (eds.), *Parameters and functional heads*. 181–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. *Negation and clausal structure*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2004. *Sentential negation and negative concord*. Utrecht: Utrecht University dissertation.

Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2008. On the syntactic flexibility of formal features. In Theresa Biberauer (ed.), *The limits of syntactic variation*. 143–174. Benjamins.

Appendix

The table below shows the first 50 languages from Miestamo (2005), which De Clercq (2020a) used for her pilot study. The ‘type’ label is based on the hypothesis developed in the introductory section of this paper, and deviates somewhat from the pilot study. Only the negative concord patterns for types A/B/C are provided (see discussion in section ). For the determination of the types and the negative concord patterns the main resources are: Miestamo (2005), reference grammars of the relevant languages and native speakers if available. To determine the concord pattern for Aymara I want to thank Roger Gonzalo Segura, my Aymara informant, whom I was able to consult via Gabriel Martinez Vera, whom I also want to thank. The variety of Aymara in the table is Southern Aymara, as spoken in the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca.

Concerning the abbreviations in table 2: ? means that I am not sure whether there is concord or not, **No NC** means that the language does not have Negative Concord, **SNC** means that the language has Strict Negative Concord, **Non-SNC** stands for Non-Strict Negative Concord, **NQ** stands for Negative Quantifier. If the cell is **empty** I did not look into the concord pattern, because the language is of Type D. If I added ? to one of the abbreviations, then it means that I am not entirely sure.
<table><caption>Table 2: The sample</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Genus</th><th>Type</th><th>NC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Abipon</td><td>Guaicuruan</td><td>D?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Abkhaz</td><td>West caucasian</td><td>C</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Achumawi</td><td>Palaihnihan</td><td>A</td><td>No NC?</td></tr><tr><td>Acoma</td><td>Keresan</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Ainu</td><td>Ainu</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Alamblak</td><td>Sepik</td><td>A?</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Albanian</td><td>Indo-European</td><td>B</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Amele</td><td>Trans New Guinea</td><td>A</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Andoke</td><td>Andoke</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Apala\i</td><td>Cariban</td><td>C</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Apurina</td><td>Maipuran</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Araona</td><td>Pano-Tacanan</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Armenian (Eastern)</td><td>Indo-European</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Asmat</td><td>Central and South New Guinea</td><td>C</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Awa Pit</td><td>Barbacoan</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Aymara</td><td>Aymara</td><td>C</td><td>NC</td></tr><tr><td>Bafut</td><td>Niger-Congo (Eastern Grassfield)</td><td>A</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Bagirmi</td><td>Nilo-Saharan</td><td>C</td><td>NC, type?</td></tr><tr><td>Bambara</td><td>Mande (Niger-Congo)</td><td>A</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Barè</td><td>Tucanoan</td><td>B</td><td>NQ</td></tr><tr><td>Barasano</td><td>Arawakan</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Basque</td><td></td><td>C</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Batak</td><td>Sundic</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Bawn</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>B</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Beja</td><td>Northern Cushitic</td><td>A</td><td>No NC?</td></tr><tr><td>Bella Coola</td><td>Bella Coola (Salish)</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Berber (Middle Atlas)</td><td>Berber</td><td>C</td><td>SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Birom</td><td>Niger Congo</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Boko</td><td>Mander (Niger-Congo)</td><td>C</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Bororo</td><td>Macro-Ge/Bororoan</td><td>A</td><td>No NC?</td></tr><tr><td>Brahui</td><td>Dravidian</td><td>A</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Bukiyip (Arapesh)</td><td>Torrcelli</td><td>A</td><td>NQ</td></tr><tr><td>Burara</td><td>Burarran</td><td>C</td><td>NQ</td></tr><tr><td>Burmese</td><td>Burmese (Sino-Tibetan)</td><td>C</td><td>NC</td></tr><tr><td>Burushaski</td><td>Burushaski</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Canamarì</td><td>Katukinan</td><td>?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Candoshi</td><td>Candoshi</td><td>B</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Canela-Krah</td><td>Carib</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Cantonese</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>A</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Carib</td><td>Carib</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Cayuvava</td><td>Cayuvava</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Chamorro</td><td>Chamorro</td><td>D</td><td>Non-SNC</td></tr><tr><td>Chechalis (Upper)</td><td>Salishan (Coast)</td><td>A</td><td>NQ</td></tr><tr><td>Chinantec (Lealao)</td><td>Oto-Mangue</td><td>A?</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Chinook (Lower)</td><td>Chinookan</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Chorote</td><td>Mataco</td><td>C</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Chukchi</td><td>Chukoto-Kamchatkan</td><td>A</td><td>No NC</td></tr><tr><td>Chumash</td><td>Chumash</td><td>D</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Comanche</td><td>Numic</td><td>C</td><td>NC?</td></tr><tr><td>Egyptian Arabic</td><td>Semitic</td><td>B</td><td>Non-SNC</td></tr></tbody></table>