Language Research

Abstract This paper investigates the External Merge position of the floating quantifier “hame” (all) in Persian. Quantifier floating has received two major analyses: stranding adverbial. In this paper, the former approach is shown to be more explanatorily justified. The paper provides evidence to indicate that “hame” is adjoined acyclically to the argument DP after the DP moves from its θ-position, along the lines of Boskovic (2004). More specifically, quantifier floating is shown not to be possible from θ-positions. The evidence comes from the prosodic pattern of Persian unmarked sentences as well as the scope interaction of negation and the floating quantifier “hame”. In regard to prosodic pattern of Persian unmarked sentences, main sentence stress has been argued by Kahnemuyipour (2009) to mark the left edge of vP. Floating quantifier is shown to occur before the element bearing main sentence stress in unmarked sentences, so it is claimed to be outside of vP, and therefore outside of the θ-position. As regards the second evidence, i.e. scope interaction, in negative sentences containing floating “hame’ when negation is not focused, ‘hame’ is constantly out of the scope of negation, and this means that in such sentences, neither the floating quantifier nor its copies are within the c-commanding domain of NegP. To put it another way, the base position of the floating quantifier is higher than NegP, which is argued to be between TP and vP. To determine the position of NegP in Persian, evidence is provided from negation in gerund phrases in Persian, and the scope interaction between manner and speaker-oriented adverbs on the one hand and between these adverbs and negation on the other. Showing that NegP is located between vP and TP within the scope of “hame”, it is concluded that the External Merge position of quantifier is higher than vP, and therefore is outside the θ-domain.

Abstract This descriptive-analytic study aimed at investigating the semantic interaction of negation with the epistemic and deontic possibility and necessity senses of a select group of central Persian modal verbs (i.e., tavanestan, shodan, momken budan, emkan dashtan, bayestan and lazem budan). Among these modal verbs, the first four express the notion of possibility and the rest express necessity. Necessity and possibility constitute the core of modality domain. Modality as a semantic category mainly deals with speaker’s attitude or opinion regarding the state of affairs. Epistemic and deontic modality are the two main types of modality. The former expresses speaker’s judgment regarding the truth or falsehood of propositions while the latter deals with speaker’s influence on actualization or non-actualization of actions. Modal verbs are among the commonly used modal forms in Persian. Negation has logical and semantic interactions with modality (especially, possibility and necessity notions). Negation appears in Persian modal verbs and main verbs as ن- prefix. In this study, the views of Palmer (1995) and de Haan (1997), who both investigated the interaction of negation and modality from typological point of view, were used as the theoretical framework. The examples used as evidence in our analyses were mainly extracted from the corpus of Academy of Persian language and literature. The study showed that the interaction of negation prefix with the modal verbs of possibility domain (i.e., tavanestan, shodan, momken budan and emkan dashtan) is “regular” in the sense that there is correspondence between the form and meaning of the negative modal verbs. Thus, a negative modal form negates the modality and a negative main verb negates the proposition. In the necessity domain, the interaction of lazem budan with negation prefix is, also, “regular”. In fact, the co-occurrence of negation prefix with bayestan negates the proposition (not the modality). In addition, bayestan cannot express the epistemic “lack of necessity” of the truth of a proposition and deontic lack of necessity for actualization of an action. Other modal verbs (e.g., lazem budan and modal verbs of the possibility domain) express these notions through “modal suppletion” or “logical suppletion” strategies. Bayestan is a “uniscopal” modal form interacting only with “narrow scope” negation while other modal verbs investigated in this study are “biscopal” as they interact with both narrow and wide scope negation. Except bayestan, for which “modal suppletion” and “logical suppletion” strategies are employed to express wide scope negation, for other verbs investigated in this research “negation placement” strategy is used to distinguish between narrow and wide scope negation.

Abstract The aim of this article is to explain the construction of euphemistic meaning via the process of negation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The main question of the present study is how the cognitive mechanism of negation acts for constructing euphemistic meaning and consequently for motivating euphemistic linguistic structures. The present research explains euphemism in Persian by a descriptive-analytical method. Data were also collected manually from mostly library resources containing several Persian-language dictionaries. In this study, it is shown that the cognitive process of negation is volitionally applied to a conceptual content by the conceptualizer and consequently a pleasant conceptual content is activated and attention is drawn toward it. Based on the negation process, the negated pleasant concept is represented phonetically and the strength of attention over the unpleasant content which has not been represented at the linguistic level will decrease. Due to the representation of the negated pleasant concept at the linguistic level and based on the type of guided attention distribution pattern encoded in the negative linguistic forms, the speaker tries to distribute a portion of the listener's attention sources over the pleasant content and he/she tries to decrease the strength of attention on the unpleasant concept. In fact, instead of directly encoding an unpleasant concept at the linguistic level, the speaker uses indirect methods and encodes "the negated pleasant concept". By this indirect reference, lesser attention is assigned to the unpleasant concept than when the concept is directly represented in the language. Therefore, linguistic negations structure the concepts in such a way that the window of attention does not open on the unpleasant aspects of the entity in question and does not put them at the center of attention, and through this way, euphemistic meaning will be constructed. It should be noted that the present study re-emphasizes on the interaction and overlap of language and other general cognitive abilities.

Abstract Except for personal clitics in past transitive forms, Sorani Kurdish has threeverbal prefixes; n?- for negation, be- for subjunctive, and (d)?- for imperfective. Thisarticle starts with bringing forth the question of why subjunctive marker in this languagecannot appear with verbal negative or aspect prefixes while there is no problem with the co-occurence of negative and aspect prefixes.After proposing some possible analyses, the author tries to analyze the question based onDM theory, saying that negation head moves downward, merges with the mood head, andthe merged form gets one phonological content by vocabulary items. For imperfectiveappearing in the final position in past subjunctives, she analyzes that this aspect headmoves to the final position of the verb in the presence of subjunctive marker. Both thesemovements happen in the morphological structure of PF –the first operates in terms ofhierarchical structure and before the linearizational rules being applied and the second operates in terms of linear order and after linearization- hence they are namedphonological rules, which are language-specific. As these rules changes –or sometimes add to- the syntactic structure, they are called readjustment rules too