Expletive negation and related problems

Abstract

This paper makes two main claims: the presence of two or more negative elements in Negative Concord, Negative Comparison, and Expletive Negation basically rests upon the pragmatic need of intensifying the negative import of the sentence. Secondly, the paper aims at identifying a possible path of functional expansion that may account for the use of the Expletive Negation in the constructions under scrutiny. Expletive Negation is originally tied to the core concept of inequality comparison (x is more/has more y than z, where y refers to a state, a quality or property), as well as to temporal comparison (x before y)–where the second member is implicitly negated; it may then expand to other constructions such as Negative Concord and the construction of fear verbs.

Keywords

• double negation
• equative and negative comparison
• expletive negation
• negative concord
• fear verbs
• pragmatic strategy