Negation and imperatives

Abstract While some languages have negative imperatives, others do not, and express prohibition through suppletive subjunctives or infinitives. The present paper argues that a language with negative imperatives projects a mood/modality phrase, ModP, which is c-commanded by Neg. In a language with no negative imperatives, however, ModP and NegP are fused. Within the South European languages there is a distinction with respect to the distinct projection of ModP: while the majority of the Romance languages do not project it, all the South Slavic languages do. Within South Slavic there is a parametric difference with respect to the strength of Neg, however. This difference is reflected in two distinct positionings of the clitics relative to the imperative verb: in the South Slavic languages with strong Neg the clitics are wedged between the negation operator and the imperative verb, while in the South Slavic languages with weak Neg they occur to the left of the verb. Key words: word order, negated imperatives, Wackernagel clitics, South-Slavic. Resum Hi ha llengües que tenen imperatius negats, i altres que no, i han d’expressar la prohibició per mitjà de subjuntius or infinitius supletius. Aquest article defensa que una llengua amb imperatius negatius projecta un sintagma mode/modalitat, SMod, que és c-comandat per Neg. En una llengua sense imperatius negatius, en canvi, SMod i SNeg estan fosos. Dins les llengües del sud d’Europa hi ha una distinció pel que fa la projecció de SMod: la majoria de les llengües romàniques no el projecten, però totes les llengües eslaves meridionals el projecten. Dins de les eslaves meridionals, però, hi ha una diferència paramètrica pel que fa a la força de Neg. Aquesta diferència es reflecteix en dues posicions diferents dels clítics respecte al verb en imperatiu. En les llengües eslaves meridionals amb una Neg forta, els clítics queden atrapats entre l’operador negació i el verb en imperatiu, mentre que en les que tenen una Neg feble els clítics apareixen a l’esquerra del verb. Paraules clau: ordre de mots, imperatius negats, clítics Wackernagel, eslau meridional. CatWPL 7, 1999 191-206 Negation and imperatives Olga Mi©eska Tomic´ University of Novi Sad/University of Leiden [email protected]v.nl Received: December 13th 1998 Accepted: March 17th 1999 CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:30 Página 191 1. Previous Analyses It is a well-known and often discussed fact that in Spanish and Catalan negation is incompatible with imperative morphology and prohibition is expressed through the use of subjunctives or infinitives. This is illustrated in (1): (1)Sp a. *Nolee! b.Noleas! c.No leer! notread-2Sg-Imp notread-2Sg-Subj notread-Inf ‘Don’t read.’ ‘Don’t read.’ Thus, Spanish and Catalan (and Italian, but only in the singular) contrast with French where imperatives canbe negated. (2)FNelise pas! notread-2Sg-Imppas ‘Don’t read.’ Zanuttini (1991, 1997) accounts for the contrast between the Spanish sentence in (1) and the French sentence in (2) through the different requiremments of preverbal and postverbal negation:1whereas preverbal negation requires TP, postverbal negation does not. Since imperatives are tenseless, she concludes that they are incompatible with preverbal negation. Laka (1994), discussing sentential negation in Spanish, claims that the incompatibility of negation and imperatives in this language is due to the fact that they are elements of the same syntactic category, which she labels Σ. Since, in the presence of negation, imperatives cannot be projected, sentences such as (1) are ungrammatical. Zanuttini’s and Laka’s analyses work well for Romance, but encounter problems when applied to the languages of the Balkans, which have preverbal negation, but differ as to whether they allow negative imperatives: Romanian and Modern Greek do not, whereas Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian do:2 192 CatWPL 7, 1999 Olga Mi© eska Tomic´ 1. Whereas in Spanish negation is preverbal, in French it is postverbal, material evidence for this being the fact that in colloquial French negation is marked only by the postverbal negative particle pas. 2. Another Balkan language, Albanian, lacks distinct imperative morphology altogether. Table of Contents CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:30 Página 192 1. Previous Analyses 2. The Relationship of Neg and Mod in Macedonian 3. Interdependence between Types of Clitics and the Morphological Features of the Head of the Clause 4. Stress Patterns 5. Strong and Weak Negation Operators 6. Fusion of Neg and Mod 7. Summary References (3) R *Nu cîteste! not read-2Sg-Imp+it-Acc-Cl MG *Den/mi diavase to! Not read-2Sg-Imp it-Acc-Cl BNe go cˇeti! not it-Acc-Cl read-2Sg-Imp MNe cˇitaj go! not read-2Sg-Imp it-Acc-Cl SC Ne cˇitaj ga! not read-2Sg-Imp it-Acc-Cl ‘Don’t read it!’ Rivero and Terzi (1995) account for the contrast between Spanish and Modern Greek, on the one hand, and Serbo-Croatian and Ancient Greek, on the other, through the blocking potential of Neg. They argue that in Spanish and Modern Greek, negative imperatives are unavailable, since Neg blocks the raising of the verb to C, where the strong mood feature is located, and its mood feature remains unchecked. In Serbo-Croatian and Ancient Greek, however, the strong mood feature is located in I, and the verb can raise to it without crossing Neg. Rivero and Terzi’s assumption that the illocutionary force can be checked at two different places is shaky.3Moreover, the raising of the Serbo-Croatian negated imperative from I, where it checks its imperative feature, to C, is in need of motivation. Recent research has undermined not only the assumption that constituents can be moved in order to support clitics,4but also the assumption that the Wackernagel clitic cluster is always formed in C.5 In her analysis of the relation between negation and mood, Han (1998) posits C as the only locus of the imperative operator. She argues that negative imperatives are unavailable in some languages, because they have syntactic configurations in which negation takes syntactic scope over the imperative operator in C. Her explanation for the compatibility of negation and imperatives in languages such as Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian can be summarized as follows: In Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian the imperative verb is not in C on the surface, but rather low in the clause. In these languages, the imperative verb moves and adjoins to C at LF. Since Negation and imperatives CatWPL 7, 1999 193 3. They argue that in Sebo-Croatian and Ancient Greek, C cannot be the position associated with imperative force, since in these languages C is reserved as the last-resort landing site for verb movement, in order to rescue the Wackernagel (or second-position) clitics from occurring in clause-initial positions. 4. Among other things, this movement presupposes that syntax looks into phonology. 5. Bo©kovic´ (1995, 1997) argues that the Wackernagel clitic cluster is formed in different positions in the structure, the host being provided by the phonology. Franks (1998) contends that the Wackernagel clitics move to the highest available site in the extended projection of the verb, head to head, leaving copies at all intermediate sites; in PF the highest clitic copy is pronounced that satisfies the clitic’s phonological requirement for encliticization. CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 193 morphological/phonological constraints do not apply in LF, the imperative verb can move along, stranding the clitic-like preverbal negation. Consequently, Neg does not take scope over the imperative operator in C, and negative imperatives are not ruled out. Nevertheless, the South Slavic languages offer numerous counter-examples to Han’s «evidence» for the location of the strong semantic imperative mood feature. In particular: (a) As illustrated by the Macedonian examples in (4), the subject can precede the imperative verb, just as often as it can follow it: (4) Ma. Ti daj mi go! you-Sg give-2Sg-Imp me-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl b. Daj mi go ti! give-2Sg-Imp me-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl you-Sg ‘You give it to me!’ (b) As evident from the Bulgarian examples in (5), the clitics can be placed, not only to the right, but also to the left of the imperative verb: (5) B a. Daj mi go ti! give-2Sg-Imp me-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl you-Sg b. Ti mi go daj! You-Sg me-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl give-2sg-Imp ‘You give it to me!’ (c) As shown by the Slovenian example in (6), embedded imperatives are not always ruled out: (6) Sl Vztraja da pridi jutri. insists that come-2Sg-Imp tomorrow ‘He insists that you come tomorrow.’ In this paper I argue that the verb checks its imperative mood feature in an operator node to the immediate left of AgrsP. The incompatibility of imperatives and negation in Spanish, Catalan (or Modern Greek, for that matter) follows from the fact that in these languages the same node is projected by negation markers, as well. In the South Slavic languages, in which preverbal negation coincides with imperatives, however, the node where the imperative mood is checked is distinct from the node where negation is checked (Neg). 2. The Relationship of Neg and Mod in Macedonian In Macedonian, the node where the imperative mood is checked coincides with the node projected by the modal clitics. Material evidence for this is the fact that, like 194 CatWPL 7, 1999 Olga Mi©eska Tomic´ CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 194 the Macedonian imperative verb, the Macedonian modal clitics can be wedged between the negation operator and pronominal clitics. Compare (7a) to (7b): (7) M a. Ne davaj mu ja knigata not-Cl give-2Sg-Imp him-Dat-Cl her-Acc-Cl book+the-Cl ‘Don’t give him the book.’ b. Ne k´e mu ja dade© Not-Cl will-Mod-Cl him-Dat-Cl her-Acc-Cl give-2Sg-Subj knigata. book+the-Cl ‘You won’t give him the book.’ As argued in Tomic´ (1996), the Macedonian clausal clitics are derived as heads of a range of functional projections. The structure of (7b), with a clausal clitic cluster consisting of the negative clitic ne ‘not’, the modal clitic k´e ‘will/shall’ the dative pronominal clitic mu ‘him’ and the accusative pronominal clitic ja ‘her’, is presented in (8): In (8) Tense/AgrS6does not dominate any mophological material. Nevertheless, in the derivation of (9), where the clausal clitic cluster includes an auxiliary clitic, Tense/AgrsP is projected by this clitic. Negation and imperatives CatWPL 7, 1999 195 6. A joint Tense and Subject Agreement Phrase is argued for by the portmanteau morph which in all Balkan Slavic languages represents tense, person and number. (8) M NegP Spec Neg’ pro Neg ModP ne Mod Tense/AgrsP k´e Tense/AgrsAgrioP Agrio AgroP mu AgroVP ja V XP dade©knigata CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 195 (9) M Ne k´e si mu ja not-Cl will-Mod are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl her-Acc-Cl dadel knigata. given-l-Part-M-Sg-Subj book+the-Cl ‘Rumor has it,7you would be unwilling to give him the book.’ The structure of (9) is given in (10): The cooccurrence and ordering of the modal and auxiliary clitics justifies the projection of ModP and its position relative to Tense/AgrsP. While occurring in clauses in which the verb is in the subjunctive mood, the Macedonian modal clitic k´e is excluded from clauses in which the verb is in the imperative mood. In such clauses Mod is an imperative mood operator and the imperative verb raises to it overtly to check its strong imperative feature. The structure of (7a), where this is illustrated, is given in (11): 196 CatWPL 7, 1999 Olga Mi©eska Tomic´ 7. In Macedonian, the cooccurrence of forms of be with forms of the l-participle, signals reporting modality. (10) M NegP Spec Neg’ pro Neg ModP ne Mod Tense/AgrsP k´e Tense/AgrsAgrioP si Agrio AgroP mu AgroVP ja V XP dadelknigata CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 196 The raising of the verb to Mod (via Agrs) accounts or the post-verbal ordering of the pronominal clitics. The position of the negation clitic is invariable, however. As argued in Tomic´ (to appear) this is due to the difference in the nature of the modal, auxiliary and pronominal clitics, on the one hand, and the negative clitic, on the other: While the modal, auxiliary and pronominal clitics originate as clitics, the negative clitic originates as a stress-bearing negation operator and acquires clitichood when merging with V and any modal, auxiliary and/or pronominal clitics that had cliticized to it. The difference in the nature of the clitics is reflected in the stress patterns of the clitics + V or V + clitics complex. 3. Interdependence between Types of Clitics and the Morphological Features of the Head of the Clause At this point, a discussion of the cliticization strategy of the Macedonian clitics is in order. The clausal clitics of a language can in most cases be qualified as proclitic or enclitic. In Macedonian that is not the case. Consider the Macedonian clauses in (12): (12) M a1Si mu go dal vcˇera. are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl given-M-Sg yesterday. ‘You gave it to him yesterday, I understand.’ a2*Si mu go vcˇera dal are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl yesterday given-M-Sg b1*Si mu tatko. are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl father Negation and imperatives CatWPL 7, 1999 197 (11) M NegP Spec Neg’ Pro Neg ModP Ne Mod AgrsP davaj AgrsAgrioP Agrio AuxP mu AgroVP ja V XP t1knigata CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 197 (12) b2Tatko si mu. father are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl ‘You are his father (so you have to take care of him).’ b3Ti si mu tatko. you are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl father ‘YOU are his father (and not anybody else)!’ c1??Si mu mil. are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl dear ‘He likes you.’ c2Mil si mu. dear are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl ‘He likes you.’ c3Ti si mu mil. you are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl dear ‘It is you he likes!’ d1?Mu e skinato paltoto. him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl torn-Pass.Part coat+the-Cl ‘His coat is torn out.’ d2Skinato mu e paltoto. torn-Pass.Part him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl coat+the-Cl ‘His coat is torn out.’ d3Na Petreta mu e skinato paltoto. to Peter-Dat him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl torn-Pass.Part coat+the-Cl ‘Peter’s coat is torn out.’ f1?Mu e recˇeno da bide tocˇen. him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl told-Past.Part to be-3Sg-Subj punctual povek!e pati. more times ‘He was told to be punctual more than once.’ f2Recˇeno mu e da bide tocˇen told-Past.Part him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl to be-3Sg-Subj punctual povek´e pati. more times ‘He was told to be punctual to be punctual more than once.’ f3Na Petreta mu e poveke pati to Peter-Dat him-Dat-Cl is-3Sg-Cl more times recˇeno da bide tocˇen. told-Past.Part to be-3Sg-Subj punctual. ‘Peter was told to be punctual more than once.’ The grammaticality of (12a1), where the clitics are clause-initial and left-adjacent to the l-participle, in contrast with the ungrammaticality of (12a2), where the 198 CatWPL 7, 1999 Olga Mi©eska Tomic´ CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 198 clitics are clause-initial but separated from the l-participle by an adverb, tells us that we are here dealing with prototypical verbal clitics, i.e. clitics that are leftadjacent to the verb and procliticize to it. The well-formedness of (12b1) and (12b2), where the clitics are preceded and followed by a nominal, in contrast with the ill-formedness of (12b3), where they are placed clause-initially to the left of a nominal, suggests that the clitics can be hosted by a nominal to their left but not by one to their right. The relativized acceptability of (12c1), (12d1) and (12f1), compared to the unconditional acceptability of the other clauses in (12c), (12d) and (12e), indicates that, in environments such as the ones illustrated in these clauses, the clitics can with some (but not all) speakers of the language occur in initial position and be hosted to their right, though non-initial clitic positioning, with hosts to their left is preferred. The choice of anchor and the orientation of the Macedonian clausal clitics actually correlates with the morphological properties of the head of the clause. In Tomic´ (1997a, 1997b), I argued that tensed lexical verbs, l-participles, past participles, passive participles and adjectival and nominal predicates have distinct values for the features [±V] and [±N]. These are represented in (13): (13) M V N tensed verbs + – l-participles + – past participles + + passive participles + + adjectives + + nouns – + Note that l-participles have positive values for V, negative for N, as do tensed verbs. As argued in Tomic´ (1996, 1997b) the behavior of l-participles in the environment to clitics is analogous to that of tensed verbs. Like the tensed verbs, the l-participles form enlarged local domains with the clitics to their left, to the extent that, when they move, the clitics get a free ride with them. This is exemplified in (14a) and (14b), where an l-participle and a tensed verb, respectively, have moved to the left of the interrogative clitic li, which in all the Slavic languages is uncontroversially located in C: (14) M a. Bi (si) mu go dala would-Mod-Cl are-2Sg-Aux-Cl him-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl given-F-Sg li peroto? Inter-Cl pen+the-Cl ‘Would you be willing to give him the pen?’ b. k´e mu go dadea li will-Mod-Cl him-Dat-Cl it-Acc-Cl give-Pres-2Sg Inter-Cl peroto? pen+the-Cl ‘Will you give him the pen?’ Negation and imperatives CatWPL 7, 1999 199 CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 199 Laka, Itziar (1994). On the Syntax of Negation [Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics]. New York and London: A Garland Series. Rivero, Maria-Luisa (1994). «Clause Structure and V-movement in the Languages of the Balkans». Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12: 63-120. Rivero, Maria-Luisa and Arhonto Terzi (1995). «Imperatives, V-Movement and Logical Mood». Journal of Linguistics 31: 301-332. Tomic´, Olga Mi©eska (1996). «The Balkan Slavic Clausal Clitics». Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14: 811-872. —(1997a). «Non-first as a Default Clitic Position». Journal of Slavic Linguistics 5(2): 1-23. —(1997b). «Finiteness and Type of Clitichood». Paper presented at the 7th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, held in Oviedo, Spain. — (to appear). «Clitichood and Cliticization». In Kenesei, I. (ed.). Linguistic Theory in Eastern Europe. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zanuttini, Rafaela (1991). Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation. A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation. —(1997). Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages [Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax]. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. 206 CatWPL 7, 1999 Olga Mi©eska Tomic´ CatWPL 7 191-206 13/6/00 12:31 Página 206