Issues in Spanish Syntax

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Negation is an essential semantic concept crucial to the expressive power of natural language. In this class we will look at how negation is realized in Spanish and compare Spanish in this regard to other Romance languages and also to English and German. One important topic we will discuss is Negative Concord. In addition to its syntax and semantics, we will also look at the history of Negative Concord, the relation between Negative Concord and the licensing of Negative Polarity Items, and how Negative Concord systems relate historically to double negation systems. A related topic we will discuss is sentential negation (e.g. not, n't ) and the historical development known as Jespersen's Cycle.