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Selected Proceedings of the 9th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium edited by Nuria Sagarra and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio ISBN 1-57473-413-X library binding vi + 341 pages publication date: 2006 published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA Table of contents Abstract Jon Franco and Alazne Landa Preverbal N-Words and Anti-Agreement Effects 34-42 (complete pdf) This paper accounts for the syntactic distribution of N-words in preverbal and postverbal positions in Basque Spanish and explains the nature of the ban on pre-verbal negative concord in Standard Spanish. Furthermore, it discriminates between what is transferred from Basque, if anything, and what is kept as part of the syntax of Romance languages. These two goals have been accomplished by determining the syntactic properties of Basque Spanish N-words and comparing them with the syntactic properties of negative elements in Basque and Standard Spanish. Thus, whereas Basque Spanish N-words abide by the syntax of Standard Spanish (i.e., negative XPs are not NPIs), some similarities with Basque, such as seemingly parallel word orders and absence of anti-agreement effects, induced speakers of this variety to interpret the doubling NEG head as an agreement marker and develop a negative concord relation with the preverbal N-word. |