Expletive Negation revisited

On some properties of negative polar interrogatives in Russian

Abstract

Standard approaches classify questions with preposed negation in Russian as a species of Expletive Negation, alleged to be devoid of polarity reversing semantics despite the compulsory morphosyntactic exponence of negation (i.e., ne ‘neg’) realized on the verb. This purported semantic vacuity led to the conclusion that negation is neutralized or erased in Expletive Negation contexts, which amounts to equating the meaning of certain varieties of negative YN questions to the meaning of “the corresponding affirmative question[s]”. I argue against this approach. My analysis provisions two possible merge sites for negation in Russian – above AspectP/vP and above TP. Lower negation, built atop Aspect/v, delineates the exclusive domain of negative concord. Higher negation is introduced in the illocutionary field and serves to modify speaker commitments. NegYNs are ambiguous between these two structures.