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PARALLEL (A)SYMMETRIES AND THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF N-WORDS

Viviane Déprez

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 18: 253-3422000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Abstract:In many Romance languages, negative expressions exhibit a robust distributional

asymmetry. When in post-verbal positions, they require the co-presence of negation, when inpre-verbal positions, they are incompatible with it. In the same languages, bare nominalsexhibit a distribution that parallels the negative one in some striking respects. They arepossible in post-verbal positions, but infelicitous as pre-verbal subjects. Similar distributionalparallelisms between these expressions are shown to obtain cross-linguistically anddiachronically and are argued to derive from their common internal syntactic and semanticsproperties. Both expressions have a “deficient” DP, lack quantificational force and are unableto check the D feature of EPP. Bare nominals may lack D0, but negative expressions contain anull D0 syntactically licensed under DP internal Spec Head agreement or head movement. Asthese operations result from parametric options in DP syntax and have consequences on thesemantic nature of these expressions, the central result of the paper is to derive cross-linguisticvariations in negative concord from independent choices in DP syntax.

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1. Introduction: Parallel asymmetries

In many Romance languages, the distribution of N-words, that is the negative words innegative concord constructions (Laka 1990) manifests a well-known asymmetry. Asillustrated in (1&2) when N-words are in post-verbal positions as complements of verbs orprepositions, they require the co-presence of negation:

(1) I t *(Non) ho visto nessuno I did not see anyoneSp *(No) compre nada I did not buy anythingP o Claudia *(não) convidou ninguém Claudia did not invite anyoneSard *(No’)appo comporatu nudda I have not bought anything

(2) I t Mario *(non) ha parlato con nessuno Mario has not talked to anyoneSp *(Non) ablo con nadie I don’t speak to anyone

P o Claudia *(não) saiu con ninguém Claudia does not go out with anyoneSard Juanne * ( n o n ) pessat a neune John does not think about

anyone

This requirement also obtains for subjects in post-verbal positions, as illustrated in (3):

(3) I t *(Non) ha telefonato nessuno Not has called anyoneSp *(No) comió nadie Not ate anyoneP o *(Não) saiu ninguém There got out no oneSard *(No’) est vennitu neune There came nobody

But this requirement fails when N-words occur in pre-verbal positions. In these positions, N-words no longer require negation for their licensing. Quite on the contrary, they appear to beessentially incompatible with it. More specifically, the co-presence of negation and N-words,which in cases such as (1) to (3) lead to a characteristic ‘negative concord’ reading with asingle semantic negation, produces instead in (4) a double negation reading, which cancels outto a positive statement. That is, the negative concord effect, which obtains in (1) to (3) breaksdown in (4) when the N-word is in pre-verbal position:

(4) It: Nessuno (*non) ha telefonato No one calledSp Nadie (*no) comió No one ateP o Ninguem (*não) saiu No one went out

Ninguém (não) comprou o quadro No one bought the painting Sa Neune (*non) est vennitu No one has come

The canceling effect is well illustrated by the Sardinian contrast given in (5) from Jones(1993), as (5a) and (5b) clearly have opposite meanings:

(5) a.Neune at mai peccatu Concordant reading Nobody has ever sinned = Adamic innocenceb.Neune no’at mai peccatu Double negation reading Nobody has never sinned = Original sin

Parallel to the distributional asymmetry of N-words, the same Romance languagesmanifest yet another well-known distributional asymmetry in their nominal paradigm. Asillustrated in (6), (7) and (8) respectively, bare nominals can occur in post-verbal positions ascomplements of verbs or prepositions and as subjects:

(6) It: Gianni vide cani per strada John saw dogs in the street

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Sp Tengo dinero I have moneyP o Compro salsichas I bought sausagesSa Laura est toddende frores Laura is picking flowers

(7) I t Gianni lavora con cani Gianni works with dogsSp Los niños no jugaban con agua The children don’t play with

waterP o As criancas não fallam con gatos The children don’t speak with catsSa Semus ponnende vinu in ampullas We are putting wine in bottles

(8) I t Qui la notte arrivano cani Here at night come dogsSp jugaban niños en el parque played children in the parkPo Estão criancàs a gritar ao telefone. Are children screaming in the telephoneSa B’at arrivatu pitzinnas There have arrived girls

B’at cantatu tenores There have sung tenors

But as shown in (9), bare nominals are, generally excluded from pre-verbal subject positionsunder unmarked intonation:1

(9) I t * Marocchini telefonano sempre Moroccans always called upSp * Niños jugaban en el parque Children are playing in the parkP o ??Criancas estão a gritar ao telefone Children are screaming in the telefoneSa *Sórrikes an mandicatu su casu Mice ate the cheese

*Vinu at crentiatu sa tiadza Wine stained the table cloth*Piztinas sun arrivatas Girls have arrived

In these Romance languages then, we observe that N-words and bare nominals exhibitan interesting correlated asymmetry in their pre-verbal and post-verbal positions. Where N-words are incompatible with negation, bare nominals are excluded and where N-words arecompatible with negation, bare nominals are possible. While these two distributionalasymmetries have been previously noted in the generative literature, they have not generallybeen assumed to relate to one another or to result from a common cause. The required absenceof negation in (4), on the one hand, has mostly been analyzed as a side-effect of a Spec-headagreement relation between a negative head and its specifier disfavoring the redundant overtspell out of both of these elements (Laka 1990, Zanuttini 1991 and Haegeman 1995). Theasymmetric distribution of bare nominals, on the other hand, has commonly been regarded asan effect of the ECP and the lack of proper lexical government of a null determiner in subjectposition (Contreras (1986), Longobardi (1994))2. On such views, since each of theseasymmetries results from conceptually distinct syntactic constraints, the correlated distributionin (1) to (9) is coincidental. This paper argues that this parallelism is not a coincidence butrather a direct consequence of common properties in the semantic nature and the syntacticstructure of these expressions.

N-words in Romance languages have been argued to be negative (universal3) quantifierssubject to the Neg-Criterion, a syntactic principle parallel to the wh-criterion (Rizzi 1991).The Neg-Criterion enforces their A’ movement to a relevant Spec position, i.e. Spec NegP.(Zanuttini 1990, Haegeman 1995, Haegeman & Zanuttini 1997, among many others). Whilethis perspective emphasizes the similarity between negative constructions and wh-constructions (Klima 1964), it does not provide particular reasons to expect similaritiesbetween the distribution of N-words and bare nominals. There is, however, an alternative viewof negative constructions which takes N-words to be indefinite terms whose distribution andproperties parallel in essential respects those of other indefinite expressions (Laka 1990,Ladusaw 1992, Acquaviva 1992, Uribe-Etxebaria 1994, Déprez 1995, 1997, Gianakidou and

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Quer 1996, Gianakidou 1997). On this view, if bare nominals are a type of indefiniteexpression (Wilkinson 1991, Diesing 1992), a parallelism with the distribution of N-words isnatural. This paper argues that the paradigms in (1) to (9) exemplify this parallelism andprovide interesting support for an approach to negative concord conceived as a type ofindefinite licensing (Ladusaw 1992).

More specifically, the paper explores the idea that like other indefinite expressions, N-words can be expressions of variable types. Diesing (1992) has proposed a typology ofindefinites based on differences in presupposition, the presence or absence of intrinsicquantificational force and the availability of QR. Transposed to N-words, this perspectivebrings a new outlook on the parallel distributional asymmetries discussed above and moregenerally on cross-linguistic differences among various Romance languages that manifestnegative concord in some form.4 Paralleling the distinctions between quantificational andnon-quantificational indefinites, cross-linguistic variations in negative concord languages arederived from the differing quantificational nature of their N-words. I argue that this distinctionis reflected in the internal syntactic structure of these expressions and provides evidence for aDP internal syntax/semantic mapping that links DP structure and quantificational force. I goon to show that the internal syntactic structure of these expressions plays an important role intheir external sentential distribution. That is, “internal structure” determines “external”behavior.

From this perspective, the distributional asymmetries of N-words and bare NPs in (1)through (9) signals a parallelism in their internal structure. The idea is that these nominalexpressions feature a common “poverty” in their syntactic structure that is responsible fortheir parallel behavior. More precisely, both expressions are taken to feature a “deficient” DPin the sense that their nominal constituents either contain a null determiner or lack a DP layeraltogether. This parallelism in structural deficiency is in synchrony with the semantic nature ofthese expressions. Structural poverty, we suggest, essentially mirrors “poverty” inquantificational force.

N-words are argued to contain a null determiner. Syntactically, this null head can belicensed DP -internally under Spec Head agreement or head movement, a choice that reflectsindependent parametric options in the DP syntax of a given language. Thus, if a languagemanifests evidence for internal head movement to Do, then this movement is expected t oaffect N-words as well. Similarly for movement to Spec DP. I assume that a null determinertranslates as a variable with no intrinsic quantificational force and must be operator bound. Butif Do gets filled under head movement, the expression acquires its own quantificational forceand no longer acts as a variable. As a result, binding by an external operator is no longer neededor possible. Given this result, N-words with a null determiner are essentially predicted to requirethe presence of negation, and N-words with a filled determiner to preclude it.

Structurally deficient DPs, I propose, lack the ability to check the EPP feature -- a D-feature in Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist model -- unless they are internally licensed. Onlylanguages that can license deficient DPs under Spec-head agreement or head movement willallow them in the Spec of an EPP checking pre-verbal position. Clearly, DP internal licensingis possible only for constituents with a null Do, not when the D layer is missing, a distinctionthat is shown to derive independent differences between N-words and bare nominals.

In other words, the perspective explored attempts to derive cross-linguistic variationsin the licensing of N-words not from the internal structure of NegP, or from its sentencialposition but rather from the internal syntactic structure of the N-words themselves. Thecentral claim is that it is first and foremost the internal composition of these expressions thatmatters for their external distribution.

The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, on the basis of cross-linguistic anddiachronic data, I provide further evidence for a distributional correlation between N-words andbare nominals. As I show, this correlation is not restricted to languages with a distributionalasymmetry, it is also manifest in languages in which the distribution of N-words and barenominals is fully symmetric. In these symmetric languages, either N-words are generallyincompatible with negation and bare nominals are excluded from argument positions, or N-

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words generally require negation and bare nominals are possible everywhere. Based on theexistence of these straightforward symmetric cases, languages with an asymmetric distributionare argued to be hybrid cases combining two distinct sets of conditions on N-words and barenominals in a single language. To understand the conditions at work for N-words in the simplersymmetric cases, section 3 reviews Déprez’(1997) comparative analysis of negativeconstructions in two opposite symmetric languages and section 4 provides a detailedexploration of the internal syntax of their N-words. The analysis of N-words in thesymmetric languages sets up the stage for our investigation of the asymmetric cases taken upin section 5. This section provides empirical evidence for the hybrid nature of N-words in theasymmetric languages based on their internal structure and on the type of negative concordthey license. Section 6 turns to a discussion of the structure of bare nominals in asymmetriclanguages and provides the final account for the parallel distribution in (1-9). Section 7 closesthe paper by summarizing the predictions of the proposed account and its possible extensions.

2. Symmetric languages

Apart from the parallelism observed in (1) though (9), evidence for a correlationbetween the possible co-occurrence of N-words with negation and the distribution of barenominals comes from cross-linguistic comparisons. In contrast to the above Romanceslanguages, in which the distribution of N-words and bare nominals is asymmetric, there are alsolanguages that are fully symmetric in both regards. There are essentially two ways in which alanguage could fail to exhibit the asymmetric distribution of N-words in (1-9). One way is forN-words to co-occur with negation in all argument positions, including pre-verbal subjects, theother way is for negation to be incompatible with N-words in all argument positions, not justpre-verbal subjects. Both patterns are exemplified in the negative concord languages of theworld.

In some negative concord languages such as Haitian Creole, Old French, and Russian,negation is always required with N-words in all positions, including the pre-verbal subject one.Of particular interest to us here is that in these languages there is no asymmetry in thedistribution of bare nominals either. That is, bare nominals occur uniformly in all argumentpositions, both pre-verbal and post-verbal. Remaining within the boundaries of Romancerelated languages, this correlation is illustrated here with data from French lexifier creoles. Asshown in (10-12), negation is always required with N-words in these languages. The b-examplesof (13-15) show that negation is required with pre-verbal subject N-words and that it does nottrigger a double negation reading. Rather in these creoles, co-occurring negation and N-wordsare always interpreted in the same way in post-verbal and pre-verbal positions, i.e. withnegative concord and a single semantic negation:

(10) Louisiana French Creolea. Mo te pa wa pe(r)son I did not see anyoneb. A(r)jen gruj pa Nothing moves

(11) Seychelles Creolec. pa fer narien does not do nothing (It does not matter)b. person pa kontan mua Nobody loves me

(12) Haitian Creolea. M pa we pèsonn I did not see anyoneb. Pèsonn pa rele ‘m Nobody called me

Correlatively, as illustrated in (13), (14), (15), bare nominals are licensed in all argumentpositions in these languages, including the pre-verbal subject position:

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(13) Louisiana French Creolea. malor capa rive mouen Terrible things could happen to meb. O Pon Bro je pa gen koton ditu, je t’abitsyd lonton pase In Breaux Bridge we don’t have cotton anymore, but we used to

(14) Seychelles Creole a. lakaz selma ti brile

House only burntb. ka u kapab gayn larzan u pa i kompran mizer when you make money you don’t understand poverty

(15) Haitian Creolea. Mari achte flè Mary bought flowersb. Vwayèl kon chante. Yo gen bèl vwa. Konsòn fe bwi. Yo pa kap chante Vowels can sing. They have a beautiful voice. Consonants make noise. They cannot

sing

The reverse type of language also exists. That is, there are negative concord languagesfor which the co-occurrence of N-words and negation is impossible, no matter which positionsthe N-words occur in. More exactly, in these languages, the co-occurrence of N-words andnegation systematically leads to a double negation reading that is acceptable only under narrowpragmatic conditions. Within Romance, standard French illustrates this type of language: 5

(16) a. Personne n’est pas venu = DN reading For no one it is the case that they did not come = everyone cameb. Je n’ai pas rien fait = DN reading I did not do nothingc. Jean n’est pas parti avec personne = DN reading John did not leave with no one

Correlatively, it is well known that in standard French, bare nominals are impossible inargument positions, pre-verbal (subject) or post-verbal ones, as illustrated here in (17):

(17) a.*Castors construisent des barages Beavers build damsb.* J’ai vu souris dans le grenier I saw mice in the atticc.*Il a parlé avec gens He talked to people

While such bare nominals are generally excluded in Modern French, such was not always thecase throughout the history of the language. Indeed, they used to be frequent in Old and MiddleFrench, remaining common in restricted environments up to almost the 17th century:

(18) a. Old French (cited in Brunot et Bruneau 1937)Buona pulcella fut Eulalia good virgin was Eulalia

Bel avret corps, bellezour anima beautiful had body and more beautifulsoul

b. 17th French (ibid)Il y a grand disette d’eau par toute cette contrée (Vaugelas)There is great lack of water in the whole areaIl faut ordre nouveau (Corneille)There is needed new orderLe Vicomte lui coupa chemin (Racine)

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The Vicecount to him cut way (cut his way)

Of particular interest to us is the fact that correlatively, at about the same period, negationcould co-occur with N-words in all positions.6 Note that, at time, negation was themonomorphemic ne and that pas, an N-word itself, could be optionally present as a reinforceras for instance in (19c):

(19) a. Il ne li a riens teu. (Charroi 657in RDL p 97) He not to him something hid He did not hide anything from himb. Ne vous vaut riens li escondit Not to you worth thing to deny It is not worth anything for you to denyc. pas ne man poise (Foulet, 260) PAS neg to me weighsd. del suer mie ne quiert (Hulfk & Van KEMENADE p 197) of the sister MIE not wantse. Ne faites pas semblant de rien (Moliere cited in Bernini &Ramat 96:174) Do not fake anything

Thus, it would seem that the parallelism noted here between the co-presence of negation innegative concord constructions and the distribution of bare nominals has diachronic as well ascross-linguistic manifestations.7

As we have seen, French based Creoles, Old French and Modern French are negativeconcord languages with a symmetric distribution of their N-words and bare nominals. Yet theyalso maintain the intriguing correlation observed above. Where N-words concord withnegation, bare nominals are possible and where N-words cannot concord with negation, barenominals are impossible. In other words, the conditions observed for post-verbal positions onlyin asymmetric languages like Italian or Spanish are seen to generalize to all positions in thefirst type of symmetric languages, i.e. the French based Creoles. Conversely, the conditionsobserved for pre-verbal positions only in the asymmetric languages generalize to all positionsin the second type of symmetric languages such as Modern French.

This clear division of labor suggests that in the Romance languages of section 1, theasymmetric distribution of N-words and bare nominals represents a hybrid situation whichresults from the combination of two distinct sets of simpler conditions separately observed inthe symmetric languages. That is, while the symmetric languages each present a unique anddistinct type of N-word, subject to given licensing conditions, the asymmetric languages appearto combine within a single language, one type of N-word and associated conditions in pre-verbal positions and another type of N-word and associated conditions in post-verbal positions,with only the second one paralleling the distribution of bare nominals. That is, simplifyingsomewhat, Italian, Spanish and Sardinian N-words appear to have-chameleon like propertieswhich make them behave like French based creole N-words in post-verbal positions and likeFrench N-words in pre-verbal positions. This view is explored and elaborated in the rest of thepaper.

The idea that N-words in the asymmetric languages are ambiguous is of course not new(se Longobardi 1986 and Herburger 1996 among others). The originality of the proposal madehere however, is that the ambiguity arises not from a lexicon with two distinct type of N-words, but from the internal syntax of the N-words themselves. I argue that, contrary t oappearances, N-words feature a complex internal syntactic structure that may vary with theirposition in the sentence and with general principles governing DP syntax in the relevantlanguages. The core of my proposal is that N-words in the asymmetric languages aresyntactically ambiguous between two possibilities, each at work separately in the distinctsymmetric languages. This syntactic ambiguity correlates with diverging semantic properties,and in particular, with a difference in quantificational force.

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Tackling the hybrid properties of N-words in the asymmetric languages in this fashionrequires first that the properties of N-words and negative concord in the simpler cases of thesymmetric languages be clarified. To this effect, we turn in the next section to a comparativestudy of negative constructions in two illustrative symmetric languages, French and HaitianCreole. We then return to the asymmetric languages in section 5, where I argue that theyfeature syntactically ambiguous N-words corresponding to the two symmetric types identifiedin section 3 and 4.

3. Two distinct cases of Negative concord: French and Haitian Creole

This section compares the negative constructions of two opposite symmetric negativeconcord languages, French and Haitian Creole. Following Déprez (1995,1997, 1999) theirsimilarities and differences are shown to derive from the semantic properties of theirrespective N-words. In section 4, Déprez results are extended with a detailed study of theinternal syntax of these N-words and evidence is provided for a correlation between thesesemantic properties and their syntactic structure.

3.1 Common Properties of French and Haitian Creole N-words

Three characteristic properties distinguish the French and Haitian Creole expressionspèsonn/personne (no/anyone), anyen/rien (no/anything) from standard NPIs. First, theybehave distinctly in comparable contexts of occurrence. For instance, in the prostasis of aconditional (20a), in a comparative (20b) or in the first argument of a universal quantifier(20c), the HC expressions are excluded and the French ones have a negative meaning8:

Haitian Creole French(20) a.*Si ou touye pèsonn, ou pral nan prizon a’. Si tu tues personne/quique ce soit tu irasen If you kill anyone you will go to jail prison

If you kill no one/anyone, you will go to prison b.*Jean pi gwo pase pèsonn b’ . Jean es t p lus g ros que(??personne)/quique ce soit John is bigger than anyone John is fatter than no one/anyone c.*Tout timoun ki wè anyen dwe di'm c’.Tout enfant qui voit rien/quoique ce soit doitle dire Every child who sees anything must tell me Every child who sees nothing/anythingmust

tell meSecond, when occurring in isolation as in (21), both expressions have a negative interpretation.

(21) a. Kimoun ki vote pou Manigan? Pèsonn a’. Qui a voté pour Manigan? Personne Who voted for Manigan? No one/ *Anyone

Third, in contrast to NPIs, these expressions support modification by universal modifiers suchas almost or absolutely.

(22) a. Jan pa te envite prèske pèsonn b. Jean n’ a invité presque personne John invited almost no one / *did not invite almost anyonec. *Jean n’a pas invité presque qui que ce soit John did not invite almost anyone

These expressions also differ from negative quantifiers such as nobody/nothing because, likeNPIs, they are interpreted as non-negative indefinites when in the scope of appropriate

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negative expressions. If as argued by Zanuttini (1991), these properties characterize N-wordsas opposed to NPIs then both HC and French can be classified as “negative concord” languageson a par with the Romance languages in section 1. In fact, DeGraff (1993)and Moritz andValois (1994) have analyzed these languages along the lines proposed by Zanuttini’s (1991) forItalian. On their views, HC and French N-words are negative quantifiers that A’-move to SpecNegP to satisfy the Neg Criterion in (23). Their concord reading derives from negationabsorption as described in (24):

(23) The Neg Criterion:Each negative Xo must be in a Spec-head relation with a negative XPEach negative XP must be in a Spec-head relation with a negative Xo

(24) Negation Absorption Rule (Negative concord)[∀x¬] [∀y¬] [∀z¬]→ [∀x, y, z] ¬

3.2 Differences between the two negative constructions

One salient difference between the negative constructions of French and Haitian Creoleconcerns the possible co-occurrence of N-words with negation. In HC, overt negation can (andmust) co-occur with N-words in all syntactic positions, as shown in (12). In French, this co-occurrence always leads to a double negation as in (16). The two negative constructions alsoclearly differ in their locality restrictions (Déprez 1995, 1997, 1999). As the summary in table(25) shows, HC negative constructions are unbounded dependencies, but unlike wh-movement,they are insensitive to some typical islands. i.e. wh-islands, and they do not manifestcharacteristic subject/object assymetries. In this respect, they quite resemble NPI dependencies.French negative constructions, on the other hand, appear sensitive to island constraints.Déprez argues however, that this sensitivity is merely a result of their being boundeddependencies.9 Their locality conditions resemble those of QR.____________________________________________________________________________(25) Haitian Standard Standard French

Neg Concord NPIs wh-movement Neg Concord_____________________________________________________________-_______________Obey Strong islands Yes Yes Yes YesObey wh-islands N O No Yes YesSubj/obj asymmetry NO No Yes YesUnbounded Yes Yes Yes N O____________________________________________________________________________

The Neg Criterion perspective, which emphasizes a cross-linguistic similarity betweenN-words, takes the opposite compatibility of negation with N-words in the two languages to bea consequence of distinctions in the syntactic structure of NegP. Negation would be a Spec inFrench and a head in HC. On this view, French N-words are incompatible with negation becausepas in Spec NegP blocks their movement to this position, in violation of the Neg Criterion10.In HC, in contrast, since negation is a head, Spec NegP is empty. Thus N-word movement isnot blocked, the Neg Criterion can be satisfied and negation absorption derives a concordreading.

As Déprez (1997) has shown, however, this structural account of the compatibility ofN-words with negation faces both empirical and conceptual problems. First, the Spec/headNegP opposition of French and HC does not generalize to other closely related concordlanguages. Cross-linguistically, the Xo/ XP status of negation appears in fact to be a poor

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predictor of its (im)possible co-occurrence with N-words. There clearly are languages in whichnegation is a Spec that co-occurs with N-words as well as languages in which co-occurrencefails, although negation is a head. Second the semantic parallelism between concord and wh-absorption on which the account is based leaves unexplained important empirical differencesbetween the two processes. For instance, while concord between an N-word and a propositionalnegation operator is possible in HC, absorption between a wh-term and a propositionalquestion operator is precluded (cf. * I wonder if /whether John saw who). In French, whileconcord between two N-words is local, absorption between two wh-terms is not. Wh-absorptionand negative concord thus clearly have different properties. Moreover, as noted above, thelocality restrictions of French and HC negative constructions differ both from one another andfrom the standard case of A’ movement, i.e. wh-movement. Since a difference in theSpec/head status of negation cannot explain these contrasting locality properties, Déprezconcludes that there must be other differences between the two negative constructions. Herproposal is that the differences are located in the nature of their N-words and not in thestructure of NegP.

3.3 Déprez 1997 analysisDéprez (1997)’s proposes that the similarities and differences between negative

constructions in HC and in French derive from the semantic nature of their N-words. Althoughboth are indefinite expressions, they crucially differ in their quantificational force. French N-words, like numeral indefinites, have intrinsic quantificational force but Haitian N-words, likebare plurals do not.

3.3.1 French Negative concord. Déprez proposes that French N-words like rien/personne have properties comparable to thoseof numeral indefinite expressions like zero. That is, French N-words, like numerals, areindefinite terms with intrinsic quantificational force that have, following Diesing (1992), astrong and a weak reading. On their strong reading, numerals undergo QR and have a tripartitestructure with a variable in a restrictive clause, like other quantificational terms. On their weakreading, they are cardinality predicates in a nuclear scope. The results of this proposal can besummarized as follows. First, since French N-words differ from NPIs, they are naturally behavedistinctly in identical contexts (cf. 20). Second since adverbs like almost can modify numerals(Partee 1986), French N-words are expected to support such modifiers (cf.(22)).11 Third, theproposed meaning similar to that of the numeral zero accounts for the negative reading ofFrench N-words in isolation (cf. 21). Fourth, this also explains the incompatibility of French N-words with negation. Since N-words have their own quantificational force, they do not act likevariables. Thus negating a French N-word is equivalent to negating a zero numeral, whichproduces the characteristic canceling effect of double negation:

(26) Je n’ai pas vu personne = Je n’ai pas vu “zéro” personneI did not see zero person ----> hence I saw at least one person

Fifth, as the only possible movement of N-words is QR, which is clause bounded, long distancemovement is not expected. Hence the bounded character of French negative concord follows.In Déprez’s, view French concord involves the process of “paired” or “resumptive”quantification (May 1989),12 illustrated here through an example. Consider (27) in the contextof a charity bake sale where participants are counting the results of their efforts:

(27) a. Zéro personnes ont mangé zéro gateaux Zero people ate zero cakes = no one ate any cakesb. Zero<x,y> [person x, cakes y] [ ate’(x, y) ]c. There were zero <person, cake> pairs in the eating relation

On the relevant reading, (27) amounts to a financial disaster as it is understood that there werezero <person, cake> pairs in an eating relation. The salient point here is that this is a

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characteristic “negative concord” reading that involves non-negative numeral indefinites. Thisreading is indeed synonymous to a sentence with a single semantic negation (No one ate anycake). Déprez idea is that the same resumptive quantification process is at stake in Frenchnegative concord constructions. Since resumptive quantification requires a shared absolutescope and semantic/syntactic parallelisms between the quantifiers involved (May 1989),French negative concord is predicted to be possible only when N-words have no relative scopeand when the parallelism conditions are met. The fact that the pairing of French N-words withnegatively marked NPs cannot lead a concord reading in (28) shows that these two expressionsare neither syntactically nor semantically parallel and that concord cannot involve thenegative absorption described in (24), which wrongly predicts a concord reading for such cases:

(28) b. Pas une personne n’a rien mangé Not a person ate zero thing = everyone ate something

3.3.2 Haitian Creole Negative concord. Déprez proposes that HC N-words, on theother hand, are indefinite expressions with no intrinsic quantificational force. In this regard,they resemble bare plurals, which in Diesing’s view also have a weak and a strong reading, asthey can be variables in the nuclear scope or in the restrictive clause of appropriate operators.Haitian N-words are thus similar to French N-words in being indefinite terms with strong andweak readings. They differ in having no intrinsic quantificational force. While French N-wordsare akin to numeral indefinites, HC N-words instead resemble bare plurals. This proposalaccounts for the properties of Haitian N-words as follows. Strong indefinites with generic valuesupport modifiers like almost (Kadmon and Landman 1995). Since HC N-words permit stronggeneric readings, they are correctly predicted to support them as well13. Their isolated negativereading can be captured as in Laka (1990) with an elliptical negation present in answers t oquestions such as (21a’). As Déprez (1995) notes, bare nominals can also manifest an isolatednegative reading in comparable contexts as illustrated in (30), an example from earlier French:

(29) A qui avez-vous parlé ? A âme (up to 1638)To whom did you speak? To soul = to no one

Since N-words are semantic variables in HC, concord can be analyzed as (unselective) bindingby a negative operator14. As for the locality properties of HC negative constructions, twopredictions are made. First, since on their weak readings, HC N-words are nuclear scopevariables just like NPIs, they are expected to manifest similar locality properties. Table (25)showed this prediction to be verified. For strong readings on the other hand, N-words undergoQR, a bounded process. Thus, these are predicted to be possible only in clause boundedcontexts, a prediction, which is in fact confirmed. As (30) shows, HC N-words licensed by anon-clausemate negation contrast with clausemate licensed ones in failing to supportmodification by almost. Thus while in non-local contexts, HC N-words are essentially likeNPIs, in clause bounded contexts, they differ from NPIs in allowing strong readings under QR:

(30) a. M pa di (*prèske) pèsonn ap viniI did not say almost anyone will comeb.*M pa mande poukisa Jan mange (*prèske) anyen I don’t ask why John ate almost anything

To sum up, Déprez argued that French and Haitian Creole manifest respectively twodifferent types of negative concord. The first involves paired or resumptive quantification ofN-words with quantificational force (May 1979); the second, (unselective) binding of indefinitevariables by a negative operator. These two types of negative concord have differentproperties. The former is essentially clause- bounded and is subject to parallelism constraintsbetween the terms of the concord relation. The latter is possible in non-local domains, but is

12

distinct in local and non-local domains, strong readings being licensed in local domains only.These properties follow from the differing quantificational force of the N-words, French N-words are akin to numeral indefinites in their semantic properties and HC N-words to bareplurals. Déprez further suggests that the differing semantic nature of N-words is reflected intheir internal syntax. In the next section, we explore the syntactic properties of N-words inthe two languages and argue that this suggestion is confirmed since their distinction inquantificational force is both mirrored and constrained by their syntactic structure.

4. The internal syntax of N-wordsThis section explores the internal syntax of N-words in French and Haitian Creole. Bothexpressions are argued to contain a null D0 head. It is proposed, that this D0 gets filled underhead movement by substitution in French. In HC, on the other hand, it remains null and islicensed under Spec Head agreement with NP. Evidence are provided that head movementunder substitution, unlike Spec Head agreement, affects the quantificational properties of N-words. This derives the quantificational properties of these respective N-words from theirinternal syntax.4.1 French N-words

At the end of her paper, Déprez (1997) suggests that French N-words have a complexinternal structure which involves head movement into a functional Do head as in (31):

(31) DP

D’

D NP personne t

In this section, empirical support is provided for a somewhat more complex internal structurefor French N-words which preserves Déprez original insight. Déprez conceived of the DP-internal head movement in (31) as the reflection of a grammaticalization process whereby aregular noun such as personne acquires a determiner/pronominal like status in the course of itshistorical evolution. On this view, personne, in standard modern French, is a determiner heador equivalently, following Postal (1969), a kind of pronoun. This proposal is in keeping withthe French grammatical tradition that views rien/personne as “indefinite pronouns”. Puttingthis structure together with the semantic properties of French N-words discussed above, Ifurther suggest, that the intrinsic quantificational force of French N-words is a consequence ofthis internal head movement up the DP structure. That is, like Longobardi (1994), I willprovide evidence that DP internal head movement under substitution has semanticconsequences. In the present case, however, the semantic effect amounts to a change in thenature of the raised element from a nominal predicate to a weak quantifier. In other words,head movement inside DP functions as a trigger for a semantic type shift (Zamparelli1996).15

Let us begin by comparing French N-words to other French DPs of the same nature. IfDéprez’ proposal that N-words are numeral indefinites is correct, the syntax of theseexpressions should mirror the syntax of other French “numeral” DPs. In (32) are examplesshowing that this is correct. French N-words clearly parallel other numerals and indefiniteterms in at least one of their characteristic syntactic properties, namely modification. (32)shows that like the indefinite quantifiers quelqu’un/quelque chosein (32b) and like the emphatic numerals indefinites in (32c), French N-words require thepresence of the prepositional determiner de for adjectival modification:

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(32) a.Personne d’ important a’. *Personne/rien important No one/nothing important No one/ nothing importantb.Quelqu’un d’important b. *Quelqu’un important Someone important Someone importantc.TROIS voitures de rouges (pas quatre) c. AUCUNE voiture de rouge THREE car of red NO car of red

Kayne (1994:108-109) argued that de modification implies the existence of a complexstructure involving the DP internal movement of the modified noun. On the basis of stackingpossibilities such as (33a), to which I add the parallel (33b), he rejects the idea that demodification involves adjunction or complementation and proposes instead a structure with aDP internal relative clause as in (34):

(33) a. Quelqu’un d’autre de célèbre Someone else (of) famousb. Personne d’autre de célèbre Noone else (of) famous

(34) Do [ DP/PP quelqu’un [ de [IP [AP célèbre] Io t ]]] (Kayne 1994) |________________________|

(34) features a complex DP with an internal clause-like IP constituent, an inverted predicateand a subject moved to the Spec position of de, argued to be a DP internal complementizer.The parallel with relative clauses is in the movement of quelqu’un to the Spec of this CP likeprojection. An interesting fact not noted by Kayne is that in French, this DP-internal fronting islimited to indefinite expressions. As shown in (35), universal quantified DPs with chaque‘every’ or tout ‘all’ do not allow a comparable de modification pattern even when they arebare or carry focal stress. They either require direct modification as in (35a’) or if bare, theymust be modified with a sentential relative clause as in (35b’):16

(35) a . *CHAQUE/TOUTE idée d’importante a’ . Chaque/ tou te idéeimportante

Each/every idea of important Each/every idea important

Each/every important idea Each/every important ideab. *Tout (d’)important b’. Tout ce qui est important Everything important Everything that is important

The possibility of de modification thus provides important DP internal evidence that theFrench N-words are indeed indefinite terms17. This confirms Déprez’ (1997) previousdemonstration that French N-words contrast with universal quantifiers in felicitously occuringin existential sentences:18

(36) Il y a *chaque enfant/*tous les enfants/ personne iciThere is/are each child/all children/noone here

De modification also provides a first argument for the relevance of DP internal movement t othe structure of N-words. But if, as proposed by Kayne, movement to de is movement to aspecifier position, evidence for a head movement to Do like the one suggested by Déprez(1997) is lacking. Within (34), I would like to propose that N-words like personne or rien doin fact undergo further head movement from the Spec of de position to the head of adominating Do , as in (37):

(37) [ Do/ Numo [ DP/PP personne [ de [IP AP Io t ]]] |_____________| |__________________|

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Note first that, in this regard, N-words appear to closely parallel the indefinite expressionquelqu’un, in which an adjectival like element quelque has arguably cliticized, i.e. head moved,to the numeral un. For personne, the suggestion is that head movement is to an emptynumeral zero and involves substitution.

Indirect evidence for this head movement proposal is provided by an intriguing aspectof French DP syntax. As argued by Longobardi (1994), modification possibilities can serve asa diagnostic for the structure of DPs. Pre-nominal modifiers, it was noted, are generallyimpossible for nominals that have moved to high functional DP heads. As predicted by (37),N-words do indeed fail to support pre-nominal modification. It is furthermore notable that inthis respect, they differ from a few remnant-bare nominals that can still occur in modernFrench in restricted contexts. (38a) gives examples of these essentially frozen expressionswhich contain a bare N like chose ‘thing’ and monde ‘world’ and the pre-nominal modifiergrand ‘big’. As (38b) shows, grand is excluded with the bare N-word personne:

(38) a. Je n’ai pas vu grand chose/ grand monde I did not see grand thing (many things)/ grand world (a lot of people)b.*Je n’ai (pas) vu grand personne I did not see grand personne

This is as it should be, if personne, when used as a bare N-word, sits in a high internal head forwhich pre-nominal modification is unavailable.19 For the remnant-bare NPs, in contrast, thepossibility of pre-nominal modification suggests that there is no comparable internal headmovement to a Do position. Their head noun remains low in the DP structure, at least withinthe borders of a NP shell that permits pre-nominal modifiers. Of great interest to my proposalthen is the correlated observation that, as opposed to N-words, these remnant-bare NPs appearto behave essentially like NPIs. As shown in (49), they cannot occur in simple affirmativecontexts without the presence of negation. Furthermore, they also fail to support modificationby almost or absolutely:

(39) a. *J’ai vu grand chose I saw grand thing (i.e. many things)b. Je n’ai pas vu (*absolument/presque) grand chose I did not see (*absolutely/almost) grand thing (i.e. anything)

Factually then, there are two characteristic distinctions between the remnant-bare nominalsand the French N-words: the formers allow pre-nominal modification and require the presenceof overt negation. The latter preclude both. These observations invite two conclusions. First,it is clear that French N-words, despite appearances, cannot be assumed to have the sameinternal structure as bare nominals. Second, should these two expressions differ in themovement of their head noun to Do, as proposed here, then we have evidence that this DPinternal head movement goes hand in hand with a change in semantic status. Thecorrespondence between the syntactic structure of these expressions and their semantic natureis rather clear. As indicated by pre-nominal modification, remnant-bare nominals occur low inthe DP structure. Correspondingly, they are observed to act as variables that require binding byan external operator. As indicated by the lack of pre-nominal modification, N-words, incontrast, occur high is the DP structure. Correspondingly, they have intrinsic quantificationalforce and preclude external binding. We thus reach, on this comparison, a conclusion parallelto Longobardi’s (1994) insight: head movement into Do has semantic effects. In Longobardi(1994), head movement into Do is restricted to proper names and serves to confer referentialproperties to the moved element. Our present results suggest, however, that there is a moregeneral mapping between the internal syntactic structure of nominal expressions and theirquantificational force. Expressions with quantificational force have DP structures with a filledDo and expressions with no quantificational force have structures with NP internal elements. In

15

other words, this correspondence provides evidence for the existence of a DP internalsyntax/semantics mapping.

Of yet further interest to us is the fact shown below that French remnant-barenominals also permit de modification:20

(40) Il n’a pas dit grand chose d’importantHe did not say big thing of important/ anything important

Within our set of assumptions, (40) shows that they are indefinite expressions with a complexstructure as in (41) that permit the DP internal movement to Spec de:

(41) [DP Do [ DP/PP grand chose [ d’ [ IP AP I t ]]

The differences observed above between the remnant-bare nominals and the N-words mustthen involve the upper part of the structure. If so, we have indirect evidence for the structure(37) and the proposal that N-words and remnant-bare nominals differ with respect to headmovement to the upper Do. N-words, we conclude, occupy the upper Do position in thestructure, remnant-bare nominals leave it empty, as in (41).

Besides accounting for similarities and differences in modification possibilities, (37)and (41) have interesting further consequences for the sentential distribution of theseexpressions. First, assuming with Kayne (1981) that a null Do functions as a variable, structure(41) provides a very natural explanation for the fact that remnant-bare nominals require theco-presence of an overt negation. When negation is present, the null Do variable isappropriately bound. Thus (40b) is good. But when negation is missing, the null Do variablefails to be bound and Full Interpretation is violated. (40a) is thus appropriately excluded. WithN-words in contrast, since Do is filled, there is no null Do variable. Hence binding by an externaloperator is neither required nor permitted. In short, structure (37) and (41) provide evidencefor the following generalization:(45) If a variable is syntactically realized as null Do, then its binder must also be syntacticallyrealized.When Do is filled, in contrast, there is no syntactic variable and the presence of anovert binder is precluded.

A further contrast in the sentential distribution of these expressions provides empiricalsupport for the proposed structures (37) and (41). Observe that in (42a), the remnant-barenominals are infelicitous in pre-verbal subject positions even when Full Interpretation could besatisfied by the presence of a matrix negation. That the problem is structural is demonstratedby (42b) where the remnant-bare nominal is felicitous in a post-verbal position:

(42) a.*Je ne crois pas que grand monde vienne ce soir I don’t believe that great world will come tonightb. Je ne crois pas qu’il vienne grand monde ce soir I don’t believe that there will come great world tonight I don’t believe that many people will come tonight

The contrast in (42) is reminiscent of the asymmetric distribution of Romance bare nominals.This asymmetry follows from the ECP if a null D must be properly governed (Contreras 1986and Longobardi 1994). Assuming for the moment that this is essentially correct (see section 6for a reformulation), the ungrammaticality of (42a) is straightforwardly predicted if remnant-bare nominals are indeed dominated by an ungoverned null Do, as proposed in (41). Incontrast, since French N-words have a filled Do, their distribution is expected to be symmetric,as is indeed the case (see (16)).21

Additional support for the structures (37)and (41) and for the semantic correlate of DPinternal head movement is provided by the striking behavior of yet another archaic Frenchnominal expression, âme qui vive ‘soul that lives’. There are three notable facts about thisexpression. First, it features an overt relative clause structure parallel to the abstract one

16

proposed for personne in (37). Second, it has, in the literary register of some speakers, adistribution parallel to that of personne . It can co-occur with ne and have an apparentintrinsic negative meaning in pre- and post-verbal positions:

(43) a. [DP Ame [CP qui [IP t vive ]]] ne pourrait vous sauver d’une telle situation Soul that lives could not save you from such a situationb. Je ne connais âme qui vive dans cette ville I don’t know soul that lives in this town

Third, it has, for other speakers, a distribution similar to NPIs. It requires the co-presence ofovert negation in post-verbal positions and cannot occur in pre-verbal subject positions:

(44) a. *Ame qui vive ne saurait (pas) vous sauver d’un tel danger Soul that lives could not save you from such a dangerb. Je ne connais *(pas) âme qui vive dans cette ville. I don’t know soul that lives in this town

The point of interest here is that this quite surprising array of facts receives a straightforwardaccount within the proposal outlined here. First, note that the frozen relative clause structureof âme qui vive quite transparently reflects the abstract relative structure propose in Kayne(1994), 22 suggesting (45) as the structure of this expression:

(45) [DP Do [DP/CP âme [ qui [ t vive ]]

Given (45), the shifting behavior and interpretation of âme qui vive can be straightforwardlypredicted if we take it to ambiguously manifest the two structures proposed above for N-wordsand remnant-bare nominals respectively. That is, for the speakers for whom âme qui vive actslike personne, âme moves into the head of the upper Do as in (46). Given the structuralidentity with personne, the expression is expected to require no external binding by negationand to have a similar interpretation, as is indeed the case in (43) above:

(46) [DP âme [ t qui [ t vive]]]

For the other speakers, âme is a remnant-bare nominal and does not move into Do. It has thestructure (45) and contains a null Do that requires overt negation to be bound. As expected,given the presence of this null Do, this second âme qui vive manifests a pre-verbal/postverbaldistributional asymmetry, as shown in (47):

(47) a.??(*) Je ne crois pas que âme qui vive viendra a cette soirée Je ne crois pas qu’il viendra âme qui vive a cette soirée I don't believe that soul that lives will come to this evening event

In sum, with the proposed structures, the shifting distribution and interpretation of âme quivive can be taken to simply reflect the presence or absence of string-vacuous internal headmovement into Do. Since there are no other apparent distinctions between the twointerpretations, it is quite unclear, apart from my proposal, how the ambiguous behavior of thisexpression could be predicted. These facts thus provides quite striking evidence that headmovement into Do can have non-trivial consequences for the semantic nature and thesentential distribution of the constituents that manifests it. 23

To sum up, this section has argued that the contrasting behavior of French N-wordsand remnant-bare nominals is a reflection of their differing internal syntactic structure. Bothexpressions are a kind of indefinite expression that supports adjectival modification with de.They differ with respect to their determiner structure. While the remnant-bare nominalsfeature an null Do, the Do position is filled in French N-words through the head movement of

17

the noun personne or rien into the head of a DP internal functional projection. I have arguedthat this kind of head movement confers intrinsic quantificational force to these expressionsas it suppresses their internal Do variable. My evidence suggests that head movement into Do

can have the effect of shifting a nominal predicate into an expression with intrinsicquantificational force.

Given the highly articulated DP structure assumed in current models, it may well bethat Longobardi’s (1994) referential interpretation for N to Do movement and my ownquantificational force distinction are both instantiated. Distinct DP layers could indeed beassociated with distinct semantic interpretations, as proposed for instance in Zamparelli(1996) . On his view, the lowest structural DP layer hosts the predicative part of a nominalprojection, the intermediate layer hosts weak quantifiers and the topmost layer strongquantifiers and referential elements. (The labels that may translate in other models as 'DP','NumP' and 'NP' are of little importance here, as the functional structure of DPs is still amatter of debate):

(48) SDP Strong determiners= Referential/strong Qs

F PDP Weak determiners = Numerals, Proportionals.. Strong Det Weak Det KIP Predicate layer

of NP Zamparelli (1996)

My evidence suggests that head movement into Do is not restricted to the attribution ofreferential properties to nouns. Rather, it would seem, the properties resulting from such amovement may be determined by the nature of the functional layer reached. Within thisperspective, the proposal made here regarding French N-words is that bare nouns like personneor rien have (historically) climbed up the structural ladder of the DP, now having reached thesecond level of the DP structure. Hence, they have the status of weak numeral quantifiers ormore precisely of numeral determiner heads. The remnant-bare NPs on the other hand, are atthe bottom of the DP structure and lack any quantificational force.

In regard to the sentential distribution of French N-words, the picture resulting fromthe study of their internal syntax is as follows. We have seen that DP internal head movementaffects the external distribution of N-words in two respects. First, because they have a filled Do,their distribution is symmetric, i.e. not subject to a “proper government” restriction or itsequivalent, and they can occur in all syntactic positions including the pre-verbal subject one.Second, because they have intrinsic quantificational force and no internal syntactic variables (no null Do), co-occurrence with an external negative operator is not allowed. In contrast, theremnant-bare nominals that contain a null Do are asymmetric in their distribution and requirethe presence of a negative operator to bind their internal Do variable.

In the coming sections, cross-linguistic data on the internal structure of N-words isexamined and the internal structural/semantic mapping observed here with French expressionsis shown to be replicated in the negative constructions of other languages. Section 4.2considers in detail the structure of HC N-words and argues that they contain a null Do. Section5 returns to the asymmetric languages and shows that their N-words are structurally ambiguousbetween the French N-word type with a filled Do, and the HC N-word type with a null Do.Their asymmetric distribution is then argued to follow from this syntactic ambiguity.

4.2 Haitian N-words

Déprez (1997) argued that HC N-words resemble bare plurals in their semanticproperties. 24 Based on this similarity, the syntactic structure of HC N-words like pèsonn could

18

either be a truly “bare” NP as in (49a) or feature a null Do as in (52b), both structures havingbeen previously proposed for bare nominals:

(49) a. NP b. DP | N D NP

My arguments here will support a variant of (49b) for Haitian N-words. A drawback of (49a) isthat it leaves unexplained the fact that pèsonn contrasts with other HC bare nominals in thatit always requires a syntactically overt binder. As shown in (50) indeed, in HC, a bare nominallike moun ‘person’can occur in an affirmative context with no overt binder:

19

(50) Moun vini nan fèt la M envite moun nan fèt laPeople came to the party I invited people to the party

This is not true of pèsonn which, as shown above, generally requires the co-presence of pa.If as proposed by Kayne (1981) and Zamparelli (1996), a null Do functions as a variable, thenon the alternative (49b), the necessary co-presence of pa is expected as a consequence of FullInterpretation, in similarity with our proposal for the French remnant-bare NPs. On thisground, the proposal that Haitian Creole N-words have a complex internal syntactic structurewith a null Do appears preferable. Adopting it, however, raises an apparent problem. We haveassumed so far with Longobardi (1994), that a null Do is subject to syntactic constraints akin t o“proper government”. If HC N-words contain a null D0, their distribution should beasymmetric as “proper government” fails in pre-verbal subject positions. But this is incorrect.Recall that HC N-words are uniformly possible in all NP positions, including the pre-verbalsubject ones, and can uniformly co-occur with negation.

Conceptually, the ‘proper government’ requirement on a null Do can be understood asa need for some form of syntactic licensing. Being defective in some sense, a null Do may failto be an interpretable object if it is not appropriately identified. Proper government, in a pre-Minimalist perspective, was assumed to provide such an identification (see for example Rizzi1990 on ‘formal licensing’) and the asymmetric distribution of constituents with a null Do thusfollowed from a lack of identification in given syntactic positions. Note, however, that adistributional asymmetry of constituents with a null Do is expected only if the means ofidentification are external to the constituent containing the null Do . This is presupposed inthe notion of government which always involves a relation between a (null) category and ahead external to its projection (V for example). Suppose instead that a null Do could beappropriately identified from within its containing projection. Then no distributionalasymmetry would arise, as identification would not depend on external conditions and auniform distribution would be expected. On this view, a distributional asymmetry should ariseonly for constituents in which a Do fails to be internally identified, not for those that have thisoption. This is in essence the solution proposed here for the uniform distribution of HC N-words. (51) outlines their proposed internal structure:

(51) DP

[NP pèsonn] D’

D NP

0 t

In (51), the NP projection containing the bare N pèsonn undergoes DP internal movement t othe specifier of the dominating null D0. 25 As a consequence, null Do can be syntacticallylicensed through Spec Head agreement. If this is sufficient to meet its identification condition,this null Do will no longer need external licensing, i.e. proper government, and the distributionof its containing constituent is correctly predicted to be symmetric. Let us further assume,that in contrast to head movement into Do, movement to Spec DP does not affect thesemantic nature of the constituent, as it does not suppress the null Do. If so, null Do will stillfunction as a variable and the presence of negation will be uniformly required to satisfy FI.(51) then, provides the basis of an explanation for both the syntactically symmetric behaviorof Haitian Creole N-words and for the ubiquitous presence of the negative operator in post-verbal as well as pre-verbal subject positions. Negation is necessary to bind, i.e. m-command,the null Do of N-words which is syntactically licensed through NP to Spec DP movement.

This proposal, although technically adequate for our purposes, would nevertheless bequite stipulatory if no independent support for the existence of NP to Spec DP movement

20

could be found in the language. As it turns out, however, there is in fact strong evidence thatmovement of NP to Spec DP is independently motivated in Haitian Creole, and moreover thatthis movement is obligatory in at least some cases. Consider in this respect the structure of HCdefinite DPs such as (52):

(52) a. kay la/ sa a/ li House- the/this/his

A hallmark characteristic of HC DPs is that their determiners, whether definite, demonstrativeor possessive always occur in final positions. This is, in fact, a rather surprising order, giventhat HC is in other respects a very strictly head initial language. The apparent anomaly of thismarked DP head final order has, in fact, often been cited as a serious sore point for Bickerton’selegant Bioprogram hypothesis, which views creoles as exemplifying unmarked UG properties.If movement of NP to Spec DP is assumed to be generally possible in HC, this problemdisappears. The head final position of Do, being derived, no longer stands in contradiction tothe otherwise general head-initial base order of the language. Quite obviously then, there is arather strong conceptual argument in favor of the existence of such a movement. There is alsoempirical evidence. As (53) shows, the order of complements and modifiers in the Haitian DP,explored in Lumsden (1989), provides clear support for the hypothesis that the whole NPmoves to spec DP.

(53) machin wouj papa m nancar red father my thethe red car of my father

We see in (53) that, as expected under this hypothesis, the determiner follows not only thenominal head but both its modifying adjectives, its post-nominal complement and a dependentrelative clause. This order is easily accounted for under the structure (54), with NP movementto Spec DP occurring systematically and recursively:

(54) DP

NP D'

N’ DP nan t

No AP NP D' machin wouj papa m t

Unpacking the structure, (54) shows first a movement of the NP headed by papa ‘father’ t othe Spec of its dominating DP whose head is the possessor m . This leads the intermediateorder “nan machinn wouj [ papa m t ]” ‘the car red (of) father my’. After that, the whole NPheaded by machin moves into the Spec of its DP headed by nan, with both its postnominalmodifier wouj and its postnominal complement papa m resulting in the final order [[machinnwouj [papa m t]] nan t ]. While easily derived under recursive NP to Spec DP movement, thisorder proves rather difficult to get otherwise and thus provides quite strong empirical supportfor this movement .26

Additional indirect evidence for our proposed structure (51) comes from extractiondata. As noted by Koopman (1981), extraction out of HC DPs is generally excluded. Aquestion term cannot be moved out of DP and the only possibility to relate to this position iswith a resumptive strategy available only in relative clauses:

21

(55) a. *ki moun ou te wè pitit (li) a Who you past saw child the Whose did you see the child ofb. chen an ou pa kwè m di ke li kraze a dog det you not believe I said tail his broken det The dog that you don’t believe I said his tail was broken

If, as convincingly argued by Giorgi and Longobardi (1986), movement out of DPs mustgenerally proceed through Spec DP, the ungrammaticality of (55) is straighforwardly expectedunder my proposal. As Spec DP is occupied by the moved NP in HC, there is no room foradditional movement to this position and extraction out of DP is ruled out.

Summing up, given the empirical evidence for a process of NP to Spec DP movementin HC, the structure (51) is in no way exceptional within the language. It can, in fact, simplybe said to conform to the general requirements of its DP syntax. In the spirit of Chomksy(1995), we can assume that HC Do contains a strong feature that must be checked under regularmovement to Spec DP. This movement, in turn, provides the necessary “identification” forboth overt and null Ds in the language27.

4.3 Summary: negative concord in the symmetric languages

We have now arrived at a clear picture of the properties of N-words and of negativeconcord constructions in the symmetric languages. Two types of negative concord have beendistinguished, a first one which involves resumptive quantification between two indefinite N-words with intrinsic quantificational force, and a second one which involves (unselective)binding of an (indefinite) variable by a negative operator. The choice between these twosystems was argued in Déprez (1997) to be determined by the semantic properties of N-wordsin the respective languages. I have argued here that these semantic properties are mirrored andconstrained by their syntactic structure through different ways of suppressing or licensing a nullDo. In French, the head movement of personne into Do suppresses the null Do and has theeffect of a type shifting operation which provides the N-word with an intrinsic quantificationalforce. Thus French N-words are equivalent in their semantic properties to indefinite numeralexpressions. In HC, on the other hand, null Do is internally licensed under NP to Spec Do

movement, a movement which leaves the semantic nature of these expressions unaffected, asit does not suppress the null Do. Thus, the N-words continue to function like indefinitevariables with no quantificational force, similar in this respect to bare plurals. Being internallylicensed, the null Do of HC N-words is not subject to external “proper government” licensing.Consequently, the distribution of its containing constituents is symmetric and uniform.

As noted above, French and Haitian Creole also differ in their ability to allow barenominals. Apart from the few idiosyncratic expressions dubbed ‘remnant-bare nominals’, 28

French essentially disallows bare nominals in all positions while HC, in contrast, allows themeverywhere. This contrast can now be understood in the light of the differing licensing for nullDo that the two languages have independently been argued to manifest. In French, we haveevidence that Do must be overtly filled quite generally, while in HC it may be licensed DPinternally through Spec Head agreement. Given the assumption that French Do must alwaysproject and get filled under either lexical insertion (Merge) or head movement it follows thatthat bare nominal and N-words with null Do heads are generally excluded in this language.29 InHC, on the other hand, since a null D0’s can be internally licensed through NP to Spec DPmovement, bare nominals and N-words with a null Do are allowed and their distribution issymmetric. As our proposed structures for N-words can be understood to reflect possibilitiesindependently at work in other DPs of the relevant languages, what Déprez (1997) had arguedto be the distinct semantic properties of N-words and negative concord in the two symmetriclanguages can now be reinterpreted as a consequence of independent parametrization in the DPsyntax of the respective languages.

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5. The hybrid syntax of N-words in asymmetric languages

Having clarified the properties of N-words and negative concord in the symmetriclanguages, we are now in a position to return to the asymmetric distribution of N-words andbare nominals in the Romance languages of section 1. Recall that regarding the compatibilityof N-words and negation, asymmetric N-words behave essentially like French N-words in pre-verbal positions and essentially like Haitian N-words in post-verbal positions. That is, the co-presence of negation leads to double negation for the former and is required for the latter. Inview of the proposal made above for symmetric languages, this distribution suggests that N-words in the asymmetric languages have a structure and a semantic nature similar to French N-words in pre-verbal positions and to Haitian N-words in post-verbal positions. If so, effects oftheir diverging properties that go beyond their asymmetric distribution with negation should beobservable. Indeed, if N-words in the asymmetric languages have a distinct internal syntax inpre-verbal and post-verbal positions then evidence of this difference should be detectablewithin their DP structure as well as in the type of negative concord they allow. In section 5.2and 5.3, empirical evidence supporting these predictions is provided. But before turning to thisevidence, the general predictions of my proposal are spelt out to better illuminate these rathercomplex facts.

5.1 General predictions

The idea that N-words in the asymmetric languages have a parrallel nature to the twotypes examplified in the distinct symmetric languages French and Haitian creole commits us t othe claim that pre-verbal N-words have an intrinsic quantificational force that the post-verbalN-words lack. This on my view is expected if, on a par with French N-words, pre-verbal N-words in the asymmetric languages manifest a process of head movement up the functionalstructure of DP, resulting in a structure with a filled Do. That is, leaving aside for the moment amore articulated DP structure, pre-verbal N-words should have the structure (56) with an N-word moving to fill up Do:(56) [ DP [N-word]D

o [ NP t ] ] |___________|

Of relevance to this proposal are Longobardi’s (1994) independent evidence for theexistence of a process of N to Do raising in Romance languages. Arguments for X0 movementin Romance DPs have also been made by Cinque (1995), Giusti (1995), Cardinaletti andStarke(1995) and Zamparelli (1996) among others, although they have generally invokedadjunction structures rather than substitution. For Longobardi (1994), N to D raising undersubstitution is a parametric option of Romance languages which reflects the strength of theirDo features. If this is correct, then structure (56) is clearly in tune with the general syntacticproperties of Romance DPs and can plausibly be thought as essentially determined by them.

On a par with the proposal made above for French N-words, we take the process ofhead movement into Do to endow N-words with quantificational force. Given Zamparelli’sthree level DP-structure, head movement in N-words could in principle involve movement t othe intermediate layer of DP, or alternatively, movement all the way up to the top level ofthe structure. On the first option, asymmetric pre-verbal N-words are expected to haveessentially the same properties as the French ones, i.e. to be weak, numeral like indefinites. Onthe second option, they are expected to be strong quantifiers and closer in nature to universalquantifiers. At this point in my study, I will leave both possibilities open. What is of relevanceto my proposal is the fact that, under either option, negation is expected not to be able to co-occur with these N-words. Under either option indeed, N-words have intrinsic quantificationalforce and are unlike variables as they have no null Do. Consequently, they should neither

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require or nor permit binding by overt negation. With these N-words then, the co-presence ofnegation is predicted to be as unacceptable as it is in French.

Turning to post-verbal N-words, the proposal entails that, as opposed to pre-verbalones, these N-words have a structure similar to that of the HC N-words. By this I mean thatlike HC N-words, they contain a null Do as in (57):

(57) [DP Do [NP N-word]]

The presence of this null Do ensures that N-words will function as variables. Thus, in Italianand other asymmetric languages, N-words with the structure (57) are expected to requirebinding by an overt negative operator. 30 As argued by Contreras (1986) and Longobardi(1994), null Do in the asymmetric languages require external syntactic licensing: i.e. they mustbe properly governed (see section 6 for an alternative). On my view, this will be the case onlyif, contrasting with Haitian N-words, the null Do of Romance N-words cannot be internallylicensed under movement of NP to Spec DP. Empirical evidence supporting this conclusion isfound in the asymmetric languages. The lack of NP movement to Spec DP in these languagesappears indeed largely dictated by general considerations of their DP syntax. While there isample independent support for a general process of head movement in Romance DPs (seereferences above), no comparable evidence for a generalized movement of NP to Spec DP hasbeen presented.31 As seen above, such a movement predicts that determiners should occur inpost-nominal positions, a prediction verified in HC, but not in Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.32

As Giorgi and Longobardi (1991) have argued, moreover, extraction out of DPs must generallyproceed through Spec DP. There is ample evidence that such extractions, although impossible in HC, are quite generallypossible in the asymmetric languages. 33 In the spirit of Kayne (1994), this contrast can betaken as an additional confirmation that Spec DP is generally filled in HC, thus blockingextractions from DPs, and generally free in the asymmetric languages, thus permitting suchextractions. In sum, independent evidence for a generalized NP to Spec DP movement in theasymmetric languages DPs is lacking. It is thus rather natural to conclude that this movementis not available for N-words either.

Suppose, then that the only internal movement available for N-words in theasymmetric languages is head movement to Do under substitution. Should this movementapply, the result will be the structure (56) with it associated semantic properties -- i.e. intrinsicquantificational force and the consequent impossibility to function as a variable bound by anegative operator. Suppose further that for N-words in the asymmetric languages, headmovement into Do is a last resort rescue process. That is, suppose that head movement to Do

is possible only when it is required. A more precise formulation of the relevant notion of lastresort will be discussed in section 6, but for the moment, as our aim is merely to sketch thebroad consequences of our account, this general statement will do. If proper government orsome equivalent constraint suffices to syntactically license a null Do, then in post-verbalpositions, the structure of N-words will be as in (57). That is, in “governed” post-verbalpositions, movement to Do cannot occur as it is not required. Thus Do remains empty. In“ungoverned” pre-verbal positions in contrast, as external licensing/government cannot besatisfied, movement to Do is now a last resort, and it can take place to rescue (i.e. suppress) anunlicensed null Do. The prediction of this proposal is that N-words in post-verbal governedpositions will have a null Do, as in (57), but in pre-verbal ungoverned position they will have afilled Do, as in (56). This suffices to correctly predict that the co-presence of negation will berequired with post-verbal N-words and infelicitous with pre-verbal ones. In sum, on this view,the asymmetric distribution of negation with Romance N-words is derivable from their internalstructures.

A more general result of this proposal is that the observed differences between thesymmetric and the asymmetric languages can be reduced to differences in their DP syntax and,more specifically, to differing syntactic options for licensing a null Do. I have argued that inFrench N-words, a null Do is eliminated under head movement. In HC, null Do is licensed

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internally through movement to Spec DP . In Italian and other asymmetric N-words,movement to Spec DP is unavailable, and internal head movement to Do operates only as alast resort process. 34 These differences suffice to accurately predict the distribution of N-words and negation in all these languages and to account for their correlated distribution withbare nominals. As null Do is eliminated under head movement, in French, both N-words andbare nominals with null Do are excluded. In HC in contrast, since null Do is internally licensed,both N-words and bare nominals distribute symmetrically. In the asymmetric languages finally,since Do is not licensed internally, it is subject to external conditions that determine theasymmetric distributions of N-words and bare nominals. Within a Minimalist perspective thesedifferences can be seen as reflecting distinct feature value of Do (see section 6). Null Do can beassumed to carry a strong feature in French and in HC, which enforces Xo and XP movementrespectively . In the asymmetric languages in contrast, if a null Do is sometimes strong andsometimes weak or if the relevant feature is an interpretable feature (Chomsky 1995),apparent optionality of movement will expected. On this perspective then, theparametrization that derives the co-distribution of N-words with negation and the correlateddistribution of bare nominals is located within DPs.

5.2 Empirical evidence for the structure of asymmetric N-words

The previous section exposes in broad outline my proposed account of the distributionof N-words and negation in the asymmetric languages. In the sections that follow, thisproposal is fleshed out first with a detailed study of the empirical evidence in a variety ofasymmetric languages and second with a better worked out theoretical account of the syntacticconditions on null Do (section 6). Recall that if N-words are “syntactically” ambiguous,differences in their behavior independent from their asymmetric co-occurrence with negationare expected. In the coming sections, empirical evidence of such differences in pre and post-verbal positions is provided. Section 5.3 first considers DP internal evidence, then section 5.4turns to evidence based on the type of negative concord licensed by the distinct N-words.

My survey of the empirical evidence is here limited to N-words in pre-verbal subject vs.post-verbal complement positions. Leftward fronted N-words are left for future work. Thischoice was dictated partly by the available data in the literature and partly by evidence thatleftward fronted N-words do not always behave homogeneously in the asymmetric languagesconsidered here, thus deserving a more detailed study of their own . The Romance “leftperiphery” as Rizzi (1997) calls it, has rather varied properties which are still largelyunexplored. As is apparent from even a single language, i.e. Italian, fronted N-words do notalways behave uniformly. According to Zanuttini (1991) and Haegeman (1995), the behaviorof fronted N-words essentially parallels that of pre-verbal subject N-words. But according t oSameck-Lodovici (1997) this is not the case, as fronted N-words cannot license other N-wordsin their c-command domain. A sketch of how fronted N-words fit in our model is given insection 6, but a detailed empirical study of their properties has to await a clarification of thefacts.

5.3 DP internal evidence

5.3.1 The asymmetric structure of Sardinian DPs : Interesting evidence for thediffering internal syntax of pre- and post-verbal N-words is quite readily available in at leastone of the asymmetric Romance languages considered here, namely Sardinian. As thissubsection reveals, Sardinian manifests a clear pre-verbal/post-verbal asymmetry in the internalstructure of its DPs. The relevant contrasts support our proposal that DP internal headmovement filling up a Do is involved in distinguishing the two positions. The evidence, givenin (58) to (60), concerns both the syntax of weak indefinite terms and that of negativeconcord expressions and provides, in this respect, further support for their parallelism.Consider first the examples given in (58): 35

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(58) a. Appo mandicatu (un’) adziccu de pane kin (un’) adziccu de casu I ate a little of bread & a little of cheeseb. (*Un’ ) adziccu de pane est rutt’a terra A bit of bread fell on the floor

We see in (58a) that, in Sardinian, the weak quantifier adziccu 'a little' may optionally bepreceded by an indefinite determiner un when it is part of a DP in a post-verbal complementposition. But when the containing DP occurs in a pre-verbal subject position, the determinerun is no longer optional. It must necessarily be present or else the sentence is excluded. Thusin Sardinian, there is an interesting asymmetry between subject and complement DPs withregards to the determiner position. A determiner position that can remain optionally empty incomplement positions must obligatorily be filled in pre-verbal subject positions.

Another pre-verbal/post-verbal asymmetry is observed with the weak quantifiers meta'lots' and pace 'little'. As shown in (59), meta and pace can optionally occur either in a pre-nominal or in a post-nominal position whenever their containing DP is in a complementposition. But when the containing DP is in a pre-verbal subject position, only the pre-nominalposition is acceptable:

(59) a. Amus bitu [{meta, pacu} vinu] Amus bitu [vinu { meta, pacu}] We drank much/little wineb. ??Vinu pacu est restatu Pacu vinu est restatu Little wine is left

c. ?? Turistas meta(s) sun vennitos Metas turistas sun vennitos

Many tourists came

According to Jones (1993), post-nominal meta and pacu have the categorial status ofadjectival modifiers as they can, for example, be predicates in copular sentences. In pre-nominal positions, however, these elements no longer have an adjectival status. Rather, theyact like determiners. If Jones’ insight is correct, (58) and (59) can be seen as parallelconsequences of the same requirement for an overt determiner in a pre-verbal subject DP. In(58), on the one hand, an optional determiner becomes obligatory. In (59), on the other hand,an adjectival modifier becomes determiner-like. Such data provide direct evidence thatSardinian pre-verbal and post-verbal DPs have a distinct structure that involves the filling ofthe determiner position.

While (58) and (59) concern Sardinian indefinite DPs, comparable evidence fornegative concord expressions is given in (60):

(60) a. No appo lessu [ perunu libru ] No appo lessu [ libru perunu ] I did not read any bookb. *[Libru perunu] m’est piaghitu [Perunu libru] m’est piaghitu No book pleased me

In (60), we see that the contrast observed above between pre-nominal and post-nominal meta and pacu is here replicated with the N-word perunu (any/no). In complementDPs (60a), perunu can be either pre-nominal or post-nominal. In pre-verbal subject DPs,however, it must pre-nominal. Of particular interest, moreover, is the fact that theasymmetric distribution of perunu correlates with the now familiar restriction about the co-occurrence of negation. As shown in (60a), Sardinian post-verbal DPs with perunu, like otherpost-verbal N-words in asymmetric languages, require the overt presence of the negation no t o

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be licensed. With pre-verbal subject N-words on the other hand, negation is not required and,when present, it leads to double negation as in (5) above.

The relevant facts having been presented, let us foray into Sardinian DP syntax t odetail the structure of these asymmetric DPs. Along with Jones (1993), let us assume that on apar with meta and pacu, perunu has the ambiguous syntactic status of an adjectival modifier orof a determiner. Structurally, this intuition can be implemented as follows. When DPs are inpost-verbal complement positions, perunu is an adjectival modifier that occurs either as arightward adjunct to the nominal projection or as its Specifier36. In either positions, adjectivalperunu is compatible with a null determiner which, like the null Do of other N-words, requiresthe overt presence of negation to be bound. This proposal is schematized in (61):

(61) a. [DP 0 [NP [N’ libru ] [ADJ perunu] ]b. [DP 0 [ NP [ADJ perunu] [N’ libru]]

In pre-verbal subject positions, however, following the evidence in (58) that a determinerposition cannot remain empty, we take perunu ( as well as meta and pacu) to raise to Do undersubstitution. The resulting structure (62) features the determiner perunnu in pre-verbal subjectDPs:

(62) subject position[DP [D

o perunu] [NP t libru ]]

Here as before, if Do is filled, the expression cannot function as a variable. Incompatibility ofthese pre-verbal N-expressions with overt negation is thus straightforwardly predicted.

Note that in elaborating the structure of these Sardinian DPs, we have extended thepossibility of head movement into Do to elements other than nouns. That is, besides the Ninto Do-movement turning a noun into a determiner argued for in French, (62) a movementinto Do that affect a modifier. Such an extension seems in fact fairly natural. The idea thatlexical formatives can be ambiguously modifier-like and determiner-like is indeed not new.Linguists have previously made comparable proposals for numerals, which share propertieswith both modifiers (under their weak cardinal interpretation, they are “numeral adjectives”)and determiners (under their strong quantificational interpretation) (Kadmon, Bowers 1991,Guisti 1993). Similarly, the ambiguous interpretation of weak terms like many/few between aproportional and a cardinal reading (discussed in Partee 1989) has been argued to correspond t odifferent syntactic structures (see for instance Babko-Malaya 1992 for Russian, cf. Bowers1991 for English, Guisti 1993 for Italian).37 (62) above is thus merely an extension of thesepossibilities to N-words that manifest a distribution comparable to these weak terms.

Summing up, we have seen that Sardinian manifests a number of interesting pre/post-verbal asymmetries in the distribution of its indefinite expressions. I have argued that theseasymmetries reflect strategies to fill up the Do position of a pre-verbal nominal expressionunder insertion of an otherwise optional determiner or under movement of a modifier into thehead of Do . N-words such as perunu occupy alternatively a modifier and a determinerposition, an ambiguity detectable in their DP internal distribution that correlates with thediffering co-occurrence of negation. These contrasts thus provide significant confirmation thatN-words in asymmetric languages can have an ambiguous syntax involving a null determiner inpost-verbal positions and a filled determiner in pre-verbal subject positions. The followingsubsections review comparable evidence in the other asymmetric languages.

5.3.2 Asymmetries in Italian DPs . Looking next at Italian, we begin by observing acomparable distributional asymmetry with the NPI expression alcun 'any'. As shown in (63),alcun can occur in a pre-nominal position or marginally in a post-nominal position when itscontaining DP occurs in a post-verbal position. 38 But when the DP is a pre-verbal subject,only the pre-nominal position is possible as in (64):

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(63) Non ho visto alcun ragazzo/ (?) ragazzo alcunoI haven’t seen any boy /boy any

(64) Non credo che alcun ragazzo/*ragazzo alcuno abbia parlatoI do not believe that any boy/boy any has spoken

This distribution is reminiscent of the one observed above with perunu. That alcun, likeperunu, can have an ambiguous adjectival status is also supported by the agreement pattern itdisplays. In post-nominal positions, alcun agrees overtly with its modifying noun, as do otherpost-nominal Italian adjectives. In pre-nominal position, however, alcun has no overtagreement and acts in this regard more like the determiner un. We may take this contrast t oindicate that pre-nominal alcun is farther from its modifying noun as a result of its higherposition within DP. In (65) are my proposed structures for this asymmetry: 39

(65) a. [DP [Do 0] [NP ragazzo [ADJ alcuno]] a’. [DP [Do 0] [FP ragazzo [NP [ADJ alcuno] t]b. [DP/NumP alcun [Do/Num 0] [NP t [ragazzo ]]]

In (65a), post-nominal alcuno is an adjective adjoined to the NP ragazzo. Alternatively, itcould also be is in the Spec of this NP with ragazzo moved over it, as in (65a’). (65a’) followsCinque’s (1996) proposal for the post-nominal position of modifying adjectives40 and has theadvantage over (65a) of allowing a standard Spec Head account of the agreement pattern. Forpre-nominal alcun, (65b) proposes that it occupies the Spec of a functional projection, eitherNumP or DP, and licenses a null head in its projection under Spec head agreement. As a result,(65b) is expected to be possible in pre-verbal subject positions with a c-commanding negation,a correct result that derives (64).

In contrast to Sardinian, the asymmetric pattern observed with a l c u n doesunfortunately not extend to N-words such as nessun in Italian. Nessun indeed always occurspre-nominally, independently of the position of its containing DP. This lack of alternation,although unrevealing, is nonetheless compatible with my proposal, as it could well encode thestring vacuous movement of nessun from a Spec position to a head position, as in (66a) orfrom a lower head position to a higher one as in (66b): 41

(66) a. [DP 0 [ NP nessun [ ragazzo]]] ---> [DP Nessun [NP t [ragazzo]]]] b. [DP 0 [ NumP nessun [NP ragazzo]]] ---> [DP Nessun [NUmP t [NP ragazzo]]]]

Interestingly, some asymmetry in the distribution of nessun expressions appears detectablewhen their structure is more complex. As shown in (66), when a nessun DP is further modifiedby an adjective that can be pre- or post-nominal, like bel , a contrast arises. In a post-verbalcomplement DP as in (66a), the adjective bel can be in either order with respect to the headnoun. But when these DPs are pre-verbal subjects, as in (67b), the pre-nominal bel is preferred: 42

(67) a. Non ho visto nessun bel ragazzo/ nessun ragazzo bello I have not seen no beautiful boy/ no boy beautifulb. Nessun bel ragazzo/?? nessun ragazzo bello ha parlato No beautiful boy/ no boy beautiful has spoken

Let us see what this contrast suggests about the structure of these DPs. The goal of course is t oderive the infelicity of post-nominal bello in pre-verbal DPs from their internal structure.Consider first cases with a pre-nominal bel. Bernstein (1993) proposed that such pre-nominaladjectives are heads. For concreteness, I will assume that a pre-nominal bel heads a NumPprojection. The preceding nessun would then have to be either in the Spec of this projection asin (68a) or in the head of a higher DP projection as in (68b):43

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(68) a. [DP 0 [Numpnessun [ bel] [NP ragazzo]]]b [DP Nessun [NumP/FP t [bel] [NP ragazzo]]]

As the structure (68a) has a null Do which is not internally licensed, it is limited to post-verbalpositions. Only (68b) with a filled Do is expected in pre-verbal positions. With these structures,a pre-nominal bel is correctly predicted to be possible both in pre and post verbal DPs, as in(67a) and (67b) respectively.

Consider now cases of post-nominal bello. As above, the post-nominal adjective is basegenerated in Spec NP with the N moving over it, as in (69):

(69) [DP Do [NUMP nessun [ FP /Num ‘ ragazzo [NP [ADJ bello] t ]]]] |_________________|

Movement of nessun to a higher Do position may then be precluded in (69) if nessun is neededto properly identify the null Numo head. That is, plausibly in Italian, a null Numo head cannotbe adjoined to unless it is independently identified by an element in its Spec.44 This has thefollowing consequence. In (68) above, when Numo is filled (and thus identified) by pre-nominalbel, nessun is free to remain in a specifier position or to move up into Do. With bel in SpecNP in contrast, nessun must stay in the Spec of NumP, or else N will be unable to move andthe result is again a DP with a pre-nominal bel.45 But with nessun in Spec NumP, structures as(68) with a post nominal bel contain a non-internally licensed null Do and are excluded frompre-verbal subject positions. Thus the asymmetry displayed in (67) is derived. Here as wellthen, the licensing of a null head appears to be at the heart of this pre-verbal/post-verbalasymmetry, providing evidence for a differing structure of Italian N-expressions in pre-andpost-verbal positions.

(70) reflects yet another interesting asymmetry in the behavior of Italian N-words. As(70a) shows a pre-verbal subject nessuno can create a licensing context for another N-word(niente) in its modifying relative clause. But this is not possible for a post-verbal nessuno.What this asymmetry suggests is that the licensing potential of nessuno in pre-verbal and post-verbal position is distinct. Assuming that it is the N-word itself and not the c-commandingnegation that is responsible for the licensing of the relative clause internal N-words in (70b), itfollows that the two N-words have a different semantic nature: 46

(70) a. Nessuno che ha visto niente avra il coraggio di testimonare. No one who has seen anything will have the courage to testifyb. Non conosco nessuno che sia capace di fare *niente/*nulla/??alcunche I don’t know anyone who is capable of doing nothing/anything

It is well known that existential terms do not license NPIs in the relative clause they headwhile universal terms can. The contrast in (70) thus suggests that Italian pre-verbal subject N-words have a universal force that the post-verbal N-words lack. This follows on my view if theN-word in (70a) is the head of a Do projection with strong quantificational force, while in(70b), it functions as a variable with a null Do. 47

Summing up, although the distributional asymmetries found with Italian DPs are not asstriking as in Sardinian, there is nevertheless suggestive evidence for distinct DP structures inthe distribution of alcun and of some complex nessun expressions. My hope of course is that adeeper foray into the Italian DP structure will uncover further asymmetries of this kind, butthe above evidence appear sufficient to make my syntactic hybrid approach worthy ofpursuit.48

5.3.3 Asymmetries in Spanish DPs. In this section, we turn to Spanish and survey theevidence it provides that negative expressions have a hybrid nature and a distinct syntax inpre-verbal and post-verbal positions. In contrast to Italian, we find that Spanish still manifestsan overt asymmetry in the distribution of its N-word ningún. As (71) shows, ningún has a

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distribution comparable to the Sardinian N-word perunu. It can be either pre-nominal or post-nominal in post-verbal complement DPs (71a &71a’). But it must be strictly pre-nominal inpre-verbal subjects DPs. To be sure, the post-nominal position of ningún is not entirelynatural. To most speakers in fact, it feels rather archaic. Nevertheless, while a post-nominalningún is relatively acceptable in post-verbal DPs, it is fully excluded in pre-verbal ones as in(71b’). Thus, despite the 'archaic' feeling evoked by post-nominal ningún, the contrastbetween (71a’) and (71b’) is robust, providing support for differing structures for pre-verbaland post-verbal Spanish N-words:

(71) a. No veo a ningún hombrea’. ?No veo a hombre ninguno I don’t see any man/ man anyb. Ningún hombre ha llamadob’ *Hombre ninguno ha llamado 'No men have called'

Moreover, when the structure of a ningún containing DP is made more complex, a contrastakin to the one detected above in Italian is also found in Spanish. However, there are someinteresting differences. With a pre-nominal ningún, an adjective like buen can occur either inpre-nominal or in post-nominal positions as in (72). There is no asymmetry. But with a post-nominal ningún, buen can only occur pre-nominally and under very restricted conditions.First, it cannot have its regular meaning but must form an idiom with hombre to meansomething like gentleman. Second, even under its idiomatic meaning pre-nominal buen isexcluded in a pre-verbal subject DP. Thus here again, the familiar asymmetry surfaces:

(72) a. No veo a ningún (buen) hombre (bueno) I did not see any good manb. Ningún (buen) hombre (bueno) ha llamado No good men came

(72') a. No veo a [buen hombre] ninguno I did not see any gentlemanb. *[Buen hombre] ninguno ha llamado No gentleman came

What do these facts reveal about the structure of Spanish N-words? Suppose that like perunu,Spanish ningún has the ambiguous status of an adjective and a determiner. Note that it alsomanifests an agreement contrast comparable to that of alcun. Agreement is overt with a post-nominal adjective-like ningún but not with a pre-nominal determiner-like one. Agreeing post-nominal ninguno, I take it, is generated in Spec NP with the head noun moving over it as in(73):(73) [DPDo [ NumP/FP hombre [NP [ADJ ninguno ] t] ]]Note that this excludes right away the option of a post-nominal bueno co-occurring with apost-nominal ninguno, as bueno presumably would have to occupy the same Spec NP positionas ninguno in (73). The obligatory idiomatic reading of buen hombre in (72'a) provides in factinteresting evidence for a head movement derivation of post-nominal ninguno. Suppose asbefore that a pre-nominal buen is a head (Bernstein 1993). The impossibility of *buenhombre ninguno with a regular meaning suggests that pre-nominal buen may as a head blockthe movement of the N hombre over ninguno by occupying the head position targeted by theN movement. If so a derivation such as (74) with a regular meaning for a pre-nominal buen isexcluded :

(74) [DP Do [FP buen [NP [ADJ ninguno] hombre]]] |_____________________|

The only possibility for buen to occur with hombre before ninguno is by forming a head withthe noun prior to movement over ninguno . That is if buen and hombre form a compound,then they can move together over ninguno as a single head (75), but they will of course have a

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necessary “idiomatic” or compound reading. Otherwise pre-nominal buen blocks the headmovement of hombre as in (74):

(75) [DP Do [FP [NP [ADJ ninguno] buen-hombre]]] |_____________________|

In sum, the “idiomatic” reading of buen hombre in (72'a) can be predicted only if postnominal ninguno is necessarily derived from movement of No over it. Note that in thestructures (74) & (75) , since we have evidence that ninguno occupies a low position in theDP, it will not be able to move over the head noun to a determiner position. Hence in DPswith post-nominal ninguno, the determiner position must remain empty correctly predictingthat these will be excluded from pre-verbal subject positions.

Turning now to structures with a pre-nominal ningún and a pre-nominal buen, Iassume as above for Italian, that ningún is either in the Spec of the projection headed by buenor in the head of Do:

(76) a. [DP Do [FP/NumP ningún [ buen [NP hombre]]]]b. [DP ningún [FP/NumP t buen [NP hombre ]]]Finally, for the cases of pre-nominal ningún with a post nominal buen, I take buen t o

be in the Spec of NP with the noun moving over it. Ningún in such structures could again beeither in Spec NumP or in the head of Do :

(77) a . [DP Do [FP/NumP ningún hombre [NP [bueno] t ]]]b. [DP ningún [FP/NumP t hombre [NP [bueno] t ]]]

Since in (76b) and (77b), Do is filled through head-movement, these DPs can occur in a pre-verbal subject positions where they are predicted to be incompatible with overt negation. (76a)and (77b), on the other hand illustrate possible post-verbal DPs with a pre-nominal ningún andan alternating buen. It is notable that these somewhat different Spanish facts could beaccounted for with essentially the same structures as their Italian counterpart. Only onedifference appears relevant. We suggested above that in Italian a null NumP cannot support Nadjunction if it is not independently “identified” by the presence of an overt specifier. Thisrequirement does not seem enforced in Spanish, so post-nominal buen is compatible with apre-nominal ningún. It may be that this difference relates to the existence of a partitive cliticne in Italian (for Zamparelli (1996) ne is the head of NumP), and to its absence in Spanish.The important point here is that in Spanish as well, we have found evidence that negative DPshave a different internal syntax in pre and post-verbal positions, just as in Italian.

To sum up, this section has provided DP internal evidence that N-words andcomparable expressions in various asymmetric languages manifest distinct syntactic propertiesin pre-verbal subject and in post-verbal positions. This evidence proved to be sufficientlysimilar in all the languages considered to be expressible with parallel DP structures. Althoughthe details of DP structure in each language may require further refinements, the reviewedevidence provides on the whole significant support for the proposal that N-expressions featurea null D in post-verbal positions and a filled D in pre-verbal subject position. In this sense, wehave evidence that pre-verbal N-words have a structure comparable to those of French N-words with a filled Do, while post-verbal N-words resemble instead those of Haitian Creole witha null Do. In the next section, we examine the properties of negative concord licensed by eachtype of N-expression and argue that these too provide support for a hybrid view of theproperties of N-words in the asymmetric languages.

5.4 Properties of negative concord in asymmetric languages

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Apart from the internal structure of DPs, an independent source of potential evidencefor my proposal comes from the distinct type of negative concord licensed by N-words ofdifferent nature. If N-words in pre-verbal and post-verbal positions differ in theirquantificational force, it is expected that the type of negative concord they license shoulddiffer too. Recall that negative concord in French and Haitian Creole show distinct propertiesthat correlate with the different nature of their N-words (Déprez 1997). The question iswhether comparable differences can be found with pre-verbal and post-verbal N-words in theasymmetric languages. This section provides supporting evidence for such a conclusion.

Although rarely discussed in the literature, interesting differences can be observed inthe asymmetric languages between the concord relation obtaining with negation proper and theconcord relation obtaining with a pre-verbal N-word. As shown in (78) and (79) for Italian andSpanish, negation can co-occur with a variety of N-word types in post-verbal positions under asystematic negative concord reading.

(78) a. Non ho mangiato niente/nulla I haven’t eaten anythingb. Non ho visto nessuno I haven’t’ seen anyonec. Non ho visto nessun studente I haven’t seen any studentd. Non ho letto nessun libro d’esta lista I haven’t read any books on this list

(79) a. No comió nada I didn’t eat anythingb. No he visto a nadie/ninguno I didn’t see anyonec. No he visto a ningún estudiante I did not see any studentd. Non ha leìdo ningún libro en la lista/ ninguno de los libros en la lista I haven’t read any books on the list/any of the books on the list

Of great interest therefore are the surprising contrasts observed with pre-verbal N-words. Asshown in (80) for Italian (examples from Manzotti and Rigamont 1991) only somecombinations of pre-verbal N-words with post-verbal ones lead to a concord reading. Othersdo not. Concord is readily available in standard cases like (80a) with niente or nulla, butdistinctly more difficult with other N-expressions, and particularly, with N-expressions thathave a more complex syntactic structure. Contrasting with (78), (80b-e) for instance are oftenjudged unacceptable or interpreted with a double negation reading:

(80) a. Nessuno a letto niente No one has read anythingb. ?*Nessuno le ha scritto nessuna cartolina No one has written any post-card to himc. ?* Nessuno ha portato nessun regalo No one has brought any presentd. ?* Nessuno studente ha letto nessun libro No student has read any book

e. ?* Qui, nessuno aiuta nessuno studente Here no one helps any student

That is, concord readings between a pre-verbal subject N-word and various types of post-verbalN-words do not uniformly obtain. With negation, in contrast, they are always successful. The

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exact same phenomenon can also be observed in Spanish. Apart from the classic case of (81a),negative concord is degraded in constructions with a pre-verbal subject N-word and variouspost-verbal N-words. But no such degradation arises with negation:

(81) a. Nadie comió nada No one ate anythingb. ??Nadie comió ningún pastel No one ate any pastryc. *Ningún niño comió ningún pastel No child ate any pastryd. *Ninguno de estos etudiantes leyó ninguno de estos libros None of these students have read none of these books

As reported by several speakers, the reading for (81d) is one of double negation, comparable t othe English translation with two negative quantifiers: None of these students have read none ofthese books. That is, if felicitous at all, (81d) is interpreted with a positive meaning, wheresome students have read some books.

Yet another interesting distinction between the two types of negative concord isreported for Spanish in Español-Echevarría (1994). As shown in (82a), post-verbal N-wordswith negation can be modified by casi 'almost' under a negative concord reading. This reading,however, does not obtain when the same modified N-words co-occur instead with a pre-verbalsubject N-word. (82b) is a double negation, as indicated in the translation. And (82c), with arather complex N-word in pre-verbal subject position is judged unacceptable (see Español-Echevarria 1994,ex (24)): 49

(82) a. No he visto casi nada not have-1SG seen almost nothing I have seen almost nothingb. Nadie ha visto casi nada No one has seen almost nothing “Everybody has seen few things’c. ?* Ninguno de mis hermanos ha visto casi nada None of my brothers has seen almost nothing

Clearly, these intriguing distinctions in negative concord between cases with negationand cases with a pre-verbal subject N-words are rather unexpected if they are both assumed t oinvolve exactly the same type of semantic and syntactic operations. Under an approach thatposits an empty negation (or NegP projection) and a process of movement to Spec Neg in allcases (Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1995), uniformity is expected for all these cases. On theview defended here in contrast, differing semantic effects are expected if, on the one hand,pre-verbal subject N-words have a different semantic nature than the post-verbals ones and if,on the other hand, the properties of negative concord in the former case are distinct fromthose of the latter case, as argued in Déprez (1997). For post-verbal N-words, since negation isalways present, negative concord is similar to the Haitian Creole case, which, on Déprez(1997) view, involves unselective binding by negation. With pre-verbal N-words, in contrast,since there is on our view, no hidden sentential negation or negative head, negative concordcould, in principle, be different. Negative concord involves a negation to N-word relation withpost-verbal N-words. But with pre-verbal N-words, it is an N-word to N-word relation. If so,the latter case may involve pair quantifier or resumptive quantification, as suggested in Déprez(1997), a form of negative concord not available in a negation to N-word relation. Recall thatthese two types of negative concord are not subject to the same restrictions. N-word to N-wordconcord manifests an apparent parallelism requirement between N-words that does not obtainsin the case of negation to N-word relation. Thus, failure of negative concord in (80) and (81)may be a consequence of this parallelism requirement on pair quantifier formation. That is,concord may be fully natural in (80a) and (82a) because the N-words are parallel in the required

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sense, and fail in the other cases for lack of parallelism. Further pragmatic and semanticrestrictions on pair quantifier formation, which are as yet ill understood, may also be involved.

Clearly, further research is needed to better characterize these different types ofnegative concord and to sort out their potential interactions. But what is of direct interest t ous here is the fact that the non-uniformity of negative concord observed above with pre-verbalsubject N-words in the asymmetric languages is quite narrowly replicated in French. As shownin (83), negative concord does not evenly succeed with all types of French N-words either.While perfect and distinctly preferred in (83a), at least under neutral intonation,50 thenegative concord reading is optional in (83b), disfavored in (83c) and quite impossible in (83d),which, for some speakers, has only a double negative reading:

(83) a. Personne n’a rien mangé NC reading No one ate anythingb. Aucun enfant n’a r ien mangé Oscillating NC/ DN

reading No child ate anything/nothingc. Personne n’a mangé aucun gateau DN reading favored

No one ate (?? any cake)/no caked. Aucun enfant n’a mangé aucun repas DN reading only No child ate (*any meal)/no meal

Naive native speakers find most of these examples (apart from (83a)) either marginal orinfelicitous and assign meaning to them only with difficulty. Moreover, similar to the Spanishexamples given above in (82), in classic cases such as (87a) modification of complement N-words with presque 'almost' also leads to marginality and favors a double negation reading:

(84) a. Personne n’a presque rien mangé DN reading No one ate almost nothing = everyone ate quite a lotb. ??/*Aucun de mes cousins n’a vu presque personne

None of my cousins saw almost no one = all of my cousin saw many peopleIn these respects then, we see here that negative concord between French N-words presentsstriking similarity in its restrictions to the type of negative concord that arises with a pre-verbal subject N-words in the asymmetric languages. Both license negative concord non-uniformly, depending on the type of N-words they co-occur with and behave quite alike withrespect to how modification affects the availability of concord. Such a similarity is expected if,as we propose, French N-words and pre-verbal N-words in the asymmetric languages are of thesame nature.

In contrast, non-uniform negative concord is, to my knowledge, not observed withnegation and N-words in post-verbal positions or in HC, where examples comparable to (83)are understood to have a concord reading:

(85) a. Pèsonn pa manje anyen No one has eaten anythingb. Okenn ti moun pa manje anyen No child has eaten anythingc. Pèsonn pa manje okenn gato No one has eaten any caked. Okenn ti moun pa manje okenn gato No child has eaten any cake

The difference here, of course, is that negation is present in all these cases. There is thus nodirect concord relation between two N-words. Rather concord is here a relation betweennegation and a multiplicity of N-words. These all are, in Déprez (1997)'s view, instances of

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u n s e l e c t i v e b i n d i n g .Further differences between negative concord with pre-verbal subject N-words and

negative concord with negation can be observed in long distance contexts. Although the dataare rather intricate and surely in need of further exploration, two cases contrast for at leastsome speakers. While negation can easily license negative concord in embedded contexts, pre-verbal subject N-words either fail to do so or do so only with greater difficulty. The observeddifference also concerns the kind of reading permitted. While it seems possible for negation t oallow an embedded any reading, with the embedded N-word interpreted essentially like an NPI,the reading with a pre-verbal subject N-word, if the sentence is accepted at all, is more oftenone of double negation. Granted, it is not always easy to bring out a clear semantic differencebetween the two readings and the judgments are thus quite delicate. But when appropriatescenarios are constructed, native speakers are able to make judgments that go in the directionof our expectations. For the examples in (86), for instance, consider the scenario of a facultymeeting in which student progress is considered. In (86a), a case where an embedded N-word islicensed by matrix negation, Pedro is judged as an essentially lazy student who has done verylittle for a given class, since he has not read any of the books on the reading list. In (86b),however, where the embedded N-word is now in relation with a matrix N-word, this is no longerthe case. Such a statement, if accepted at all, implies rather that no one believes that Pedrohas read none of the book on the list. That is, in everyone’s view, Pedro has not been utterlylazy, as he has read at least some of the books on the list. The same is true of (86c).

(86) a. No creo que Pedro haya leído ningún libro en la lista I don’t believe that Pedro has read any book on the listb. (??)Nadie cree que Pedro haya leído ningún libro en la lista51

No one believes that Pedro has read (??any )/no books on the listc. (*)Ningún profesor cree que Pedro haya leído ningún libro en la lista No professor believes that Pedro has read any book on the list

These examples show that while a long distance negative concord reading is possible withnegation, it is much harder and sometimes impossible with a pre-verbal subject N-word. Thedifference observed between these examples recalls in fact the difference observed by Déprez(1997) between the bounded character of negative concord in French and the unboundedcharacter of negative concord in Haitian Creole. As far as I have been able to assess, it wouldappear that long distance negative concord with negation in the asymmetric languagesresembles Haitian Creole unbounded negative concord in being essentially like NPIdependencies. Bosque (1980) observed, for instance, that long distance negative concord ispossible in Spanish inside wh-islands as in (87). Thus Spanish negative concord with negation,like the HC type of negative concord (see section 3) appears to be insensitive to wh-islands:

(87) No sé qué dijo nadieI don’t know what anyone said

As Bosque noted, embedded wh-questions are in fact the only embedded contexts in which longdistance negative concord is possible with non-subjunctive verbs.52 Further evidence thatnegative concord licensed by negation in Spanish can be immune to island effects is given in(88), an adjunct island context:

(88) Juan no hizo ese trabajo para ayudar a nadie (Español-Echebarria 1994 ex36)

John didn’t do this job to help anyone

But note that in such island contexts, modification by casi is impossible. In these contexts, N-words clearly have properties that are closer to those of NPIs:

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(89) ?*Juan no hizo esse trabajo para ayudar a casi nadie (E-E (94) ex 40b)John didn’t do this job to help almost anyone

Comparable facts about modification also obtain for Haitian N-words in embedded contexts(see Déprez (1997)) as well as in Italian. As in Spanish and HC, modification of an Italian N-word by quasi is possible with a clausemate negation, but not when negation is in a distinct(matrix) clause. More precisely, modification by quasi fails if the N-words bear normal stress(90a). But it becomes acceptable when the N-words are stressed as in (90b). In this latter case,however, the N-words are interpreted with double negation and not with concord: 53

(90) a. Non credo que tu abbia comprato (*quasi) nessun libroI don’t believe that you have bought (*almost) any bookb. Non credo que tu abbia comprato QUASI NESSUN libroI don’t believe that you have bough ALMOST NO books

To recap, the evidence reviewed in this subsection reveal an intriguing parallelismbetween the type of negative concord found with pre-verbal subject N-words in the asymmetriclanguages and the type of negative concord found with French N-words. In particular, it wasshown that both are subject to an apparent parallelism requirement between concordingexpressions. Evidence of common features between the type of negative concord found withpost-verbal N-words in the asymmetric languages and the type of negative concord found inHaitian Creole were also found. In particular, we have seen that both seem insensitive to thetype of N-word involved and that both manifest parallel differences between clause internaland long distance negative concord. While it is clear that much further study is needed t oelucidate their source, these parallelisms nevertheless provide interesting confirmation for ourproposal that N-words in the asymmetric languages have hybrid properties that mirrors thosefound in the symmetric languages French and Haitian Creole.

5.4 Summary

In sum, this section has established that there are significant differences between pre-verbal N-words and post-verbal ones in the asymmetric languages, both in regard to theirinternal DP structure and in regard to the type of negative concord they allow. As far as Ihave been able to assess, the properties of pre-verbal N-words in the asymmetric languagesessentially mirror those of French, while the properties found with post-verbal N-words areparallel to those observed in Haitian Creole. While such differences are expected my view,since asymmetric pre-verbal and post-verbal N-words are structurally and semantically distinct,they are surprising for approaches that consider N-words as uniform and subject to identicalsyntactic and semantic conditions in all syntactic positions (Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1995,among others). I thus take the evidence reviewed above to provide support for a hybrid viewof N-words in the asymmetric languages and for the proposed structural difference betweenpost-verbal N-words and pre-verbal N-words and its semantic reflection.

6. N-words and bare NPs: similarities and differences

Having drawn a detailed picture of the syntax of N-words in the asymmetric Romancelanguages, we are now finally in a position to address their parallelism with bare nominals andto explore a principled explanation of their common asymmetric distribution. We begin with adiscussion of the structure of bare nominals and suggest that, in contrast to N-words, Romancestrictly bare nominals do not feature a null Do. Rather, they lack a DP layer altogether. Thisproposal will lead us to abandon the Longobardi-Contreras ECP account of their distributionalasymmetry and to propose a new analysis in terms of checking of the EPP feature withinChomsky’s 1995 Minimalist model.

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6.1 The structure of bare NPs

An influential proposal made by Longobardi (1994) is that all nominal arguments mustproject a DP. As a consequence of this proposal, strictly bare nominals arguments have oftenbeen assumed to project a null Do. Should this view be correct, then the distributionalparallelism observed above with N-words is hardly surprising. Since N-words have been arguedto also contain a null determiner, the expectation is that both expressions should be excludedin positions that do not license them. For N-words, however, it was also argued that null Do canget filled under a last resort DP internal head movement. If bare nominals contain a null Do,the question arises as to whether they allow a comparable option. As we will see however, thispossibility does not appear available for strictly bare nominals54. Consequently, either headmovement to Do must be restricted, or strictly bare nominals and N-words must be assumed t ohave different structures. My arguments here will favor this second option.

In section 1 and 2 we have focused on the distributional similarities of N-words andbare nominals. The fact is, however, that in the asymmetric languages, there are alsointeresting differences in the behavior of these expressions. First, it is well known thatRomance N-words are ambiguous between two readings, a universal reading and an existentialone (Zanuttini 1991, Laka 1990 among many others), and that this ambiguity essentiallyfollows the pattern exemplified in the co-distribution of negation. Just as well known, is thefact no comparable ambiguity seems to be available for strictly bare nominals in Romance . Ashas been often noted (Longobardi 1994, Mc Nally 1995),55 Romance bare nominals differfrom the Germanic ones in failing to allow a (definite) generic reading, genericity in Romancebeing most naturally expressed with a definite determiner:

(91) *Castori build dams Beavers build dams

As shown in (92), moreover, even when, under particular circumstances (see below), barenominals can occur in pre-verbal positions, they can still maintain an existentialinterpretation:

(92) Vaste foresti tropicali furono distrutte dal cataclismaLarge tropical forest were destroyed by the cataclism

On my view, the fact that Romance bare nominals manifest no semantic ambiguity comparableto the universal/existential shift observed with N-words suggests that they do not have anambiguous syntax. That is, they must lack the DP-internal head movement here taken to be atthe root of the N-words' ambiguity.

Another interesting difference between bare nominals and N-words concerns theirrespective distribution in fronted positions. We have seen that bare nominals are excludedfrom pre-verbal subject positions under unmarked intonation.56 But as illustrated here in (93),it is rather well known that they can occur in fronted pre-verbal positions when receivingcontrastive stress. There is, thus, a clear distinction for bare nominals between unstressed pre-verbal subject positions and fronted positions (Suñer 1982). Notably, however, in these frontedpositions, bare nominals maintain an existential interpretation (Casielles 1996):

(93) a. ESTUDIANTES no creo que vengan Contreras (1986) Students, I don’t think will comeb. CAFE no creo que haya Coffee I don’t think there isc. ACQUA ho preso dalla sogente Longobardi (1994) Water, I took from the springd. MARROCINI incontro sempre in quest’ufficio Moroccans, I always meet in this office

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As reported in the literature (Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1995), N-words, in contrast, appearto behave essentially alike in subject and fronted pre-verbal positions. In both cases, they canreceive a strong universal like interpretation, they can license other N-words in post-verbalpositions and they are incompatible with overt sentential negation under a concord reading:

(94) Niente ho detto (Zanuttini 1991)Nothing I have saidA nessuno Gianni (*non) dice niente (Haegeman 1995)To no one Gianni Gianni non says nothing

On my view, these facts suggest that in fronted positions, N-words have a filled Do andintrinsic quantificational force.57 For bare nominals, however, there is no evidence that this isever possible as fronted bare nominals are interpreted existentially (Casielles 1996):58

That substitution into Do should not be allowed for Romance bare nominals is also aconclusion reached by Longobardi (1994). He proposes a Minimalist account that aims atlimiting N to D raising to LF. He argues that head movement in bare nominals with null D isassociated with a generic reading and is possible at LF only in the Germanic languages. Itsimpossibility in Romance is seen as a consequence of the fact that DP internal movement musttake place by Spell Out in these grammars. Longobardi’s assumptions are that Do is generallystrong in Romance and weak in Germanic and that “checking” of an null Do can be satisfiedeither if Do gets interpreted as an existential quantifier ranging over N or N raises into Do

triggering a generic interpretation. These assumptions succeed in explaining why N to Draising is not required for Romance bare nominals. As Do is strong in Romance, checking mustoccur by Spell Out. For a null Do, checking can be satisfied through existential quantification,and once chosen, this option prevents further covert LF raising, as no checking remains to bedone. Consequently, Romance bare nominals are interpreted existentially.

Although compatible with my perspective, Longobardi’s restrictions on headmovement for bare nominals nevertheless present a number of shortcomings. First, hisproposal leaves unclear why N to D raising by Spell Out is not a possible option to check thestrong feature of a Romance null Do. Longobardi invokes Economy, but the extent to which aninterpretative strategy which involves the introduction of an existential quantifier at Spell Out,can be said to be more economical than N to Do raising is unclear. This strategy also makes anon-trivial extension of the notion of checking to a non- syntactic operation -- i.e. theinsertion of an existential quantifier -- that raises unresolved interface questions with regards t ointerpretation.59 Finally, since it aims at preventing all raising into null Do in Romance DPs,the proposal is clearly too strong for our purposes as it would also prevent head movement bySpell Out in N-words and predict that they too should only have an existentialinterpretation.60

A plausible alternative solution to distinguish N-words and bare nominal would be t oassume that they have a distinct syntactic structure. Suppose for example that only N-wordshave a null determiner, while bare nominals in contrast project no DP at all, being structurallytruly “bare NPs” as in (97b):

(97) a. post-verbal Romance N-words : [DP 0 [NP N-words]]b. post-verbal Romance bare nominals: [ NP Nouns]

A comparable proposal was previously made for Spanish bare nominals by Lois (1985) andCasielles (1996). I am here simply extending this proposal to the other asymmetric languageswith similar bare NPs. The strongest drawback of (97b) appears to be that it contradictsLongobardi’s generalization about argument DPs. There seems, however, to be a rather simpleway out. It was proposed by Mc Nally (1995) that Spanish bare NPs are interpreted more as“properties” than as arguments. Assuming this “property” analysis to be generally possible forbare nominals in the asymmetric languages, then Longobardi’s (1994) generalization can

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perhaps be maintained in a more restricted version that would take into account thepredicative rather then the argument nature of bare nominals. (97b) then, has the advantageof preserving a straightforward mapping between the syntactic structure of these nominalexpressions and their semantic interpretation. 61 As the lowest projection of the nominalstructure, strictly bare NPs have no quantificational force and are interpreted as predicates.

From my perspective, the structural proposal in (97) has a number of advantages. T obegin with, it trivially predicts the head movement differences between Romance N-words andstrictly bare nominals. Romance N-words can move into a Do because they have one, butRomance bare nominals cannot, because they lack a Do head to move into. (97) thus providesa simple account for their lack of semantic ambiguity. If as proposed by Longobardi (1994),the generic interpretation is triggered by head movement, then Romance bare nominals havingno Do are predicted to lack this reading.62 N-words, in contrast, will continue to besemantically ambiguous, having or lacking intrinsic quantificational force on the basis ofwhether or not they have undergone internal head movement into Do. (97) accounts for yetanother distinction between N-words and bare nominals. Should the latter have a null Do itwould be unclear why only N-words require the presence of an overt syntactic binder. With(97), the answer can be straightforward: constituents with null Do require an overt binder,others do not.

Apparently, then, (97) quite naturally captures a number of properties of barenominals. As we will see below, it has also positive consequences for their external distribution.From my perspective, however, it raises the question of why N-words and bare nominals, ifstructurally distinct, should ever manifest a parallel distribution. With (97), indeed, theobserved parallelism between N-words and bare nominals no longer follows from a sharedinternal structure. Thus an ECP account of their asymmetric distribution, while perhaps stillplausible for N-words, clearly makes incorrect predictions for bare nominals. It may seem, atthis point, that there is an almost equivalent trade off in opting for either of the competingstructures considered here for Romance bare nominals. If they have a null Do, then theirparallelism to N-words and their asymmetric distribution is straightforward. But problems arisein preventing DP internal head movement in a principled manner. If they have no DP layer,then the properties relating to their lack of head movement follow but it is their asymmetricdistribution and their parallel with N-words that is then mysterious. In the next section, thistrade off is argued to be more apparent than real. Once the parallelism in the distribution of N-words and bare nominals is accounted for without recourse to “government” or the ECP, itbecomes apparent that (97) presents a number of empirical advantages.

6.2 A Minimalist account of the parallel asymmetric distribution

One salient respect in which Chomsky’s Minimalist framework differs from thePrinciples and Parameters model is in giving up the theoretical notion of “government”. Inthe context of this shift away from “government”, a Longobardi/ Contreras ECP style accountof the asymmetric distribution of bare nominal and N-words looses much of its attraction. Formere theoretical coherence then, an alternative approach to the asymmetric distribution ofRomance bare nominals is desirable. But as this section shows, expressing the appropriateconstraint in Minimalist terms goes beyond formal coherence: it also has positive empiricalconsequences. The alternative analysis developed here makes crucial use of Chomsky’s(1995) reformulation of the Extended Projection Principle in terms of the checking of a Dfeature. Its core idea is that, in the asymmetric languages, certain kinds of nominal expressionsare not fit to check the EPP feature and thus cannot occur in pre-verbal positions. As thisaccount has consequences for other EPP checking languages, it raises potential questions forlanguages in which bare nominals have a symmetric distribution . The section will brieflydiscuss possible parametrizations that makes our account compatible with the cross-linguisticfacts. But a detailed consideration of the general cross-linguistic conditions on bare nominals isbeyond the scope of this paper.

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6.2.1 Pre-verbal positions and the EPPWe begin with the asymmetric languages. As pointed out in section 5, these languages

manifest a requirement for a filled Do in pre-verbal subject DPs, which is perhaps most clearlyillustrated by the behavior of Sardinian DPs. The key idea here is that this requirement is areflection of the necessity for pre-verbal subjects to check the EPP feature. As proposed byChomsky (1995), EPP can involve the checking of a D feature. Within this perspective, it israther natural to propose that in contrast to constituents with a filled Do, constituents headedby a null determiner are in some sense “too weak” to perform this EPP checking. Suppose forconcreteness that what we have so far informally described as a “null Do” is in fact a null headthat lacks a categorial D feature.63 It will follow that constituents headed by such null headsare unable to check the D feature of EPP. If so, derivations in which these constituents aremoved to a pre-verbal EPP checking position will crash because the EPP feature remainsunchecked. Consequently, only constituents that have a categorial D feature will be able t ooccuppy pre-verbal subject positions. This much suffices to set the stage of my account. Letus now flesh out further details. 64

Suppose that in the asymmetric languages, N-words with the structure (57) contain anull head that lacks a D feature. The consequences are as follows. Assuming that the EPPfeature is strong in the relevant languages (Torrego 1998, among others), these N-words will beunable to check it, and will fail to occupy a pre-verbal subject position. Whether this “pre-verbal subject position” is labeled Spec AgrP, TP or IP is of little relevance to us, as nothinghere hinges on any of these labels. The only point essential to the proposal is that thisposition be the one in which the EPP is checked. 65

As for the N-words with a filled Do in (56), suppose, in contrast, that they do qualify as“strong” enough to check the EPP feature. This will be the case for instance, if theirfunctional head contains some feature, say a phi feature,66 checked under head movement andthere is an implicational relationship between the checking of this feature and a categorial Dfeature.67 The occurrence in pre-verbal subject positions of these N-words is predicted as theEPP D feature can now be checked. However, as head movement into Do suppresses the nullDo, the semantic nature of these expressions is affected. They now have intrinsicquantificational force and no longer require or allow the co-presence of negation. Hence theobserved incompatibility between pre-verbal subject N-words and negation in the asymmetriclanguages is derived.

As is of course desirable, the present EPP checking proposal also accounts for theasymmetric distribution of Romance bare nominals, and does so, notably, independently oftheir ultimate syntactic structure. If, Romance bare nominals have a null determiner(Longobardi 1994), they would be excluded from pre-verbal subject positions as long as thisnull head lacks a categorial D feature. If , as assumed here on the other hand, Romance barenominals have no DP layer, they will also fail to check the D feature of EPP. Consequently,derivations in which “truly” bare NPs occur in EPP checking positions will crash. On thisperspective, bare nominals fail to occur as pre-verbal subjects not because they have anungoverned null Do, but because they are intrinsically unable to check EPP for lack of anappropriate D projection. What they share then with null headed N-words is that both nominalexpressions lack an appropriate D feature to check the EPP. But in my view, this lack isencoded differently. With Romance N-words on the one hand, the null determiner projectionlacks a D feature. With Romance strictly bare nominals on the other hand, the DP projectionis missing altogether.

We have reached at this point a rather simple account of the parallel asymmetricdistribution of N-words and bare nominals. Both expressions fail to occur in pre-verbal subjectpositions simply because they lack the ability to check the EPP. But an obvious question thatarises on this account is how the asymmetric languages can be distinguished from thesymmetric ones. If symmetric languages are also EPP-checking languages, as seems to be thecase for HC (Déprez 1994), my proposal appears at this point to predict that bare nominalsand expressions headed by a null Do should be banned from pre-verbal subject positions in theselanguages as well. This is evidently the wrong result. Clearly, bare nomimals can be pre-verbal

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subjects in many languages and, as argued above for Haitian Creole at least, so can subject N-words containing a null D. As it now stands then, the proposal is too strong. Within our set ofassumptions, there are at least two options for amending this situation. The first option is t oparametrize the EPP and the second one, to parametrize the structure of bare nominals. I’llbriefly consider each in turn, but arriving at a final decision, as in depth consideration of thegeneral cross-linguistic distribution of bare nominals and null determiners lies beyond the scopeof this paper.

Besides the strong/weak opposition standard in Minimalist accounts, parametrizationof the EPP could involve the nature of the feature being checked. In Chomsky (1995), it isproposed that EPP involves the checking of either a D or an N feature. This dual possibilitycould easily be parametrized. Let us assume then that EPP-checking can involve a D feature insome languages, and an N feature in other languages and furthermore that the division is by andlarge located along the lines of the pro-drop/rich agreement parameter. Within the generativetradition, rich agreement has long been conceived as implying a “pronominal” nature(Chomsky 1981) and “pronouns” have in turn been thought to share categorial properties withdeterminers (Postal (1969)). Thus the proposal that rich agreement languages should beassociated with the checking of a D feature seems rather natural. For languages with pooragreement on the other hand, EPP could involve the checking of an N feature. The relevantconsequence for my proposal is that in languages where an N feature is sufficient to check theEPP, bare nominals can satisfy this checking without a DP layer. Should such a languagefeature expressions that are strictly bare NPs, the prediction is now that they should bepossible in pre-verbal subject positions. EPP checking should also be successful for nominalconstituents with null determiners if the N feature of their projection is visible, as wouldpresumably be the case if a DP-internal movement brings the nominal projection within thechecking domain of the null D under Spec head agreement as in HC. In these N-EPP checkinglanguages then, bare NP nominals and empty headed N-words with internal checking will beable to occupy pre-verbal subject positions. The reader can verify that this parametrizationmaintains our current results for asymmetric languages and correctly predicts the possibleoccurrence of pre-verbal bare nominals in EEP checking languages with poor agreement, suchas English, German, Haitian Creole68 and the French based creoles. The second option involves parametrizing the structure of bare nominals. That is,although I have argued that in Romance, bare nominals lack a DP layer altogether, it may wellbe that in other languages they do project a DP with a null Do. There is, here as well, a rathernatural motivation for this parametrization. We have seen above that Romance strictly barenominals lack a generic interpretation, which both the French based creoles (cf. 15b above)and the Germanic bare nominals allow. If following Longobardi (1994), LF head movementinto Do is the trigger for this interpretation and if this movement requires that DP beprojected, then this interpretational difference may simply coincide with the parametrizedstructure: bare nominals with a null determiner can have a generic reading; truly bare NPs withno DP layer cannot. Furthermore, if null Ds in these languages contain a categorial D feature,then EPP on this option may involve checking of a D feature in all relevant languages and stillbe checkable by these bare nominals and by N-words with a null D. These expressions will thenbe able to occur in the pre-verbal subject positions of the relevant languages. 69

In sum, I have entertained two rather simple possibilities for languages to allow pre-verbal subject bare nominals. Such languages may either check the EPP differently or they mayhave a different structure for their bare nominals. The first option essentially predicts that inlanguages with poor agreement and bare nominals, the latter should be allowed as pre-verbalsubjects. The second option predicts that languages with bare nominals as pre-verbal subjectsshould also be languages in which bare nominals can express genericity. Either one of thesepossible parametrizations appears empirically well motivated and suffices to ensure the possibleoccurrence of bare nominals and N-words with null Do in the pre-verbal subject positions of therelevant languages. But a detailed study that could motivate a choice between these two optionslies beyond the scope of this paper. I will thus simply leave the choice open, noting that,ultimately, it may well be that the correct solution lies in a combination of the two. For our

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more limited goals here, the important point is that my alternative EPP account be able t ocorrectly derive the lack of bare nominals in the pre-verbal subject positions of asymmetriclanguages without enforcing this result universally. This much has been accomplished.

6.2.2 Some empirical consequences of the EPP account

Returning to asymmetric languages, we are now in a position to show that the EPPaccount has interesting empirical consequences for the more fine-grained distribution of barenominals and N-words in the asymmetric languages. Three empirical facts which havetraditionally been difficult to capture under the Contreras/Longobardi ECP perspective canreceive an elegant account in my proposed alternative. These concern the possibility offronting bare nominals to pre-verbal non-subject positions, the distribution of bare nominals inPPs and the possible occurrence of certain more complex bare nominals in pre-verbal subjectpositions. Let us consider each of these cases in turn.

Recall that as shown above, bare nominals in the asymmetric Romance languages canbe fronted to some pre-verbal positions when contrastively stressed. Relevant examples arerepeated here:

(98) a. ESTUDIANTES no creo que vengan Contreras (1986) Students, I don’t think will comeb. ACQUA ho preso dalla sorgente Longobardi (1994) Water, I took from the spring

On an ECP account, this possibility was problematic as it is clear that these positionsare not properly governed. In my view, however, if, as is likely, fronting does not involve thechecking of a D feature, -- i.e. fronting is not here motivated by the EPP -- then barenominals are predicted. 70 Suppose for instance that fronting requires the checking of a lexicalcategorial feature. Then (98) is not surprising, as the categorial N-feature of bare NPs will besufficient for the relevant checking.

Consider in contrast the case of N-words. Recall that N-words in such fronted positionsappear to be essentially parallel to those in pre-verbal subject positions. On our view, thisimplies that they have a structure in which their Do position is filled. I have suggested abovethat N-words with a null head lack a categorial D feature. Suppose that the presence of thisdominating null head further has the effect of preventing access to the categorial N feature ofthe N-word. Then fronting of N-words will be possible only if the N-categorial feature issomehow made accessible for checking. On independent grounds, Déprez (1998) motivated theFeature Accessibility Constraint in (99), which states that a feature is accessible forMove/Attract only if it is part of the top structural layer of the relevant projection.

(99) Feature Accessibility Condition (FAC) (Déprez 1998)F is accessible to Move/Attract only if F is a feature in the checking domain of the

head of the minimal pied-piped XP

Within the present context, this constraint has the effect of enforcing internal headmovement in N-words to make a categorial feature visible for fronting. Without thismovement, fronting of N-words could not occur, as they would simply fail to be “visible” forAttraction by the relevant pre-verbal functional projection (Top, Foc …see Rizzi 1995). (99)thus correctly predicts that only N-words with the structure in (56) can occur in pre-verbalfronted positions. Note that this account has implications for the structure of bare nominals.To be specific, if the categorial feature of bare NPs is to be visible for Move/Attract, then itmust be that no layer of functional structure dominates it.71 This will be true only if as I haveproposed bare nominals are truly “bare” NPs.

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With the proposed structural difference in (97), my proposal can account for thedistributional parallelism of bare nominals and N-words in pre-verbal subject positions, as wellas for their diverging behavior under fronting. The distinction here follows from a difference inthe nature of the feature checked in each of these positions and from condition (99). As thepre-verbal subject position requires checking of a D feature for EPP, “truly” bare NPs areexcluded from these positions. But no problem arises for fronting if checking involves a lexicalcategorial feature. As for N-words, since their empty head lacks both a functional categorialfeature (D) and a lexical categorial feature, internal head movement is required in both cases t osatisfy the relevant feature checking.

The second empirical domain for which my EPP account presents an advantageconcerns the occurrence of bare NPs as complements of prepositions. In the governmentapproach, the occurrence of bare nominals in these positions presupposed that Romanceprepositions are “proper governors” for Do. This presupposition, however, conflicted withwhat was observed with extraction facts. Since extraction from the complement ofprepositions (i.e. preposition stranding) is uniformly excluded in Romance, prepositions areoften assumed to lack proper government capacity. No such conflicting assumptions areneeded in the EPP account. As EPP is not checked in the complement of prepositions, bareNPs, and N-words with null Do, are expected to be possible.

A third puzzling fact in the distribution of bare nominals concerns their distribution inpre-verbal subject positions. As discussed above, strictly bare nominals are generally excludedfrom pre-verbal subject positions in Romance. Somewhat surprisingly, however, theconjunction of two such bare nominals is quite generally accepted.(99) a. viejos y niños escuchaban con atención sus palabras Contreras (1986)

Old people and children have listened with attention to his wordsb . c a n i e g a t t i s i e r a n o g i a addormentati Longobardi

(1994) dog and cate have already fallen asleep

As it is difficult to see how conjunction could affect the “proper government” status of a nullD, facts such as (99) have remained mysterious given an ECP account. Within the EPPalternative, however, this rather surprising fact can easily be accounted for. Assume withKayne (1994), that in coordinated structures, the conjunction is the head of the constituent asin (100). Since conjunctions have a syntactic status close to that of determiners, they canquite plausibly be assumed to have a categorial D feature. If so, conjoined bare nominals shouldbe able to check the EPP, which predicts that they will be felicitous in pre-verbal subjectposition: 72

(100) ConjP = + D

NP Conj’ Cani e NP

It thus appears that besides its formal compatibility with the Minimalist Program, theEPP proposal developed here has empirical advantages over an ECP account, notably for thedistribution of bare nominals in pre-verbal positions. 73

The proposed account also has different implications for post-verbal N-words.Contrary to the ECP approach, the EPP account imposes no particular syntactic condition ona null Do besides the requirement of being properly bound (i.e. m-commanded) by a relevantoperator to satisfy FI. Thus N-words with null Dos are of course allowed in complementpositions but they should also be allowed in positions that are not so clearly properly governed.That this is indeed the case is shown by examples like (101), where the post-verbal subjectposition is arguably not lexically governed.

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(101) 'Non ha mangiato la torta nessun bambino/nessuno'74

Not has eaten the tart no child/noone

An important question that arises for post-verbal positions in this account is whetherthey allow N-words with a filled Do. It was suggested in section 5.1 that, in the asymmetriclanguages, movement into Do is only a “rescue” process that does not take place in post-verbalpositions for reasons of Economy. But how Economy comes into play in the present accounthas yet to be spelled out . We turn to this task in the next subsection.

6.3 Post-verbal N-words : Economy and last resort

In this section, the consequences of my proposal for N-words in post-verbal positionsare considered and a more technical characterization of the Economy condition pertinent t otheir distribution is sketched. I consider the empirical limitations on N-words with filled Do inthese positions and a formulation of the constraints on DP internal head movement thatenable their derivation.

Let us first consider the empirical consequences of movement into Do for post-verbalN-words. Since N-words with a filled Do are incompatible with overt negation, allowing headmovement in post-verbal N-words predicts that they should be able to occur at least in somecases without an accompanying negation. The question then is, are such examples possible andif not, how can this impossibility be derived in the present account.

Let us first survey the empirical evidence. As reported in various places in theliterature, post-verbal N-words without a negation appear to be possible at least in someinformal Italian registers. Ladusaw (1992, fn. 10) for one, notes that contrary to thepredictions of his analysis of negative concord, sentences such as (102) are possible in theinformal register of one of his informant (A. Zucchi):

(102) Mario ha visto nessunoMario has seen nooneHa telefonato nessunoNoone has called

Similarly, Bernini and Ramat (1996) note that “The reduction of NEG2 (concord) to NEG3(single negation) in sentences of the type exemplified in (7) [here 103] is typical ofsubstandard, colloquial and popular varieties (particularly in the North)” (p 21).

(103) Ma c’ era niente da farebut there was nothing to doSeppi nulla fino a che andai a casaI knew nothing before I came homePoliticamente erano nientePolitically, they are nothing

These authors even go as far as asserting that these are “constructions consistently attested ata non-literary level, particularly in northern Italy” (p 21). In Spanish, attested examples ofpost-verbal N-words without an accompanying negative term are provided in Herburger(1996).

(104) ...dije bajito a nadie que todo era mioI said softly to no one that everything was mineSe lo conte exactamente A NADIEI told it exactly to noone

I conclude from this evidence that the occurrence of N-words with a filled Do in post-verbalpositions is not systematically excluded. However, it is also undeniable that this possibility,

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apart from dialectal or register variation, has a rather marked status. Thus, freely allowing N-words will a filled Do to occur in post-verbal positions will not account for this marked status.This is where, I suggest, Economy considerations can come into play.

I have proposed that N-words with filled Ds are derived under DP-internal headmovement checking a phi-feature, an interpretable feature in Chomsky (1995) of the kindthat allow but does not require checking. In terms of global Economy, all other things beingequal, a derivation with a filled D-N-word is more costly than a derivation with an unraised nullD N-word. The former involves an additional movement operation that the latter lacks. Forpre-verbal (subject) positions, as a derivation with unraised N-words simply crashes, the morecostly derivation with the raised N-word can win out. That is, Economy considerations do notcome into play here, simply because there is only one convergent derivation. The relevantEconomy cases then are the post-verbal positions. The situation there, however, appears atfirst somewhat complicated by the fact that besides having distinct structure for N-words,examples with post-verbal raised N-words such as (102) also differ from the more regular casesby the absence of overt negation. An Economy story thus seems to have to comparederivations that contain distinct lexical items i.e. distinct numerations, with or without anovert negation. This kind of comparison, however, is excluded in most current approaches t oEconomy, where only derivations with identical numerations can be compared (Chomksy1995). This apparent problem however, can be avoided if following Laka (1990), all sentencesare assumed to equally project a functional projection GP that can be spelled out positively,with no overt marker, or negatively with a negation marker. On this view, the numerations forthe sentences in (102) and the regular cases with negation are equal: both contain a GP headwhose spell out is indifferent from the point of view of syntax. When N-words have thestructure (57) with a null Do, binding is required and, on a par with all accounts of NPIs, wemay assume that the null Do of N-words require a binder with specific semantic properties(antiaddicity, .... or downward entailingness). In this view, a derivation in which ZP is spelt outas positive will fail interpretation unless some other operator present in the numeration cansatisfy the semantic requirement for the N-words. A derivation in which ZP is spelt out asnegative, on the other hand, will automatically succeed. This derivation, moreover, is the leastcostly option, as it does not entail any internal movement in the N-word. Derivations in whichN-words have the structure (56) with a filled Do and an internal head movement will thus beappropriately disfavored for reasons of Economy. They involve one more operation than theunmarked neg + unraised N-word cases, and thus cannot win out when all other things are keptequal.

This proposal thus correctly accounts for the unmarked status of the regular cases ofnegation + post-verbal N-words in the asymmetric languages. It further predicts that for anylanguages that have comparable dual possibilities for its N-words, the pattern of negation + nullD N-words will be the least marked option for post-verbal positions. Thus on this view, caseslike (102) are appropriately conceived as marked options. The fact that they are possible at allsuggests that in the relevant dialects or registers, Do may be in the course of being reanalyzedas containing a strong morphological feature which enforces obligatory internal headmovement of N-words as in French. For other cases, such as the Spanish ones, it may be thatthe internal head movement is motivated by semantic considerations, which, as proposed byFox (1995) for example, may override Economy to produce a specific meaning not derivableotherwise. 75 Leaving the complex consequences of these suggestions for future research, theimportant point for our present concern is that the regular cases of negation + unraised N-wordis appropriately favored by Economy considerations.

6.4 Summary

In this section, I have proposed a new account of the distribution of N-words in theasymmetric languages and shown that this account also derives the asymmetric distribution ofbare nominals. In this account, both expressions lack the categorial D feature that they would

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need to check the EPP and consequently they cannot occur in pre-verbal subject positions. Inpost-verbal positions, as EPP checking is not required, both bare nominals and N-words with anull D are straightforwardly allowed. I have argued, moreover, that N-words with a filled Do aredisfavored in these positions for reasons of Economy. As they feature an additional internalmovement, derivations that contain raised N-words in post-verbal positions are more costlythan derivations that contain unraised N-words with a null Do. Consequently, raised N-wordsare predicted to occur only when Economy considerations can somehow be overridden bymorphological change or, perhaps, by semantic considerations.

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7. Conclusions and further typological considerations

This paper has discussed different negative concord languages, in which a parallelism inthe distribution of N-words and bare nominals was observed. In French, N-words can never co-occur with overt negation under a concord reading and, correlatively, bare nominals areimpossible in argument positions. In HC, N-words require the co-presence of negation in allpositions and, correlatively, bare nominals are possible in arguments positions. In theasymmetric Romance languages considered here, N-words asymmetrically require the co-presence of negation in post-verbal positions, but not in pre-verbal positions and,correlatively, bare nominals are asymmetrically possible in post-verbal positions but not inpre-verbal subject positions.

I have proposed that these differences are conditioned by general syntactic constraintson DP syntax in these respective languages, which influence the internal structure of N-wordsand bare nominals and their interaction with the EPP. For N-words, I have argued that distinctoptions reflect various syntactic licensing for a null Do under XP movement to Spec DP or Xo

movement into Do. The table in (105) summarizes the proposals made and their consequences:

(105) Different ways of licensing null Ds in N-words

French: D= filled Xo movement to D ( substitution) (obligatory)

[DP N-word [NP t ]] + Q-force|_______| * Neg + N-word

Haitian Creole: D = empty XP movement to Spec D (obligatory)[DP [NP N-word ] [D

o 0] t ] -Q-force|____________| Neg + N-word

Asymmetric Romance languages:

Complement N-words: D = empty Do incorporates into lexical head

[DP [Do 0] [NP N-word]] -Q-force

Neg + N-word

Subject N-words : D = filled Xo movement to D (substitution) (Last resort)[DP N-word [NP t ]] + Q-force

|_______| *Neg + N-word

French exemplifies N-words with a strong Do in which movement of N to Do issystematic and obligatory, so that Do always ends up lexically filled and correlatively, theseexpressions have intrinsic quantificational force and disallow co-occurrence with negation.Comparable constraints are responsible for the lack of bare nominals with a null Do in thislanguage. Haitian Creole on the contrary, features N-words where Do remains null and isinternally licensed by the movement of NP to Spec DP. Correlatively, N-words have noquantificational force and the co-presence of negation is required to bind the null Do variable.The same internal licensing possibility predicts a uniform distribution for bare nominal with anull Do. The asymmetric Romance languages discussed here exemplify a hybrid case in whichN-words with a null Do occur in post-verbal positions, and N-words with a filled Do occur inpre-verbal (subject) positions. The two are related by a process of Economically costlyinternal head movement which eliminates the null Do and can be enforced by the EPP or bythe checking of a categorial feature (i.e the fronting cases). Correlatively, the post-verbal N-words with a null Do have no quantificational force and require negation. And the pre-verbal N-

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words with a filled Do have intrinsic quantificational force and cannot co-occur with negationunder a concord reading. Bare nominals in these languages have been argued to lack a DP layeraltogether. Like N-words with a non-internally licensed null Do, they lack the ability to checkthe D feature of EPP and cannot occupy pre-verbal positions.

Given the typological array that my proposal carves out, further options that are yetunexplored seem theoretically possible. I have assumed that in HC, Do is uniformly licensedunder movement to Spec DP. To my knowledge, indeed, HC presents no evidence of astructural asymmetry in the distribution of its nominal expressions that would support a “lastresort” view of movement to Spec DP, enforced only for pre-verbal expressions in thislanguage. The possibility, however, remains open for other languages. That is, it could be thatin yet another negative concord language movement to Spec DP is a “last resort” operationwhich takes place only for pre-verbal N-words. Such a language should manifest anhomogeneous distribution of its N-words with respect to negation, since movement to Spec DPdoes not suppress null D. That is both pre-verbal and post-verbal N-words should contain anull Do and should uniformly require the co-presence of negation. Superficially then, such alanguage would look like HC for the distribution of its N-words. Differences, however, shouldarise in the distribution of other nominal expressions where the familiar asymmetricdistribution could surface. As described in Gianakidou (1997), Greek could perhaps exemplifythis option. As shown in (106) and (107), Greek N-words uniformly require the presence ofnegation in both pre-verbal and post-verbal positions, 76 but the familiar pre-verbal/post-verbalasymmetry is manifest in the distribution of its bare nominals. For Greek N-words to undergo alast resort movement to Spec DP appears, moreover, to fit the parametric options of GreekDP syntax, since as argued by Androstopoulou (1995), there is independent evidence for thepossible movement of NP to Spec DP in Greek DPs:

Greek N-words:(106) Complement position

a. Den ida kanenas plousio. NEG saw no one rich.Pre-verbal subject positionb. Kanenas plousios den perase apo ti zoi mou. No one rich NEG passed-by from the life my.c. Tipota to endiaferon den simveni se afti tin poli. nothing the interesting NEG happens in this the city

Greek bare nominals(107) object position Complement of a preposition

a.Thelo mila/ rizi / hrimata b. Megriro me mila I want apples/ rice / money I cook with apples

Pre-verbal subject positionc.*Pedhia epezan sto dromo d.*Fili mou tilephonisan simera t o

proi Children were playing at-the street Friends to-me calledtoday the

morning

Another theoretical option not explored in this paper is the possibility that the Do ofN-words be internally licensed under head adjunction. The availability of such an optiondepends in part on the theoretical status of adjunction to a null head. But if this is a possibility,and Do is not suppressed by adjunction, my approach predicts that N-words in this case willuniformly require the co-presence of negation. An asymmetric version of this option may beexemplified in the interesting case of Romanian. First, Romanian presents solid evidence for Nto Do adjunction in regular definite nominal expressions since determiners commonly follow

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their head nouns (Giusti 1993). Second, its N-words uniformly require the presence of negationin pre-verbal and post-verbal positions. Finally, the familiar asymmetric distribution ismanifest in the distribution of its bare nominals. These are exactly the properties expected ifEPP involves a D feature checking in Romanian, its N-words are internally licensed under “lastresort” N to Do adjunction and its bare nominals have no DP layer as in the other asymmetricRomance languages.

A more thorough investigation of the properties of negative concord in theselanguages is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. My goal here was merely to spell out thepossibilities so as to be able to summarize their predictions. In this paper, I have examined indetail cases of licensing of null Do under movement to Spec DP and under head substitution.Clearly, however, the possibilities allowed by my proposal are more diverse, yet at the sametime tightly constrained. Possible variations indeed go only as far as available syntactic optionsfor the internal licensing of a null Do under head movement substitution, adjunction andmovement to Spec DP, all of which are standard checking options. From our perspective, thetype of negative concord exemplified in a given language cannot be determined without athorough investigation of the internal structure of its N-words and other DPs.

My approach makes some very clear general predictions. A first prediction is that N-words will be in harmony with the DP syntax of the languages they occur in. I predict the non-occurrence of a language with N to D raising in N-words but no evidence for this movementelsewhere in its DP syntax. And similarly for the other licensing options. In this respect, thenmy approach entails that the properties of negative concord in a given language are dictated bythe syntax of its DPs. A second prediction of my approach is that languages in which N-wordsuniformly require the co-presence of negation should also be languages that generally allowbare NPs. In this sense, there should be a correlation between the distribution of N-words andbare NPs. The reverse implication, however, does not hold. That is, although it appears truethat languages in which N-words must co-occur with negation are also languages that allow bareNPs, it is not true that languages that uniformly license bare NPs necessarily license N-wordsthat co-occur with negation. Standard English and German, for example, are languages thatgenerally allow bare NPs, yet do not license such N-words. One might say that these languagesdo not have N-words at all, as they do not license negative concord. There are however, manydialects of English and German that have such constructions. For these dialects, the predictionof my proposal is that they should differ from the standard dialects in their internal DPsyntax. Quite generally, this paper has proposed that the cross-linguistic variations observed indiffering negative concord languages derive from differences in the internal syntax and in thesemantic properties of their N-words. The proposals for N-words, however, are not specific t onegative concord. Rather, they have been argued to follow from independently motivatedsyntactic and semantic principles operative in the DPs of the relevant languages. This paper isthus a step in the direction of eliminating construction specific principles in the account ofnegative concord phenomena.

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Language, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Laca, Brenda. 1990. ‘Generic objects: some more pieces of the puzzle’, Lingua, 81: 25-46.Ladusaw, Williams. 1979. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations. Ph. D. dissertation,

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(eds) Logical Structure and Linguistic Structure, Kluwer, Dordrecht.Longobardi, Guiseppe. 1994. ‘Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement insyntax

and Logical form’, Linguistic Inquiry 25(4): 609-665.Lumsden, John. 1991. ‘La distribution des modificateurs dans le syntagme nominal en Haitien’,in

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Rochester.Zanutttini, Rafaella. 1991. Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation: A Comparative Studyof

Romance Languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Zanuttini, Rafaella. 1995. ‘Re-examining negative clauses’, in G.Cinque, J. Koster, J-YPollock, L Rizzi, R.Zanuttini (eds). Path Towards Universal Grammar: Studies in Honorof Richard Kayne,

427-453, Georgetown University Press.

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AcknowledgmentsThis paper develops ideas originally presented at the 1996 GLOW meeting in Athens,

at LSRL 1997 and Going Romance 1997, in Grenoble, Tours and HESS- Paris and at MIT,CUNY and SUNY Stony Brook. I wish to thank the linguists present at these talks and moreparticularly Richard Kayne, Gennaro Chierchia, Chris Corne, Anastasia Giannakidou, ManuelEspanol-Echvarria, Marcel Den Dikken, Judy Bernstein, Richard Larson, Pino Longobardi, ,Roger Schwartzshild , Karina Wilkinson, Norbert Hornstein, Ian Roberts, and LilianeHaegeman for useful comments and discussions at various points of this work. Many peoplehave generously contributed their native speaker judgments on various languages. I am gratefulto Anna Pairet, Eric Bakovic, Itziar Laka for Spanish, Manuela Ambar, Juan Costa forPortuguese, Roberto Zamparelli, Anna Cardinalletti, Vieri Sameck-Lodovici , Cecilia Poletto,Fabio Pianesi, Alessandra Giorgi for Italian, Patrice Kuzniak, Blandine Laferrere, Gilles Martin,Christian Graff, Catherine Laforest and Marie-Odile Junker for Standard French, Marie-Therese Vinet and France Martineau for Quebec French, Michel DeGraff, Claudie and JosianeHurdicourt Barnes, Jean Louis Coquillot and Francois Canal for Haitain Creole, Sabine Iatridou,Annastasia Giannakidou and Ahonto Terzi for Greek. Thanks finally to the anonymousreviewers who have contributed to positive improvements of this paper. All remaining errorsare my own.

1 We return to sentences containing stressed pre-verbal fronted bare NPs and N-words in section 6.

2 Other accounts have involved Case marking or incorporation. See Lois (1985) and references therein.

3 That N-words are universal quantifiers is proposed in Zanuttini (1991) but abandoned in Zanuttini (1995).Haegeman (1995), who adopts Zanuttini (1991) for her semantic characterization of Negative Concord, alsotakes N-words to be negative quantifiers but offers no details as to their semantic nature. Van den Woudenand Zwart (1993) explicitly assume that N-words are semantically ambiguous, one of their meanings beingthat of a universal quantifier.

4 For an investigation of negative constructions in Germanic languages, see Haegeman (1995). Shetakes negative concord to be a “by-product of the application of the Neg-Criterion”, which is a universalsyntactic principle, and leaves cross-linguistic variations among concord languages unexplained. Haegemanwrites: “There is no general correlation between NC and the presence of an overt Nego....... We leave theissue of what determines the availability of NC for future research.” (p 166). My proposal, which linksnegative concord to DP structure, makes predictions for Germanic languages. As it turns out, Dutch andWest Flemish N-words share many of their properties (in particular scrambling) with other indefinites. For acritic of Haegeman’s Neg Criterion perspective and interesting arguments linking the behavior of Dutchnegative expressions to their indefinite nature, on a par with my proposal for Romance see Rullman (1997).

5 This situation may also be present in at least one French based Creole, namely Tayo, the Frenchbased creole of New Caledonia. Thanks to Chris Corne for Tayo data .

6 Bernini and Ramat 1996 note: “ In Medieval French, it is possible to find the type: Pierre n’a pas vupersonne, where the negative quantifier still maintains its original meaning of ‘person’ : P. didn’t see anyperson” (p 174).

7 For further discussion of the historical evidence, see Déprez (1994)’s unpublished manuscript. For adiscussion of some creolization issues, see Déprez (1999).

8 The occurrence of N-words in yes/no questions shows dialectal differences in Haitian Creole and isat best marginally acceptable in formal registers of French. See Déprez (1995) for discussion. In HC, N-words are further licensed in the embedded complement of affective predicates as well as in the complementof the preposition san (without) but apparently again with dialectal differences. French N-words areinterpreted negatively in the first of these contexts and existentially in the second one.

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9 For a thorough discussion of the claim that French Negative Concord is clause bounded, seeespecially Déprez (1995, 1999) and for a summary, Déprez (1997).

10 Note that on this NegP account sentences like (16) are expected to be fully ungrammatical because theyviolate the Neg Criterion. Unexplained is the fact that they are in fact acceptable under a double negationreading. Déprez (1997) on the other hand correctly predicts the availability of the double negation reading.

11 Although presque 'almost' can be used with the numeral two, absolument 'absolutely' cannot. But it canmodify zero.(i) a. Il lit presque/*absolument deux livres par jour. He reads almost/absolutely two books a day

b. Ce lait contient absolument zéro grammes de matière grasse This milk contains absolutely zero grams of fat

12 May (1989) distinguishes “absorbed” quantification from “resumptive” quantification in several respects.Crucial for Déprez’s proposal is the fact that relative scope is only possible for the component quantifiers of“absorbed quantifiers” not of “resumptive quantifiers”. Since negative concord is resumptive quantification,this implies that there are no possible relative scope dependencies between two N-words in a concordrelation. Thus if anything enforces relative or absolute scope between two N-words, concord is predicted tobe impossible. These differences and their consequences are further spelt out in Déprez (1998), where thesemantic nature of French negative concord is argued to resemble the non-scopal cumulative readings ofplurals.

13 As (i) shows, the common belief that bare NPs systematically disallow these modifiers is not fullycorrect :

(i) John and Mary are almost doctors.For a semantic account of why generic bare NPs, although universal in character, disallow such modifiers,see Kadmon and Landman (1993). Their account can be adapted to pèsonn.

14 Giannakidou (1997) makes a related proposal to account for Greek negative constructions. She differs fromDéprez (1995, 1997) in assuming that some N-words (the emphatic ones) still covertly move to Spec NegP.In this regard, her proposal is syntactically equivalent to Zanuttini’s 1991 (but not to Haegeman’s strongerNeg Criterion proposal), although the semantics of NC is distinct. Déprez (1997) proposes instead that thestrong reading is obtained under QR.

15 I explore the correct formulation of this type shift operation in forthcoming work.

16 The DP internal movement discussed here is different from the one proposed by Abney ( 1987) to derivethe post-nominal position of modifiers with English bare quantifiers (cf. everything precious). In English,but not in French, the movement generalizes to all quantifiers.

17 Complex N-word expressions such as aucun livre ‘no book’ behave in this respect like stressed numeralDPs:(i) Je n’achète AUCUNE jupe de rouge I buy NO skirt of red

As these expressions parallel simplex N-words in most of their properties, the paper will only make a fewremarks on their behavior, leaving a more detailed study for future work.

18 Additional evidence that N-words are indefinite expressions comes from the fact that they cannot occur inStylistic Inversion contexts. As pointed out by De Cornullier (1974) and Kupferman (1994), SI contextsalways exclude indefinite expressions:(i) *Quel livre n’a lu personne/ aucun étudiant Which book read none/no student ?

19 Notably when personne is used as noun in French, it requires a determiner and can be modified pre-nominally as shown in (i):(i) J’ai rencontré une charmante personne. I have met a charming person.

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Pre-nominal modification is also possible with rien not used as an N-word :(ii) Un petit rien le dérange A little thing bothers himAs (i) and (ii) confirm, the lack of pre-nominal modification for N-words is due to their DP positions, notto their intrinsic nature.

20 French NPIs also require modification with de as is expected if they are indefinite expressions:(i) Il n’a pas dit quoique ce soit d’important He didn’t say anything important

21 The same distributional characteristics are observed with complex N-words like aucun livre 'no/any book'.I assume that the Do position here is filled with the term aucun. Historically, aucun derives from theincorporation of the adjectival element aucque to the numeral un and is, in this respect, structurally parallelto quelqu’un.

22 As (i) shows, the presence of the relative clause is required, suggesting that it may be an integral part ofthe structure of these expressions and perhaps also of personne. (Consider also the French NPI qui que cesoit 'who that there be')

(i) *Je ne connais âme I Ne know soulThis recalls the English subtrigging effect discussed in Dayal (1996), where the presence of a relative clauseis shown to license the NPI any in a non-modal, non-negative contexts.

23 The indefinite nature of âme qui vive is confirmed by the fact that it requires the de pattern formodification(i) Je ne crois pas qu’il viendra âme qui vive (*d’) intéressant à cette soirée.

I don’t believe anyone interesting will come to this party

24 Déprez (1997) is based on a Diesing type approach to bare NPs.

25 Within a Minimalist perspective, this implies that the null D of Haitian N-words always contains at leastone strong feature. In this respect, it differs from the null D of asymmetric languages discussed in the nextsection.

26 Post nominal adjectives have been argued to derive from the head movement of N. Should this be the casefor wouj in (54), my argument remains unchanged : the N could undergo a first head movement inside theNP structure and then the whole NP would move further up.

27 In contrast to definite determiners, indefinite yon is pre-nominal in HC as are all numerals and weakquantifiers. This suggests that these expressions are not determiners, but pre-nominal adjectives.

28 There are a few non-idiomatic constructions that have been argued to contain null Ds or bare NPs inFrench: the [de NP] constructions discussed in Kayne (1981); certain PP constructions, such as sansargent/amis 'without money/friends' , en danger 'in danger' etc…and conjoined constructions such as in (i):(i) Parents et enfants sont conviés à se joindre à nous pour les fêtes

Parents and children are invited to join us for the festivitiesI leave the investigation of such cases for further study.

29 I take the property that French Ds must always be projected and lexically filled to be a parametric choiceof the language. Assuming that Do is strong in the Minimalist sense will only derive part of the desiredresult. Strength here must additionally enforce projection to eliminate the possibility of strictly bare NPs.Conceivably, it may derive from the necessary representation of a number feature (an interpretable feature)and the fact that number is only marked on Do in French, not on N. Putting aside a formalization of thenotion of “strength”, once the assumption is made, the proposed structure for N-words is predicted.Assuming furthermore that Merge generally takes precedence over Move (Chomksy (1995)), French DPwith a merged lexical D are expected to be the normal case and Xo movement to D, the more marked case.This seems to be generally correct. As it turns out, there appears to be a general constraint on N to Dmovement requiring N to lack phi-features. Historically, personne and rien did not become Do until they hadlost all gender and number specification. A better understanding of the circumstances and the consequences

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of this interesting and apparently required “feature” bleaching must await a detailed consideration of thehistorical evidence.

30 The term 'negative' here should really be understood to mean antiadditive or downward entailing. I leaveaside here potential differences in the precise semantic nature of the licenser.

31 Some instances of internal NP to Spec movement would be consistent with my proposal: crucial to mypoint is that there be no such movement to the Spec of the highest DP projection. see Bernstein (1997) andDéprez 1998 for potential cases of intermediate movements.

32 To my knowledge, Romanian is the only Romance language to feature regular post-nominal determiners.These are assumed to result from the adjunction of N to D, not from movement of NP to Spec DP (Ref) .Note, however that in similarity to HC, Romanian has fully symmetric negative concord. That is, negationis obligatorily both with pre-verbal and with post-verbal N-words. Recall that on my view, only null Do thatare internally licensed are expected to be able to occur in pre-verbal positions. Within my perspective , thesymmetric behavior of Romanian N-words suggests that a null Do can be licensed under adjunction. Seesection 7 for a discussion of this option.

33 See Chomsky (1986) for Spanish examples of extractions from DPs attributed to Torrego.

34 A fourth case is in principle possible: an asymmetric language in which movement to Spec DP operates asa last resort . For N-words, this would in fact result in an apparent homogenous distribution as the null Do

of pre-verbal N-words would have to be bound by an overt negation. The potential distinction between sucha language and Haitian Creole thus resides in the distribution of bare nominals. If internal movement to SpecDP is precluded for bare nominals (on a par with head movement see section 6), then such a language wouldmanifest an asymmetric distribution for bare nominals but not for N-words. See section 7 for discussion ofpotential cases of this type.

35 The Sardinian examples are taken from Jones (1993).

36 Depending on how many functional projections a DP structure may contain, an alternative structure couldhave pacu and perunu generated in Spec NP with N moving up to an intermediate functional projection,dominated by an null D position as in (i):(i) [ DP D

0 [FP N [ NP meta/pacu/perunu t ]]]

Pre-verbal subject DPs would then differ from (i) in requiring an additional movement of thesemodifiers/determiners up to Do. This structure has the advantage of offering a unified structure for pre-nominal and post-nominal modifiers in the complement structure : they always occur in Specifier positionsaligning with Cinque (1996) proposal for all modifiers.

37 In French traditional grammars, the same indefinite expression quelque 'some' is called an adjective whenit co-occurs with a noun as in (les) quelques amis '(the) some friends' and a determiner or an indefinitepronoun when it precedes the cardinal one as in quelqu’un 'someone'. On this view, the cliticization ofquelque to the numeral un in fact provides overt support for the possibility of head movement of anadjectival term to a determiner position.

38 The post-nominal position is literary and not of common usage, but Italian speakers do have contrastivejudgments about it.

39 It is very likely that the structure of Italian DP is far more complex than my discussion suggests. Ibelieve, however, that my main point would nevertheless carry over. For a thorough discussion of thestructure of Italian DPs, see for example Guisti (1993).

40 If N-movement is adjunction here, no semantic consequence is expected.

41 See Guisti (1993) who suggests comparable ambiguous structures for weak quantifiers such as molti'many', pochi 'few'.

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42 It is important that the intonation be kept neutral for the judgment to obtain. In particular, a dislocationintonation should be avoided.

43 A possible alternative to (61a) would be to have bel generated in the head FP above NP and nessun in thehead position of NumP with an empty D dominating it, as in (i) below:(i) [DP 0 [NumP [Num’ nessun [FP [ bel] [NP ragazzo]]]]]On this view, nessun would always be a head, which might explain why it can never occur in a post-nominalposition. But I do not pursue this alternative.

44 The marginality of post-nominal alcuno may follow from the same requirement.

45 This may in fact be an alternative structure for post-verbal nessun DPs with a pre-nominal bel.

46 Note that the presence of a c-commanding negation does not suffice to license an NPI within a relativeclause even in French:(i) *Je ne connais pas un homme qui a dit quoique ce soit.

I don’t know a man who said anything.

47 One clear distinction between pre-verbal and post-verbal nessun (valid also for the other weak quantifiersof Italian) concerns the asymmetric possibility of ne clitizisation. As is well known, ne cliticization ispossible from post-verbal positions, but not from pre-verbal ones. (i) a. di questi libri, non ne ho compro nessuno

of these books, I did not buy any b. *di questi libri, nessuno ne sono venduto

of these books, none were soldIf this distinction could be argued to derive from the internal structure of N-words, then it may providestrong support for my proposal. But I leave this issue for further research.

48 Rather strong evidence for the asymmetric structure of pre-verbal and post-verbal Italian DPs is foundwith nominalized adjectives. As noted in Chierchia (1998), nominalized adjectives can have an optionaldeterminer in post-verbal positions (ia). But the presence of the determiner is obligatory when they occur inpreverbal positions, as in (ib):(i) a. Ho visto (i) ricchi rubare I have seen (the) rich steal

b. *(I) richi sono avidi The rich are greedyThis contrast clearly recalls the one observed above in Sardinian.

49 Yet another interesting piece of evidence for the distinct property of negative concord with negation andnegative concord with a subject N-word is provided by M.Español-Echevarria (1994) who notes thefollowing contrast:(i) a.?*Casi nadie comió nada mas que judias

Almost no one ate anything other than beansb. No comió nada mas que judias Not ate-SG nothing other than beans She did not eat anything but beans

(ia) differs from (ib) is that in the former the post-verbal N-words is licensed by a pre-verbal N-one and inthe latter it is licensed by negation.

50 Note that even in the most solid cases of concording N-words such as (66a) (67a) and (68a), a doublenegation can obtain under a certain intonation. As indicated by the French example in (i), such aninterpretation is favored when at least one N-words is stressed and/or focused. Similar examples obtain inSpanish.(i) Est-ce qu’il y a des invités qui n’ont rien mangé ?

Are there guests that ate nothing?Non, PERSONNE n’a rien mangé. Ils ont tous au moins gouté un plat.No, NO ONE ate nothing. They have all tasted at least one dish.

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To my knowledge, however, such a suspension of negative concord is not possible in an obligatory Neg /N-word relation. In Haitian Creole, for instance, since Neg is always required, the question answer exchange in(i) cannot be replicated with pèsonn.

51 Such examples are possible for some speakers with a negative concord interpretation. For example Uribe-Etxebarria reports the following as acceptable:(i) a. Nadie creia que Maria hubiera dicho que la debieras ningún dinero.

b. Noboby believed that Mary had said that you owed her any moneyc. Nobody believed that Mary had said that you owed her no money

Note that the meaning difference between the translation (ib) given by Uribe Etxebarria and a double negationexample in English (ic) is rather unclear for native speakers of English, despite the fact that no money/ anymoney are not ambiguous in this language. It is thus rather unclear what reading the Spanish speakers whoaccept these sentences have in mind. But even if Uribe Etxebarria is right in her judgment, this fact does notinvalidate the distinction I propose, nor Déprez’s (1995) conjecture that cumulativity can be at stake in N-word/N-word negative concord in Spanish (contra Herburger 1996). Given the ambiguous status of N-wordsin Spanish, matters will indeed be fairly complex. On Déprez’s (1997) view, there are at least 3 ways that a“negative concord” interpretation can occur. One is between two N-words under pair quantifier formation orcumulativity just like in French, a second is under binding by negation or a negative operator essentially likeNPIs i.e. with N-words as variables in the nuclear scope and the third is under binding by negation or anegative operator with N-words in the restriction of that operator. The second option is clearly expected tobe possible in long distance contexts, even if the first and the third are not). Evidence that unselectivebinding may indeed by involved in (i) is shown by the impossibility of modifying the embedded N-wordswith casi in such contexts. This shows that in cases such as (i) the embedded N-words can be interpretedonly like an NPIs. The distinction between (i) and the judgment reported by my informant may then beattributed to a variation in the type of semantic licensing (antiadditivity, antimorphicity, monotonedeacrinsingness…) required by N-words under such interpretation for different speakers.

52 As ( i) shows, it is not the wh-term that licenses the embedded N-word, but rather the matrix negation. (i) *se que dijo nadie

I know what anyone/none said

53 This data is taken from Gerzoni 1997.

54 The structure of modified bare nominals may differ. See note 73 below for a discussion.

55 As pointed out by Longobardi, generic readings are available for bare nominals modified with expressioncomparable to the English expression “of this kind”. Because such readings are also possible with indefinitearticles, he call these “indefinite generics”.(i) (Dei) castori di questo tipo non costruiscomo mai dighe

(Part Art) beavers of this kind never build damsSee Wilkinson (1995) for a discussion “of this kind” of bare NPs in English and Zamparelli (1995) for ademonstration that such bare nominals have a different structure from the unmodified ones considered here.See also fn.73 for the suggestion that modified bare nominals may structurally differ from unmodified onesin that they may project a null determiner.

56 See, Casielles (1995) for a very clear distinction between bare NPs in pre-verbal subject positions in pre-verbal non-subject positions in Spanish.

57 As mentionned in Zanuttini (1991), the co-occurrence of fronted non-subject N-words with negation undera concord reading is judged somewhat better than comparable subject N-words cases. She suggests that thismay be due to a marginal reconstruction option available for fronted N-words but not for subject ones. Onmy view, such an option would involve unraised N-words.

58 Bare NPs and N-words seem to present yet another distributional distinction in the subject positions ofECM contexts. While N-words are fine, bare NPs are excluded. This seems, however, to reflect ill

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understood additional constraints on indefinites in these contexts. As shown for instance by Lois (1985),Spanish indefinites with an overt determiner are also excluded from this position.(i) *Creia/consideraba (a) unos estudiantes inteligentes

I consider some students intelligentI leave the study of these additional constraints for further research.

59 English seems also to be problematic in Longobardi’s model as he assumes that empty Do must beuniversally properly governed at LF. This implies that movement into Do should be obligatory for Englishbare NPs in subject positions, thereby always deriving a generic interpretation. The problem is avoided byproposing that the existential interpretation can optionally take place at S-structure in English while it mustobligatorily do so in Italian. Such a move, however, blurs even further the notion of Economy required toobtain the right result for Italian.

60 Movement into Do could potentially be blocked for bare nominals on the basis of their plurality. Such apossibility, however, raises apparent difficulty with mass nouns (such as café) that are morphologicallysingular but subject to the same restrictions as bare plurals. A potential unification seems possible if asproposed by Chierchia (1998), mass nouns are semantically plural. I leave the exploration of this matter forfuture work.

61 A reviewer objected that if bare nominals are bare NPs, desirable distinctions between argument barenominals and predicate bare nominals in constructions such as (i) may be obscured:(i) Maria es doctora

Maria is a doctor This objection, however, crucially relies on the premise that the bare nominal in (i) is a simple NP.Suppose, however, as proposed by Bowers (1996), predicative constructions like (i) have a PredP projection.Then potential differences may result from the presence of this additional functional projection, and itsfusion with the head of N under head movement, as in (ii):(ii) Maria es [PredP [[Ndoctora] Pred] [NP t]]

62 There are, in this view, at least two possible ways of allowing a generic reading for Germanic bare NPs.They could be assumed to have a base structure with a null Do or, conceivably, a null Do with a strongfeature could be introduced at LF along the lines of Boskovic's (1998) proposal for a null Co. That bare NPsmay have distinct structure cross-linguistically is also entertained by Chierchia (1996) (1998). His proposal,however, differs from mine, as he assumes that Romance bare NPs always have a null determiner.Incidentally, it could be that more complex bare NPs in Romance permit a null D. The predictions of myanalysis in this case would be that they would be semantically ambiguous, permitting at least sometimes ageneric like reading and being capable of occurring in pre-verbal subject positions. This may be a possibilitywithin the asymmetric languages to account for the marginal possibility of modified bare nominals in pre-verbal subject position. Quite plausibly, the presence of an adjective could be sufficient to license a null Do

that would be internally licensed either by the adjective in Spec Do or by the movement of N to some higherhead under adjunction. The study of these bare NPs is outside the scope of this paper.

63 Such a functional head may in fact be similar to Abney’s Agr position within DP than to D itself oralternatively to NumP, if NumP is the head that contains number features. I will keep ignoring matters oflabeling here and continue to use D for convenience.

64 My account is here developed in terms of EPP, or more exactly in terms of the checking of a D feature.Conceivably of course, the relevant feature checked in this pre-verbal position could be something else thanD itself. What is crucial for this account is that it a feature that is contained in a D projection be absent froma NP projection. Clearly, several alternatives are plausible, but to keep things simple I continue to speak of'D feature'.

65 Alexiadou and Anastopoulou (1997) (hence A&A) have proposed that EPP is checked under V movementin pro-drop languages. For compatibility with this proposal, the feature checked by a moved DP in pre-verbal subject position could be nominative Case instead of EPP. Assuming that the Case feature of DPsare located in D (or Ko above DP), my analysis would remain essentially unchanged. This alternative is not

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pursued here because A&A’s evidence for the left dislocated status of all pre-verbal subjects in Null SubjectLanguages remains inconclusive. In Italian or Spanish. indeed, there are a number of nominal expressionsthat cannot be left dislocated, and yet can appear in pre-verbal subject positions. N-words in particular areexamples of such DPs (Rizzi 1981). For simplicity, I assume here with Rizzi (1981) that in pro-dropsentences the EPP is checked by an empty pronominal with a categorial D feature. A third alternative forEPP checking in NSLs involves a mixed system in which the EPP D feature can be checked by V and by apre-nominal DP. Such a view is explored in Déprez (1998). Contra Rizzi (1981) and A&A above, Ordonez(1997) argues that EPP is weak in Spanish, a position not immediately compatible with the accountpresented in the text, but potentially compatible with the Case version suggested above.

66 Note that incorporation of negation could not be the motivating 'force' behind the N to D movement. Inso far as Italian N-words can be assumed to have a negative morphology, nessuno derives from ne suntunus..., they have it in both pre-verbal and post-verbal positions. Thus a distinction of structure cannot bemotivated on the basis of negative features. See Bernini and Ramat (1996) who argue that Italian N-wordsare of the suppressive kind and cannot be considered as synchronically decomposable into a nominal headand a negative morpheme.

67 As suggested below, an implicational relationship between phi features and D may also be true for therich verbal agreement features of the so-called Pro-drop/inflectionally rich languages. That is, overtly checkedAgr features may imply the presence of a D feature both in the DP structure and in the clause structure.

68 For arguments that HC is not a Null-Subject language, see Déprez (1994).

69 This second proposal has one potential drawback. It appears to contradict the generalization in (45)concerning null determiners and overt binders. If bare nominals also have a null D, the generalization fails.Within the Minimalist framework, however, it has been suggested that null heads with a strong feature canbe inserted during the derivation after Spell Out (Boscovic 1998). If the null head of bare nominals are suchheads then two facts follow. First, the fact that bare nominals do not require an overt syntactic binder isderived: they have no null Do by Spell Out. Second, Longobardi’s insight that head movement in bare NPsis possible only at LF is also derived. If Do is introduced at LF, head movement cannot occur before thispoint. I explore this possibility in forthcoming work.

70 As the nature of fronted bare nominals may not be uniform across the asymmetric languages consideredhere, my discussion of these facts will remain at a rather general level. For Spanish, Casielles 1994 hasargued that fronted bare NPs can be topics. For Italian, it would seem rather that fronted bare NPs arefocused, as topics usually involve the presence of a clitic. If Rizzi 1995 is right in distinguishing severalfunctional projections such at ToP, or FocP etc in what he calls the left periphery, then there may well beseveral possibilities. The minimal requirement for my proposal is that the EPP not be involved in themotivation of any of these frontings, so that the feature being checked is different from the pre-verbal subjectcase.

71 Or, alternatively, a lexical category-bearing projection can move to its Spec, an option presumably notopen in Romance, but clearly possible for HC.

72 Some further facts about pre-verbal bare nominals seem amenable to a similar treatment. It has beenrepeatedly noted that modified bare nominals are distinctly more acceptable in pre-verbal subject positionsthan simple non-modified ones. Some Spanish and Italian examples are given in (i) (see also Delfitto andSchroten 1991):(i) a. Hombres asi no vienen a menudo por aqui

Men like that don’t often come by herea’.*Hombres no vienen...b. Ucelli di queste varieta sono rari (Zamparelli 1995) Birds of this kind are rareb’.*Ucelli sono raric. Soldati che si reggevano a stento in piedi camminavano per le strade Soldiers who could hardly walk on their feet were walking in the streetsc’.* Soldati camminavano per le strade

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In a government account, such facts remained elusive, as it is unclear how modification could affect thegoverning status of an empty D. Within the EPP perspective, however, modified bare nominals canplausibly be assumed to have a complex internal structure involving a DP projection with an internallylicensed null D. If so EPP checking should be possible and the contrast above are explained. As a detailedstudy of the internal structure of modified bare nominals is beyond the scope of this paper, I leave thisinteresting prediction aside, noting however, that a more complex structure for modified bare nominalfollows quite straigtforwardly on Kayne’s 1994 Antisymetry hypothesis or on Chomsky’s Bare Structureversion of X’ theory. See also Zamparelli (1995) for arguments that kind denoting DPs of the type in (i)bhave a complex structure. In contrast to us, however, Zamparelli (1995) adopts Longobardi’s proposal thatstrictly bare nominals have an empty D in Italian.

73 Like the proper government account, the EPP proposal of the text does not yet account for the fact thatbare nominals cannot occur in the object position of predicates that require generically interpreted objects.(i) *Leo odia gatti Leo hates cats For Chierchia (1995), (i) reflects the presence of a lexically selected aspectual head associated with a genericoperator. If this is correct, (i) can then be straightforwardly predicted within the EPP perspective, if thisAspect head (or AGR-O) is assumed to contain a D feature. D-feature checking will then be enforced for theobjects and it will fail in (i) for the same reason as in the subject case, as the bare NP lacks the appropriateD-feature to permit this checking.

74 I thank Richard Kayne for pointing out this example to me.

75 As argued by Herburger (1998), N-words in examples like (104) do have a distinct semantic interpretation.A reviewer objected to the text's Economy proposal on the basis that is not compatible with a theory ofmovement restricted by local Economy. The two may be compatible however, if the domain of localEconomy is restricted to the checking of uninterpretable features. On this view, checking of interpretablefeatures involves a movement that satisfies Last Resort, but that is not enforced, as deletion is not requiredor even possible. (See Chomsky’s (1995) where checking of an interpretable feature may fail to have to occurwithout preventing convergence, or may occur repeatedly). I have proposed in section 6.1.2 that N-wordswith a filled D are N-words in which Phi -features are checked. If Phi features are interpretable, theirchecking should be “optional”, enforceable by external considerations such as the EPP but not disfavoredunder Global Economy considerations on the number of operation as in the present context. If so, there is nocontradiction between my proposal and local Economy. The two types of Economy simply have differentdomains as recently proposed in Reinhardt 1999.

76 As observed by Giannakidou (1997), there appear to be two types of N-words in Greek distinguished byemphasis. Only the emphatic ones are possible in pre-verbal subject positions. Emphatics N-words may beN-words that have undergone a DP internal movement to the Spec of the null D, base on Kayne (1994)observation that DP internal movement to Spec de in French presents properties similar to emphatic frontingat the sentential level in Italian.