The Ban on True Negative Imperatives

Abstract

Languages cross-linguistically differ with respect to whether they accept or ban True Negative Imperatives (TNIs).In this paper I show that this ban follows from three generally accepted assumptions: (i) the fact that the operator that encodes the illocutionary force of an imperative universally takes scope from C 0 ; (ii) the fact that this operator may not be operated on by a negative operator and (iii) the Head Movement Constraint (an instance of Relativized Minimality).In my paper I argue that languages differ too with respect to both the syntactic status (head/phrasal) and the semantic value (negative/non-negative) of their negative markers.Given these differences across languages and the analysis of TNIs based on the three above mentioned assumptions, two typological generalisations can be predicted: (i) every language with an overt negative marker X 0 that is semantically negative bans TNIs; and (ii) every language that bans TNIs exhibits an overt negative marker X 0 .I demonstrate in my paper that both typological predictions are borne out.

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