Negative Concord and the Scope of Negation

Abstract

In Romance languages like European Portuguese, Negative Concord may not be explained in terms of the licensing of multiple underspecified polarity items by a negative operator; ignoring expletive negation, negative phrases behave as inherent negative items which may constitute a complex negative expression. However, syntactic approaches involving negative sentential projections and relying on specifier-head Agreement of negative items are not able to deal with Negative Concord. Negative Concord is captured by Neg-Absorption, an LF operation which applies in a single negative domain. In what concerns sentence negation, this domain is delimi-ted by an overt strong negative element, the sentence marker or some negative phrase, overtly having scope over the verbal element which checked Tense.