Licensing Negative Concord Items

Abstract

This chapter discusses the syntactic configurations and processes that are involved in licensing the various types of NCIs (negative concord items) in Arabic. The author argues for a revised syntactic agreement approach. In this way, the chapter explains the behavior of Arabic NCIs with extra mechanisms (positing an abstract negative operator) to explain non-strict NCIs by conceptualizing a revised inventory of abstract negation features that the various types of Arabic NCIs carry, thus partially building on and departing from analyses for Germanic languages. The coordinators laa-wala ‘neither-nor’ are conspicuous analogues of the NCI wala, which can combine with NPs to create person-NCIs such as wala-ħada ‘no body,’ in their ability to co-occur with the negative adverb maʕumrhiš ‘never’ in the CP (complementizer phrase) layers without triggering a double negation reading. A covert negative operator licenses the coordinators laa-wala as a last resort in the absence of overt licensors.