Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammar and Related Formalisms, pages 49–56,
Sydney, July 2006. c©2006 Association for Computational Linguistics
Negative Concord and Restructuring in Palestinian Arabic:
A Comparison of TAG and CCG Analyses
Frederick M. Hoyt
Linguistics Department
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B5100
Austin, TX, USA 78712-0198
fmhoyt@mail.texas.edu
Abstract
This paper discusses interactions between
negative concord and restructuring/clause
union in Palestinian Arabic. Analyses
formulated in Tree Adjoining Grammar
and Combinatorial Categorial Grammar
are compared, with the conclusion that a
perspicuous analysis of the the intricacies
of the data requires aspects of both for-
malisms; in particular, the TAG notion of
the extended domain of locality and the
CCG notion of flexible constituency.
1 Palestinian Arabic Negative Concord
In Palestinian Arabic (PA), negative concord oc-
curs with the determiner wEla “(not) even one,”
where negative concord describes the failure of an
expression which expresses negation in some sen-
tences to do so in others. Phrases formed with
wEla (“wEla-phrases”) are interpreted either as
negative quantifiers (“NQ-wEla)” or as polarity-
sensitive indefinites (“NPI-wEla”). wEla-phrases
have an NQ-interpretation preceding the finite
verb or verb complex in a clause (1-2) or in frag-
ment answers (3-4):
(1) wEla
not.even
h˙ada
one.MS
fi:-hUm
in-them
ˇsæ:f-ni.
saw.3ms-me
“Not even ONE of them saw me!”
(2) wEla
not.even
yo:m
day
Qaˇgabni
pleased.3ms-me
l-Ekıl.
the-food
“There wasn’t even one day the food pleased me!”
(3) Q: ˇsu
what
k˙al-l-ak?
said.3ms-to-you
A: wEla
not.even
iˇsi.
thing
“What did he say to you? Nothing at all.”
(4) Q: mi:n
who
ˇsUfti?
saw.2fs
A: wEla
not.even
s˙u:s˙
chick
ıbn
son
yome:n.
two-days
“Whodid you see? Noteven atwo-day oldchick!”
A preverbal wEla-phrase preceding a sentential
negation marker causes the sentence to have a
double-negation reading (5: compare with 2):
(5) wEla
not.even
yo:m
day
ma-Qaˇgabni
not-pleased.3ms-me
l-Ekıl.
the-food
“There wasn’t one day the food didn’t please me!”
“The food pleased me every day.”
NQ-wEla never occurs within the scope of nega-
tion but does occur in post-verbal positions which
are not “thematically entailed” by the verb (6-7)1:
(6) huwwa
he
wEla
not.even
iˇsi!
thing
“He is NOTHING!”
(7) hiyya
she
ma˙gru:ra
conceited.fs
Qala
upon
wEla
not.even
iˇsi.
thing
“She is conceited for absolutely NO reason!”
The NPI-interpretation is only available within the
scope of antimorphic operators (Zwarts, 1993),
like sentential negation or bıdu:n “without” (8-9):
(8) tılıQti
left.2fs
bıdu:n-ma
without-that
tk˙u:li
say.2fs
wEla
even
iˇsi.
thing
“You left without saying even one thing!”
(9) la-s-sEnna
to-the-year
ma-baQt˙i:-hUm
not-give.1s-them
wElla
even
lUk˙mi
bite
Ekl.
food
“Up to a year I don’t give them even a bite of
[solid] food.”
More than one wEla-phrase can have the NPI-
interpretation at a time:
(10) ma-k˙Ult
not-said.1s
wEla
even
iˇsi
thing
wEla
to-even
la-h˙ada
one
fi:-hUm.
in-them
“I didn’t give anything at all to even one of them.”
It follows from the distributions of NQ- and NPI-
wEla that wEla-phrases are blocked from post-
verbal argument positions which are thematically
entailed and which are not within the scope of an
antimorphic operator.
1Following (Herburger, 2001), “thematically entailed”
means that the meaning of the verb entails the existence of
an entity filling the thematic role in question.
49
1.1 Negative Concord and Locality
PA negative concord is generally subject to strict
locality constraints: a wEla-phrase must be con-
tained within the smallest inflected clause contain-
ing its licensor. It cannot be separated from its li-
censor by the boundary of either an indicative (11)
or a subjunctive/irrealis (12) complement:
(11) * ma-waQatt
not-promised.1s
[ Eh˙ki
talk
wEla
even
maQ
with
h˙ada
one
fi:-hUm
in-them
].
(12) * batwak˙k˙aQ-ıˇs
believe.1s-neg
[ ınnhæ
that.3fs
bıth˙ıbb
likes.3fs
wEla
even
h˙ada
one
].
Similar sentences with weaker polarity items such
as h˙ada or Paiy h˙ada “anyone” are acceptable:
(13) ma-waQatt
not-promised.1s
Eh˙ki
talk
maQ
with
( Paiy
any
) h˙ada
one
fi:-hUm.
in-them
“I didn’t promise to talk with any of them.”
(14) batwak˙k˙aQ-ıˇs
believe.1s-neg
ınnhæ
that.3fs
bıth˙ıbb
likes.3fs
( Paiy
any
) h˙ada.
one
“I don’t think that she likes ANY one.”
This suggests that negative concord is a strictly
bounded dependency like agreement marking, ar-
gument realization, or reflexive binding.
However, there are exceptions to this general-
ization. “Long-distance” negative concord is pos-
sible between a matrix negation morpheme and
wEla-phrases inside the complements of a small
class of verbs, including bıdd- “want” (15), Xalla
“to allow” (16), h˙a:wal “to try” (17, 25 below) or
Qırıf “to know how to, to be able to” (18 below):
(15) ma-bıddna
not-want.1s
nXalli
leave.1p
wEla
even
zElami.
fellow
“We don’t want to leave even one man.”
(16) ma-Xallu:-ni:-ˇs
not-allowed.3mp-me-neg
æ:kOl
eat.1s
wEla
even
lUk˙mi
bite
“They wouldn’t let me eat even one bite!”
The embedding can be recursive, provided that
only verbs in this class are used (17).
(17) bıddi:-ˇs
want.1s-neg
ah˙a:wıl
try.1s
Eh˙ki
speak.1s
wEla
even
maQ
with
h˙ada.
one
“I don’t want try to talk with anyone at all.”
These verbs correspond to verbs found in many
other languages which trigger a process often re-
ferred to as restructuring or clause union. I fol-
low (Aissen and Perlmutter, 1983) in calling them
trigger verbs. Restructuring involves the “stretch-
ing” of the domain of locality for certain kinds of
bounded dependencies from the complement of a
trigger verb to include the clause that it heads.
At present no other phenomena have been iden-
tified in PA which independently confirm that it
has restructuring. However, long-distance nega-
tive concord is identified as a restructuring phe-
nomenon in several languages such as West Flem-
ish (Haegeman and Zanuttini, 1996), Polish (Dzi-
wirek, 1998), and Serbian (Progovac, 2000). As
such, I assume for now that long-distance negative
concord in PA is a form of restructuring as well.
2 A TAG Analysis
Restructuring involves a seeming paradox involv-
ing a dependency which is non-local in the hier-
archical structure of a sentence but local in its se-
mantics. TreeAdjoining Grammarsare wellsuited
for analyzing restructuring because the distinction
betweenaderived tree andthe derivation tree asso-
ciated with it provides two notions of locality. Re-
structuring phenomena which have been analyzed
with TAGs include clitic-climbing in Spanish and
Italian (Bleam, 2000; Kulick, 2000), long-distance
scrambling in German (Rambow, 1994), and long-
distance agreement inTsez (Frank, 2006). It there-
fore is natural to explore a TAG analysis for long-
distance negative concord in PA.
To illustrate with a simple example, the nega-
tive concord dependency in (18) is licensed within
an initial tree headed by Ektıb “write,” and is
then “stretched” by adjunction of the auxiliary tree
headed by Qırıft “I was able to” (19):
(18) ma-Qırıft
not-knew.1s
Ektıb
write.1s
wEla
even
kılmi.
word
“I wasn’t able to write even one word.”
(19) β:IP00
δ:IP
ma:- IP*
β:IP00
γ:IP
Qırıft IP*
β:IP00
Ektıb NP↓02
α:NP
wEla kılmi
The locality constraint on negative concord can
then be expressed as a generalization about the
derivation tree (20): a wEla-phrase and its licen-
sor must be sisters:
(20) β
α(02) γ(00) δ(00)
However, several properties of negative concord
in PA preclude a simple analysis like this.
50
2.1 Clause-local Dependencies
The first property is the domain of locality of the
negative concord dependency. In a simple TAG,
syntactic dependencies are licensed within an ele-
mentary tree: they are tree-local. However, nega-
tive concord in PA is clause-local, because wEla-
phrases are not licensed within the immediate tree
to which they are attached, but instead within the
immediate clausal tree containing them. For ex-
ample, wEla-phrases can be inside prepositional
phrases attached to a negative clause (21-22):
(21) ma-kaQatt
not-sat.1s
[PP ˇganıb
next.to
wEla
even
h˙ada
one
fi:-hUm
in-them
]
“I didn’t sit next to even one of them.”
(22) bıtXallıfu:-ˇs
disagree.2mp-neg
Qan-na
from-us
[PP bi-wEla
with-even
iˇsi
thing
].
“You don’t disagree with us about even one thing.”
In a simple TAG analysis, the wEla-phrase first
substitutes into the initial tree headed by the
preposition, which is then attached to the clausal
tree. The relationship between the wEla-phrase
and its licensor would therefore not be tree-local.
Clause-locality can be modeled with what I
refer to as “Scope TAG” (Kallmeyer and Joshi,
2003), a multi-component TAG (MC-TAG) in
which quantificational NPsare tree sets containing
two parts: a “defective” auxiliary tree IP* which
specifies the scope of the quantifier, and an NP-
tree which specifies its restriction. I refer to such
tree sets as “scope sets.”
While Kallmeyer & Joshi’s proposal is intended
to capture the semantic scope of quantifiers, it can
alsobe used toexpress clause locality byassigning
PPs to scope sets as well, and by stipulating that
scope sets can combine with each other by means
of set-local adjunction. TheIP*-node inthe scope-
set of a wEla-phrase can then adjoin to the IP*-
node in the PP scope set, which in turn adjoins to
the IP-node of the initial tree.
For example, (21) above can be analyzed with
the elementary trees in (23) (trees are in abbrevi-
ated form), producing the derivation tree in (24):
(23) a. α :
braceleftBigg α
1 : IP* , α2 : NP
wEla h˙ada
bracerightBigg
b. γ :
braceleftBigg γ
1 : IP*00 , γ2 : PP
ˇgænıb NP↓02
bracerightBigg
c. δ: IP
ma:- IP*
β: IP00
I
kaQatt
PP↓02
(24) β
γ1(00)
α1(00)
δ(00) γ2(02)
α2(02)
However, given (24) it is still not possible to state
a generalization about negative concord locality in
terms of sisterhood in the derivation tree.
This can be remedied by adopting the “node-
sharing” relation proposed by (Kallmeyer, 2005).
Informally, two nodes α and β are in a node-
sharing relation in a derivation tree T iff they
are either in a mother-daughter relation in T at
a node address A, or there is a sequence S of
nodes N1 ...Nn which is the transitive closure of
a mother-daughter relation in T in which the node
pairs are related in terms of the root node or foot
node in an auxiliary tree.
On this basis, the negative concord locality gen-
eralization is that a wEla-phrase and its licensor
are “shared-node sisters” in the derivation tree,
where shared-node sisters are two nodes A and B
which are each in a shared-node relation with a
single node C. For example, in (24) β is a shared-
node parent of both α1 and δ. Accordingly, α1
and δ are shared-node sisters with respect to β.
2.2 Trigger Verbs and Complement Type
The second property of PA long-distance negative
concord that complicates a TAG analysis has to
do with the kinds of complement that they take.
TAG approaches to restructuring exploit “reduced
complement” analyses in which trigger verbs take
“smaller” complements than other kinds of sub-
ordinating verbs do (Bleam, 2000; Kulick, 2000).
However, PA trigger verbs are mixed in terms of
the types of complements they take: h˙a:wal “try
to” or k˙ıdır “be able to” optionally allow a com-
plementizer Pınn- (25-26), while bıdd- “want” or
Qırıf “know to, be able to” exclude it (27-28):
(25) ma-h˙a:walt
not-tried.1s
( ınni
that.1s
) Eh˙ki
speak.1s
wEla
even
maQ
with
h˙ada.
one
“I didn’t try to talk with even one of them.”
(26) ma-k˙ıdırt
not-could.1s
( ınni
that.1s
) Eh˙ki
speak.1s
wEla
even
maQ
with
h˙ada.
one
“I wasn’t able to speak with even one of them.”
(27) ma-bıdd-i:-ıˇs
not-want.1s-neg
( *ınni
that.1s
) aˇsu:f
see.1s
wEla
even
h˙ada.
one
“I don’t want to see even ONE of them.”
(28) ma-Qırıft
not-knww.1s
( *ınni
that.1s
) Ektıb
write.1s
wEla
even
kılmi.
word
“I wan’t able to write even one word.”
51
Assuming that the presence of a complementizer
indicates a CP category, and that the presence of
agreement marking onthe verb indicates anIP cat-
egory, what these data show is that some trigger
verbs allow either CP or IP complements, while
others allow only IP complements. It follows that
complement category cannot be exploited as away
todistinguish trigger verbs from non-trigger verbs.
This is an essential distinction because restruc-
turing is not the only phenomenon which in-
volves adjunction. For example, long-distance A-
dependencies are analyzed in TAG as involving
adjunction of auxiliary trees. (29-30) show that
the same verbs which block long-distance nega-
tive concord allow long-distance A-dependencies,
indicating that theymust alsobe analyzed as auxil-
iary trees. Moreover, (30) can include the comple-
mentizer Pınn-, indicating that it takes the same
kinds of complements as do trigger verbs like
k˙ıdır “be able” and h˙a:wal “try”:
(29) mi:n
who
bıtıtwak˙k˙aQ
believe.2ms
yah˙sal
get.3ms
Qala
upon
kæ:s
cup
ıl-Qæ:lım?
the-world
“Who do you think will get the World Cup?”
(30) ˇsu
what
waQatt
promised.2ms
( ınnak
that.2ms
) taQt˙i:-hæ?
give.2ms-her
“What did you promise to give her?”
A failure to distinguish between trigger verbs and
non-trigger verbs will over-predict the availability
of long-distance negative concord.
To make this distinction, I use Dowty’s (Dowty,
1994) analysis of negative concord licensing.
Dowty models negative concord with a “polarity”
feature whichtakes “+” or“-” values. Whenaneg-
ative concord item combines with a clausal cate-
gory it specifies (by unification) the clause as hav-
ing a negative value for this feature. In addition,
Dowty assumes that root clauses must have a pos-
itive value for the feature: I refer to this as the root
clause polarity constraint. Negation morphemes
(as well as bıdu:n “without”) take a complement
specified as POL- and return a constituent with a
POL+ feature. A root clause containing a negative
concord item and lacking a negation morpheme
will have a POL- feature for its root node and vio-
late the root clause polarity constraint. This de-
rives the requirement that wEla phrases in root
clauses be “roofed” by a negation morpheme.
Turning to long-distance negative concord, trig-
ger verbs can be distinguished from non-trigger
verbs by stipulating that non-trigger verbs take
POL+ complements, while trigger verbs (and aux-
iliary verbs) impose no polarity specification and
instead inherit the polarity feature withwhichtheir
complement is specified2. An analysis of this kind
applied to (18) would result in a derived tree (32)
which satisfies the root clause polarity constraint.
(31) β:IP
IPPOL+
ma:- IP*POL-
γ:IP
Qırıft IP*
α1:IP*POL-
β:IP
Ektıb NP↓
α2:NP
wEla kılmi
(32) IPPOL+
ma:- IPPOL-
Qırıft IP*POL-
Ektıb NP↓
wEla kılmi
2.3 Negation Morphology
The last property of long-distance negative con-
cord sentences to be dealt with has to do with
negation morphology inPA.Negation is expressed
with some combination of the proclitic ma:- and
the enclitic -š. -š appears to be a second-position
attaching to the first word-sized constituent in the
stringproduced byanIP-constituent, provided that
the word contains a morpheme expressing person
features (Awwad, 1987; Eid, 1993).
The most frequent distribution has -š attached
to the leftmost verb stem in a clause, which may
be the main verb in a mono-verbal predicate (33),
or to the leftmost auxiliary in a clause with com-
pound tense-aspect-mood marking (34-35):
(33) ma-nımt-ıˇs
not-slept.1s-neg
fi-l-le:l.
in-the-night
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
(34) ma-kUnt-ıˇs
not-was.1s-neg
Qa:rıf
know.actpart.ms
we:n
where
ah˙Ut˙t˙-u.
put.1s-it
“I didn’t know where to put it.”
(35) ma-Qad-ˇs
not-returned.3ms-neg
k˙al-l-i
said.3ms-to-me
Pınnu
that.3ms
ˇstara
bought.3ms
sayya:ra.
car
“He didn’t tell me anymore that he bought a car.”
2This is similar to Frank’s (Frank, 2006) proposal for an-
alyzing long-distance agreement in Tsez.
52
In other kinds of sentences, -š attaches to a variety
of non-verbal expressions, including the indefinite
pronoun h˙ada “(any)one” (36), the existential par-
ticle fi: (37), inflected prepositions (38), and the
adverb QUmr “ever” (39):
(36) ma-h˙ada:-ˇs
not-one.ms-neg
kæ:n
was.3ms
yıQˇgır-na.
rent.3ms-us
“No one would rent to us.”
(37) ma-fıˇs-ˇs
not-exist-neg
fi-d-dınya
in-the-word
mıþıl-hın.
like-them.fp
“There isn’t [anything] in the world like them.”
(38) bæk˙i:-l-E
was.3ms-to-him
faras
mare
ma-lhæ:-ˇs
not-to-her-neg
UXt.
sister
“He had a mare [that was] without compare.”
(39) fi:
exist
næ:s
people.3fs
ma-QUmr-hæ:-ˇs
not-age-3fs-neg
h˙at˙t˙at
put.3fs
mawd˙u:Q
subject
fi-l-mUntada.
in-the-club
“There are people who have never posted a thread
on almontada.com.”
What these expressions all have in common with
verb stems is that they occur as the first constituent
in the clause and that they all contain a morpheme
expressing person features. It follows that -š is
constrained to occur in the second position at-
tached to a word that is inflected for person.
The cases in which -š attaches to a verb can be
modeled by assuming that ma:- and -š are part of
a tree set and that -š adjoins to right of an I-node:
(40)
braceleftBigg δ
1 : IP
ma:- IP*
, δ2 : I
I -š
bracerightBigg
(41) IP
IP
ma:- IP*
IP
I PP
fi-l-le:l
I
I* -š
I
nımt
The cases with -š attached to a non-verbal expres-
sion require a second analysis. One possibility is
to assume a second tree for -š like the first, except
with -špreceding the foot node. This requires stip-
ulating a morphological output filter that affixes -š
tothe preceding word and blocks use ofδ2 in(40):
(42)
braceleftBigg δ
1 : IP
ma:- IP*
, δ2 : I
-š I
bracerightBigg
(43) IP
IP
ma:- IP*
IP
NP
h˙ada
I
I VP
yıQˇgırna
I
-š I*
I
kæ:n
This is still not adaquate for (35), in which -š is
attached to a “serial auxiliary” (Hussein, 1990),
one of a small set of verb stems which function
as aspectual adverbs and which “agree” with the
main verb in aspectual form and agreement mark-
ing. Serial auxiliaries are plausibly analyzed as
adverbial IP-auxiliary trees as in (44):
(44) IP
I
Qad
IP*
IP
IP
I
k˙al-l-i
CP↓
The structure resulting from (44) has two I-nodes,
and another constraint would have to be stipulated
forcing -š to adjoin to the leftmost of the two.
To sum up, a TAG analysis can be formulated
for PA long-distance negative concord which al-
lows the locality of negative concord licensing to
be stated as a generalization about shared-node
derivation trees. However, the analysis requires
brute force stipulations to capture the morpholog-
ical expression of negation in PA negative sen-
tences. Moreover, the TAG analysis does not pro-
vide a way to express the simple morphological
generalization that -š falls in the second position
in the string generated by the clause.
3 A CCG Analysis
The TAG analysis has difficulty accommodating
the distribution of -š because TAG trees are phrase
structures, making it difficult to state constraints
on strings of words rather than on hierarchical
structure. Categorial Grammar, on the other hand,
is a string calculus, and its operations result in
string concatenation rather than structure expan-
sion. For this reason, a CG can be constrained to
not generate particular kinds of strings, rather than
53
particular trees. A CG therefore provides a way to
state constraints on the distribution of -š more di-
rectly than a phrase-structure grammar does.
I assume a Combinatory Categorial Gram-
mar (Steedman, 1996; Steedman, 2000b;
Baldridge, 2002). The basis of the CCG analysis
is that npI-wEla-phrases are treated as type-raised
categories which look for an s category to their
left. I continue following Dowty in assuming the
root clause polarity principle and in assuming
that wEla-phrases specify a POL- feature on
the s-headed category that they combine with.
NQ-wElaphrases, on the other hand, are treated as
negative quantifiers which look for their s-headed
argument to the right:
(45) NQ-wEla :- (Spol+$/(Spol+\$/NP))/NP :
λPλQ.∃x[P(x) & Q(x)]
(46) NPI-wEla :- (Spol−$\(Spol−$/NP))/NP :
λPλQ.¬∃x[P(x) & Q(x)]
The negation morphemes are treated as follows (-š
is semantically vacuous):
(47) ma:- :- Spol+$/Spol−$ : λPst.¬P(e)
(48) -š :- Spol−$\×Spol±$
Verbs have the following types3:
(49) šUft :- S\NP/NP : λy.λx.[x saw y]
(50) h˙a:walt :- S\NP/(s\NP) : λx.λPst.[x tries P(x)]
The -š morpheme fixes a clause with a POL-
feature, while ma:- takes the POL- clausal cate-
gory and changes its value for the polarity feature
to POL+, satisfying the root clause polarity con-
straint. This works much as the TAG analysis did.
The slash in the type for -š is marked with the
“crossed composition” modality. This allows -š to
combine withapreceding s-headed category while
returning a category looking for its arguments to
the right (Figures 1-2)4.
Turning to long-distance negative concord, a
CCG analysis, like the TAG analysis above, has
to account for the distinction between trigger
verbs and non-trigger verbs. The CCG analog of
auxiliary-tree adjunction is function composition.
The long-distance negative concord dependency
therefore involves a specific kind of composition
subject to stricter constraints than is the more gen-
eral kind which produces A-dependencies.
In order to model this, I adapt Hepple’s (Hep-
ple, 1990) approach tomodeling island constraints
3The type assignments ignore the representation of VS
word order and pro-drop sentences.
4Logical forms are surpressed in the derivations.
in Categorial Type Logic. In brief, Hepple’s ap-
proach is to assign unary modalities to the argu-
ments of clausal categories (such as subordinat-
ing verbs or relative pronouns) as well as to the
nominal argument of a type-raised extracted cate-
gory (such as a question word or topicalized noun
phrase). The former are referred to as “bounding
modalities,” and the latter as “penetrative modal-
ities.” Interaction axioms require the penetrative
modality of an extraction category to be compati-
ble with the bounding category of its argument in
terms of a type hierarchy defined over modalities.
The unary modalities in CTL can be duplicated
in CCG as features on category labels, so to ap-
proximate Hepple’s proposal, I define a feature hi-
erarchy as follows:
(51) h
g c
Each pair of sisters in the hierarchy consists of a
“penetrative feature” and the “bounding feature”
which blocks it (following Hepple’s terminology).
The feature c is an penetrative feature which is
blocked by the g feature, and h is the most gen-
eral or permissive bounding feature.
The idea is that categories which participate in
restructuring dependencies are marked with the c
penetrative feature, which is spread across all the
arguments of a complex type:
(52) wEla h˙ada :- Sc$\(Sc$/NPc)
Trigger verbs impose the h bounding feature on
their complements, while non-trigger embedding
verbs impose the g feature:
(53) bıdd- “want,” Qırıf “be able to,” h˙a:wal “try to” :-
S\NP/(Sh\NPh)
(54) waQad-yu:Qıd “promise to” :- S\NP/(Sg\NPg)
According to (51), categories marked with fea-
ture h are compatible with categories marked with
feature c, while categories marked with feature g
clash with it. The clash between g and c expresses
the restriction on restructuring dependencies.
For example, in an analysis of (18), wEla kılmi
applies to the composed constituent, Qırıft Ektıb.
This is possible because the penetrative feature
c on the wEla-phrase is compatible with the h
bounding feature which Qırıft passes to its com-
plement (Figure 3).
Long-distance negative concord is blocked in
two ways. A wide-scope derivation (in which the
wEla-phrase combines with the composition of the
54
matrix and embedded verbs) is blocked by a fea-
ture clash between the g and c features (Figure
4). A narrow scope derivation (in which the wEla-
phrase combines with the embedded verb only)
is blocked because of a resulting clash in polar-
ity features between the embedded clause and the
matrix verb (Figure 5).
4 Comparison and Discussion
While the TAG analysis imposes certain limita-
tions on the ordering of morphemes, it does pro-
vide a very simple and intuitive way to describe
restructuring verbs as a natural class that includes
auxiliary verbs, the other kinds of verb stems
which are “transparent” to negative concord. In
contrast, The CCG analysis has a technical flavor,
and it is not clear to what extent it reflects a lin-
guistic intuition. The CCG analysis does, how-
ever, capture the distribution of the negation mor-
phemes in PA. It would therefore be interesting
to explore further whether the Hepple-style fea-
ture/modality approach could be associated with
some linguistic phenomenon.
One interesting possibility would be to use
Steedman’s theory of intonation (Steedman,
2000a) to explore the prosodic properties of re-
structuring sentences in Arabic (and in other lan-
guages) to see whether the availability of restruc-
turing correlates with certain prosodic properties.
There has been very little study of sentential into-
nation in Arabic, and so very little empirical ba-
sis for an investigation. However, should such an
investigation bear fruit, it might suggest that Hep-
ple’s approach to extraction constraints could be
recast as a theory of intonation. This would allow
powerful generalizations to be stated relating the
prosodic properties of sentences in PA and other
languages to their syntactic properties.

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