Squat, zero and no/nothing
Karen De Clercq
November 2011 

In this paper I propose a distinction between syntactic and semantic sentential negation. I will motivate the distinction by discussing some core properties of three downward entailing quantifiers: no/nothing, SQUAT, and the numeral zero. The syntactic tests I apply to these quantifiers demonstrate that no/nothing can give rise to both syntactic and semantic sentential negation, whereas SQUAT and zero can only give rise to semantic sentential negation. Beghelli’s (1995) clause structure for quantifier scope will be used to capture the available scope positions for these quantifiers based on their syntactic properties.

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Reference:	lingbuzz/001326 (please use that when you cite this article, unless you want to cite the full url: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001326)
Published in:	Linguistics in the Netherlands 2011
keywords:	negation, downward entailment, quantifiers, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v4 [November 2011] v3 [August 2011] v2 [August 2011] v1 [April 2011]
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