On the syntactically complex status of negative indefinites

Abstract Negative Indefinites (NIs) in languages such as Dutch and German may give rise to split-scope readings. Sentences like German Du must keine Krawatte anziehen (‘you must wear no tie’) have a reading where the modal takes scope in between the negation and the indefinite. In this paper I argue that West Germanic NIs are not negative quantifiers (in the Montegovian sense), but complex syntactic structures that consist of an abstract negative operator and an indefinite that are spelled out as a single word. Split-scope effects result from application of the copy theory of movement. I argue... Mehr ...