For Thursday 2/4, please read the following paper, which can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website (PDF format):

Potsdam, Eric. 1997. NegP and subjunctive complements in English. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 533-541.

The Potsdam paper provides an empirical argument for the syntactic structure of the English clause/standard negation that we will develop in next week’s lectures.

For Thursday 1/28, please read the following paper, which can be downloaded from the “Readings” section of this website (PDF format):

Dryer, Matthew. 1989. Universals of negative position. In Studies in Syntactic Typology, M. Hammond, E. Moravcsik, and J. Wirth (eds), 93-124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(Remember that the password for the “Readings” section is listed on your syllabus.)

We will not be discussing section 4 of the paper in class, which presupposes certain background knowledge in theories of linguistic universals and typology.  So you may safely skip this section.  Additionally, the Postscript to the paper, while interesting, will not figure into our class discussion.  You should focus your attentions on sections 1-3, and also section 5, which together constitute the heart of the paper.

For next Tuesday 1/26, please (re-)read section 2 of Payne 1985.

(Sections 2.5 and 2.6 are optional, as are sections 3 and 4.  But if you have the time, do take a look at them.  They contain some discussion that unfortunately, we won’t have time to cover in class.)

For section 2.1.2, read carefully until the middle of page 214.  The end of page 214 to page 222 can be skimmed.