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In:Negation and Contact: With special focus on Singapore English
Edited by Debra Ziegeler and Zhiming Bao
[Studies in Language Companion Series 183] 2017
► pp. 171–206

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Chapter 8
Quantification under negative scope in Singapore English

 | Université Paris 3
Published online: 31 May 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.183.08zie
Abstract
Earlier studies on the grammatical system of Singapore English have attributed little attention to the interactions between negation and quantification, and even less researched in previous studies is the application of the Aristotelian Square of Oppositions to variational data from international dialects of English. The present study takes up the challenge of explaining three phenomena relating to negation and quantification in Singapore English; (i) the somewhat more frequent use of affirmative universal quantifiers co-occurring with predicate negation; (ii) the presence of conjunctive phrasal coordinators (and) rather than disjunctive or in the scope of negation, and (iii) the use of the additive focus adverb (also) co-occurring with clause-mate negation, rather than the negatively-polarized clause-final (either). The present study investigates the possible existence of interrelations existing between each feature.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The constructions on the Aristotelian Square
  • 3.Quantification and reference in Singapore English
  • 4.The corpus study
    • 4.1Results
    • 4.2 Examples from the Flowerpod Corpus
      • 4.2.1Universal quantifier > neg. V (Type 1)
        • 4.2.1.1Other universals in neg-scope
      • 4.2.2Neg. X and Y constructions (Type 2)
      • 4.2.3Focus particle > neg. V (Type 3)
        • 4.2.3.1Neg-V > also/too
    • 4.3The ICE corpora
    • 4.4Interim summary
  • 5.Substrate and contact influence
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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