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Based on a wide variety of languages, this study examines the ways in which modal notions, such as permission and obligation, interact with negation. In particular, the study focuses on how ambiguities in scope are resolved. It is shown that languages overwhelmingly make use of two different strategies. The first strategy (the Modal Suppletion Strategy) is to use different modal verbs for the different scope interpretations. This strategy is found in languages such as English, Finnish, and Tamil. The second strategy (the Negation Placement Strategy), which is found in French, Russian, and Modern Greek (among others) is to use two different places for the negation to surface. It turns out that these two strategies have two different foundations: the first strategy is a semantic one, while the second strategy is syntactic in nature. That there is a difference can be shown by appealing to syntactic tests. The Modal Suppletion Strategy is not sensitive to these tests, while the Negation Placement Strategy is. It can also be shown that the two different strategies are correlated with word order: the Negation Placement Strategy is found exclusively in languages with a basic SVO order and with a negative morpheme that precedes the verb. This is checked against a database of 75 languages. Finally, these results are compared to other scope resolutions in languages.

A study of the relationship between the Case of a noun phrase (NP) and its quantificational character. Develops a hypothesis about strong and weak readings of NPs, and on type of Case assignment, using examples from Finnish, Turkish, Inuit, English, and Dutch. Contains chapters on the semantics of

This Study investigates the syntax of complement and relative clauses in English which lack overt complementizers (clauses without "that). The central analytical claim is that these clauses differ in phrase structure from their synonymous counterparts with overt complementizers. In particular, novel evidence from adjunction facts is used to demonstrate that clauses without "that are more appropriately analyzed as bare sentences of the category IP rather than CP with a phonologically null head, a proposal which has since been adopted in many economy-driven approaches to phrase structure. In addition to strong empirical support, the IP-analysis is shown to provide explanations for a variety of related syntactic phenomena, superior to those available under the previous CP-analysis. These include the restricted syntactic distribution of "that-less complements, in addition to the adjacency restrictions on "that-less relative clauses. The analytical task posed by the "that-trace effect is also very much reduced under the IP-analysis. The work also examines the syntax of 'subject contact clauses' (e.g."There's a man wants to see you.), common in many non-standard varieties, including Hiberno-English and establishes that they have all the distinctive properties of other "that-less relative clauses. This book will be of interest to a broad variety of readers: scholars working in all areas of generative syntax, specialists in English and Germanic syntax, in addition to researchers in non-standard English and Hiberno-English.