| This dissertation studies the interpretation of sentential negation, with the main goal of disambiguation based on an understanding of the nature of the ambiguities. It has been observed that English sentential negation involves; ambiguities with respect to certain quantified subjects and post-verbal adverbials, which do not always extend to other subjects or across languages.;The main idea presented in this study is that scope interpretation of sentential negation is unambiguous. The ambiguities observed in English sentential negation are lexical or syntactic in nature, independent of the scope interpretation mechanism for negation. The lack of parallelism in the interpretation of different quantified subjects in English sentential negation is shown to be rooted in the differences in the lexical entries of the quantifiers, and the ambiguity concerning post-verbal adverbials is shown to be syntactic. The non-ambiguity in Chinese in similar situations is attributed to the unambiguous lexical and syntactic representations, which supports the integrity of the unambiguous scope interpretation mechanism proposed by this study.;The analysis is cast in the Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar approach (Pollard & Sag, [1994]), with the negation operator located within VP as complements or adjuncts. The basic conclusion is that in both English and Chinese, sentential negation has its scope restricted to within the VP immediately above the negation operator, with subjects scoping over negation. |
