Search results for "Expletive"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Polar meaning and “expletive” negation in approximative adverbs
2005
In this paper we provide a synchronic and diachronic analysis of an instance of so-called “expletive” negation in the Spanish approximative adverb por poco. Synchronically, we show that this adverb, when combined with the sentence negator no, is ambiguous between ~p (“expletive”) and ~~p (“canonical”) meanings. Diachronically, we show that this ambiguity arose due to a change in the negation system of Spanish around the fifteenth century. As a result, the supposed instances of “expletive” negation found in present-day uses of por poco are not really expletive at all, but rather are a holdover from the Old Spanish requirement of preverbal negative concord.
Hugo Grotius – Individual Rights as the Core of Natural Law
2014
The Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius’ status as an important forerunner of the Enlightenment is well recognized, bolstered by his famous etiamsi daremus-dictum in the Prolegomena of De iure belli ac pacis. Less well known is that Grotius was the first central Protestant thinker to redefine the concept of ius, so that it was understood as individual or subjective rights. His understanding of ius as a personal moral quality, which he subsequently delimits as the expletive justice or perfect right to one’s own (suum), was given a pivotal role in his system of natural law. These concepts of ius and suum, which Grotius differentiates from other rationally derived moral principles, inspired John Locke…
Null subjects in generative grammar: A synchronic and diachronic perspective
2018
This book considers the null-subject phenomenon, whereby some languages lack an overtly realized referential subject in specific contexts. In generative syntax-the approach adopted in this volume-the phenomenon has traditionally been explained in terms of a ‘pro-drop’ parameter with associated cluster properties; more recently, however, it has become clear that pro-drop phenomena do not always correlate with all the initially predicted cluster properties. This volume returns to the centre of the debate surrounding the empirical phenomena associated with null subjects. Experts in the field explore the cluster properties associated with pro-drop; the types of null category involved in null-su…