Chapter 6 - Inflectional Phrases(29) IP
DP I'
the glass 1 I vP
-ed v'
v VP
not DP V'
t 1 V
shatter
‘the glass did not shatter’
Note that the inability of the negative to support the inflections is a language
specific property and there are languages where this is exactly what happens. For
example, Finnish negation shows the same agreement morphemes as its verbs do and
in the presence of negation the verb does not inflect for agreement:
(30) menen – en mene
go1.s. not1.s. go ‘I go/I don’t go’
menet – et mene
go2.s not2.s. go ‘you go/you don’t go’
menee – ei mene
go3.s not3.s. go ‘he/she goes/he/she doesn’t go’
menemme – emme mene
go1.pl. not1.pl. go ‘we go/we don’t go’
menette – ette mene
go2.pl not2.pl. go ‘you (lot) go/you (lot) don’t go’
menevät – eivät mene
go3.pl not3.pl go ‘they go/they don’t go’
Because of its behaviour, the Finnish negative element is often called the negative
auxiliary or even a negative verb. Moreover, in other languages the negative element
surfaces as a bound morpheme on the verb, a situation very similar to the analysis we
have given the aspectual markers in English. This is exemplified by the following
Choctaw and Japanese sentences:
(31) ak-Ø-pi-so-tok
1s-3s-see-not-past
‘I didn’t see it’
(32) watashi-wa yom-anakat-ta
I read-not-past
‘I didn’t read’
do