The status of ne and clitics in imperative sentences

What is it about?

This article argues that there is compelling evidence that French ne, even in dialects that still have this particle, is no longer negative, does not determine the scope of negation with respect to other operators, and therefore cannot be analysed as the head of NEGP in Modern Standard French. Rather, it should be considered an affix merged to a Tense projection (TNSP) endowed with sub-label features of polarity. This article argues that this proposal provides a unified solution for the distributional properties of ne in finite, non-finite and imperative contexts alike.

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Why is it important?

It is a minimalist approach to the syntax of negation that deals at the same time with the syntax of clitic pronouns and negative markers in finite, non-finite and imperative sentences.

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