Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.negacion-expletiva

negación expletiva

A pattern in which the negative particle appears in a subordinate clause without reversing its polarity, licensed by the meaning of what governs the clause.

The construction places the negative particle in a subordinate clause whose polarity it does not reverse, and it is licensed by a small set of governing elements: a temporal connector meaning until, the comparative connector, and verbs of fearing. Two positions are held about it. On the first the particle is genuinely empty, a formal reflex of the negative meaning already present in the governing element, and its presence changes nothing. On the second it is not empty and its presence adds a shade of expectation or of apprehension, so the two versions are not equivalent. The record adopts the first as the convention it states and is marked contested, because named reference grammars record the second and the judgments vary by region as well as by speaker.

statusstatus
contestedasserted, and the sources disagree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguageexpletive negation
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

Why this is a construction at all

construction.admission

Goldberg's admission test: a template earns storage either by being unpredictable or by being frequent.

admissionadmission
unpredictableit is stored because its meaning does not follow from its parts

The slots

construction.slots

At least two, by the schema: fewer is not a multi-element template. Every filler is a link, never a name in prose.

  1. 0el elemento que legitima la negación, de significado temporal, comparativo o de temorpositional: this slot is a place in the string, not a lexical requirement

    fillerslots[].filler
    No filler is named. For a positional slot that is the correct reading; for a lexical one it is a gap.
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONnúcleofun.spa.nucleo

  2. 1la partícula no, sin valor negativolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    No function is assigned to this slot.

  3. 2la cláusula subordinadapositional: this slot is a place in the string, not a lexical requirement

    fillerslots[].filler
    No filler is named. For a positional slot that is the correct reading; for a lexical one it is a gap.
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONcomplemento circunstancialfun.spa.complemento-circunstancial

Slot template

3 slots: 1 constrained, 2 positional, 2 naming a grammatical function.

  1. el elemento que legitima la negación, de significado temporal, comparativo o de temor
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names núcleo

  2. la partícula no, sin valor negativo
    constrained
    • adverbioclass
  3. la cláusula subordinada
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names complemento circunstancial

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • CATEGORYsubjunctivecat.subjunctivedocumented
    • conditionThe clause carrying the particle is normally subjunctive, and the particle is licensed by the meaning of the element governing it rather than by anything in the clause.

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by