Negation without head-movement

This paper presents a lexicalist analysis of negation in French and English. In both languages, negation in finite clauses is grammatically distinguished from constituent negation. Lexical idiosyncrasy motivates treating finite negation as a verbal complement, while constituent negation is treated in terms of a familiar modifier-head construction. General principles ordering lexical and phrasal heads ensure that negation (the adverbs not and pas) follows the finite verb (the finite auxiliary verb in English), while only constituent negation appears preverbally. Our constraint-based account, cast within the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), provides a viable alternative (with broader coverage, fewer devices and simpler principles) to analyses based on head movement. which seek to explain the syntax of negation and adverbial positions in terms of the interaction of morphological properties, verb movement, and functional projections.