Compositionality and Complexity in Multiple Negation
Francis Corblin · Logic Journal of IGPL · 1995
This paper considers negative triggers (negative and negative quantifiers) and the interpretation of simple sentences containing more than one occurrence of those items (multiple negation sentences). In the most typical interpretations those sentences have more negative expressions than negations in their semantic representation. It is first shown that this compositionality problem remains in current approaches. A principled algorithm for deriving the representation of sentences with multiple negative quantifiers in a DRT framework (Kamp and Reyle, [25]) is then introduced. The algorithm is under the control of an on-line check-in, keeping the complexity of negation auto-embedding below a threshold of complexity. This mechanism is seen as a competence limitation imposing (and licensing) the ‘abrogation of compositionality’ (May [22]) observed in the so-called negative concord readings (Labov [17], Zanuttini [28], Ladusaw [19]). A solution to the compositionality problem is thus proposed, which is based on a control on the processing input motivated by a limitation of the processing mechanism itself.