This paper develops and defends a semantic/syntactic analysis of a curious set of negative gradable predicates in the Tlingit language, and shows that the analysis has some important consequences concerning the range of crosslinguistic variation in degree constructions. In Tlingit, certain negative gradable predicates are formed by negating a positive root and then applying an additional morphological operation: e.g. k’éi ‘good’, tlél ukʼé ‘not good’, tlél ushké ‘bad’. I show that (i) the negation in forms like tlél ushké ‘bad’ is VP-external, clausal negation, and is not an incorporated negation like English un-; and (ii) the meaning of these forms is indeed that of a gradable negative predicate, rather than the propositional negation of the positive predicate (cf. tlél ukʼé ‘not good’). Under the proposed analysis, the additional morphological operation observed in these forms is the reflex of a special degree relativizer, one that must undergo movement to Spec-NegP. In addition, Tlingit differs from English and other languages in that degree operators—like POS and comparative operators—can be attached high in the clause, above sentential negation. In addition to capturing various facts concerning these negative predicates, the proposed analysis raises some novel puzzles concerning intervention effects in the movement of degree operators, and provides support for the view that negative predicates like bad are morphosyntactically derived from positive predicates like good.

中文翻译：

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善，“不好”和“不漂亮”：对Tlingit否定谓语的否定

本文开发并捍卫了Tlingit语言中一组好奇的否定可分级谓词的语义/句法分析，并表明该分析对度结构的跨语言变化范围具有重要意义。在Tlingit中，某些否定可分级谓词是通过否定一个正数根然后应用其他形态运算而形成的：例如k'éi'good '，tlélukʼé '不好'，tlélushké '坏'。我证明（i）否定形式tlélushké'bad '的否定是VP外部的从句否定，而不是像英语un-; （ii）这些形式的含义确实是可分级否定谓词的含义，而不是肯定谓词的命题否定（参见tlélukʼé“不好”）。在提出的分析下，以这些形式观察到的其他形态学操作是特殊度相对化剂的反射，必须对Spec-NegP进行运动。此外，Tlingit与英语和其他语言的不同之处在于，度数运算符（例如POS和比较运算符）可以在句子中高于句法否定的位置附加高位。除了捕获有关这些否定谓词的各种事实外，所提出的分析还提出了一些有关度数运算符运动中的干预效应的新颖难题，并为否定谓词如坏的morphosyntactically从像正谓词衍生好。