Two Types of Negation in Let Imperatives

This paper aims to complement Park's (2013) approach to let imperatives by presenting new data. Based on Zanuttini's (1996) generalization about the dependency between the presence of TP and the availability of sentential negation, Park claims that the complement clause selected by -key-ha 'let' in Korean can be negated because of the presence of TP, but the one selected by let in English cannot due to the absence of TP. Although his analysis of the distribution of sentential negation is on the right track, there are English data in which the lower clause of let imperatives can be negated with not. We bring together a wider range of data of let imperatives from various sources, which include not only the data with a sequence of Let not NP VP but also those with a sequence of Let NP not VP. These two patterns of negation are reported to be unavailable in let imperatives by Park (2013), which traces back to Potsdam (1998). However, this paper shows with several diagnostics that not serving to negate the lower clause in these two patterns is no t 'sentential' but 'constituent' negation. The conclusion we draw is that despite the structural difference of the lower clause, there is no difference in logical possibilities of negation of the lower clause between the English let imperatives and Korean key-ha-la imperatives.