V-stranding with null arguments in coordination and its interpretation

This paper explores the reasons why V-stranding negative replies allow the interpretation that negates every argument in the antecedent coordinate clause as noted in Russian by Landau (2021). We observed a similar pattern in Korean, where VP ellipsis is not attested, thus V-stranding VP ellipsis is not an analytic option. For an alternative account of the relevant construction, we propose an argument ellipsis analysis with De Morgan’s laws syntactically implemented via negation lowering into coordination. In constructions observing De Morgan’s laws, the negation of a disjunction is interpreted as the conjunction of the negations while the negation of a conjunction is construed as the disjunction of the negations. We generalize that in the absence of functional heads licensing null categories, negation does not undergo lowering, exerting no influence on the coordinator combining null arguments in V-stranding constructions. This yields a conjunctive interpretation by default, generating a denotation where every conjunct is negated. Effectively, the syntactic process of negation lowering accompanied by coordinator switch feeds the interpretations in compliance with De Morgan’s laws, although this process is constrained by diverse configurations such as the presence of adverbial expressions.