Fragment Answers and Negative Concord in Turkish

This article is concerned with the interpretation of negative concord items (NCIs henceforth) as fragment answers to negative questions in Turkish. Turkish is known as a strict negative concord language; however, a judgment test showed that the behavior of NCIs as fragment answers in negative questions is rather unexpected. NCIs as fragments do not pattern with their counterparts in other strict negative concord languages since they only display the negative concord reading. The double negation reading in which each instance of negation is interpreted is almost never available. Therefore, an analysis that includes a covert negative operator in order to explain an otherwise double negation reading is not possible in Turkish. Instead, to account for this unambiguous reading I argue for an analysis in which fragment NCIs are locally licensed by sentential negation. The findings reveal a typological distinction among negative concord languages in terms of NCI licensing as well as their interpretation.