[29]no and tampoco a pragmatic distinction in spanish negation

Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

No and tampoco: a pragmatic distinction in Spanish negation Scott A. Schwenter Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The Ohio State University, 266 Cunz Hall, 1841 Millikin Road, Columbus, OH 43210, USA Received 6 May 2002; received in revised form 17 March 2003; accepted 18 March 2003

Abstract Cases of variation between canonical and non-canonical negative forms are widespread across the world’s languages. Typically, the difference between the forms is characterized as regulated by pragmatic factors, albeit fuzzy or undefined, such as ‘‘emphasis’’: the non-canonical form conveys an ‘‘emphatic’’ meaning while the canonical form does not. In this paper I examine in depth one of these cases, heretofore unmentioned in the literature on negation: the distinction between the canonical negator no and non-canonical tampoco in mainly spoken Spanish. It is shown that the distinction between the two expressions is not regulated by ‘‘emphasis’’ at all, but instead constrained by a more specific set of pragmatic considerations.

These are, first of all, the argumentatively de-realizing (Ducrot, Oswald, 1995. Les modificateurs de´re´alisants. Journal of Pragmatics 24, 145–165 nature of tampoco versus the argumentative neutrality of no. And second, the special information-structural requirements of tampoco, requirements not shared by no: tampoco, as opposed to no, can only be used in denials of discourse-accessible propositions. From a theoretical perspective, the analysis illustrates how tools from modern pragmatic approaches can be employed to go beyond commonsense explanations based in intuitive notions like ‘‘emphasis’’. # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Spanish; (canonical vs. non-canonical) negation; discourse accessibility; argumentative de-realization; tampoco; emphasis

1. Introduction: non-canonical negatives in Romance languages The alternation between a canonical negative form and some other, non-canonical, negative expression is a widespread phenomenon in many of the world’s languages. It E-mail address: schwenter.1@osu.edu (S.A. Schwenter).

0378-2166/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00057-2

1000

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

is manifested by such pairs of negatives as the famous alternation from the history of French between the diachronically prior and strictly preverbal negative ne and the innovative, ‘‘reinforced’’ negative collocation ne V pas (Jespersen, 1917; Ashby, 1981), which added the nominal element pas (literally ‘a step’) after the verb. In present-day French, the variation now holds between the diachronically older ‘‘reinforced’’ ne V pas, as in (1a) below, and bare postverbal pas in (1b) (Ashby, 1981, 2001; Coveney, 1996): (1a) (1b)

Je ne mange pas.

‘I don’t eat.’

Je mange pas.

‘I don’t eat.’

In the present-day spoken language, there is a clear shift of preference towards the latter, strictly postverbal, form, while the former, more complex, form is increasingly uncommon (Ashby, 1981, 2001; Coveney, 1996). However, as noted at length by these authors, the present-day alternation between the discontinuous negative ne . . . pas and simple postverbal pas is regulated primarily by speaker and stylistic considerations, not by discourse-pragmatic factors.

If we go beyond the now-famous French case, it is possible to find lesser-known examples of competition between negators in other Romance languages/dialects (and beyond Romance as well). Regarding all of these cases, a canonical negative can be identified on the basis of frequency and distributional properties, being in all cases considerably more frequent in occurrence and less restricted in distribution than a non-canonical negative form. Most prominent among these cases are the alternation in Brazilian Portuguese between canonical na˜o VP vs. non-canonical na˜o VP na˜o or even, in some dialects, VP na˜o (Schwegler, 1991; Roncarati, 1996; Furtado da Cunha, 1996, 2001; Barme, 2000); Catalan canonical no VP vs. non-canonical no V pas (Espinal, 1993); Italian non VP vs. non-canonical non V mica (Cinque, 1991 [1976]; Zanuttini, 1997); and Dominican Spanish canonical no VP vs. noncanonical no VP no (Schwegler, 1996; Toribio, 2002). Examples of the non-canonical forms in Brazilian Portuguese (Schwenter, 2002: 255) and Italian (Zanuttini, 1997: 62) are given in (2), where the optional postverbal negative elements appear in italics (see Schwenter, 2002 for a unified pragmatic analysis of these cases): (2a) (2b)

Na˜o esta´ muito frio na˜o.

‘It’s not very cold.’

Gianni non ha mica la macchina.

‘Gianni hasn’t got a car.’

(Brazilian Portuguese) (Italian)

Regarding all of the cases referred to in the last paragraph, the investigators typically make at least brief mention of pragmatic factors which serve to differentiate the canonical form from the other variant(s). Thus, in no instance are the two variants considered fully interchangeable from an interpretational perspective, even though the propositional content of, e.g., the examples in (2) would not change

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1001

at all if the italicized postverbal negatives were eliminated, thereby resulting in the canonical, strictly preverbal, negative form (e.g. Na˜o esta´ muito frio or Gianni non ha la macchina). The most common explanation for such cases from a pragmatic perspective is that the non-canonical expression(s) is more ‘‘emphatic’’ (Barme, 2000) and/or ‘‘presuppositional’’ (Zanuttini, 1997) than its canonical counterpart. Thus, the conditions under which the sentences with non-canonical negation in (2) are possible represent a subset of those in which the canonical (i.e. strictly preverbal, in these cases) negative may appear.

Problematic in such accounts, however, is the fact that terms like ‘‘emphasis’’ or ‘‘presupposition’’ are very rarely, if ever, clearly defined. This is especially true of studies invoking ‘‘emphasis’’ as the factor responsible for motivating the choice of non-canonical negatives over their canonical counterparts. In all such studies, I have found that no definition is provided for this concept. For instance, in his discussion of the rise of non-canonical negatives like the ones presented above, Schwegler (1990: 158) maintains that ‘‘there seems to be a constant and universal psycholinguistic need for negative emphasizers’’, but he never provides his own view of what constitutes ‘‘emphasis’’. In fact, looking a bit closer at Schwegler’s use of the term ‘‘emphasis’’, one finds that he uses it inconsistently. In one sense it seems to refer to a minimal quantity, as reflected in the meanings of what he calls ‘‘nominal emphasizers’’ such as French and Catalan pas ‘a step’ or Italian mica ‘a crumb’, where the ‘‘emphasis’’ in question presumably derives from the denial of that minimal quantity (e.g. not take a step, not eat a crumb). But Schwegler also uses ‘‘emphasis’’ in his discussion of non-canonical negatives in languages like Brazilian Portuguese, where the form serving as the preverbal negator (na˜o) is ‘‘copied’’ into postverbal position, as in (2a) above. In these cases, no minimal quantity is necessarily involved. In other studies (e.g. Jespersen, 1917; Barme, 2000), it appears that the ‘‘emphasis’’ in question is motivated as much by phonological factors as by pragmatic ones: the postverbal negator adds phonological weight (often termed ‘‘reinforcement’’) to a phonologically ‘‘weakened’’ preverbal negative, and this additional weight thereby lends more ‘‘emphasis’’, in some unspecified pragmatic sense, to the utterance.1 Surveying the literature more broadly, it appears that such a lack of clear definition for this term is the norm: ‘‘emphasis’’ is used intuitively in linguistics in general, whether it be in reference to prosody, information structure, or negation. But in no case should it be considered anything more than an intuition.

The other term found frequently in accounts of non-canonical negatives, ‘‘presuppositional’’, is more clearly defined than ‘‘emphasis’’ by some researchers (Zanuttini, 1997), but not by others (Schwegler, 1991), even though its pragmatic basis is difficult to deny. Thus, Zanuttini (1997: 61–62), following Cinque (1991 1 Indeed, the diachronic process whereby canonical negatives gradually arise from more complex, ‘‘reinforcing’’ structures, made famous to the linguistic world by Jespersen (1917), and now commonly known as ‘‘Jespersen’s Cycle’’, is regularly depicted as one in which the ‘‘emphatic’’ nature of the more complex structures is gradually lost through a kind of ‘‘rhetorical devaluation’’ (Dahl, 1999). On this view, the frequent (over)use of the non-canonical, ‘‘emphatic’’ negative in contexts of little or no emphatic value leads, over time, to the loss of the structure’s erstwhile emphatic value and its eventual reanalysis as the unmarked or canonical form of negation.

1002

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

[1976]), states that mica in (2b) above, and in similar examples, is a ‘‘presuppositional negative marker’’, and is felicitous only when the ‘‘proposition that Gianni has a car [is] entailed by the common ground. If such a proposition is not part of the common ground, the presence of mica renders the sentence infelicitous and its counterpart without mica must be used’’. While this is a considerable improvement over the implicit, intuitive concept of ‘‘emphasis’’, it gives rise to other unanswered questions. For instance, what constitutes ‘‘common ground’’ for Zanuttini? How is it determined? Does it matter how the negated proposition came to form part of the common ground? Another problem is that this description of non-canonical negatives is now very similar to often-cited definitions of canonical negative forms like that of Givo´n (1978: 109): ‘‘negatives are uttered in a context where corresponding affirmatives have already been discussed, or else where the speaker assumes the hearer’s belief in—and thus familiarity with—the corresponding affirmative’’. Clearly, the contexts Givo´n indicates as suitable for negatives (whether of canonical form or not) resemble quite closely the notion of common ground employed by Zanuttini.

In general, then, despite the pragmatic ‘‘flavor’’ of discussions of cases of variation between negative expressions, there has been very little in-depth analysis of the pragmatic factors which operate to distinguish one negative from another. Those attempts that we do have, several of which are mentioned above, fail to provide clear criteria for distinctions. This should not be too surprising, however, since the meaning or function of the non-canonical negatives is rarely, if ever, the focus of the aforementioned studies. Rather, in some cases what is of prime interest is their syntax (Zanuttini, 1997), in others their diachrony (Schwegler, 1990), and in others their typological implications (Barme, 2000). Indeed, in my opinion, there is only one clear case of a study that focuses on the pragmatics of a non-canonical negator: the analysis of the interpretation of Catalan no V pas by Espinal (1993).

One of the virtues of Espinal’s study is that she is able to completely avoid intuitive explanations like ‘‘emphasis’’ or problematic concepts like ‘‘presupposition’’.

Instead, she argues that the difference between canonical no VP and non-canonical no V pas in Catalan is that the function of the non-canonical form is ‘‘to cancel a proposition that is either part of the most accessible context or is an inference deducible from the utterance’s context’’ (1993: 354). Espinal (1993: 355) repeats an example from Fabra (1932) to illustrate this function: (3) A: Dema` t’ho dire´.

‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

B: Oh! no ens veurem pas dema`.

‘Oh! we won’t see each other tomorrow.’

For Espinal, pas (or no V pas) in this example and others like it should be analyzed ‘‘as a linguistic marker for the hearer indicating that the utterance containing this adverb [pas] has to be understood in a certain context’’ (1993: 357). Eliminating pas from the example would not affect the grammaticality of the reply, but it would remove an overt signal for the hearer about the relationship of B’s utterance to (some aspect of) the discourse context. In (3), that aspect of the context is the infer-

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1003

ence derivable from A’s prior utterance such that A believes that A and B will in fact see each other the next day. At its core, then, Espinal’s account is information-structurallybased: the proposition denied by no V pas must be accessible—either directly or via inference—from the discourse context in which the non-canonical negative occurs. I will make a similar argument, with additional detail about the discourse-accessibility of the denied proposition, in the analysis of Spanish negatives that follows.

To sum up what has been said so far, terms such as ‘‘emphatic’’ or ‘‘presuppositional’’, when not clearly explicated by researchers who use such terms, are at best illdefined or, at worst, intuitive, and do not provide a basis for making predictions as to where one negative will be preferred over the other(s), or even to where the variation between the negative variants will be possible or impossible. In light of the deficiencies in the prior study of negative forms, this paper strives to provide a detailed pragmatic analysis of one case of pragmatically-driven variation between negative forms: the alternation between the canonical negative no and the non-canonical variant tampoco in (mainly spoken) Spanish. While this case is not similar in formal terms to those cited above (in which all the non-canonical negatives exhibit a discontinuous structure, e.g., non V mica or na˜o VP na˜o), it does share many functional similarities with them, some of which I have pointed out in prior work (Schwenter, 2002).

In the rest of this paper, I will make two principal arguments, with primary emphasis placed on the second. First, it will be demonstrated that the Spanish negative adverb tampoco (usually translated by bilingual dictionaries as ‘either’) is in fact polysemous between two distinct meanings: one which requires access to a negative proposition in the discourse context as a ‘‘licenser’’—in accordance with its dictionary definition below—and one which does not require such licensing. However, the second sense of this adverb still requires a particular set of conditions to obtain in the discourse context in order to be used felicitously. This set of conditions will be clarified in detail in the discussion to follow. Secondly, it will be shown that the latter, innovative sense of tampoco is in pragmatic variation with the canonical negator no: there is no propositional-meaning difference between the two forms, but there are important discourse-pragmatic differences. In particular, this sense of tampoco differs from no in two important respects. First of all, it is pragmatically specialized for argumentatively ‘‘derealizing’’ (Ducrot, 1995) negation in speech acts expressing (partial or attenuated) denials. What this means is that tampoco in this use occurs in utterances whose function is to constrain the inferential conclusions that can be derived from some other, prior, part of the discourse. Putting this a bit differently, the tampoco-carrying utterance attenuates the rhetorical force of a prior piece of discourse.

Second, this sense of tampoco is sensitive to a specific information-structural configuration which is only conversationally implicated by some uses of the canonical negative no (cf. Horn, 1989). Specifically, the proposition denied by tampoco must be either ‘‘discourse-old’’ or ‘‘inferrable’’ on the basis of discourse-old information, following the information-structural typology of Prince (1992). In this typology, Prince distinguishes between ‘‘hearer-status’’ and ‘‘discourse-status’’, with the values ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ for each. While her concern is mainly with the referents of NPs, her model is also applicable to situations, events, and even propositions (cf. Birner and Ward, 1998). It is this wide range of application that makes Prince’s typology

1004

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

most suitable for the analysis to be offered here. Admittedly, there are many other models of information structure on the pragmatic market (e.g. Ariel, 1990; Gundel et al., 1993), but these are typically constructed with specific reference to the linkage between NP forms (e.g. pronouns, names, definite descriptions) and the accessibility of the antecedents of those forms. Since the present study is dealing neither with NP form nor NP antecedents, Prince’s model is deemed more appropriate for the analysis.

The data to be considered in this study consist of naturally-occurring examples from corpora of tape-recorded speech, such as the Val.Es.Co corpus of conversational discourse from Valencia, Spain (Briz, 1995), and the Real Academia Espan˜ola’s Corpus de Referencia del Espan˜ol Actual (CREA accessible online at http://www.rae.es), as well as witnessed/overheard conversations. In addition, I will also use constructed examples designed to test the hypotheses being put forward. Examples of the former type will be duly referenced as to their source, while those of the latter kind will not.

2. Two kinds of tampoco While the topic of negative expressions, and more specifically the class of so-called ‘‘N(eg)-words’’, has been of great interest to researchers in Spanish semantics and pragmatics over the past few years (e.g. Laka, 1993; Vallduvı´, 1994; Aranovich, 1996; Herburger, 1998, 2001), there are some negative expressions which appear to have escaped scrutiny. This is clearly the case of tampoco ‘(n)either’, an N-word which, even when afforded (scant) attention in the scholarly literature (e.g. Bosque, 1980; Brucart, 1987; Sa´nchez Lo´pez, 1999a,b), has actually not been analyzed in terms much different from those which appear in dictionary definitions of the word, such as the following, from the Diccionario de la Real Academia Espan˜ola (1992): tampoco. (De tan y poco.) adv. neg. con que se niega una cosa despue´s de haberse negado otra. ‘(From tan and poco) negative adverb with which one thing is negated after another thing having been negated.’

While this definition of tampoco may be accurate for some of its uses, it is also a wholly inadequate characterization of its range of meanings. As I intend to demonstrate in the rest of this section, there are actually two kinds of tampoco.

The first kind of tampoco, corresponding to the dictionary definition above (‘either’), I will term ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco. Like other N-words in Spanish (e.g. nada ‘nothing’, nadie ‘nobody’, nunca ‘never’; cf. Laka, 1993; Vallduvı´, 1994), when tampoco occurs in postverbal position, it requires a preverbal negative trigger in order to be grammatical, as in (4a); without this accompanying preverbal negative the sentence is ungrammatical, as shown in (4b). However, in preverbal position, tampoco itself expresses the negation without the need for a negative trigger, as shown in (4c): (4a) (4b) (4c)

Marı´a no estudia italiano tampoco.

‘Maria doesn’t study Italian either.’ *Marı´a estudia italiano tampoco.

Marı´a tampoco estudia italiano.

‘Maria doesn’t study Italian either.’

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1005

Unlike the other N-words listed above, however, tampoco in both postverbal and preverbal position requires either a discourse-old or an inferrable negative proposition in the discourse context in order to be used felicitously. In (5a), this proposition can be found in the first conjunct of the sentence of the coordinated structure, while in the dialogic example (5b) it is found in the declarative portion of A’s utterance, preceding the question directed towards B: (5a) Juan no estudia italiano y Marı´a no lo estudia tampoco.

‘Juan doesn’t study Italian and Maria doesn’t study it either.’

(5b) A:

No voy a clase, vas a ir tu´?

‘I’m not going to class, are you going to go?’

Yo tampoco (voy a ir).

‘I’m not going either.’ (OR: ‘neither am I.’) ?

B:

When a negative proposition is not accessible in the prior discourse context, the use of tampoco (just like Eng. either) becomes infelicitous, as illustrated in (5b0 ) below, where there is no necessary assumption that A (or someone else) is not going to class. In other words, and in accordance with its dictionary definition above, tampoco must mark (at least) the second negative proposition in a string of negatives, as it does in (5b). Note however that the canonical negator no is perfectly acceptable in a context lacking any preceding negative like that shown in (5b0 ); it is primarily this requirement of a preceding negative proposition that distinguishes dictionary tampoco from no (#=pragmatic infelicity): (5b0 ) A: Vas a ir a clase?

‘Are you going to go to class?’

B: No/#Tampoco voy a ir.

‘I’m not going.’ ?

In sum, then, tampoco in its dictionary sense can be characterized, following Ko¨nig (1991), as a ‘negative additive focus particle’, which has the primary function of ‘‘adding’’ one negative proposition to another negative proposition already accessible in the discourse context (cf. Ko¨nig 1991).2 Thus, its meaning in (5b) above can be represented in terms of assertion and presupposition as in (5c): 2 As pointed out to me by Thorstein Fretheim (p.c.), the notion of a ‘‘discourse-accessible negative proposition’’ can be construed rather broadly, and tampoco does not necessarily require an overt negative to be licensed; rather, the negative may simply be implicated by what is said. While I agree with this observation, the results of a questionnaire study I conducted (see Schwenter and Zulaica-Herna´ndez, 2002) showed that speakers differ widely in the degree to which they accept tampoco in the context of a non-negated proposition. Thus, for example, the sentence Marı´a rehu´sa trabajar y a Juan tampoco le gusta ‘Maria refuses to work, and Juan doesn’t like to either’, considered impeccable by Steinberg (1991: 294), was accepted and rejected by equal numbers of Spanish speakers (from both Latin America and Spain) whom I surveyed, despite the fact that Maria’s disliking work is potentially inferrable from the example.

However, in examples where a negative proposition was entailed by the content of the first conjunct (e.g.

Juan odia la pizza y a Marı´a tampoco le gusta ‘‘Juan hates pizza and Maria doesn’t like it either’) the speakers surveyed all agreed on the acceptability of tampoco.

1006

(5c)

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Asserted: The speaker is not going to class.

Presupposed: At least one other person besides the speaker is not going to class.

In stark contrast to this ‘‘dictionary’’ meaning of tampoco, the second use of this word—and the one that is of primary interest in this paper—does not require a preceding contextually-accessible (i.e. either discourse-old or inferrable) negative proposition in order to be used felicitously. I term this use of the form ‘‘independent’’ tampoco. Although it is most commonly found in colloquial conversational styles, it can also be found more infrequently in other styles. The ‘‘independent’’ use of tampoco is illustrated by (6a), a written example, and by (6b), from a conversation overheard by the author: (6a)

(From Santos Domı´nguez and Espinosa Elorza 1996: 49) Para Jackendoff (1983: 183–189), la sema´ntica del movimiento y de la situacio´n en el espacio proporciona la clave para otros campos sema´nticos, advirtiendo -eso sı´- que tampoco hay que exagerar su alcance.

‘For Jackendoff (1983: 183–189), the semantics of movement and spatial relations provide the key for other semantic fields, warning—nevertheless— that one should not exaggerate its reach.’

(6b) [In a bar; A and B are discussing Pablo’s (in)ability to drive home] A: Pablo esta´ borracho.

‘Pablo is drunk.’

B: Tampoco ha bebido tanto.

‘He hasn’t drunk that much.’

(Overheard conversation, Alicante, Spain, 7/98) The function of tampoco in (6a) and (6b) differs from that of ‘‘dictionary’’ uses of this form in that, first of all, there is no prior negative proposition accessible in the discourse context.3 Therefore, this use of tampoco does not require the presence of a prior negative proposition in order to be used felicitously. Furthermore, while the ‘‘dictionary’’ use of tampoco in (5a) and (5b) brings out an underspecified pragmatic parallelism between the two negative propositions—for example, that neither Juan nor Maria study Italian in (5a) and that these two pieces of information have

3 As far as I know, this ‘‘independent’’ use of tampoco has only been mentioned in two prior studies: Reta Janariz (1981) and Gonza´lez (1998). However, both of these authors treat this use of tampoco as a dialect-specific and/or contact-induced function of the lexeme. It is not found in grammars or dictionaries, not even those which purport to describe actual ‘‘usage’’. A survey of corpora from different countries throughout the Spanish-speaking world, as well as of native speakers from diverse regions, reveals that ‘‘independent’’ tampoco is a widespread phenomenon, not characteristic of particular dialects.

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1007

parallel implications in the discourse (Blakemore, 1987; Blass, 1990)—no parallelism is invoked in the examples in (6). Indeed, the characterization of tampoco as ‘‘additive’’ in its focus particle use—adding one negative proposition to another one already salient in the discourse—does not seem to apply at all to its use in (6a) and (6b). Note as well that the intended interpretation of B’s reply in (6b) is one of disagreement: B does not agree with A’s assessment that Pablo is drunk—or with the degree of drunkenness A ascribes to Pablo—and attempts to persuade A to modify that assessment.

In addition, the ‘‘independent’’ use of tampoco as in (6) is most plausibly translated into English as ‘not’, instead of ‘either’, while it is the latter English word which corresponds rather transparently to the dictionary meaning of tampoco shown in (5a, b) above. Indeed, the substitution of tampoco by no in an example like (5a) would be pragmatically odd, and specifically the ‘either’ meaning would be lost entirely. On the other hand, a simple no would also be possible in (5b) in place of tampoco, but this substitution would again bring about considerable differences in interpretation. Specifically, the additive parallelism conveyed by ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco—essentially, the ‘either’ meaning—would be lost. This is clearly not the case with the examples in (6), where no would be a perfectly felicitous substitute for tampoco, as shown by the modification of (6b) in (6b0 ): (6b0 ) [In a bar; A and B are discussing Pablo’s (in)ability to drive home] A: Pablo esta´ borracho.

‘Pablo is drunk.’

B: No ha bebido tanto.

‘He hasn’t drunk that much.’

The substitution of tampoco in (6b) by no in (6b0 ) does not change the propositional content of B’s reply in the least; this reply is still interpreted as disagreeing with A’s assessment of Pablo. As I will show below, however, there still remain important pragmatic differences between ‘‘independent’’ tampoco and the canonical negator no in contexts like those illustrated in (6b).

As will be shown in much greater detail in Section 3 below, ‘‘independent’’ tampoco is limited to utterances with argumentatively de-realizing (Ducrot, 1995) discourse function, utterances that constrain the potential inferential conclusions of some other discourse segment. This functional restriction differs from that of ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco (=‘either’), which is indifferent to the argumentative function of the utterance in which it appears. This specialization of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco motivates a polysemy analysis, instead of, e.g., one based in homonymy or monosemy, since there is a clear meaning connection between ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco when employed with counter-argumentative function, and ‘‘independent’’ uses of the same form, which are limited to expressing this function. However, ‘‘independent’’ tampoco cannot be considered merely a particular contextually-dependent use of ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, since, again, the latter form requires an accessible negative proposition for proper licensing in the discourse, while the former does not.

1008

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

These points of differentiation between ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, on the one hand, and ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, on the other, therefore provide some robust evidence that tampoco should be treated as polysemous, that is, as having distinct uses with distinct (albeit related) meanings.4 Additional evidence for a polysemy analysis can be found in the fact that the two meanings of tampoco may co-exist within a single utterance—a test which is often considered the most stringent test for polysemy.

Thus, some 15 native speakers (from both Spain and Latin America) that I asked to read aloud the example in (7) below found exchanges like the one included therein to be acceptable, though admittedly not common. In this example, both ‘‘independent’’ and ‘‘dictionary’’ uses of tampoco occur in B’s second utterance: (7) A1: Juan esta´ borracho.

‘Juan is drunk.’

B1: Tampoco ha bebido tanto. (‘‘independent’’) ‘He hasn’t drunk that much.’

A2: Y creo que ha estado fumando marihuana tambie´n.

‘And I think he’s been smoking marijuana too.’

B2: Tampoco1 ha fumado tanto, tampoco2.

‘He hasn’t (tampoco1) smoked that much, either (tampoco2).’ (tampoco1=‘‘independent’’; tampoco2=‘‘dictionary’’) If the ‘‘independent’’ meaning of tampoco were a strictly context-dependent interpretation, the double occurrence of tampoco in B2 should lead to an anomalous utterance. The fact that native speakers accept such utterances, and, furthermore, are able to distinguish the meanings conveyed by each token of tampoco in these contexts, once again provides strong evidence for a polysemy analysis.

Finally, probably the most convincing piece of evidence for polysemy is to be found in the syntactic distribution of the two meanings. While the ‘‘dictionary’’ use of tampoco, as illustrated above in (5a, b), is possible both postverbally (with an appropriate negative trigger) and preverbally (without this trigger), the ‘‘independent’’ use of the same form is found strictly in preverbal position. Thus, in example (6b) above, repeated here, speaker B’s reply (Tampoco ha bebido tanto) would not have been felicitous with the same interpretation had tampoco appeared postverbally as in the alternate version (6b00 ): (6b) [In a bar; A and B are discussing Pablo’s (in)ability to drive home] A: Pablo esta´ borracho.

‘Pablo is drunk.’

B: Tampoco ha bebido tanto.

‘He hasn’t drunk that much.’

(Overheard conversation, Alicante, Spain, 7/98) 4

I understand polysemy as ‘‘the association of two or more related senses within a single linguistic form’’ (Taylor, 1995: 99).

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1009

(6b00 ) [In a bar; A and B are discussing Pablo’s (in)ability to drive home] A: Pablo esta´ borracho.

B: #No ha bebido tanto tampoco.

Indeed, the infelicitous reply in (6b00 ) would have forced an interpretation of tampoco with its ‘‘dictionary’’ meaning of ‘either’. In other words, there is a partially overlapping, though not completely parallel, syntactic distribution between the ‘‘dictionary’’ and ‘‘independent’’ meanings of tampoco, indicative of a polysemous relationship between the two meanings (cf. Fretheim, 2001: 88).

The propositional meaning equivalence between ‘‘independent’’ tampoco and the canonical negator no (which always appears preverbally), also noted above, is therefore paralleled by the matching syntactic placement of the two negative forms.5 Before moving on to a more detailed analysis of the differences between the Spanish negative forms, it may be useful to point out, for non-Spanishspeaking readers who may be trying to draw parallels with English forms, that there do exist ‘‘independent’’ uses of English either. However, it is not difficult to discern that these uses are not the same as the ones found with tampoco. Thus, for instance, while it is possible for either to appear without a prior parallel negative proposition in certain discourse contexts, the interpretation of this use is rather different from that of tampoco in (6a, b) above.

Consider the following: (8) A: John is drunk.

B: (And) He hasn’t drunk that much either!

This fairly common use of either in English conveys the speaker’s perceived incongruence between John’s state of inebriation and the (relatively small) amount of alcohol he has consumed. Unlike the Spanish example in (6b), in (8) speaker B’s intention is not to deny the truth or the degree of accuracy of speaker A’s assessment of John, but rather to express incredulity about John’s condition. Note as well that either in (8) is not semantically commutable with the canonical negative form not, unlike the case of tampoco and canonical no shown in (6b) and (6b0 ) above. Thus, this use of either must still be syntactically ‘‘triggered’’ by a preverbal negative, such as the negation in the auxiliary hasn’t in (8).

5

Though not the focus of the present paper, one might ask why it is that tampoco, instead of other Nwords with nearly identical syntactic behavior (e.g. nada, nadie, nunca, ninguno), has come to develop a separate meaning. The answer lies, I believe, in the semantic differences between tampoco and its N-word counterparts. While the latter all express a (negated) concept as part of their propositional content (e.g. a person, time, or object), tampoco expresses strictly procedural meaning (cf. Blakemore, 1987; Wilson and Sperber, 1993), i.e. negation, albeit with strict pragmatic constraints on where this meaning may be expressed (Schwenter and Zulaica-Herna´ndez, 2002).

1010

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Another ‘‘independent’’ use of either, which sounds somewhat archaic nowadays to my ears,6 is illustrated in (9): (9) A: John is drunk.

B: He’s not either!

While in this case B does deny the truth of A’s assertion, once again it is not equivalent to the Spanish case, where tampoco is used in place of the canonical negator no. English either, on the other hand, must co-occur with the negative not, as shown by the ungrammaticality of the previous example without negation as in (90 ): (90 ) A: John is drunk.

B: *He’s either!

Thus, while ‘‘independent’’ uses of English either do exist—and, I should add, are highly worthy of further study—they are not strictly comparable to the uses of Spanish tampoco of interest in the present paper.

3. No, tampoco, and argumentative force Despite the strictly semantic commutability of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco and no in examples like (6) above, these two negative expressions are clearly pragmatically distinct, and any native Spanish speaker, though probably not capable of pinpointing the differences between the two forms in an example like (6b), would notice their interpretational differences.7 Most significantly, these negatives differ with respect to the argumentative function of the utterance in which they appear. On the one hand, tampoco is restricted to utterances which have the function of reducing the argumentative force of some inferential conclusion that is derivable from the discourse context. By contrast, no freely occurs in utterances whatever their argumentative function may be. Examples given below will support this difference between the two negatives.

The notion of argumentative force refers to the degree to which a given utterance supports (‘‘argues for’’) a contextually-salient conclusion. This force can be modified, both upwards and downwards, by a variety of linguistic forms. Within the program of the French Theory of Argumentation in Language (TAL; see Anscombre and

6 Other native speakers of American English who have been in the audience during presentations of this research have tended to agree with my subjective assessment. Indeed, almost invariably, those under 40 (approximately) consider this use of either to sound either archaic or ‘‘British’’ (which, in the USA, is often synoymous with ‘‘archaic’’). But many of those over 40 (approximately) in the audiences have stated that they find this use of either quite normal. A more scientific study of these differences is called for, since I did not actually poll all the audience members for their responses or judgments.

7 Part of the discussion in this section is taken, with substantial revisions, from Schwenter (2000).

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1011

Ducrot 1983, 1994 for overviews), Ducrot (1995) distinguishes between those modifiers which strengthen (or, in Ducrot’s terminology, ‘‘realize’’) and those which weaken (‘‘de-realize’’) the argumentative force of certain predicates. According to Ducrot, in a given sentence, the construction ‘‘and even’’ (coordinating conjunction+scalar particle) provides a suitable context for ‘‘realizing’’ modifiers, but not for ‘‘de-realizing’’ modifiers. In contrast, the adversative conjunction ‘‘but’’ creates a suitable context for ‘‘de-realizing’’ modifiers but not for ‘‘realizing’’ modifiers. Consider the Spanish examples in (10) below, where the predicate being modified in each case is the noun pariente ‘relative’: (10a) (10b)

Es un pariente, {e incluso/#pero} un pariente cercano.’

‘She’s a relative, {and even/#but} a close relative.’

Es un pariente, {#e incluso/pero} un pariente lejano.’

‘She’s a relative, {#and even/but} a distant relative.’

In (10a), the adjective cercano ‘close’ is ‘‘realizing’’ with respect to pariente in the sense that the predicate phrases un pariente and un pariente cercano can be used rhetorically as premises in support of a similar conclusion, with the latter supporting that conclusion to a greater degree. For example, if it is understood that someone’s being ‘‘a relative’’ of mine is an argument in favor of them helping me out financially, their being ‘‘a close relative’’ will be (under normal assumptions) an even stronger argument in favor of them helping me out. The linguistic evidence for this relationship between pariente and cercano is provided by the fact that (10a) is felicitous (without additional contextual assumptions) with the conjunctive phrase e incluso ‘and even’, but not with pero ‘but’. By contrast, in (10b) the adjective lejano ‘distant’ is felicitous with pero, but not e incluso. This is due to the fact that lejano is a ‘‘de-realizing’’ argumentative modifier of pariente, i.e. it weakens the argumentative force of this predicate. In other words, if one can use ‘‘she’s a relative’’ as an argument supporting to some degree D a (potentially implicit) conclusion C, then one can use ‘‘she’s a close relative’’ as an argument supporting C to some greater degree D+x. The argument ‘‘she’s a distant relative’’ will reduce the argumentative force for C to some lesser degree D x.

For Ducrot and the TAL, the realizing/de-realizing property is part and parcel of the inherent semantic content of predicates and their modifiers (e.g. pariente, cercano, lejano). However, it is rather easy to construct a context in which a typically de-realizing modifier can be used as a realizing modifier, as illustrated by the contextualized example in (11), which is based on a constructed situation provided by Ducrot himself (1995: 148): (11)

[Paco wants to buy a nice present for his nuclear family, but he wants the help of another, more distant, relative to do so. Someone suggests Marta as a possibility.]

Paco: Marta es un pariente, e incluso un pariente lejano. Ella me ayudara´.

‘Marta is a relative, and even a distant relative. She’ll help me out.’

1012

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Here, given the contextual assumptions about Paco’s intentions, it is actually preferable that a distant relative provide him the help he needs. That is, Marta’s being a distant relative, instead of merely a relative, is a stronger argument for choosing her to help out instead of a weaker one (compare the examples in [10] above). Thus, the position that will be adopted in the present paper—unlike that of Ducrot and the TAL—is that the realizing/de-realizing distinction is pragmatic, not semantic, in nature, and links contextual assumptions with argumentative strategies.

These strategies are often strongly associated with lexical items like predicates and their modifiers, but they are not fully conventional associations, as shown by the fact that they are cancelable in an appropriate discourse context, like that provided in (11) above. This position is, in essence, a Gricean (or neo-Gricean) one. From such a perspective (e.g. Grice, 1975; cf. also Levinson, 2000), the association between linguistic forms (i.e. predicates) and argumentatively realizing or de-realizing value would appear to be a good candidate for generalized conversational implicature status.

Using this framework, it is now possible to contend that what is denied by utterances with ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, specifically, is the (potential) implicature that a propositional argument in a discourse supports a (potentially implicit) conclusion C to some degree D. The utterance which contains the token of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco carries out the function of decreasing the support of C from D to D x, thereby constraining the inferences to be drawn regarding C. Consider the following constructed dialogue: (12) A: No sabemos si comprar ma´s comida. Juan come mucho, verdad?

‘We don’t know whether to buy more food. Juan eats a lot, right?’

B: Tampoco come tanto.

‘Well, he doesn’t eat that much.’ ?

In (12), B does not necessarily deny the truth of the proposition ‘‘Juan eats a lot’’, directly derivable from A’s utterance; however, B does reduce the argumentative force of that proposition, and implicates that the amount of additional food that A would need to buy due to Juan’s presence is less than what A is implicating in the initial utterance of the exchange.8 Additional evidence for the specialization of tampoco to argumentatively de-realizing contexts comes from the contrasts in pragmatic acceptability between tampoco and the canonical negator no in the following pairs of constructed dialogic examples.

While both tampoco and no are candidates for expressing negation in the (a) examples, only the latter form can be used felicitously in the (b) examples:

8

Juan:

Avanzan las obras de tu casa?

‘Is the construction of your house progressing?’ ?

(13a)

Note that postverbal positioning of tampoco in (12) would be pragmatically odd. That is, no come tanto tampoco would be infelicitous in the context of B’s reply.

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Marı´a: (14a)

Juan: Marı´a:

(14b)

Juan: Marı´a:

?

Juan:

?

(13b)

Sı´, pero no/tampoco avanzan mucho.

‘Yes, but it’s not progressing much.’

Avanzan las obras de tu casa?

‘Is the construction of your house progressing?’

Sı´, (y) no/#tampoco tardara´n mucho en terminarla.

‘Yes, (and) they won’t be long in finishing it.’

Llovio´ durante el viaje?

‘Did it rain much during the trip?’

Sı´, pero no/tampoco llovio´ demasiado.

‘Yes, but it didn’t rain too much.’

Llovio´ durante el viaje?

‘Did it rain during the trip?’

Sı´, (y) por ello no/#tampoco pudimos salir durante tres dı´as.

‘Yes, (and) because of it we weren’t able to go out for three days.’ ?

Marı´a:

1013

Following Ducrot (1995), the crucial difference separating the (a) examples and the (b) examples in (13) and (14) is that only in the former does Maria provide derealizing modification—rhetorical attenuation—of her initial affirmative answer (sı´ ‘yes’), thereby permitting the felicitous use of tampoco. In the (b) examples, Maria actually goes on to strengthen the argumentative force of the initial affirmation, disallowing the use of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, but perfectly acceptable with the canonical negative no. To make this distinction more explicit, consider (14b) in more detail. In this example, the question asked by Juan is already argumentatively ‘‘biased’’ (Portole´s, 1988), in the sense that an affirmative reply to it will result in the affirmation of a proposition (‘‘it rained during the trip’’), which is oriented, under normal circumstances, towards a negatively-evaluated conclusion: rain is stereotypically understood as a factor which lessens one’s positive assessment of a trip.

This is made explicit in (14b0 ) below: (14b0 )

Question: Did it rain during the trip?

Initial response: Yes (oriented toward an argumentatively negative conclusion) Elaboration: We weren’t able to go out for three days because of the rain (strengthens already salient negative conclusion)

Because the elaboration in (14b) involves rhetorically strengthening Marı´a’s initial negatively-oriented response, the negation conveyed in that elaboration cannot be expressed by tampoco but rather only by the canonical negator no. This contrasts with examples like (14a), where the elaboration modifies the initial affirmative reply by weakening its (potential) argumentative force. In terms of speaker–addressee interaction, then, the tampoco-marked elaboration in (14a) functions to constrain the inferential conclusions which Marı´a wants Juan to draw based on her initial response (sı´ ‘yes’).

A similar, naturally-occurring example of this use of tampoco can be seen in (15), which comes from a Spanish television talk show. In this example, speaker I responds to speaker E’s prior statement, admitting that her (=E’s) demanding

1014

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

attitude could possibly lead her to remain unmarried for good. But she then employs tampoco in conjunction with the content of the next clause in order to constrain the inferential conclusion that such a result would be disconcerting to her: (15) E: Por un problema de exigencia que te puede llevar a una solterı´a permanente.

‘Because of a problem of being demanding that could lead you to a permanent unmarried status.’

I: Es posible, pero tampoco me preocupa mucho.

‘It’s possible, but it doesn’t worry me much.’

(CREA, 1983, Espan˜a, Si yo fuera presidente, TVE 2) Notice however that such constraining of inferences is not limited to dialogic contexts where one speaker is attempting to limit the argumentative force of her reply, as has been illustrated by the preceding examples. A different context can be seen in example (16) below, from a lecture at a planetarium in Madrid, Spain. In this case the speaker employs tampoco to constrain an inference potentially triggered by use of the word osa ‘(female) bear’: (16) Y hay estrellas de la Osa Mayor que esta´n ma´s cerca de nosotros que entre ellas. Lo que vemos es una figura en el plano y nada ma´s, que sale. . . como esto, la Osa Mayor, que tampoco se parece a ningu´n oso, no?, pero como veis ahı´. ?

‘And there are stars in Ursa (lit. bear) Major that are closer to us than to each other. What we see is a figure on the chart and nothing more, which comes out. . . like this, Ursa Major, which doesn’t look like a bear, right?, but as you can see there.

(CREA, 1991, Espan˜a) The speaker’s strategy in (16) is clear, albeit quite complex. The utterance of the name of the astronomical body (Ursa Major) gives rise to the implicature that this body itself physically resembles the animal mentioned in its name, i.e. a bear. The speaker’s tampoco-marked sentence works to counteract that implicature, and ensure that the addressees do not draw an unwarranted inference from the name Ursa Major—itself giving rise to a physical representation of a bear—to the physical appearance of the astronomical body in question.

Another characteristic of tampoco which distinguishes it from no is that it is further restricted to expressing attenuated denials; it cannot convey complete rejections, like that of B1 in (17) below. Likewise, it cannot be used to carry out ‘‘metalinguistic’’ (Horn, 1985, 1989; Geurts, 1998) denials of upper-bounding scalar implicatures, like the one seen in (18): (17) A: Me gusta mucho la nueva grama´tica, porque tiene una orientacio´n teo´rica.

‘I like the new grammar a lot, because it has a theoretical orientation.’

B1: No/#Tampoco es teo´rica para nada.

‘It’s not theoretical at all.’

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1015

B2: Tampoco es tan/muy teo´rica.

‘It’s not that/very theoretical.’

(18) Tu hermano no (#tampoco) es guapo, es guapı´simo!

‘Your brother isn’t handsome, he’s super-handsome!’ !

While these restrictions may seem like arbitrary ones, both actually follow directly from the analysis of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco as a negative operator specialized for argumentatively de-realizing contexts. The function of tampoco noted in the discussion above is specifically to weaken or reduce the rhetorical argumentative force of some prior utterance. In (17) above, B1’s reply would do much more than weaken the argumentative force of A’s utterance; indeed, it would eliminate this force completely, and implicate an ‘‘inversion’’ of the argumentation away from a positive evaluation of the grammar in question toward a negative one.9 The restriction on metalinguistic contexts like that in (18) is also predicted by the present analysis. In (18), the negative no is not used to deny the truth of the underlying proposition (‘‘your brother is handsome’’), but rather to present an objection to the argumentative insufficiency of the adjective guapo ‘handsome’, which, via the application of Grice’s (1975) quantity maxim, licenses the upper-bounding scalar implicature ‘‘handsome and no more than handsome’’. The negation therefore creates a suitable context for replacing the adjective with a stronger alternative, in this case, guapı´simo ‘super-handsome’. Putting it more generally, metalinguistic negations which deny the upper bound of scalar implicatures are found only in argumentatively realizing contexts. This is precisely where ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, a negative form restricted to argumentatively de-realizing environments, cannot be employed felicitously. The canonical negator no, on the other hand, lacks this type of argumentative restriction, and is therefore compatible with metalinguistic negation contexts like the one in (18).

As a number of the examples presented so far have illustrated, the de-realizing use of tampoco is often found in collocation with the adversative conjunction pero ‘but’.

This conjunction is traditionally considered to express ‘‘restrictive’’ meaning (Gili Gaya, 1961; Acı´n Villa, 1993), in that it limits the interpretational possibilities of some prior discourse segment, as in examples like (19): (19)

Alicia es madrilen˜a, pero no le gusta el metro.

‘Alicia is from Madrid, but she doesn’t like the subway.’

(Portole´s, 1995: 252)

In more recent analyses, pero as employed in (19) is termed a ‘‘counter-argumentative’’ connective whose role is to present the second conjunct ‘‘como supresor de alguna suposicio´n que se podrı´a originar del primero’’ (‘as canceling some supposition that could arise from the first conjunct’); in other words, as nullifying the

9

See the similar analysis of the adverb poco ‘little’ by Ruiz and Pons (1996: 64). The link between the argumentative value of poco and that of tampoco ( <tan ‘so’ + poco) is worthy of further investigation.

1016

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

rhetorical force of a prior discourse segment (Portole´s, 1995: 252). But, more importantly for present purposes, pero in (19) expresses de-realizing meaning, in the sense that the conclusions possible from the proposition derivable from the first conjunct (‘‘Alicia is from Madrid’’) are constrained by the conjunct introduced by pero. Thus, for instance, the inferences that could be drawn about Alicia’s degree of ‘‘Madrid-ness’’ based solely on the information that she is from Madrid are restricted by the clause introduced by pero.

The combination of pero and tampoco is therefore not surprising given the proposed de-realizing function of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, and the similarly de-realizing function that pero often performs (cf. Portole´s, 1995, 1998). But one could also ask the following question: Is it actually the adversative conjunction which contributes the de-realizing meaning in utterances containing both pero and tampoco? It appears not. As pointed out by Portole´s (1998), the inherent meaning of pero is in fact not strictly counter-argumentative or de-realizing: it can also be used in contexts where the argumentative value of the segment it introduces is argumentatively co-oriented or parallel to that of the prior segment. Evidence for this co-orientation can be found in the fact that pero in some contexts is free to co-occur with markers of argumentative parallelism like adema´s ‘in addition’ or sobre todo ‘above all’, neither of which can appear in utterances where pero displays counter-argumentative function, as shown by naturally-occurring examples like (20), cited by Portole´s (1998: 205):10 (20)

Era como una segunda madre de todos, tanto por su autoridad como por sus desvelos, pero adema´s se ocupaba de cualquier extran˜o que le tocara el corazo´n.

(G. Garcı´a Ma´rquez, Noticia de un secuestro, Barcelona, Mondadori, 1996, p. 117) ‘She was like a second mother to everyone, both by her authority as well as by her watchfulness, but in addition she would take care of any stranger who touched her heart.’

As pointed out by Portole´s (ibid.), in contexts like (20) there is no intended argumentative opposition between the segment introduced by pero and the one which precedes it. Instead, the function of pero is to mark the preceding segment as argumentatively insufficient for the desired conclusion and to introduce another discourse segment which, when considered along with the preceding segment, provides a more sufficient argumentative basis for the desired conclusion. Thus, in (20), in order to reach the speaker’s desired conclusion about the woman in question, it is not enough to know only that she was like a second mother to everyone; one must also know, in addition, that she was willing to help out any strangers that came her way.

10 Further evidence supporting this analysis of pero can be found in so-called ‘‘super-realizing’’ uses of this conjunction (Garcı´a Negroni, 1995), e.g. Es guapo, pero {guapo/guapı´simo} ‘He’s handsome, but handsome/super-handsome’. Here pero indicates the argumentative insufficiency of the ‘‘normal’’ interpretation of an adjectival property (‘‘handsome’’), and introduces a strengthened interpretation of that same property through repetition of the adverb (‘‘super-handsome’’).

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1017

In example (21) below, taken from the CREA corpus, pero is used with the same function as in (20), but now occurs followed by a token of overt negation (no). Note the asymmetry between the canonical form no and ‘‘independent’’ tampoco in this context: (21)

Adema´s, cuando la Biologı´a se ha centrado en el hombre ha tenido que hacer frente a nuevos problemas relativos a las formas de observar. Para estos casos, los u´tiles que hay que emplear han de poseer una gran sensibilidad y un elevado poder de resolucio´n; pero sobre todo no (#tampoco) han de causar dan˜o alguno al sujeto del ana´lisis.

(CREA, 1988, Espan˜a, Nuevas tecnologı´as en biomedicina) ‘In addition, when Biology has centered its attention on man it has had to face new problems relative to methods of observation. For these cases, the tools which must be employed have to possess great sensitivity and a high power of resolution; but above all, they must not cause any damage to the subject under analysis.’

Crucially, in examples like (21) where pero does not introduce de-realizing (i.e. argumentatively weakening) modification of what precedes it, but rather realizing (i.e. argumentatively strengthening) modification of some prior proposition, only no, not tampoco, can be used to convey the meaning of negation. And of course, even in argumentatively de-realizing contexts, there is no requirement that pero accompany tampoco, as illustrated by examples like (6b) or (16) above. Thus, it can be concluded that the form tampoco is itself conveying the argumentatively de-realizing meaning that has been associated with it in this section. Another naturally-occurring example in which tampoco expresses de-realizing meaning in isolation from any other expressed content helps to corroborate this analysis (I have chosen not to translate tampoco here, given the complete lack of an English equivalent):11 (22) [Context: Two graduate students talking to each other; A is asking B for computing assistance.]

A: Como tu´ eres la experta en computadoras. . .

‘Since you’re the expert on computers. . .’

B: Ah, tampoco.

‘Ah, tampoco.’

(Columbus, Ohio, 11/2000) B’s response in (22) is not meant to deny her knowledge of computers, but rather only to attenuate the flattering description of her in A’s prior utterance: tampoco ‘‘de-realizes’’ the argumentative strength of A’s characterization of B as an ‘‘expert’’ in computers. What is striking about B’s reply with tampoco is that it is clearly not designed to dissuade A from consulting with her about computers, an interpretation

11

Thanks to Tim Face for overhearing and supplying me with this example.

1018

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

that would have been possible, though not necessary, had B responded with no instead of tampoco in the above example. B’s choice of tampoco thus actually implies a show of modesty on her own part: she denies the high scalar value of ‘‘expert’’, but at the same time conversationally implicates that she does know something about computers, and therefore that she will be able to help A out with her computer problem.

The choice of tampoco, instead of no, in this particular discourse context, then, is a highly motivated one, insofar as it permits B to guide A to an interpretation which would not have been as easily accessible had the canonical negator been employed.

In sum, it has been shown in this section that there are clear differences between the two negatives tampoco (in its ‘‘independent’’ use) and no with respect to how they modify the argumentative force of a preceding proposition. These differences are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 captures the result that, on the one hand, no is indifferent to the kind of argumentative force involved: it is equally at home in realizing and de-realizing contexts, as shown for instance by its felicity in all the examples in (13) and (14). On the other hand, tampoco is restricted to de-realizing modification, as in (13a) and (14a), and cannot be employed in utterances whose purpose is to strengthen the argumentative force of some prior piece of discourse, like those seen in (13b) and (14b).

Before closing out this section, let us first return to a point made in Section 1 above that requires clarification. While it is now clear that ‘‘independent’’ tampoco occurs only in argumentatively de-realizing contexts, ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, like the canonical negator no, is not restricted by the argumentative function of the discourse segment in which it appears. Thus, in (23a) below, tampoco occurs in a conjunct which is argumentatively co-oriented with the preceding conjunct, a context in which, as (21) above especially has shown, ‘‘independent’’ tampoco cannot appear. ‘‘Dictionary’’ tampoco can also be found in contexts of counter-argumentation, such as that shown in (23b): (23a)

Juan no es alto y tampoco sabe tirar muy bien. No vamos a escogerlo para el equipo de baloncesto.

‘Juan isn’t tall and he doesn’t know how to shoot very well either. Let’s not choose him for the basketball team.’

(23b)

Juan no es alto pero tampoco es bajo. Vamos a escogerlo para el equipo de baloncesto.

‘Juan isn’t tall but he’s not short either. Let’s choose him for the basketball team.’

This difference between the two meanings of this lexeme is a crucial one, since on another view it could be maintained that ‘‘independent’’ tampoco is merely a Table 1 No/tampoco and the modification of argumentative force

No Tampoco

Realizing (arg. strengthening)

De-realizing (arg. weakening)

+

+ +

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1019

contextually-conditioned variant of ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco. Such an analysis would, however, miss the likewise crucial fact that ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, unlike its ‘‘independent’’ counterpart, requires a prior negative proposition in order to be licensed (as it is in (23a) and (23b)).

Nevertheless, it appears that there is a close connection between uses of ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco in counter-argumentative contexts like the one seen in (23b) and ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, which is always found in such contexts, but which, again, does not require access to a prior negative proposition as a ‘‘trigger’’. The synchronic, and possibly diachronic,12 connection between the two meanings becomes even clearer upon considering examples like (24) below, which could be considered an ‘‘intermediate case’’ between examples of ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco like (23b) and ‘‘independent’’ tampoco:13 (24)

Es bien sabido que todos estamos demasiado ocupados para escribir mensajes largos, pero tampoco queremos perder el contacto con aque´llos que esta´n lejos, y un mensaje diario o semanal evita que se pierda ese contacto.

‘It is well known that we are all too busy to write long messages, but we don’t want to lose contact with those who are far away, and a daily or weekly message permits us to avoid losing that contact.’

(Passage from a term paper by a Spanish-speaking graduate student, Ohio State University, 6/2000)

Here, what is strongly implicated by the writer before the start of the pero-clause is a negative proposition: ‘‘we do not write long messages because of how busy we are’’. It is this negative implicature that licenses the use of tampoco that follows.

Functionally, it is a short step from such ‘‘hybrid’’ examples to the existence of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, which differs from the token in (24) only by virtue of discarding the latter’s phoric properties—unlike ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, it no longer indexes a prior negative proposition (whether explicit or implicit) in the discourse context.14 12

Diachronic accounts of the development of (‘‘dictionary’’) tampoco (e.g Llorens, 1929; Espinosa Elorza, 1989) do not mention any uses of the form resembling ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, thus implying that this meaning is a rather recent development of the form. Diachronic analysis of tampoco in newly-available corpora (e.g. the Real Academia Espan˜ola’s CORDE) should shed more light on the timeframe of this development.

13 I find ‘either’ to be somewhat marginal as a translation equivalent of tampoco in the ‘‘hybrid’’ example (24). As noted above, ‘either’ is not a possible translation equivalent of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco in examples like (6a) and (6b).

14 A question for further research is whether other, seemingly lexicalized, uses of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco can also be included in a unified analysis of this polysemy. Commonly-heard (at least in Spain) phrases such as Tampoco es para tanto! (akin to ‘it’s not such a big deal’) and Tampoco te pases! (‘don’t go too far/overboard’) are not necessarily argumentatively de-realizing, but they do clearly direct an interlocutor to ‘‘reduce’’ or ‘‘weaken’’ his or her (verbal or non-verbal) action in a situated discourse context. This raises the possibility that the de-realizing meaning of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco has actually been extended to a more general sense of ‘‘reduction’’ or ‘‘weakening’’ which can be applied not only to argumentative force, but also to other kinds of forces. !

!

1020

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

4. No, tampoco, and information structure It has often been claimed that negation is ‘‘polyphonic’’ (Ducrot, 1984) or, alternatively, that it has a ‘‘marked presuppositional status’’ (Givo´n, 1978). What both of these characterizations refer to is the observation that negation covertly displays the confrontation of two opposing viewpoints. Specifically on this view, the principal meaning and function of a negative assertion is to offer up a denial of another, typically previously-stated, viewpoint (or expectation, or presupposition). A simple and common example of the polyphonic possibilities of negation is shown in (25) below: (25)

Juana no bebe vino.

‘Juana doesn’t drink wine.’ viewpoint #1 (implicit/presupposed): Juana drinks wine. viewpoint #2 (explicit/asserted): viewpoint #1 is false.

In this example, viewpoint #2, which carries the marker of negation, would be identified with the speaker’s viewpoint, but viewpoint #1 would not. It is not necessary that the viewpoint being denied actually be ascribed to another specific person.

To take another example, on the exterior doors on many department stores in the USA it is possible to find signs which read ‘‘Not an Entrance’’. The message on these doors can only be understood against a specific pragmatic presuppositional backdrop, namely that of another viewpoint—more commonly and pretheoretically called an ‘‘expectation’’ (cf. Tannen, 1979)—which holds the belief that the doors should constitute a means for entering the store. The role of the negation is therefore to deny the expectation involved.

In an attempt to clarify what is meant by the ‘‘polyphonic/presuppositional status’’ of negation, many scholars (e.g. Fretheim, 1984; Horn, 1989; Carston, 1996; Jordan, 1998) have argued at length that negation should not be strictly associated with denials of interlocutors or other viewpoints accessible in the discourse context (contra, e.g., Givo´n, 1978; Tottie, 1982). Rather, the polyphonic/presuppositional nature of negation derives from ‘‘the prototypic use of negation . . . as a denial of a proposition previously asserted, or subscribed to, or held as plausible by, or at least mentioned by, someone relevant in the discourse context’’ (Horn, 1989: 203; emphasis added). Thus, the context-bound interpretation of negation arises from the way in which negative markers are used in situated discourse, not from any semantic characteristic of the negative expression itself.

Following the general lines of Horn’s (1989) analysis, I will assume that the ‘‘extra assumption’’ associated with negative statements which links them to other viewpoints in the discourse context is actually a Gricean conversational implicature, and therefore cancelable in an appropriate discourse context. Adopting this view is crucial, since it makes it possible to account for another essential difference between the Spanish negative expressions no and (‘‘independent’’) tampoco: while the former only in some cases implicates a context-bound interpretation (the denial of a proposition accessible in the discourse context), the latter actually evokes such an

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1021

interpretation. Thus, for instance, while no is perfectly acceptable in example (26), where there exists no necessary prior contextual assumption that the professor’s door is open, tampoco is infelicitous in the same context: Esta´ la profesora en su despacho?

‘Is the professor in her office?’

B: La puerta no (#tampoco) esta´ abierta.

‘The door isn’t open.’ ?

(26) A:

In this example, B’s reply may implicate (depending on the interlocutor’s knowledge about the professor and how she usually leaves her door) that she either is or is not present in her office. However, it does not necessarily license an interpretation in which the underlying affirmative proposition (‘‘the professor’s door is open’’) is understood as one which speaker A believes to be true. As pointed out to me by Richard Waltereit (p.c.), this example can still be considered ‘‘presuppositionally marked’’ in that it leads to an interpretation that potentially differs from an alternate, non-negated, reply like La puerta esta´ cerrada ‘The door is closed’, or from the non-negated version of B’s reply in (26), La puerta esta´ abierta ‘The door is open’.

Nonetheless, the ‘‘marked’’ status of the negative with respect to its non-negative counterparts in (26) does not display the properties that will license the felicitous use of tampoco.

Additional support for this position comes from the interpretive contrast between the two negatives in discourse contexts where either one would be a felicitous option. For instance, in the following example (taken from a fight between ‘‘novios’’, i.e. boyfriend/girlfriend), tampoco is easily commutable, on strictly propositional semantic grounds, with no: (27) B: adema´s parece que te enfades conmigo todo el rato y/ (no se´) // yo pienso que tampoco me he portado tan mal ‘besides it seems like you’re angry at me all the time and, I don’t know, I think that I haven’t (tampoco) behaved so badly.’

A: no si / tU´ no te has portado mal// pero! no lo se´/ hay veces que- que me da la impresio´n de que/ cuando estoy con mis amigos me-/ me miras como si me dijeras por que´ esta´s ahı´?/ sabes?

‘No, you haven’t behaved badly, but I don’t know, there are times that I get the impression that, when I’m with my friends, you look at me as if you were saying, ‘‘why are you over there?’’, you know?’

(Valencia Corpus: Briz, 1995) ?

?

The use of tampoco in this example indexes the denied proposition (‘‘B has behaved very badly’’) as a viewpoint that is inferrable based on discourse-old information. Specifically, from B’s assertion that ‘‘it seems like (A) is mad at (B) all the time’’, it is plausible to derive the inference that (A thinks that) B has behaved badly, and therefore that (A thinks that) B is a deserving target of A’s anger. Clearly, though, B wants to deny this inferrable conclusion, thereby implicating that A’s

1022

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

being angry with her (=B) all the time is unwarranted. Most interesting here is that the replacement of tampoco by no in (27) would remove the explicit instruction, conveyed by tampoco, to interpret the negated content as being both accessible in the discourse context, as well as, via conversational implicature, ascribable to someone other than the speaker. In this case, it seems obvious that speaker B wants to ascribe the denied proposition (i.e. ‘‘B has behaved badly’’) to speaker A. This same instruction regarding the discourse-old status of the denied proposition and the denial of a viewpoint that cannot be identified with the speaker’s is evident in (28): Cua´nto ha dicho? tres millones de pelas por capı´tulo!

‘How much did you say? Three million pesetas per episode!’

B: Sı´.

‘Yes.’ A: Por capı´tulo! Vamos ya.

‘Per episode! Come on now.’

B: Pues tampoco es mucho, eso lo cobra un actor espan˜ol.

‘Well it’s not much, that’s what Spanish actors earn.’

(CREA, 1996, Espan˜a, Esta noche cruzamos el Mississippi, Tele 5) !

?

(28) A:

!

The interlocutors in (28) are discussing the amount of money an American actress is going to earn per episode. A’s reaction to the amount results in both incredulity and contempt, and although he never explicitly states that the amount in question is excessive, this opinion on his part is easily inferrable based on what he does say. B’s tampoco-marked utterance could be interpreted as contradicting this opinion: ‘‘despite what you (=A) think, three million pesetas per episode is not a lot’’. B then provides further justification for his position, when he points out to A that Spanish actors earn the same amount per episode.

A similar example can be found in (29), where speaker H3, a guest on a TV talk show, is trying to distance herself from the characterization of her husband’s lover as being un monstruo ‘a monster’. This characterization has not been made explicitly by anyone in the prior discourse, but it is inferrable from the reactions of the other participants, who are clearly surprised by H30 s desire to meet her husband’s lover face-to-face: (29) < H1 > Que´ quiere decir conocerla? A ver, que nos cuente. Tu´ quieres conocer a la amante de tu < simulta´neo> marido ‘What do you mean meet her? Let’s see, have her tell us. You want to meet your husband’s lover.’ < H3 > Yo la citarı´a ‘I’d set up an appointment with her.’ < H2 > Va a hacer < /simulta´neo > una telenovela.

‘She’s going to make a soap opera.’ < H1 > Esto, vamos.

‘That, right.’ ?

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1023

< H3 > No, no, no, nada.

‘No, no, no, nothing.’ < H2 > Y vas a llorar y vas a ir. . .

‘And you’re going to cry and you’re going to go. . .’ < H3 > Pero, pero si no es llorar.

‘But, but it’s not a question of crying.’ < H1 > Que´ vas a hacer? a ver, < simulta´neo > cue´ntanos que´ es lo que vas a hacer.

‘What are you going to do? let’s see, tell us what it is that you’re going to do.’ < H3 > Yo, que < palabra cortada > < /simulta´neo > quedarı´a con ella en una cafeterı´a < simulta´neo > porque tampoco es un monstruo ‘I would meet with her in a cafeteria, because she’s not a monster.’ < H2 > < ininteligible > < /simulta´neo > < unintelligble > < H3 > esta mujer, me refiero. Si se ha enamora < (d) > o de mi marido pue < palabra cortada > , pues no es ningu´n monstruo, yo tambie´n me enamore´ de e´l.

‘This woman, I mean. If she fell in love with my husband, then she’s no monster, I also fell in love with him.’

(CREA, 1991, Espan˜a, TVE 1) ?

Speaker H3’s choice of tampoco, instead of no, for asserting that her husband’s lover ‘‘is not a monster’’ is a pragmatically motivated one: it allows her to signal that this characterization (which she is denying) is one which is inferrable in the context of the ongoing discourse. In addition, through the tampoco-marking, it is also conversationally implicated that the ‘‘monster’’ characterization cannot be identified as being or having been H3’s personal viewpoint. Had H3 used no instead, the responsibility for the characterization could have been interpreted as being her own. This analysis is further supported by the italicized negative clause in H3’s last turn, no es ningu´n monstruo ‘she’s no monster’. The use of ningu´n ‘not a/any’ here makes it clear that the utterance is to be interpreted as a denial of another viewpoint, which maintains that the lover is a monster.

In support of this analysis of tampoco, it is also possible to construct minimal pairs of question-answer sequences, slightly different from those seen in Section 3 above, which highlight the inherently discourse-bound nature of tampoco, as opposed to the merely conversationally-implicated discourse linkage of no. For instance, speaker A’s WH-question in (30a) is neutral with respect to the construction of B’s house, but in (30b) the yes/no-question activates (though does not presuppose; see Dryer (1996) for this distinction) the underlying proposition ‘‘the construction of B’s house is progressing’’: Co´mo va lo de tu casa?

‘How’s your house coming along?’

B: Pues no/#tampoco avanzan mucho las obras.

‘Well, construction’s not progressing much.’ ?

(30a) A:

1024

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Avanzan las obras de tu casa?

‘Is the construction of your house progressing?’

B: Pues no/tampoco avanzan mucho.

‘Well, it’s not progressing much.’ ?

(30b) A:

The yes/no-question asked in (30b) implicitly evokes a viewpoint which presupposes a declarative proposition underlying the question, namely ‘‘las obras de tu casa avanzan’’ (‘the construction of your house is progressing’), thereby making this proposition discourse-old. It is against this argumentatively-biased discourse context that tampoco is offered in the reply; again, tampoco carries out de-realizing modification of this underlying proposition. By contrast, in (30a), the WH-question does not, in the absence of additional assumptions, evoke a viewpoint presupposing any progress in the construction of the house. With this viewpoint lacking, no de-realizing modification can be carried out, and as a result tampoco is infelicitous in B’s reply in (30a).

Note too the contrast between the possible responses to A’s question in (31a) and (31b) below. In the first case, the response with no could be used either in a context where neither speaker held any previous assumptions about the quality of the movie being referred to, as well as in a ‘‘biased’’ context where prior assumptions about the (positive) quality of the movie were already contextually salient to the interlocutors.

Que´ tal la pelı´cula?

‘How was the movie?’

B: No era gran cosa. (prior assumptions about movie not necessary, but possible) ‘It was no big deal.’ ?

(31a) A:

But as the present analysis would predict, the interpretational possibilities of no in (31a) contrast with those of the tampoco-prefaced reply in (31b):

B:

Que´ tal la pelı´cula?

‘How was the movie?’

Tampoco era gran cosa. (prior assumptions about movie necessarily evoked) ‘It was no big deal.’ ?

(31b) A:

The use of tampoco in this latter example would actually require a context where prior assumptions about the movie—in this instance, an assumption that the movie was supposed to be good—were already accessible to the interlocutors. Speaker A’s question in (31b) would be sufficient to activate those shared assumptions in the dyadic question–answer context. Speaker B’s use of tampoco in the reply would explicitly index the assumptions, contravening the interlocutors’ shared expectations about the movie being evaluated.

While the discussion in this section has been sufficient to distinguish tampoco from no in terms of their distinct discourse-pragmatic properties, it appears that the

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1025

properties of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco are actually a bit more specific than implied so far. Indeed, an important restriction on its use is based in particular on whether the accessible viewpoint at issue is one that is simply an expectation, whatever its source (similar to the views of Ducrot and Givo´n cited above for canonical negation), or one that is actually asserted and/or implicated by some discourse participant. In the first case, only the canonical negator no seems possible. Consider the situation in (32): (32)

[Juan, from Barcelona, has gone to Madrid and is staying at his friend Pablo’s house. Juan decides to take a shower, and says the following to Pablo] No/#Tampoco hay mucho jabo´n en el ban˜o.

‘There’s not much soap in the bathroom’

Based strictly on the culturally-based expectation of the availability of soap in the bathroom, Juan can assert the negative statement using no in (32) as an indirect request for Pablo to supply him with more soap. However, the alternate version with tampoco could not be employed felicitously in that same situation; rather, it would require that someone (in this case, most likely Pablo) actually assert or at the least implicate beforehand that there was in fact a sufficient amount of soap in the bathroom. Thus, it is not simply the case that ‘‘independent’’ tampoco entails the existence of an underlying expectation which no may sometimes implicate. Rather, the very conditions under which the proposition corresponding to the expectation is brought to life in the discourse are important for the felicitous use of tampoco in such contexts. In Prince’s (1992) terms, the expectation proposition must have discourse-old status, or be inferrable on the basis of discourse-old information. When the expectation proposition corresponds to hearer-old but discourse-new information, as in (32) above, the use of tampoco is infelicitous.

In summary, what I have shown in this section is that, among the two Spanish negative forms ‘‘in competition’’ (‘‘independent’’ tampoco and canonical no), only tampoco explicitly ‘‘points to’’ a discourse-accessible assumption underlying the negative proposition it marks. Thus, its conventional meaning includes a specific ‘‘discourse deictic’’ (Levinson, 1983) instruction which no does not, though no does often license implicatures leading to similar interpretations (cf. Fretheim, 1984; Horn, 1989). Indeed, the contrast established between tampoco and no provides more corroborating evidence that the more specific discourse-accessible interpretation—that of the denial of a viewpoint already salient in the discourse—which is often associated with no as well as with other canonical negatives across languages, is one that is only conversationally implicated, not conventionally associated with the negative marker itself. A difference closely resembling the Spanish case has also been noted for the contrast in Catalan between the canonical negator no and the pragmatically more specialized negative no . . . pas (Espinal, 1993). As noted in section 1 above, the latter is used most frequently ‘‘to cancel a proposition that is either part of the most accessible context or is an inference deducible from the utterance’s context’’ (1993: 354). However, unlike Spanish tampoco, the Catalan negative form is not restricted solely to argumentatively de-realizing modification.

1026

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

5. Conclusion In this paper, I have shown, first of all, that the Spanish lexeme tampoco is polysemous between its ‘‘dictionary’’ meaning as an N-word signaling pragmatic parallelism between two negative propositions (cf. either), and a distinct ‘‘independent’’ meaning as a marker of argumentatively de-realizing denials. In other words, there exist two kinds of tampoco in modern-day Spanish.

Secondly, I have shown that, in its ‘‘independent’’ use, tampoco enters into pragmatic variation with the canonical negator no in a subset of the contexts of denial which include overt negation. However, ‘‘independent’’ tampoco is easily distinguishable from no with respect to two conventional components of its meaning which make reference to pragmatic factors: (1) the type of argumentative modification it carries out, and (2) the obligatory context-bound interpretation of tampoco, as a denial of a discourse-old or inferrable proposition accessible in the discourse context, versus the same interpretation which is only (sometimes) conversationally implicated by no. The differences separating the three negative expressions examined in this paper (no, ‘‘dictionary’’ tampoco, and ‘‘independent’’ tampoco), based on three key properties emerging from the foregoing analysis (restriction to de-realizing modification; obligatory context-bound interpretation; requirement of a ‘‘parallel’’ negative proposition in the prior discourse context), can be summarized as in Table 2.

A more important contribution of the paper, however, is that it has made successful use of tools from modern pragmatic analysis to uncover the contexts of possible alternation between no and tampoco, thereby filling the gaping theoretical void created by intuitive and pretheoretical labels such as ‘‘emphatic’’ and/or ‘‘presuppositional’’, labels which nonetheless abound in pragmatic analyses. A tantalizing question for future research concerns the possible extension of the functions and use of tampoco into a greater range of the functional territory occupied by no— could tampoco eventually become the canonical negative in Spanish? If one only thinks in terms of Jespersen’s Cycle (1917), whereby a form providing post-verbal reinforcement of a preverbal negative, e.g. French ne . . . pas, comes to take over the functions of the erstwhile negative morpheme, then the case of Spanish tampoco clearly does not fit the pattern. However, if one looks away from the formal side for a moment and towards the side of function, then the possibilities look much more realistic. If we consider the two properties identified as characteristic of the meaning Table 2 Properties of the three negative expressions

No ‘‘Dictionary’’ tampoco (=‘either’) ‘‘Independent’’ tampoco

De-realizing modifcation only?

Oblig. context-bound interpretation?

Requires ‘‘parallel’’ negative proposition in prior discourse?

No No Yes

No No Yes

No Yes No

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

1027

and use of ‘‘independent’’ tampoco, it is not hard to see how these could be pragmatically extended to interpretations that are rhetorically ‘‘stronger’’ than the derealizing meaning presently conveyed, as well as to contexts in which the link between the proposition denied by tampoco and the ongoing discourse context is much more tenuous. Indeed, because of the highly inferential basis of discourse itself, and due to the fact that addressees often infer information which their interlocutors do not intend to implicate, contexts in which there is a denial of a proposition considered discourse-accessible by one interlocutor, but not by the other, are highly likely. A naturally-occurring example where this occurred (taken from an e-mail exchange between two departmental colleagues) can be seen in (33): (33) R: > Por cierto, me han aceptado el abstract para ese congreso. Ahora me toca inventar algo. . .

‘By the way, they’ve accepted my abstract for that conference. Now I’ve got to invent something. . .’

H: Tampoco creo que vaya a haber muchos expertos en el tema allı´.

‘I don’t think many experts on the topic will be there.’

Here, H’s tampoco-marked reply illustrates what his interpretation of R’s message is: for H, R is worried about putting together his paper for the conference because of the likely presence of ‘‘experts’’ that may be attending. By choosing tampoco rather than no as the negator, H indexes this interpretation explicitly and denies its validity.

However, after the exchange in (33) had occurred, R pointed out to H that that was not the intended interpretation; indeed, R did not fear the presence of experts in the conference audience, but rather was worried about getting his paper together in time, since he had assumed that his abstract had been rejected. Such asymmetries in the speakeraddressee interactional dyad are prime contexts for reinterpretation of the meaning of tampoco, but only time will tell if such reinterpretation actually takes place.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Thorstein Fretheim, Jose´ Portole´s, Salvador Pons Borderı´a, Mar Garachana, Javier Gutie´rrez-Rexach, Richard Waltereit, and Iker Zulaica-Herna´ndez for useful comments on earlier versions of this research. Thanks as well to a Journal of Pragmatics referee for excellent comments. A prior, and much less elaborated, version of this paper was presented at the Fourth Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Bloomington, Indiana, November 2000.

References Acı´n Villa, Esperanza, 1993. Aspectos de la adversacio´n en espan˜ol actual. Universidade da Corun˜a, La Corun˜a, Spain.

Anscombre, Jean-Claude, Ducrot, Oswald, 1983. L’argumentation dans la langue. Mardaga, Brussels.

Anscombre, Jean-Claude, Ducrot, Oswald, 1994. La argumentacio´n en la lengua. Gredos, Madrid.

1028

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Aranovich, Rau´l, 1996. Negation, Polarity, and Indefiniteness: A Comparative Study of Negative Constructions in Spanish and English. PhD Dissertation, UC-San Diego.

Ariel, Mira, 1990. Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents. Routledge, London.

Ashby, William, 1981. The loss of the negative particle ne in French: a syntactic change in progress.

Language 57, 674–687.

Ashby, William, 2001. Un nouveau regard sur la chute du ne en franc¸ais parle´ tourangeau: s’agit-il d’un changement en cours? French Language Studies 11, 1–22.

Barme, Stefan, 2000. Negac¸a˜o (e afirmac¸a˜o) no portugueˆs brasileiro falado informal. Hispanic Linguistics.

Birner, Betty J., Ward, Gregory, 1998. Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Blakemore, Diane, 1987. Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Blackwell, Oxford.

Blass, Regina, 1990. Relevance Relations in Discourse. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Bolinger, Dwight, 1972. Degree Words. Mouton, The Hague.

Bosque, Ignacio, 1980. Sobre la negacio´n. Ca´tedra, Madrid.

Briz, Antonio (Ed.), 1995. La conversacio´n coloquial (materials para su estudio). Universidad de Valencia, Valencia.

Brucart, Jose´ Maria´, 1987. La elisio´n sinta´ctica en espan˜ol. Publicacions de la Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, Bellaterra.

Carston, Robyn, 1996. Metalinguistic negation and echoic use. Journal of Pragmatics 25, 309–330.

Cinque, Guglielmo, 1991. Mica: note di sintassi e pragmatica. In: Cinque, G. (Ed.), Teoria Linguistica e Sintassi Italiana. Il Mulino, Bologna, pp. 311–323.

Coveney, Aidan, 1996. Variability in Spoken French: a Sociolinguistic Study of Interrogation and Negation. Elm Bank, Exeter, UK. Dahl, O¨sten, 1999. Grammaticalization and the life-cycle of constructions. Ms., Stockholm University.

Dryer, Matthew S., 1996. Focus, pragmatic presupposition, and activated propositions. Journal of Pragmatics 26, 475–523.

Ducrot, Oswald, 1984. Le dire et le dit. Minuit, Paris.

Ducrot, Oswald, 1995. Les modificateurs de´re´alisants. Journal of Pragmatics 24, 145–165.

Espinal, M.Teresa, 1993. The interpretation of no-pas in Catalan. Journal of Pragmatics 19, 353–369.

Espinosa Elorza, Rosa Marı´a, 1989. Tambie´n y tampoco: origen y evolucio´n. Anuario de Estudios Filolo´gicos 12, 67–79.

Fabra, Pompeu, 1932. Diccionari general de la llengua catalana. Edhasa, Barcelona.

Fretheim, Thorstein, 1984. Denials and other negatives. In: Brendemoen, B., Hovdhaugen, E., Magga, O.H. (Eds.), Riepmoca´la: Essays in Honour of Knut Bergsland. Novus, Oslo, pp. 49–65.

Fretheim, Thorstein, 2001. In defence of monosemy. In: Ne´meth, E., Bibok, K. (Eds.), Pragmatics and the Flexibility of Word Meaning. Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 79–115.

Furtado da Cunha, Maria Ange´lica, 1996. Gramaticalizac¸a˜o dos mecanismos de negac¸a˜o em Natal. In: Martelotta, Ma´rio Eduardo, Votre, Sebastia˜o Josue´, Cezario, Maria Maura (Eds.), Gramaticalizac¸a˜o no portugueˆs do Brasil. Tempo Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 167–189.

Furtado da Cunha, Maria Ange´lica, 2001. O modelo das motivac¸o˜es competidoras no domı´nio funcional da negac¸a˜o. D.E.L.T.A. 17, 1–30.

Garcı´a Negroni, Marı´a Marta, 1995. Scalarite´ et re´interpre´tation: les modificateurs surre´alisants. In: Anscombre, J.-C. (Ed.), The´orie des Topoı¨. Kime´, Paris, pp. 101–144.

Geurts, Bart, 1998. The mechanisms of denial. Language 74, 274–307.

Gili Gaya, Samuel, 1961. Curso superior de sintaxis espan˜ola. Biblograf, Barcelona.

Givo´n, Talmy, 1978. Negation in language: pragmatics, function, ontology. In: Cole, P. (Ed.), Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics. Academic Press, New York, pp. 69–112.

Gonza´lez, Marı´a Jose´, 1998. Negative constructions with tampoco ‘neither’ in the Spanish of the Basque Country. MS, University of Illinois.

Grice, H.P., 1975. The logic of conversation. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J.L. (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York, pp. 41–58.

Gundel, Jeanette K., Hedberg, Nancy, Zacharski, Ron, 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69, 274–307.

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1030

1029

Herburger, Elena, 1998. Lexical ambiguity is not always evil: the example of ni-ni. In: Gutie´rrez-Rexach, Javier, MartĹ´nez-Gil, Fernando (Eds.), Advances in Hispanic Linguistics, Vol. 2. Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA, pp. 378â&#x20AC;&#x201C;393.

Herburger, Elena, 2001. The negative concord puzzle revisited. Natural Language Semantics 9, 289â&#x20AC;&#x201C;333.

Horn, Laurence R., 1985. Metalinguistic negation and pragmatic ambiguity. Language 61, 121â&#x20AC;&#x201C;174.

Horn, Laurence R., 1989. A Natural History of Negation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Jespersen, Otto, 1917. Negation in English and Other Languages. A. F. Høst, Copenhagen.

Jordan, Michael P., 1998. The power of negation in English: text, context and relevance. Journal of Pragmatics 29, 705â&#x20AC;&#x201C;752.

Ko¨nig, Ekkehard, 1991. The Meaning of Focus Particles. Routledge, London.

Laka, Itziar, 1993. Negative fronting in Romance: movement to . In: Ashby, William J., Mithun, Marianne, Perissinotto, Giorgio, Raposo, Eduardo (Eds.), Linguistic Perspectives on the Romance Languages. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 315â&#x20AC;&#x201C;333.

Levinson, Stephen C., 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Levinson, Stephen C., 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Llorens, E.L., 1929. La negacio´n en espanË&#x153;ol antiguo con referencia a otros idiomas. Jose´ Molina, Madrid.

Portole´s, Jose´, 1988. La respuesta sĹ´/no a interrogativas generales. EspanË&#x153;ol Actual 49, 65â&#x20AC;&#x201C;83.

Portole´s, Jose´, 1995. Diferencias gramaticales y pragma´ticas entre los conectores discursivos pero, sin embargo y no obstante. BoletĹ´n de la Real Academia EspanË&#x153;ola 75, 231â&#x20AC;&#x201C;269.

Portole´s, Jose´, 1998. El concepto de suďŹ ciencia argumentativa. Signo y SenË&#x153;a 9, 199â&#x20AC;&#x201C;224.

Prince, Ellen F., 1992. The ZPG letter: subjects, deďŹ niteness, and information-status. In: Thompson, Sandra, Mann, William (Eds.), Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fundraising Text. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 295â&#x20AC;&#x201C;325.

Reta Janariz, Alfonso, 1981. Forma y contenido de algunas estructuras del navarro en su relacio´n con la situacio´n de las mismas en el espanË&#x153;ol general (II). Fontes Linguae Vasconum 13, 171â&#x20AC;&#x201C;213.

Roncarati, Cla´udia, 1996. A negac¸aË&#x153;o no portugueË&#x2020;s falado. In: Tavares de Macedo, Alzira, Roncarati, Cla´udia, Mollica, Maria CecĹ´lia (Eds.), Variac¸aË&#x153;o e Discurso. Tempo Brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, pp. 97â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 112.

Ruiz, Leonor, Pons, Salvador, 1996. Escalas morfolo´gicas o escalas argumentativas? EspanË&#x153;ol Actual 64, 53â&#x20AC;&#x201C;74.

Sa´nchez Lo´pez, Cristina, 1999a. Los cuantiďŹ cadores: clases de cuantiďŹ cadores y estructuras cuantiďŹ cativas. In: Bosque, I., Demonte, V. (Eds.), Grama´tica Descriptiva de la Lengua EspanË&#x153;ola, I. EspasaCalpe, Madrid, pp. 1025â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1128.

Sa´nchez Lo´pez, Cristina, 1999b. La negacio´n. In: Bosque, I., Demonte, V. (Eds.), Grama´tica Descriptiva de la Lengua EspanË&#x153;ola, II. Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, pp. 2561â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2634.

Santos DomĹ´nguez, Luis Antonio, Espinosa Elorza, Rosa MarĹ´a, 1996. Manual de sema´ntica histo´rica.

Editorial SĹ´ntesis, Madrid.

Schwegler, Armin, 1990. Analyticity and Syntheticity: A Diachronic Perspective with Special Reference to Romance Languages. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Schwegler, Armin, 1991. Predicate negation in contemporary Brazilian Portuguese: a change in progress.

Orbis 34, 187â&#x20AC;&#x201C;214.

Schwegler, Armin, 1996. La doble negacio´n dominicana y la ge´nesis del espanË&#x153;ol caribenË&#x153;o. Hispanic Linguistics 8, 247â&#x20AC;&#x201C;315.

Schwenter, Scott A., 2000. Spanish evidence for implicature denials. In: Boyle, John, Lee, Jung-Hyuck, Okrent, Arika (Eds.), CLS 36, Volume 1: The Main Session, pp. 441â&#x20AC;&#x201C;453.

Schwenter, Scott A., 2002. Pragmatic variation between negatives: evidence from Romance. In: Ezra Johnson, Daniel, Sa´nchez, Tara (Eds.), University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 8.3: Papers from NWAV 30, pp. 249â&#x20AC;&#x201C;263.

Schwenter, Scott A., Zulaica-Herna´ndez, Iker, 2002. On the contextual licensing of tampoco. In: Francisco Ordo´nË&#x153;ez, (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth Hispanic Linguistics Symposium. Cascadilla Press: Somerville, MA (forthcoming).

Steinberg, Elisa, 1991. A form of Spanish negation: negation without negatives. CLS 27 (2), 291â&#x20AC;&#x201C;308. ?

1030

S.A. Schwenter / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 999–1030

Tannen, Deborah, 1979. What’s in a frame? Surface evidence for underlying expectations. In: Freedle, Roy O. (Ed.), New Directions in Discourse Processing. Ablex Publishing, Norwood, NJ, pp. 137–181.

Taylor, John R., 1995. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory, 2nd ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, 2002. Focus on clefts in Dominican Spanish. In: Lee, James F., Geeslin, Kimberly L., Clancy Clements, J. (Eds.), Structure, Meaning, and Acquisition in Spanish. Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA, pp. 130–146.

Tottie, Gunnel, 1982. Where do negative sentences come from? Studia Linguistica 36, 88–105.

Vallduvı´, Enric, 1994. Polarity items, n-words and minimizers in Catalan and Spanish. Probus 6, 263–294.

Wilson, Deirdre, Sperber, Dan, 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua 90, 1–25.

Zanuttini, Raffaella, 1997. Negation and Clausal Structure. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Scott A. Schwenter is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The Ohio State University. He received a PhD in Linguistics in 1998 from Stanford University.

His dissertation was published in 1999 as The Pragmatics of Conditional Marking: Implicature, Scalarity, and Exclusivity in the series Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics, Garland Publishing, and his articles have appeared in the journals Linguistics, Hispanic Linguistics, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, and Studies in Language. His current research centers on the pragmatics of negation in Romance languages.