Kalendář akcí

Inner Islands and Negation in Czech, German, English and Spanish: The case of which-clauses and as-clauses revisited

Ever since the pioneering work of John “Haj” Ross on “Inner Islands” in English (Ross 1984), it is not quite clear how to explain facts such as the followings:

(1) This mist can’t last, which Morpho and Hoppy (don’t) realize.

(2) This mist can’t last, as Morpho and Hoppy (*don’t) realize.

Whereas in (1) the embedded clause is introduced by the relative pronoun which that does seem to license a negation of the embedded clause, example (2) is a case of a restriction of negation in an as-clause. Why is this so? Are we facing an idiosyncratic English restriction or is there a Principle of UG that has to do with the structure of such clauses involved? In order to find an answer to this puzzling and challenging question, we shall analyze which- and as-clauses in Czech and German and we will also try to show that similar restrictions as in English, German and Czech can be found in Spanish, too.