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1 Introduction 2 The interpretation of negative concord and the nature of n -words 2.1 Negative absorption 2.2 N -words as indefinites 2.3 N -words and universal quantifiers 2.3.1 Universal quantifiers and n -words: parallelism in scope 2.3.2 Negative concord as a universal scoping above negation 2.3.3 Commitment of existence 2.3.4 Existence, familiarity, and topicalization 2.3.5 Summary 3 Two basic varieties of negative concord and the distribution of n -words 3.1 Strict and non-strict varieties of negative concord 3.2 The position of n -words: preverbal vs. postverbal 3.3 A typology of n -words 4 The issue of negativity 4.1 Negative meaning and ellipsis 4.2 Non-negative readings of n -words 5 The possibility of having an existential polarity item under negation 5.1 Negative concord vs. existential dependencies: locality 5.1.1 N -words in islands 5.1.2 N -words in embedded clauses 5.1.3 Preceding negation 5.2 Existential polarity items and the semantics of n -words 5.2.1 Almost/absolutely modification 5.2.2 ke -modification 5.2.3 Donkey anaphora 5.2.4 Use in predicate nominals 5.3 Summary 6 Conclusion In this chapter we discuss the semantic and syntactic properties of a set of expressions known as n -words. The term is coined in Laka (1990 ) and is employed to refer to nominal and adverbial constituents that appear in negative-concord (NC) ... log in or subscribe to read full text