Scopal relationship of negation and quantifiers in jizani arabic

This study aims at investigating the scope interpretation of quantified DPs, especially when they interact with negation in Jizani Arabic. The main purpose of the study is to investigate the ambiguous relationship between negation and quantifiers under the Logical Form rules. Ambiguity in a sentence is a result of having different semantic interpretations of that sentence. In this thesis, I investigate scope relations by using Negation Placement Strategy. Negation Placement Strategy is introduced by De Haan (1997 & 2006) to examine the interpretation of wide and narrow scope of negation in a sentence. I show that different interpretations can be identified by examining various sentences in Jizani Arabic. Ambiguity can be found when there are two quantifier operators orby changing the surface syntactic position of negation in a Quantifier Phrase (QP). This operation is supported by different kinds of evidence based on the interaction between the quantifier operator and other kinds of operators, such as negation. The investigation results indicate that there is an absence of ambiguity in Jizani Arabic when the quantifier kull ‘all’ is in the same sentence with the negations ma or mu. However, when the quantifier kull ‘every’ interacts with negative particles, a sentence shows scope ambiguity in its interpretation. A solution has been proposed to avoid this ambiguity. The best resolution of scope ambiguity in JA is allowing the QP to take a wide scope over the negation in spite of the quantifier’s position.