Chloé Tahar

Alda Mari

Turning expletive: from embedded speech-acts to embedded propositions

Keywords: prohibitive negation, expletive negation, imperatives, priority attitudes

This paper focuses on a non-canonical use of negation in historical and modern French, characterized by an apparent absence of meaning, expletive negation. In search of the lost meaning of expletive negation, via a diachronic investigation from Latin to French, we establish that expletive negation originates from prohibitive negation. We put forward an analysis of prohibitive negation within Krifka (2014)'s model of embedded speech-act and propose that expletive negation is the continuation of prohibitive negation and it is what remains of a long gone embedded negative imperative in French. Along this line of analysis, the paper brings historical evidence in favor of the hypothesis that languages can develop from speech-act embedding to proposition embedding. Our analysis of prohibitive negation as a clause-typing negation marker in Latin and as a verbal mood negation marker brings new evidence to the claim that sentential and verbal mood marking are two intimately related phenomena.

Introduction

Expletive negation 1 is a cross-linguistic phenomenon whereby a negation marker receives a non-negative reading. Across languages, the distribution of expletive negation is limited to a restricted set of contexts. Among these contexts, we find attitude verbs, and especially fear verbs, as shown in (1). We also find expletive negation with adverbial connectives such as exceptive connectives, notably with unless ('à moins que'), see (2), or without ('sans que'), as well as prospective temporal connectives, and in particular with before ('avant que'), see (3), or until ('jusqu'à ce que'). Also (for the most part in romance languages), expletive negation occurs within comparative clauses, see (4).

( pense. think-3SG 'She is even more charismatic than what people tend to think.' If expletive negation is an optional element in French, it is not necessarily so in other languages. In Greek, see (5-a), or Russian, see (5-b), expletive negation cannot be removed.

( 'I fear that he might get sick'. [START_REF] Inkova | La négation explétive: un regard venu d'ailleurs[END_REF].

In this paper, we choose to approach the distribution of expletive negation in French from a diachronic perspective, by tracing its historical trajectory to its Latin roots. In Indo-European linguistics, the idea of a historical relation between expletive negation and prohibitive negation is not new. Among others, it was explored concerning Greek by [START_REF] Chatzopoulou | Negation and Nonveridicality in the history of Greek[END_REF], concerning Italian by [START_REF] Parry | Negation in the history of Italo-Romance[END_REF] and concerning French by [START_REF] Mari | Negative priorities: evidence from prohibitive and expletive negation[END_REF]. You may recall from van der Auwera (2005), 2010 or van der Auwera et al. ( 2013) that prohibitive negation is the morphologically specialized negation that two thirds of the world's languages may possess for imperative sentences, see example (6-a).

(6) a. Chó 'Do not drink alcohol!' b. Không NEG uông drink ruou. alcoholic 'I/you/he/etc. am/are/is not drinking alcohol.' (van der [START_REF] Van Der Auwera | The prohibitive[END_REF] We will show, based on cross-linguistic and historical evidence, that expletive negation arises from Latin prohibitive negation. While this is not a new claim [START_REF] Ageno | L'uso pleonastico della negazione nei primi secoli[END_REF][START_REF] Lakoff | Abstract syntax and Latin complementation[END_REF][START_REF] Fruyt | Grammaticalization in Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Parry | Negation in the history of Italo-Romance[END_REF][START_REF] Lakey | The grammaticalization of latin ne + subjunctive constructions[END_REF], the literature has left unexplained how the transition takes place. Our paper fills this gap. We will argue that the historical emergence of an expletive reading of negation is closely related to "harmonic" (akin to the combination between modal verbs and modal adverbs, see [START_REF] Lyons | Semantics[END_REF][START_REF] Huitink | Modal concord: a case study of Dutch[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | The semantic roots of positive polarity: epistemic modal verbs and adverbs in Greek and Italian[END_REF]) uses of prohibitive negation in Latin, which are inherited in French. In our analysis, expletive negation continues the harmonic meaning of prohibitive negation, while reanalysis takes place on the syntactic side, along with a gradual change in the system of clausal complementation, developing from speech-act embedding to proposition embedding.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we offer a view across three Indo-European languages -Greek, Albanian and Latin -of the distributions of prohibitive and expletive negations (Section 2). We focus on prohibitive negation in Latin in Section 3. Then we turn to the analysis of the negation ne in Latin and then in French in Section 4. Section 5 discusses a competing analysis. Section 6 briefly discusses previous approaches of expletive negation. Section 7 concludes.

Prohibitive negation across Indo-European languages

Many languages of the world distinguish two or more morphologically specialized negation markers that serve distinct functions. In many languages, negative imperatives cannot be formed with the standard propositional negation. This fact is well documented in the typological literature (e.g., van der Auwera 2005; van der Auwera 2010; van der [START_REF] Van Der Auwera | The prohibitive[END_REF].

In this section, we present evidence for the morphological distinction between propositional (or declarative) negation and prohibitive negation in Indo-European languages, based on Turano (2012)'s study for Albanian, Chatzopoulou (2017)'s study for Greek, as well as historical data from Classical Latin. We will refer to the former (declarative) negation as NEG DECL and to the latter as NEG PROH in the glosses.

Root clause

Embedded Unlike [START_REF] Joseph | The Modern Greek Negator mi(n) as a Morphological Constellation[END_REF] and [START_REF] Joseph | Balkan Insights in the Syntax of *me in Indo-European[END_REF], we will not explore the details of the variety of functions that the prohibitive negation may serve in each of these languages. We will rather focus on a similarity between these languages, namely that the prohibitive negation may receive expletive uses, notably under fear verbs (see Table 1). We consider this cross-linguistic similarity as strong evidence of an intimate connection between prohibitive and expletive negation that warrants considering in detail the nature of this relation.

Albanian

Modern Albanian distinguishes between a standard propositional negation nuk (which can be replaced by s') and the negation mos, which is related to the imperative, optative, or subjunctive mood, in root clauses. In declarative contexts, nuk cannot be replaced by mos, see (7), and in imperative contexts, mos cannot be replaced by nuk, see (8), as observed by [START_REF] Turano | On Clitics and Negation in Albanian[END_REF]

Greek

Modern Greek distinguishes between a standard propositional negation dhen and the negation mi(n), found in non-declarative contexts like imperative clauses or with the subjunctive (marked by the particle na). As observed by [START_REF] Chatzopoulou | The history of the Greek Neg2 : Two parameter resets linked to a syntactic shift[END_REF], these two negations cannot freely alternate, see ( 10) and ( 11).

(

Classical Latin

Classical Latin (roughly from 150 BC to 300 AD) distinguishes a standard propositional negative marker non, used with the indicative mood, and the negation ne, used with the imperative or subjunctive moods.

Latin prohibitive negation, which we discuss in subsequent sections, receives a (seemingly) expletive use with fear verbs, and with a wider set of verbs (where it does not occur as an optional element). In view of this set of data, we turn to the investigation of the connections between prohibitive and expletive negation focusing on Latin and French.

Prohibitive negation in Latin

The goal of this section is to provide evidence that Latin prohibitive ne does not occur randomly in embedded clauses. Rather, the distribution of ne in embedded clauses is restricted to a set of attitude verbs that describe a certain type of imperative illocutionary force (e.g. directives, desideratives, etc.), thus adding a piece of evidence in favor of the hypothesis of a semantic connection between ne in unembedded and embedded contexts.

Imperative clauses are conventionally associated with a wide range of illocutionary forces (see [START_REF] Schmerling | How imperatives are special and how they aren[END_REF]Hamblin 1987, König and[START_REF] König | Speech Act Distinctions in Grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Aikhenvald | Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Condoravdi | Imperatives: meaning and illocutionary force[END_REF]Kaufmann 2012, Jarry andKissine 2014, among others). For instance, depending on contextual conditions, imperatives may express a request, an advice, a permission, a wish, etc. The set of attitude verbs with which ne occurs also describe the various types of illocutionary forces that imperatives may have. For an overview of the distribution of ne in embedded clauses, see We label 'priority attitudes' (after [START_REF] Portner | Imperatives and modals[END_REF]2009) label for deontic, teleologic and bouletic modals) the category of attitudes in the embedded clause of which the prohibitive ne occurs in Latin. These attitudes come in two sorts. On the one hand, there are positive priority attitudes (e.g., directives, desideratives). According to the analysis we will advocate for in the next section, when ne-clauses are embedded under positive priority attitudes, they are interpreted in conformity with the meaning of the embedding verb. For instance, a desiderative attitude (e.g. opto, 'I wish') expresses a wish and indicates that the embedded ne-clause is to be interpreted as a speech-act of the wish-type, see ( 14). referat! report-3SG.SBJV 'I hope that my death will not be his reward.' (lit., 'I hope may my death not be his reward.') (Fro, AurCaes, 1.4)

On the other hand, there are negative priority attitudes (e.g., prohibitives, apprehensives). Embedded under negative priority attitudes, ne-clauses are interpreted in a redundant fashion with respect to the meaning of the embedding verb. For instance, an apprehensive attitude (e.g., timeo, 'I fear') expresses an apprehension and indicates that the embedded ne-clause is to be interpreted as a speech-act of the apprehension-type. This is redundant with what the embedded ne-clause expresses. This redundancy explains why such constructions, see for instance (15), are translated as involving no negation in the embedded clause. The exact nature of the concord mechanism which is at play in the "harmonic" interpretation of ne in clauses embedded under negative priority attitudes is a question that we discuss at length in Tahar 2022.

(15) Haec this timeo fear-1SG ne NEG PROH impediantur. prevent-1SG.SBJV.PAS 'I fear that I may be prevented from (doing) this.' (lit., 'I fear may I not be prevented from (doing) this.') (Cic,Fam,11,10) Note that across the three types of uses of Latin ne, namely in negative imperatives, under positive priority attitudes and under negative priority attitudes, we argue that ne carries one and the same semantic contribution: namely, ne(p) conveys that the speaker/the attitude holder prefers not-p to p. In a negative imperative, not-p is the course of action that the speaker favors.

With positive priority attitudes, the attitude holder prefers not-p to p, e.g., in ( 14) the 1st person attitude holder prefers that his death not be somebody else's reward. Finally, under negative priority attitudes, the attitude holder also prefers not-p to p, e.g., in (15) the 1st person attitude holder prefers not being prevented from doing it to being prevented.

With negative priority attitudes, for the whole construction to convey a prohibition or an apprehension towards a negative event, the propositional (or 'verbal') negation non is required, in addition to ne, see (16-a) and ( 16 Turning to the empirical characterization of the contexts where prohibitive ne occurs in Classical Latin, we describe side by side the occurrence of ne in root imperative clauses and in embedded clauses. 2In Latin, both morphological imperatives, as in (17-a), and morphological subjunctives, as in (17-b), could be used interchangeably in the 2nd person, for the construction of root negative imperative clauses, see (Pinkster, 2015, Chapter 7.50) Embedded under attitudes, ne-clauses do not allow for the morphological imperative. Only morphological subjunctives are attested, see (Pinkster, 2021, Chapter 15.64). Still, embedded clauses of this kind closely correspond to root imperative clauses, which leads Pinkster to even call them "imperative" clauses.3 Indeed, the distribution of embedded ne-clauses argues in favor of a semantic connection between the interpretation of root imperative clauses and the interpretation of the embedded clause. The embedded clause, by spelling out the meaning of the embedding attitude, maintains the illocutionary flavors (or forces) characteristic of imperative clauses, which we now describe.

Commands (and Prohibitions) With Condoravdi and Lauer (2012), we group together directive illocutionary acts as COMMANDS. Furthermore, along with [START_REF] Sadock | Speech acts distinctions in syntax[END_REF]; [START_REF] Bybee | Cross-linguistic comparison and the development of grammatical meaning[END_REF]; [START_REF] Pakendorf | From possibility to prohibition: a rare grammaticalization pathway[END_REF], we refer to the negative counterparts of imperatives with a directive force as PROHIBITIONS. Directive and prohibitive speechacts not only express the speaker's desire towards the (non)realisation of the situation described by the proposition, they also express a request for the addressee's compliance. This request for compliance, as argued by (Huddleston, 2002, 929), comes with various subflavors.

( Wishes and Apprehensions Imperatives may as well serve no directive function, but merely express the speaker's desire for the (non)realisation of the content of the proposition. WISHES and their negative counterparts, APPREHENSIONS4 do not express a request for the addressee's cooperation. In fact, wishes can be addressed, such as well-wishes (Get better!), but they need not be.

( 'I fear that my past misdeeds will be discovered.' (Plaut,Mil,4) We now substantiate our hypothesis of a semantic relation between ne in imperative clauses and embedded contexs by designing a diachronic path from Latin to Modern French.

4 From speech-act embedding to proposition embedding

Our analysis spells out two stages of change in the syntax of clausal embedding from Latin to French. Speech-act embedding is the first stage. The embedding attitude selects a negative imperative clause. The second stage is proposition embedding. The embedding attitude selects a propositional complement, with expletive negation.

Parataxis

Jespersen (1917) was one of the first to suggest that Latin ne-clauses are in some way treated as independent sentences when occurring under prohibitive or apprehensive verbs (Jespersen, 1917, 75). Under his analysis, they retain both the syntax and the semantics of a root negative imperative. He was followed by different scholars, including [START_REF] Ageno | L'uso pleonastico della negazione nei primi secoli[END_REF] and [START_REF] Parry | Negation in the history of Italo-Romance[END_REF], for whom the Latin ne-clause is paratactically juxtaposed to the verbal clause (e.g., timeo; ne veniat, 'I fear; may he not come!').

What Jespersen was suggesting is that verbs like prohibeo and timeo receive a parenthetical use. They serve a presentative function having almost no interpretative effect upon the negative imperative, which has a main point status (see [START_REF] Simons | Observations on embedding verbs, evidentiality, and presupposition[END_REF].

Prohibitive verbs name the illocutionary act performed by the negative imperative ("X forbids: PROHIBITION"). The meaning of the main verb is thus redundant with that of the ne-clause, with respect to the whole construction. In the same line of thought, one can also add that the presentative function that apprehensive verbs serve is meant to provide evidential motivation (see also [START_REF] Krifka | The Semantic Types of Clausal Complements[END_REF][START_REF] Simons | Observations on embedding verbs, evidentiality, and presupposition[END_REF] to the utterance of the negative imperative ("X fears:

APPREHENSION").

This line of analysis is based on the old assumption that languages follow a diachronic trajectory of development from parataxis to hypotaxis (see for instance [START_REF] Bennett | Syntax of Early Latin. Ally and Bacon[END_REF][START_REF] Wallin | Parataxis in Early Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Meillet | Traité de grammaire comparée des langues classiques[END_REF]. According to this assumption, a language displays, at early stages of its development, paratactic constructions that ultimately develop into subordinated constructions.

The matching of illocutionary flavors between matrix imperatives and embedded subjunctives in Latin makes a paratactic analysis intuitively attractive. However, the paratactic analysis fails to adequately capture the Latin facts. In fact, even though subjunctive ne-clauses are introduced by no embedding device, they can also display characteristic properties of embedded clauses. In these cases we cannot evoke parataxis. For this reason we propose a middle ground analysis between a paratactic and hypotactic (see Section 5) analysis.

Speech-act embedding in Latin

In a series of recent studies [START_REF] Krifka | Embedding Illocutionary Acts[END_REF] We follow Krifka's proposal and propose that, in Latin, ne-clauses are embedded speech-acts.5 However, embedded ne-clauses cannot display root clause property, as they do not allow for morphological imperatives, which remains an open issue for our speech-act embedding analysis.

In our perspective, we assume that ne is a specialised negation, with a clause-typing function.

More precisely, we propose that ne heads the Force projection [START_REF] Rizzi | The fine structure of the left periphery[END_REF]. The structures corresponding to the fragments (39) are given in (40).

( An important insight of Krifka ( 2014) is that speech-act embedding verbs are speech-act reports, that is to say, they describe a locutionary act. A question embedding verb may describe a locutionary act in an explicit (e.g., ask) or implicit manner (e.g., wonder). To Krifka, wonder is a speech-act report insofar as it describes the psychological attitude one has when asking oneself questions. 6 We follow Krifka in assuming that directives explicitly denote a locutionary act, as desideratives implicitly do so. However, we believe that imperative embedding verbs need not be speech-act reports. Indeed, ne-clauses may also be embedded under intention reports, like efficio ('I try') or uito ('I avoid').

( Our proposal is thus that, in Classical Latin, directives and desideratives have the ability to embed imperative speech-acts. Speech-act embedding may correspond, if the hypothetical earlier stage of parataxis were to be confirmed in ancestors of Latin, to an intermediary stage of development between parataxis and hypotaxis.

Proposition embedding in French

With the rise of the overt-complementation system in Old French, the Latin prohibitive ne undergoes syntactic reanalysis. We believe that expletive ne in French is a descendent of Latin ne.

Note that expletive ne is homonymous with the standard negation ne, but we make the assumption that these two markers are morphologically distinct until the standard negation ne loses its negative meaning to pas due to the Jespersen's cycle. Recall that Latin ne is semantically redundant with the intrinsic negativity of the negative priority embedding verb. We will here argue that expletive negation is a negation that is semantically in harmony with the intrinsic negativity of the (attitudinal) embedding verb (cf. infra).

During the transition from Latin to French, the use of the complementizer que (originating from the Latin indicative complementizer quod, see [START_REF] Vincent | Latin[END_REF] develops and becomes more systematic. 7

Directives and desideratives (and by extension, their negative counterparts) systematically subaway", without meaning that the thought expressed by abeat constitutes his advice.

7 Note that, in Old French, we can still find ne-clauses embedded under prohibitive attitudes, see (i) and apprehensive attitudes, see (ii).

(i) (The speaker argues that Benedeit's allegiance merits the queen's protection, as he is an exemplary servant). categorize for que-clauses (or infinitival complements) by the end of the Old French period. They thus cease to embed imperative speech-acts and start behaving, syntactically, as attitude reports.

Our proposal is that with the development of the que from Latin to French, prohibitive ne loses its clause-typing function in embedded clauses. The key phenomenon occurring is that prohibitive ne fossilizes into a modal negation, undergoing downward-reanalysis from ForceP to MoodP, under negative priority attitudes, see (45). Crucially, there is a continuity of meaning of harmonic ne in Latin and French, despite its syntactic reanalysis. To get from ( 43) to (44) essentially no semantic change is required.

(43) With ne reanalyzed as a negation marker base-generated in the Mood projection, our diachronic investigation resonates with accounts that reach a similar conclusion based on synchronic evidence. In particular, Zovko-Dinkovic (2017)'s synchronic analysis of expletive negation in Croation and Slovenian (building on Abels (2005)'s analysis for Russian) also concludes that the negation which receives an expletive reading is base-generated in MoodP.

From a semantic perspective, we propose that ne in MoodP conveys the speaker's preferential attitude towards the negation of the proposition. Just as in imperatives clauses, ne conveys a general meaning of dispreference: the speaker wants not-p to be realized. We argue that ne is reanalyzed in MoodP as it enters 'Modal Harmony' with embedding verbs that express negative preferences.

The notion of 'Modal Harmony' was introduced by works that have explored the relation between modal verbs and adverbs (a.o. [START_REF] Lyons | Semantics[END_REF][START_REF] Huitink | Modal concord: a case study of Dutch[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | The semantic roots of positive polarity: epistemic modal verbs and adverbs in Greek and Italian[END_REF].

(46) John must definitely be at home.

Modal Harmony relies on the idea that two modal elements bear the same meaning (in (46) the modal and the adverb bear the same epistemic flavor8 ). Unlike with Negative Concord approaches, there is no notion of semantic dependency (as in [START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation and logical absorption[END_REF][START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation, Negative Concord and Feature Checking[END_REF], see discussion in section 6.1). The main idea is that, together with the embedding verb, expletive ne yields a unitary semantic meaning of dispreference at large. Note that, like adverbs, expletive negation can be omitted in Modern French, without any change in the interpretation of the sentence. To sum up, in our analysis, directive and desiderative attitudes embed imperative clauses in Latin, and in this context prohibitive negation is a contentful element which has a clause-typing function. Imperative embedding is lost and proposition embedding becomes the only option in French for directives and desideratives and their negative counterparts. Prohibitive negation fossilizes into expletive negation with negative priority attitudes.

Second, our analysis provides a new handle on understanding how languages develop from parataxis to hypotaxis, by positing an intermediary stage of speech-act embedding, where there is embedding -as evidenced by consecutio temporum and pronominal coreference -without complementizer. Finally, we hope that we have shed new light on the intricacies between sentential and verbal mood as two intimately related phenomena (see a.o. [START_REF] Portner | Mood[END_REF]).

An alternative hypotactic analysis for Latin

A competing analysis of the relation between prohibitive and expletive negations could rely on the Performative Hypothesis, notably by [START_REF] Lakoff | Abstract syntax and Latin complementation[END_REF] (see also [START_REF] Mari | Negative priorities: evidence from prohibitive and expletive negation[END_REF]. The Performative Hypothesis, also developed in the works of [START_REF] Ross | On declarative sentences[END_REF]; [START_REF] Sadock | Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts[END_REF]; [START_REF] Katz | Propositional structure and illocutionary force: A study of the contribution of sentence meaning to speech acts[END_REF] provides a declarative semantics for imperatives. In this (much criticized)9 framework, imperative clauses contain an implicit performative verb in their deep structure: an imperative sentence like (48-a) and a performative sentence like (48-b) are deemed truth-conditionally equivalent. More recently, [START_REF] Mari | Negative priorities: evidence from prohibitive and expletive negation[END_REF] have revisited the Performative Hypothesis. For them, along with [START_REF] Kaufmann | Interpreting imperatives[END_REF], the variety of forces that imperatives may have are hard coded in the semantics and not reconstructed in the pragmatics, via inferential mechanisms (à la [START_REF] Wilson | Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences[END_REF]; [START_REF] Condoravdi | Imperatives: meaning and illocutionary force[END_REF]). They posit the presence of an abstract operator IMP in the semantics of imperative clauses and propose a unified modal semantics for the imperative operator and for priority attitudes.

In Lakoff's analysis and, by extension, in [START_REF] Mari | Negative priorities: evidence from prohibitive and expletive negation[END_REF]'s, it is argued that ne in embedded position is a complementizer (a hypothesis shared by many, see also [START_REF] Vincent | Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Orlandini | Négation et Argumentation en Latin, volume 25 of Grammaire Fondamentale du Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Roussou | Syntactic change: a minimalist approach to grammaticalization[END_REF][START_REF] Fruyt | Grammaticalization in Latin[END_REF] In both cases, however, we have to stipulate hidden mechanisms or operators, which, for methodological reasons, we prefer to abstain from. In (49), we have to stipulate that ne does not occupy the same syntactic position in root and in embedded clauses. In other terms, as per [START_REF] Fruyt | Grammaticalization in Latin[END_REF] and [START_REF] Lakey | The grammaticalization of latin ne + subjunctive constructions[END_REF], we have to posit that Latin prohibitive ne grammaticalizes onto a subordinator when occurring in embedded clauses (a claim for which there is no diachronic evidence, to the authors' knowledge).11

6 Previous analyses of expletive negation and discussion

This section compares our account to previous ones. We choose to leave aside the discussion of expletive negation in root clauses (such as [START_REF] Zanuttini | The force of Wh Exclamatives and Interrogatives[END_REF]'s account for exclamatives and Eilam (2009)'s account for free relatives), under the working assumption that expletive negation in root and embedded clauses is not a unified phenomenon (see also [START_REF] Greco | Is expletive negation a unitary phenomenon?[END_REF]. We also leave aside the discussion of expletive negation in adverbial clauses (such as [START_REF] Tovena | An expletive negation which is not so redundant[END_REF]'s and Margulis (2016)'s accounts for until-clauses). Still, to understand how the present account would generalize to adverbial clauses, the reader is referred to Tahar (2021a), who argues that expletive negation enters Modal Harmony with the negative preference component conveyed at the pragmatic level by avant que-clauses ('before') or at the truth-conditional level by à moins que-clauses ('unless') in French.

Expletive negation as a negative concord item

Previously, van der Wurff (1999); van der Wouden (1994) and [START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation, Negative Concord and Feature Checking[END_REF] have posited that expletive negation is a Negative Polarity Item. Relatedly, [START_REF] Zeiljstra | Sentential Negation and Negative Concord[END_REF] and [START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation and logical absorption[END_REF]; [START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation, Negative Concord and Feature Checking[END_REF] have in particular posited that expletive negation enters Negative Concord with the embedding context. Together with the main verb, expletive negation would yield a 'singlenegation' semantic reading. To the previous authors, expletive negation is indeed embedded under 'inherently negative' contexts.

In the works of van der Wurff (1999) and van der Wouden (1994), it is argued that the negativity of the contexts of appearance of expletive negation relies on downward-monotonicity. Subsequent works like that of [START_REF] Espinal | Expletive negation, Negative Concord and Feature Checking[END_REF] propose that the negativity of contexts where expletive negation occurs relies on nonveridicality (see also Jin and Koenig 2019), defined as the property of operators that do not entail the truth of the proposition they take as argument (see [START_REF] Zwarts | Nonveridical contexts[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)veridical Dependency[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | Affective Dependencies[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | Non)veridicality and mood choice: Subjunctive, polarity, and time[END_REF], with respect to an epistemic model (see [START_REF] Giannakidou | Epistemic future and epistemic must: Nonveridicality, evidence, and partial knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | Emotive predicates and the subjunctive: a flexible mood OT account based on (non)veridicality[END_REF][START_REF] Giannakidou | Veridicality in Grammar and Thought : modality, propositional attitudes and negation[END_REF]. Simply relying on downward-monotonicity or non-veridicality would lead to an obvious over-generalization. For instance, downward-monotonic predicates such as the emotive-factive attitudes regret or be surprised (see von Fintel 1999 for a discussion) do not allow for expletive negation. Similarly, belief predicates do not allow for expletive negation in spite of being non-veridical (they do not entail p).

Finally, for Espinal, the main predicate is interpreted as semantically 'negative', while the negation marker in the subordinate clause is interpreted (out of a semantic mechanism of 'logical absorption') as a dependent concord item, which is semantically empty. Our analysis proposes an alternative explanation, grounded in the diachronic trajectory from prohibitive negation, by appealing to the notion of Modal Harmony rather than the one of Negative Concord. According to our account, both the attitude and the negation bear the same modal meaning of negative preference. Since the negative preference remains once the expletive negation is omitted, it is hard to find contexts in which the negative contribution of the expletive ne is visible. The use of expletive negation in (51-b) is infelicitous for the reason that the avant que-clause describes a positively valued event. Indeed, the most natural interpretation of (51-b) would be what Tahar (2021b) labels an apprehensive use of the avant que-connective, conveying that the goal of the doctor is that his patient does not get better, which is conflicting with the intended interpretation.

Expletive negation as a modal particle

For [START_REF] Yoon | Not in the Mood: the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of evaluative negation[END_REF] and [START_REF] Mari | Negative priorities: evidence from prohibitive and expletive negation[END_REF], expletive negation is not a standard negation marker but a modal particle (but see also [START_REF] Makri | Expletive Negation beyond Romance[END_REF]. For these authors, expletive negation is the grammatical reflex of a component related to the ordering source of the embedding verb. According to Yoon's analysis, expletive negation realizes the ordering source of the predicate, as it imposes an ordering on the (non-veridical) modal base M B of the verb fear, ranking ¬p-worlds higher than p-worlds on a desirability scale. While stating that expletive negation is the morphological realization of the ordering source of the embedding verb is an ad hoc solution which we cannot retain as such, our diachronic analysis supports the view that expletive negation conveys a meaning of negative preference.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have argued that there is a morphological distinction between a negation marker dedicated to the construction of imperatives and a standard negation marker, in Latin. We have taken as an assumption that expletive negation in French continues the prohibitive negation from Latin. For Latin, we have argued that prohibitive negation (i) heads ForceP, a functional head encoding clause-typing information, (ii) either introduces root negative imperatives or negative imperatives embedded under directive or desiderative (and by extension, prohibitive and apprehensive) attitudes. We then argued that prohibitive negation, from Latin to French, (i) loses its grammatical function in embedded context (ii) undergoes downward syntactic reanalysis to MoodP. Semantically, we argued that there is a continuity between harmonic uses of prohibitive negation in Latin and the expletive negation. Our analysis proposes that expletive negation enters Modal Harmony with negative priority attitudes, as both bear a meaning of negative effective preference (i.e. that not-p be realized).

Once the expletive negation becomes stable in attitudinal context, its use starts spreading across other constructions, such as adverbial connectives (Tahar 2021a[START_REF] Tahar | La négation explétive: des impératifs aux connecteurs. Approche diachronique et formelle[END_REF] as in later stages of the history of French, most specifically starting in the 17th century. The fact that expletive negation becomes productive in a new syntactic environment is not without reminding us of the grammaticalization path known as generalization (Hopper and Traugott, 1994, 104-106), (Heine, 2003, 580); (Boerm, 2008, 18). It is not a mere coincidence that the generalization of expletive negation to new syntactic contexts takes place by the 17th century, at the stage of the Jespersen's cycle when ne loses its negative meaning to pas or to another postverbal negator. It is reasonable to assume that preverbal negation ne at this stage is no longer a negation marker (as argued, for instance, by [START_REF] Wallage | Negation in Early English: Parametric Variation and Grammatical Competition[END_REF][START_REF] Wallage | Jespersen's cycle in middle english: Parametric variation and grammatical competition[END_REF]; [START_REF] Breitbarth | A hybrid approach to Jespersen's cycle in West Germanic[END_REF]). The semantic reanalysis of the preverbal marker of standard negation into what [START_REF] Breitbarth | A hybrid approach to Jespersen's cycle in West Germanic[END_REF] names a "polarity" negation could have resulted in endowing this marker with a semantic content akin to that of expletive negation. Both expletive and standard ne could plausibly have merged at this point in the history of French into a single functional item, which could have triggered the observed resurgence of productivity in the usage of expletive negation.

  m afraid that I shall increase my work.' (Cic, Leg, 1-4)

  that something happened to my dog.'

  your room! b. [I order that] you clean your room.

  Scalar semantics for expletive negation with fear(Yoon, 2011, p.161): a. If fear (x,p) is true in a context c, then M B (x) ∩ p is not / 0 in c. b. The evaluative component of EN (x,p) expresses in context c as the following: M B (x) -p > Desirability M B (x) ∩ p in c

Table 1 :

 1 Choice of negation marker in Latin, Albanian, Greek

	clause

  .

		'I fear that my father will die.'
	(7)	Nuk/	*mos	vajta			në	bibliotekë.
		NEG DECL /	NEG PROH	went-1SG.PST	in	library
		'I didn't go to the library.'
	(8)	Mos/	*nuk	më	ndihmo!
		NEG PROH /	NEG DECL	CL.1SG	help-2SG.IMP
		'Don't help me!'
	Importantly for us, mos can receive expletive uses in the embedded clause of fear verbs, among
	other contexts (where it occurs as an optional element).
	(9)	Kam	frikë	se	mos		më		vdes	babai.
		have-1SG	fear	that	NEG PROH	CL.1SG	die-2SG	father-the

Table 2 .

 2

	Root clause	Matrix clause
	Illocutionary force Positive priority attitude Negative priority attitude
	Command	Impero ('I order')	Prohibeo ('I forbid')
		Iubeo ('I order')	Recuso ('I refuse')
			Veto ('I forbid')
	Request	Peto ('I ask')	Impedio ('I prevent')
		Mando ('I ask')	Obsto ('I prevent')
		Rogo ('I ask')	Deterreo ('I prevent')
	Warning	Admoneo ('I warn')
		Moneo ('I warn')
	Advice	Suadeo ('I advise')	Dissuadeo ('I dissuade')
		Cohortor ('I encourage') Dehortor ('I discourage')
	Plea	Obsecro ('I implore')
		Quaeso ('I beg')
	Wish	Velim ('I want')	Timeo ('I fear')
		Opto ('I wish')	Metuo ('I fear')
		Cupio ('I desire')	Uereor ('I fear')

Table 2 :

 2 Root clause/Matrix clause matching illocutionary forces

  -b) (as mentionned in the synthetic works onLatin Orlandini 2001;[START_REF] Bodelot | Grammaire fondamentale du Latin: Les propositions complétives en Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Fruyt | Grammaticalization in Latin[END_REF][START_REF] Pinkster | The Oxford Latin Syntax: Volume I: The simple clause[END_REF][START_REF] Pinkster | The Oxford Latin Syntax: Volume II: The complex Sentence and Discourse[END_REF]. Note that a literal translation for such constructions would involve a double negation. But I fear that I may not obtain it.' (lit., 'But I fear may I not not-obtain it.') (Cic,

	(16)	a. Sed	timeo		ne		non	impetrem.
		But	fear-1SG.PRS	NEG PROH	NEG DECL	achieve-1SG.SBJV
		'Att, 9)
		b. Timuit,	ne		non	succederet.
		fear-3sg.pf	NEG PROH	NEG DECL

succeed-3SG.SBJV.IPFV 'He feared that he would not succeed.' (lit., 'He feared may he would not notsucceed.') (Hor, Ep, 1, 17)

  .

	(17)	a. Uigila,			ne		somno	stude.
		stay.awake-2SG.IMP,	NEG PROH	sleep-DAT	seek.for-2SG.IMP
		'Open your eyes, don't fall asleep.'	(Pl, Mil, 215)
		b. Da		mihi		hanc	ueniam,	ignosce,	irata
		give-2SG.IMP	POSS.1SG.DAT	DEM.ACC	mercy-ACC	forgive-2SG.IMP,	angry
		ne	sies.
		NEG PROH	be-2SG.SBJV
		'Give me this indulgence, forgive me, don't be angry.'	(Pl, Amph, 94)

  But prevent that he be ridiculed, for he says what he knows and he does what he can. Such a servant must not be blamed.' (Benedeit, Le voyage de Saint Brendan, 1150)

	Mais	tu=l					defent			ne		seit	gabéth.	Quant	dit	que	set	e	fait	que
	but	you=CL.3SG	forbid-2SG	NEG	be-3SG.SBJV	ridiculed.	When	say-3SG	what	know-3SG	and	do-3SG	what
	peot:		Itel	servant	blasmer	n'	esteot.
	can-3SG:	such	servant	blame-INF	NEG	be-3SG
	'(ii) (Saint Thomas Becket advises the King of England not to commit himself to a hostile policy to the clergy)
	Mais	cil		qui				tuz	li	munz		ne	remue	ne	tente,	Jo	criem,	Sire,	ne
	but	DEM	PRO-REL	all	the	world		NEG	move-3SG.PRS	nor	tempt-3SG.PRS,	1SG	fear-1SG.PRS,	Sir,	NEG
	turt.					Mais	ja		Deus	ne=l	consente
	leave-3SG.SBJV.	But,	never	God		NEG=CL.3SG	consent-3SG.SBJV

!

'But he who is neither moved nor tempted by the world, I fear, Sir, that he may leave. But may God never let this happen!' (Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, Vie de

Saint Thomas Becket, 1173)

  Je crains [ CP que [ IP mes anciens méfaits 1 [ MoodP ne + sont 2 -SBJV [ VP t 1 t 2 découverts ]]]]]

		Timeo,	ne		malefacta		mea	sint	inventa	omnia.
		fear-1SG	NEG PROH	misdeeds-ACC	mine	be-3PL.SBJV	discovered-PTCP-PST	all.
		'I fear that my past misdeeds will be discovered.'	(Plaut, Mil, 4)
	(44)	Je	crains	que	mes	anciens	méfaits		ne	soient	découverts.
		1SG	fear-1SG	that	my	ancient	misdeeds	EXN	be-3PL.SBJV	discovered.
		'I fear that my past misdeeds will be discovered.'
	(45)	[ VP

  ; Lakey 2015, among others), which is selected by the embedding verb and has the capacity of selecting a subjunctive clause.

	(49)	a.	[ ForceP IMP [ NegP ne [ IP me territes ]]]
		b.	[ VP Iubeo [ CP ne [ IP me territes ]]]
		c.	[ VP Prohibeo [ CP ne [ IP me territes ]]]
	An alternative syntactic analysis, approaching the embedded ne-clause as headed by a null com-
	plementizer, could as well be considered within Lakoff's and Mari and Tahar's line of reason-
	ing. 10
	(50)	a.	[ ForceP IMP [ NegP ne [ IP me territes ]]]
		b.	[ VP Iubeo [ CP / 0 [ NegP ne [ IP me territes ]]]
		c.	[ VP Prohibeo [ CP / 0 [ NegP ne [ IP me territes ]]]

  However, there are cases -especially with temporal connectives -in which this component can still be seen, see (51).

	(51)	Context: A doctor receives a patient who promises to stop smoking once he has recov-
		ered from his current pneumonia.
		a. Vous	devriez	arrêter	de	fumer	avant	que	vous	soyez	guéri.
		2SG	should-COND	stop	of	smoking	before	that	you	be-2SG.SBJV	healed
		'You should stop smoking before you get better.'
		Intended: the speaker wants to convey a relation of consecution between the main
		event and the subordinate event.
		b. #Vous	devriez		arrêter	de	fumer	avant	que	vous	ne	soyez
		2SG		should-COND	stop		of	smoking	before	that	you	EXN	be-2SG.SBJV
		guéri.
		healed
		'You should stop smoking before you get better.'
		Intended: the same meaning as (51-a).

We draw on extensive qualitative data from several classical Latin grammars; such as that of[START_REF] Scheller | A copious Latin Grammar[END_REF];[START_REF] Allen | New Latin Grammar[END_REF];[START_REF] Bennett | Syntax of Early Latin. Ally and Bacon[END_REF];[START_REF] Ernout | Syntaxe Latine[END_REF]; as well as the more recent grammars of[START_REF] Vincent | Latin[END_REF][START_REF] De Melo | The Early Latin verb system: archaic forms in Plautus, Terence and Beyond[END_REF];[START_REF] Pinkster | The Oxford Latin Syntax: Volume I: The simple clause[END_REF][START_REF] Pinkster | The Oxford Latin Syntax: Volume II: The complex Sentence and Discourse[END_REF]. Furthermore, we rely on data from several works that have extensively studied the Latin negator ne, such as those of[START_REF] Lakoff | Abstract syntax and Latin complementation[END_REF];[START_REF] Orlandini | Négation et Argumentation en Latin, volume 25 of Grammaire Fondamentale du Latin[END_REF];[START_REF] Bodelot | Grammaire fondamentale du Latin: Les propositions complétives en Latin[END_REF];[START_REF] Fruyt | Grammaticalization in Latin[END_REF];[START_REF] Lakey | The grammaticalization of latin ne + subjunctive constructions[END_REF]. For more resources, we consulted the online corpus prepared by The Packard Humanities Institute, which contains most of the texts written before A.D. 200, as well as some texts selected from later antiquity. We did not proceed to a quantitative corpus analysis to check whether embedded ne-clauses only appear under the set of priority attitudes to be given below. However, we believe that embedded ne-clauses are restricted to this set of contexts, since no others were inventoried by centuries of philological works.

We are very thankful to Igor Yanovich for bringing to our attention the question of mood in root and embedded Latin ne-clauses and related issues discussed in Section

4.2.

Note that in the typological literature, the label apprehensive ('volitive of fear', as per[START_REF] Vuillermet | Grammatical Fear morphemes in Ese Ejja: Making the case for a morphosemantic apprehensional domain[END_REF]) describes, among other things, the modal meaning conveyed by fear verbs or precautioning conjunctions such as the English lest (see also[START_REF] Lichtenberk | Apprehensional epistemics[END_REF][START_REF] Franc ¸ois | La sémantique de prédicat en mwotlap (Vanuatu)[END_REF][START_REF] Kuteva | The grammar of 'non-realization[END_REF] for a recent discussion). This label is only marginally used to describe negative imperatives of the wish-type.

Note that, in English, contrary to assertions, imperatives cannot be embedded.

A similar idea is that speech-act embedding verbs are used to report the performance (by the speaker or another agent) of the embedded speech-act, on the mode of (mixed) quotation, see Kaufmann 2012; Woods 2016. Namely, the intuition that embedded imperatives are relayed as quotations in Latin is not new, see(Wallin, 1910, 11):It is inconceivable, for instance, that a speaker would say: eum moneo: abeat, "I advise him: let him go

[START_REF] Giannakidou | The semantic roots of positive polarity: epistemic modal verbs and adverbs in Greek and Italian[END_REF] argue, several cases of modal dis-harmony are observed, cross-linguistically, with respect to force.

See for instance[START_REF] Boër | A performadox in truth-conditional semantics[END_REF] Lycan 1980, Levinson 1980 or more recently[START_REF] Jarry | Imperatives[END_REF][START_REF] Jarry | Imperatives[END_REF][START_REF] Portner | On the relation between verbal mood and sentence mood[END_REF]

We thank an anonymous reviewer for calling our attention to this point.

Indeed, there is no evidence that root negative imperatives are found at earlier stages of Latin than embedded ne-clauses.