We first point out that Mandarin Chinese and English show a striking
contrast with respect to metalinguistic negation. Simple negated sentences in
English freely allow metalinguistic readings of the negation whereas counterpart
sentences in Mandarin do not. The cross-linguistic difference is then derived from
independently motivated structural representations of negation in these two
languages interacting with a single proposed universal syntactic constraint on the
availability of metalinguistic readings of negative sentences. We show that the
proposed constraint also accurately distinguishes within Mandarin between
negative sentences which prohibit metalinguistic readings, on the one hand, and
negative sentences which allow them, on the other. In addition to accounting for
the previously unanalyzed contrast between Mandarin and English, the analysis
accounts for this cross-linguistic difference without resorting to language specific
(or even typological) statements about metalinguistic negation. Cross-linguistic
differences in this respect are claimed to follow as a consequence of independently
motivated syntactic differences between the two languages.
