Brazilian Portuguese (BP) permits at least three kinds of sentential negation – Neg1 (não VP), Neg2 (não VP não) and Neg3 (VP não). The topic of this paper are the different interpretations of Neg2 and Neg3 in comparison to Neg1. I argue that Neg2 is a Negative Concord element that exhibits properties associated with presupposed denial, while Neg3 is interpreted as a kind of focus operator. Some contexts show the incompatibility between Neg2/Neg3 and Neg1. I believe that this incompatibility can be explained by presuppositional content and scope. The aim of this paper is to explain the relation between negation structures in BP and pragmatics.

JournaLIPP, Nr. 1 (2011): Sprachvariation im europäischen Kontext – Language Variation in Europe and Beyond