Expletive negation and the decomposition of only

Abstract

This paper is focused on the seemingly superfluous sentential negation showing up in Hebrew until-clauses. I discuss a scalar implicature arising from until-clauses which surprisingly becomes uncancellable when this negation is present. I argue that this inference becomes obligatory due to the presence of an only-like exhaustivity operator, which gets (partially) spelled out as negation since it is composed of negation and an exceptive. Moreover, this negation is shown to share more properties with only.