Focus intervention effects in neg-raising

Neg-Raising (NR) is shown to be subject to Focus Intervention Effects (FIEs), just like wh-insitu has been shown to be (Beck 1996, 2006). With a view to deriving FIEs in NR and wh-in-situ in a unified manner, I combine the framework of Beck (2006) with the theory of NR in Romoli (2013), plus one additional assumption, namely, that just like an expression’s focus value, an expression’s scalar value is unavailable for further computation once the ordinary value of that same expression is referred to by the focus operator. The apparent ‘optionality’ of NR in basic NR-constructions is also accounted for in terms of FIEs.