Squatitives
By Haj Ross and Paul Postal
(informal data handout)

                          Squatitives
                     Haj Ross & Paul Postal
                     8.VIII.95  Lac des les

List of suspects:  (jack)shit, crap, beans, diddley(shit), zilch,
                   (diddley)squat, dick, fuck all, bugger all

The Bahnhofers:  zero, zip, zippo, zilch & dick -
                 only for cognitive objects?

      He told us zero.
      They (*don't) know zero.
     *He ate zero.
      They *(don't) give squat to anyone.

Some are weaker than others:
      He gave zero to Louise >=  He gave Louise zero.
      He handed zip to me.  >= ?He handed me zip.

Locality condition on negative with squat:
      I didn't  think / *say / *report / *write  that she knew squat.
      Never did anything / *squat happen to me.
      Never was anything / *squat recovered from the Titanic.
      He knows squat about calc.
      *Squat does he know about calc.
      They *(don't) know squat, do they?
      He didn't take / buy / ?approve of pictures of squat.

Case condition:   No 3's:
      He didn't give anything / *squat a coat of paint.
      He didn't give anything / *squat any consideration
      He didn't prove anything / squat to have been given any consideration.
      [ OK because squat has become a 2 via Raisng.]

Passive:
      He never gets injured by anything / *squat.
      He wasn't killed by anything / *squat
     ?He wasn't swayed by squat.
      Houdini couldn't escape from anything / ?squat.

No locatives:
      He won't live in anything / *squat.

[passive OK:  e.g., This house was lived in for years;
 thus squat is more restrictive than passivization.]

No genitives:  *squat's surface

Weird P's:
      Jack didn't prove of anything / *squat that there was recursion.

There facts:
      There never was anything / squat on the table.
      There never emerged anything / *squat from our discussions.

Pronominal reference to squat:
      They don't force anything / *squat to lie on its side.
      Alchemists couldn't make anything / *squat attract stuff to itself.
      He doesn't expect anything / *squat to suggest itself

Nakedness condition:
      He said squat (*of any interest/ *at all)
      He didn't send [anything / *squat] to her at all.
      They don't have anything / *squat to play with.  [
      Shows that the infinitive is not modifying the object of have.]
      He didn't say squat (*else).

Huge problem:  why isn't the about-phrase ruled out by nakedness?
viz., 
      They don't know shit about algebra.

It looks like such phrases make constituents with what precedes them,
cf.
      Nothing about algebra did he tell us;
      He told us neither anything about algebra nor anything about snake
      oil;     let alone anything about algebra -_

all of these generally require constituents -_cf. the self-immolations
of the following, in all of which I assume that NP about NP after tell 
is a decided non-constituent:
      *Nobody about algebra did he tell;
      *He told neither any girl about algebra nor any boy about snake oil;
      *let alone anybody about algebra.

Negative spreading: 
      Nobody said squat about anything.
      He didn't say squat about anything.
      He said squat about anything.
     *I allowed squat to poison anyone.

Strong negative condition: there must be a syntactic Klima-type
negative, which really means not to get squatitives, and in the same
clause.
      Why not go fuck Barbara? / *eat anything / *squat.

NB:  only won't trigger squat:
      Only Bob knew anything / *squat about calc.

paralleling
      Everybody but Bob knew squat about calc.
      He is too stupid to understand anything / *squat.

Affectives, lexical negatives, Q's, etc. aren't worth shit:
      If he knows anything / *squat;
      Does he know anything / *squat?;
      He is unable to find anything / *squat

Negative Q's *:
      Didn't he sign anything / *squat?

Something else (?):
      Why didn't you do anything / *squat?

		
Double negatives:

      Paul:  You can't just not do anything / *squat.
      Better for Haj -_He can't just not know squat.

      Nobody saw nothing = everybody saw something
      Nobody saw squat = nobody saw anything <> everybody saw something

Note 1:  inside NP's, even strong negatives are too weak:
      Nobody's discussion of anything / *squat interested me.

Worse than merely out after P:
      She doesn't dream about squat / *Nobody's dream about squat.

Negative-swallowing squat's untough-movability
      I take squat to be hard to give to friends at Christmas.

Paralleling:
      It's easy to imagine nobody sending nothing
      = everybody sending something.

But not:
     *Nothing is easy to imagine nobody sending.

Nonconjoinability: 
      She doesn't like anyone or anything / *squat.

Black hole condition:
      Frank didn't give / *gave squat to any charity.

Unembeddabilities:
      In order to spend nothing / *squat, he stayed out of the malls.
      He's too big-hearted to give nothing / *squat to the United Fund.
      
Unsolved mysteries:
      He gave very little in the way of anything / *squat to her.
     *(Don't) do squat until I get back.
     *May I ask that you do squat till tomorrow?
      Why didn't you do nothing / *squat till he got back?
      He figured out zip >> *He figured zip out.

Last modified: February 7, 2011     http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/squatitives.html