The complementary distribution between nē and nōn revisited: a semantic approach to wish and result clauses

Abstract This paper revisits the well-established complementary distribution between the sentential negators in Classical Latin, nē and nōn. It will be shown that in wish and result clauses these negators alternate in a seemingly free manner, which would violate the complementary distribution in its strictest sense. However, this paper argues that the negators can be clearly differentiated semantically, and that there is as such no overlap between their functions. Building on Mellet (1992. L’alternance ne/non en latin Classique. L’Information Grammaticale 55. 28–32), the alternation in wish and result clauses is discussed, and it is demonstrated that the choice of negator depends on the presence of the subjunctive mood and the presence or absence of epistemic certainty: nē is the negator which is incompatible with epistemic certainty, whereas nōn is the negator which is compatible with it.