Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals

Iatridou, Sabine; Zeijlstra, Hedde

doi:10.1162/ling_a_00138

Cited by 127 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…PPIs that are banned from anti-additive contexts may appear under the scope of an anti-additive operator if that operator, in turn, is outscoped by another (non-antiadditive) DE operator. The data in (19), again taken from Iatridou & Zeijlstra (2013), show that this also applies to English must.…”

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 87%

“…For example, English must is a PPI (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013;Homer 2015). That shows that it is not inherently impossible for a universal quantifier to be a PPI.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Szabolcsi 2004). For a detailed description and application of these tests to modal PPIs I refer to Iatridou & Zeijlstra (2013) and Homer (2015), but for the sake of illustration I address two tests already here, which will also prove to be relevant in the remainder of this article. The first test concerns intervention effects, where a scopetaking intervener disrupts the relation between an (anti-)licenser and a polarity item.…”

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first test concerns intervention effects, where a scopetaking intervener disrupts the relation between an (anti-)licenser and a polarity item. If an intervener shows up between the PPI and the anti-licenser, this PPI is fine under the scope of negation, as shown in (18), taken from Iatridou & Zeijlstra (2013). Both sentences in (18) allow a reading where must takes scope below negation.…”

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More importantly, their approach only applies to non-universal epistemic modal PPIs, whereas the reported modal PPIs here are all deontic modals (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013;Homer 2015). 8 Third, the strongest piece of evidence, however, comes from the hitherto unreported observation that PPIs under this approach should be able to "self-intervene" (though see Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013: 557, footnote 40).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Universal Quantifier PPIs

Zeijlstra

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) that denote lower scalar endpoints, such as existentials like any or ever, are often said to be only fine in Downward Entailing contexts, since outside such contexts their semantics would give rise to a contradiction. According to Chierchia (2006Chierchia ( , 2013, this contradiction arises as such NPIs both obligatorily introduce domain alternatives and trigger the presence of a covert exhaustifier. Following this line of reasoning, I argue it should be expected that elements with the same properties that denote the highest endpoint of a scale, such as universal quantifiers, are Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). Indeed, universal quantifier PPIs have been attested in the domain of modals (quantifiers over possible worlds) -English must and should are good examples of such universal quantifier PPIs (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2010, 2013; Homer 2015) -but not in the domain of quantifiers over individuals. In this paper, I argue that PPIs that are universal quantifiers over individuals actually do exist. However, since the covert exhaustifier that is induced by these PPIs (and responsible for their PPI-hood) can act as an intervener between the PPI and its anti-licenser, universal quantifier PPIs may still scope below negation and thus appear in disguise; their PPI-like behaviour only becomes visible once they morpho-syntactically precede their anti-licenser. Universal quantifier PPIs may surface under negation, but may not reconstruct under negation once they appear above it. This article concludes that Dutch iedereen ('everybody'), unlike English everybody, is actually such a PPI.

show abstract

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 87%

“…For example, English must is a PPI (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013;Homer 2015). That shows that it is not inherently impossible for a universal quantifier to be a PPI.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modal Ppismentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Universal Quantifier PPIs

Zeijlstra

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Modal Auxiliaries

Barbiers

Dooren

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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In many languages modal auxiliaries such as English can , must , may , need , will , ought , want are ambiguous between two types of interpretations: epistemic and root interpretations. In the epistemic interpretation the modal expresses how likely it is that a proposition is true (for example, necessarily, possibly, probably true) while in the root interpretations the modal expresses the obligatoriness, permissibility, desirability, or possibility of a state or event. A central question in much syntactic research on modal auxiliaries has been whether this systematic semantic ambiguity corresponds to a syntactic distinction. A commonly accepted answer has been that in epistemic interpretations the modal verb is a monadic predicate while in root interpretations it is a dyadic predicate, typically a relation between a subject and an infinitival verb. This distinction between monadic and dyadic modal predicates has been modeled syntactically in various ways: (i) in terms of lexical argument structure, that is, as the distinction between raising and control verbs; (ii) in terms of different base positions in the array of functional heads making up the clausal spine, with epistemic modals being higher than root modals; (iii) in terms of a higher syntactic position for epistemically interpreted modals after raising at the level of semantic interpretation (LF raising); (iv) in terms of the nature of the complement of the modal. This chapter evaluates these proposals, drawing on data from, among others, English, Dutch, Icelandic, German, and Catalan and taking into account cross‐linguistic differences in the modal systems. One important conclusion is that the alleged correspondence between the epistemic/root distinction and the raising/control distinction is too simple, as there are sentences with root interpretations but a raising syntax. The chapter ends with a list of questions for future research.

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Subject–Auxiliary Inversion

Bruening

2017

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition

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In subject–auxiliary inversion in English, the typical declarative word order subject–auxiliary‐verb is instead realized as auxiliary‐subject‐verb. This inversion occurs in a number of environments, namely, matrix questions, conditionals, blessings and curses, comparatives, exclamatives, negative imperatives, and in environments where certain elements have been fronted ( so/as/nor , negative phrases, phrases with only , and certain others). Most theoretical analyses of subject–auxiliary inversion treat all of these instances uniformly, but some recent work indicates that there are actually two distinct types of inversion, one which can affect multiple auxiliaries and one which cannot. The most prominent theoretical account of subject–auxiliary inversion, head movement of Infl (or T) to C, accounts best for the type that can only invert one auxiliary, but is incompatible with the type that inverts multiple auxiliaries. This type may involve a lower‐than‐usual position for the subject, instead. Subject–auxiliary inversion is subject to a strict adjacency requirement, which requires that the fronted auxiliary be adjacent to the subject it has inverted with. Many theoretical proposals struggle to account for this requirement, as well as for the possibility of subject–auxiliary inversion in embedded clauses. Subject–auxiliary inversion is also one of the contexts for do support, and any theoretical account needs to explain why this is so and how do support comes about. Finally, subject–auxiliary inversion has figured prominently in debates regarding learnability (the “poverty of the stimulus” argument), and it is also important for the question of whether grammatical roles like “subject” are primitive notions of grammar, or not. It appears that subject–auxiliary inversion refers only to structure, and not to notions like “subject,” suggesting that grammatical roles are not primitives.

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Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals

Cited by 127 publications

References 35 publications

Universal Quantifier PPIs

Universal Quantifier PPIs

Modal Auxiliaries

Subject–Auxiliary Inversion

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