Negative and Positive Polarity

Li, Yafei; Progovac, Ljiljana

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511554308

Cited by 183 publications

(167 citation statements)

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“…); see e.g. Ladusaw (1979Ladusaw ( , 1980, Linebarger (1980Linebarger ( , 1987, Progovac (1994), Giannakidou (1998 and onwards), and Horn (2002) for different proposals along this line. As yes/no-questions and conditionals may host polarity items even in the absence of an overt licensor, the search has been directed at finding an underlying syntactic/semantic licensing feature common to both negative and non-negative licensing contexts.…”

Section: Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluability – An alternative approach to polarity sensitivity

Brandtler¹

2013

Beyond 'Any' and 'Ever'

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Based on Brandtler (2012), this paper argues that polarity items are sensitive to evaluability, a concept that refers to the possibility of accepting or rejecting an utterance as true in a communicative exchange. The main distinction is made between evaluable and non-evaluable utterances. The evaluable category comprises any clause that asserts, presupposes or entails the truth of an affirmative or a negative proposition. In contrast, the non-evaluable category contains clauses that do not assert, presuppose or entail the truth of an affirmative or a negative proposition.According to the Evaluability Hypothesis, non-evaluable environments are natural hosts for both NPIs and PPIs. Hence, the occurrence of polarity items in non-evaluable clauses does not require formal licensing, and this is the reason we find both PPIs and weak NPIs in yes/noquestions and conditionals. Evaluable clauses, in contrast, are restricted environments and may only host polarity items that are formally (i.e. syntactically) licensed. Hence, NPIs require the presence of a licensing element, and PPIs require the absence of such elements. This analysis leads to an important change of perspective, as the occurrence of polarity items in negative and affirmative sentences becomes the marked, or exceptional, case.

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Section: Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluability – An alternative approach to polarity sensitivity

Brandtler¹

2013

Beyond 'Any' and 'Ever'

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“…One research tradition, dating back to Klima (1964) and advocated by Progovac (1992, 1994), Postal (2000, Szabolcsi (2004), Den Dikken (2002 and Herburger and Mauck (2007), takes NPI licensing to involve a syntactic relation between a proper (semi-)negative element and an NPI. Progovac, for instance, argues that NPI licensing shows significant similarities with syntactic binding and takes an unlicensed NPI to be on a par with an improperly bound anaphor.…”

Section: Explaining the Npi Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Negation and polarity: an introduction

Penka

Zeijlstra

2010

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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This introduction addresses some key issues and questions in the study of negation and polarity. Focussing on negative polarity and negative indefinites, it summarizes research trends and results. Special attention is paid to the issues of synchronic variation and diachronic change in the realm of negative polarity items, which figure prominently in the articles and commentaries contained in this special issue.

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“…4 question tags, we will propose that clauses are typed for polarity and we explore the hypothesis (Laka 1990, Progovac 1993, 1994, Moscati 2006, De Clercq 2011a,b, McCloskey 2011) that a polarity head in the left periphery of the clause is crucially involved in the licensing of sentential negation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Medial adjunct PPs in English: Implications for the syntax of sentential negation

Clercq¹,

Haegeman²,

Lohndal³

2012

Nord J Linguist

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This paper provides evidence that medial adjunct PPs in English are possible: On the basis of corpus data, it is shown that sentence-medial adjunct PPs are not unacceptable and are attested. Our corpus data also reveal a sharp asymmetry between negative and non-negative 2 adjunct PPs. The analysis of the corpus revealed the following pattern: Non-negative adjunct PPs such as at that time resist medial position and instead tend to be post-verbal. Negative adjunct PPs such as at no time appear medially rather than postverbally. In the second part of the paper, we broaden the empirical domain and include negative complement PPs in the discussion. It is shown that when it comes to the licensing of question tags, English negative complement PPs, which are postverbal, pattern differently from postverbal negative adjunct PPs. That is, sentences with a postverbal negative adjunct PP pattern with negative sentences in taking a positive question tag, while sentences containing a postverbal negative argument PP pattern with affirmative sentences in taking a negative tag. To account for the observed adjunct-argument asymmetry in the licensing of question tags, we will propose that clauses are typed for polarity and we explore the hypothesis that a polarity head in the left periphery of the clause is crucially involved in the licensing of sentential negation.

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Negative and Positive Polarity

Cited by 183 publications

References 0 publications

Evaluability – An alternative approach to polarity sensitivity

Evaluability – An alternative approach to polarity sensitivity

Negation and polarity: an introduction

Medial adjunct PPs in English: Implications for the syntax of sentential negation

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