Only , Emotive Factive Verbs, and the Dual Nature of Polarity Dependency

Abstract

The main focus of this article is the occurrence of some polarity items (PIs) in the complements of emotive factive verbs and only. This fact has been taken as a challenge to the semantic approach to PIs (Linebarger 1980), because only and factive verbs are not downward entailing (DE). A modification of the classical DE account is proposed by introducing the notion of nonveridicality (Zwarts 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 2001 as the one crucial for PI sanctioning. To motivate this move, it is first shown that two solutions in the direction of weakening classical monotonicity do not work: Strawson DE (von Fintel 1999) and weak DE (Hoeksema 1986). Weakening DE systematically either overgenerates or undergenerates, in either case failing to characterize the correct set of licensers. Nonveridicality is introduced as a conservative extension of DE and is shown to account for PIs also in contexts that are not DE (i.e. questions, modal verbs, imperatives, directive propositional attitudes). This theory, augmented with the premise that certain PIs (i.e. the liberal class represented by any) are subject to a weaker polarity dependency identified not as LICENSING but as RESCUING by nonveridicality, explains the occurrence of this particular class with only and emotive factive verbs. Crosslinguistic comparisons illustrate that the occurrence of PIs with only and emotive factives is not a general phenomenon, and further support the dual nature of polarity dependency and the semantic characterization of the elements that license or rescue PIs.* Klima's (1964) seminal work on English negation. In earlier works the main goal has been to describe the conditions under which English PIs like any and ever appear, but recent crosslinguistic studies have extended the empirical domain of polarity and made obvious a complexity that in the earlier works went unnoticed. We now know that any is one of many PI paradigms in the world's languages, and that the various PIs are not subject to identical distributional restrictions. At the same time, in order to predict whether an expression can act as a licenser, we have come to expect a coherent and relatively homogenous characterization of the set of expressions that allow PIs within and across languages. POLARITY-ITEM LICENSING AND THE PROBLEM OF only AND EMOTIVE FACTIVES. The licensing of POLARITY ITEMS (PIs) is a central issue in linguistic theory, one that has received considerable attention sinceLadusaw 1979 established that we can indeed unify the class of PIs licensers in terms of a semantic property they share. This property is identified as DOWNWARD ENTAILMENT (DE), and a licensing condition like 1 is proposed.(1) Ladusaw's (1979) licensing condition ␣ is a trigger for negative polarity items in its scope iff ␣ is downward entailing.

Disruption of NPI Licensing: the Case of Presuppositions

“…Crucially, the ungrammaticality of (3a) is not due to some incompatibility between too and the negation, as shown by the well-formedness of (3b). The singular definite article and both are disruptors as well (this observation is not new, unlike the one about too, see Lahiri 1998, Giannakidou 2006, Guerzoni and Sharvit 2007:…”

Universal Grammar and the Second Language Classroom

“…We follow Giannakidou (1997Giannakidou ( , 2006, who argues (following Zwarts, 1995) that any is sanctioned in nonveridical contextsÑthat is, contexts that do not correspond to an actual event. 1 Thus, any is grammatical in contexts such as conditionals and interrogatives as in (1-a) and (1-b), but it is incompatible with progressives and episodics as in (1-c) and (1-d).…”

“…2 However, if the propositional operator is veridical (as in episodics and progressives), then the [uNV] 1 Giannakidou (2001, p.670) Giannakidou (2006) and Zwarts (1998) appeal to lexical-semantic properties as the source polarity sensitivity, although neither has proposed a specific feature. Szabolcsi (2004) proposes a feature-based account of any in negative polarity contexts, but this does not extend to all nonveridical contexts.…”

“…For exceptions such as these, Giannakidou (2006) argues that in certain veridical environments any can be ÔrescuedÕ by negative (i.e., nonveridical) inference in the context. Due to the lexical semantics of only and negative factive verbs such as regret, both (2-a) and (2-b) give rise to negative inferences, along the lines of (3-a) and (3-b).…”

“…English any, Chinese renhe ÔanyÕ, and the existential use of Chinese wh-words are all polarity sensitive, meaning that their distribution is restrictedÑalthough each in slightly different ways (Cheng, 1994;Giannakidou, 1997Giannakidou, , 2006Klima, 1964;Wang & Hsieh, 1996;Zwarts, 1995;among others). Korean and Japanese, like Chinese, can form existential quantifiers from wh-words, but in these languages, their distribution is not restricted (Gill, 2004;Nishigauchi, 1990; among others).…”