Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency

What’s in the Textbook and What’s in the Mind

“…The free choice use differs from the existential use in that it is associated with the sense of "every". So (9) means "Every person can…" and (10) has the sense of "Every cake [in the context] is one that you can choose" (Dayal, 2005;Giannakidou, 1998;Horn, 2000;Lee, 1993; among others).…”

“…Specifically, we investigate L2 knowledge of English polarity item any, by means of a paced acceptability judgement task, in L1 speakers of Najdi-Saudi Arabic of different proficiency levels. Any, along with its compounds, such as anyone and anything, is interesting because of its complex distribution properties (Chierchia, 2013;Giannakidou, 1998Giannakidou, , 2001Klima, 1964;Zwarts, 1995;among others). Basic rules about the use of any appear in most English language coursebooks, but these rules do not account for every aspect of its distribution, as will be exemplified below.…”

Literal and nonliteral meaning in placename idioms

“…We analyzed a set of occurrences from the Internet, and found that this expression shows a nearly absolute tendency to appear in nonveridical contexts, and therefore has to be viewed as a weak polarity item (cf. Giannakidou 1998). Unlike the majority of cases discussed in the literature under the heading of nonveridicality, however, the idioms we have studied here are not indefinite pronouns or determiners, but predicates.…”

“…The high percentage of negative sentences is a tell-tale sign, as is the fact that the remainder is taken up to a large extent by interrogative and subjunctive clauses. Subjunctive clauses have been identified by Giannakidou (1998) as one of the prime contexts in which items that require nonveridicality may appear. 3 Nonveridicality is defined as in (27): (27) A context X__Z for a proposition Y is nonveridical just in case the truth of XYZ does not entail the truth of Y.…”

“…Zwarts (1995) and Giannakidou (1998Giannakidou ( , 1999 have argued that a class of weak polarity items is licensed in such contexts, such as modern Greek indefinite pronouns of the kanenas series. Since then, more items with similar distributions have been discovered (Oosterhof 2004, Hoeksema 2010.…”