Positive polarity predicates

Abstract

This paper presents Dutch and English predicates that behave as positive polarity items and provides a partial, semantically-grounded classification of this group of PPIs. The items are studied from the perspective of anti-licensing behavior (by negation, either locally or long-distance, in questions, and by weakly negative quantifiers such as little and few). Predicates, unlike quantifiers, do not have wide scope readings (which allow quantificational PPIs such as somebody to appear in the syntactic scope of negation). Using a mixture of corpus data and introspective judgments, we show that anti-licensing among PPIs is not uniform (mirroring earlier results on NPIs which likewise show considerable variation). Rescuing contexts are likewise shown to differ among PPIs. Some of the PPI predicates show complex interaction with illocutionary force (especially mandative force), and others with differences between presupposed and asserted propositions. High degree predicates, finally, point toward the existence of connections between the marking of degree and positive polarity. PPI status is argued to be the result of a complex interaction between the effects of negation and other nonveridical operators, and other semantic factors, which differ among subclasses of PPIs. Anti-licensing by weak negation correlates fairly well with anti-licensing by long-distance negation, a finding which is (partly) in line with a recent proposal by Spector (2014, Global positive polarity items and obligatory exhaustivity. Semantics and Pragmatics 7(11). 1–61) concerning global PPIs. However, we find there to be more variation among the PPIs studied here than the classification of Spector (2014) or any binary classification stipulates.

Novel ERP Evidence for Processing Differences Between Negative and Positive Polarity Items in German

“…Following the works of Klima (1964) ; Ladusaw (1979) , and Giannakidou (1998) , researchers mostly agree that sentences with unlicensed NPIs are ungrammatical for both structural and semantic reasons. In contrast, the nature of PPIs and their violation is currently highly debated (e.g., Szabolcsi, 2004 ; Homer, 2011 ; Nicolae, 2017 ; Zeijstra, 2017 ; Hoeksema, 2018 ). One important reason for the debate is that PPIs are shown to be rescuable as in (2).…”

“…In general, polarity items can differ from one another greatly despite their shared sensitivity toward negation or negation-like contexts ( Giannakidou, 2012 ). Furthermore, there is considerable variation within NPIs and within PPIs respectively ( Hoeksema, 2018 ). The results we obtained in our study are certainly contingent on, for example, the specific experimental design, the specific polarity items and the specific contexts used.…”

“…While PPIs were taken to be less interesting than NPIs in earlier literature (e.g., Horn, 1989 ), they have been gaining more attention recently (e.g., Szabolcsi, 2004 ; Homer, 2011 ; Liu, 2017 ; Nicolae, 2017 ; Zeijstra, 2017 ; Hoeksema, 2018 ). Theoretical accounts of PPIs are, however, highly biased by NPI theories, in that they often assume a parallelism between NPIs and PPIs.…”