The empirical reality of bridging contexts

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-451
Author(s):  
Pierre Larrivée ◽  
Amel Kallel
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Documented Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grammatical Change

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide quantitative substantiation for the role of bridging context in grammatical change. Bridging contexts are assumed to be environments compatible with the new function that an item is acquiring. The evolving item would therefore be predicted to occur in bridging contexts at significant rates just before the change. To test this prediction, the well-known evolution of Negative Polarity Items into an n-word is analysed, using the well-documented case of the aucun in the history of French. Charting its course in a monogeneric corpus of narrative legal material, we find that the item occurs in strong negative polarity environments at rates of over 50% before it is found in a majority of n-word uses. This supports the view that bridging contexts are instrumental to change, and that they involve quantitative conditions.

Neg-raising

2020 ◽  
pp. 198-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence R. Horn
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
Syntactic Islands ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Grammatical Theories

Neg-raising is “the strong tendency in many languages to attract to the main verb a negative which should logically belong to the dependent nexus [=clause]”: a speaker uttering I don’t believe that p is typically taken to have conveyed ‘I believe that not-p’. Such lower-clause understandings of higher-clause negations are possible across certain predicates (believe, think, want) but not others (realize, regret, deny) in English and other languages. Grammatical theories of Neg-raising posit a movement rule based on evidence from the interaction of higher negation with strict negative polarity items, negative inversion, negative parentheticals, and syntactic islands. Semantic and pragmatic approaches cite the relation of Neg-raising to other processes involving contrary negation in contradictory form, the availability of excluded middle presuppositions (I believe that p v I believe that not-p), the Neg-first conspiracy, and the role of politeness or euphemism in motivating Neg-raising.

scholarly journals How speakers interpret the negative markers no and no…pas in Catalan

Probus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susagna Tubau ◽  
Viviane Déprez ◽  
Joan Borràs-Comes ◽  
M.Teresa Espinal
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Metalinguistic Negation ◽  
The Status

AbstractThis paper reports the results of an experimental investigation designed to test the interpretation of the optional doubling of the negative markersnoandpasin Expletive Negation (EN) contexts and in preverbal Negative Concord Items (NCI) contexts in Catalan. We show that in EN contexts a negative interpretation ofnois preferred to an expletive one, with non-negative readings being less widespread than expected from what is described in traditional grammars. In NCI contexts the overt presence ofnobasically contributes to a single negation interpretation, thus confirming the status of Catalan as a Negative Concord language. We also show that, in the absence of discourse environments,pasin both EN and NCI contexts shows a variable interpretation, a characteristic of negative polarity items. Our results indicate thatpasdoes not increase the amount of negative interpretation ofnoin EN contexts, or of double negation in NCI contexts, but is an item dependent on the interpretation ofno. We conclude that the strengthening role of Catalanpas(at stage two of Jespersen’s cycle), while associated with the expression of metalinguistic negation, does not reverse the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Licensing Negative Polarity Items

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-105
Author(s):  
Ahmad Alqassas
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Multiple Loci ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Semantic Notion ◽  
Categorial Status

This chapter concerns the role that syntax plays in licensing NPIs (negative polarity items). Scholars have argued for a semantic approach to characterizing the unifying properties of the wide range of licensors, such as negation, disjunction, interrogation, and subjunctives, licensors that all share the semantic notion of nonveridicality. The author extends this approach to Arabic NPIs in this chapter but also argues that syntax is heavily involved in licensing these items. In particular, the role of the categorial status, syntactic configurations, and syntactic processes such as movement in licensing NPIs are discussed. The author argues for a unified analysis with a minimal set of basic syntactic operations such as Merge and Move, and licensing configurations of c-command and Spec-Head (specifier-head). The analysis captures the true nature of perceived mutual exclusivity between NPIs and the enclitic negative marker as an epiphenomenon of the availability of multiple loci for negation.

Negation and Alternatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 332-348
Author(s):  
Anamaria Fălăuş
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items

This chapter investigates the interplay between negation and alternatives, one of the richest areas of investigation for the semantics-pragmatics interface, with significant insights into how meaning is compositionally calculated and the role context plays in this process. It explores the focus-sensitivity of negation and the role of syntactic factors in determining the scope of negation with respect to focused elements. The semantic effects produced by the interaction between negation and focus alternatives are approached by discussing two empirical domains (i) focus-sensitive particles and (ii) focused and non-focused negative polarity items.

scholarly journals Spotting, collecting and documenting negative polarity items

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 931-952 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Philipp Soehn ◽  
Beata Trawiński ◽  
Timm Lichte
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items

How Antisymmetric Is Syntax?

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 516-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuji Takano
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
The Right

Since the emergence of Kayne's (1994) stimulating proposal for an antisymmetric theory of phrase structure and linear order, much work has been devoted to arguing for or against his theory as well as discussing its empirical predictions. As a result, for a number of phenomena involving rightward positioning, such as rightward adjuncts, heavy NP shift, extraposition, postverbal subjects, and postverbal constituents in OV languages, there now exist both an approach consistent with Kayne's theory (the antisymmetric approach) and another not consistent with it (the symmetric approach). In such a situation, it is often difficult to show on empirical grounds that one approach is superior to the other (see Rochemont and Culicover 1997). In what follows, I describe this situation with respect to two well-known phenomena in English: rightward positioning of adjuncts and heavy NP shift. For each of these phenomena, the symmetric and antisymmetric approaches have been proposed, and both approaches can correctly account for the data discussed in previous studies. Here, I examine the approaches from a novel point of view, showing that data involving the licensing of negative polarity items allow us to differentiate them and to decide which is the right one for each of the two empirical domains. Interestingly, the relevant facts lead to different conclusions for the two phenomena. The results have important implications for the antisymmetric view of syntax.

scholarly journals The Interpretation of Disjunction in the Scope of Dou in Child Mandarin

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shasha An ◽  
Peng Zhou ◽  
Stephen Crain
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Downward Entailing ◽  
The Right

A recent theory provides a unified cross-linguistic analysis of the interpretations that are assigned to expressions for disjunction, Negative Polarity Items, Free Choice Items, and the non-interrogative uses of wh-phrases in languages such as Mandarin Chinese. If this approach is on the right track, children should be expected to demonstrate similar patterns in the acquisition of these linguistic expressions. Previous research has found that, by age four, children have acquired the knowledge that both the existential indefinite renhe “any” and wh-words in Mandarin Chinese are interpreted as Negative Polarity Items when they are bound by downward entailing operators, but the same expressions are interpreted as Free Choice Items (with a conjunctive interpretation) when they are bound by deontic modals (Mandarin keyi) or by the Mandarin adverbial quantifier dou “all”. The present study extends this line of research to the Mandarin disjunction word huozhe. A Truth Value Judgment Task was used to investigate the possibility that disjunction phrases that are bound by the adverbial quantifier dou generate a conjunctive interpretation in the grammars of Mandarin-speaking 4-year-old children. The findings confirmed this prediction. We discuss the implications of the findings for linguistic theory and for language learnability.

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