PSIs with Head-Like Properties

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-210
Author(s):  
Ahmad Alqassas
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Case Theory ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Dependent Case ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Case Licensing ◽  
Polarity Sensitive ◽  
Genitive Case

This chapter discusses two main issues that arise from PSIs (polarity-sensitive items) with head-like properties. These PSIs seem to be outside the (immediate) domain of their licensor. The first issue is how these PSIs are licensed in syntax and how a unified analysis can handle their distribution. The author argues that these PSIs are adverbial phrases that do not project a clausal projection and that negation licenses these PSIs either in Spec-NegP or under c-command. This unified analysis does not appeal to the problematic head–complement relation as a putative licensing configuration. Another issue that arises from these NPIs (negative polarity items) with head-like properties is their ability to host clitics with accusative and genitive case marking. This issue raises interesting questions pertaining to case theory and dependent case licensing. The author argues that negation licenses the puzzling accusative case of the pronominal complement, a conclusion with far-reaching implications to dependent case licensing in natural language.

scholarly journals On the negativity of negation

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Potts
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Meta Data ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics

Natural language negation is persistently negative in the pragmatic sense, and emphatic and attenuating negative polarity items modulate this effect in systematic ways. I use large corpora of informal texts with meta-data approximating features of the context to characterize this pragmatic negativity, and I attempt to explain it in terms of the ways in which negative sentences engage the questions under discussion. The discussion highlights some of the ways in which quantitative corpus methods can be used to achieve novel results in linguistic pragmatics.

Case marking in Russian eventive nominalizations: inherent vs. dependent case theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asya Pereltsvaig ◽  
Ekaterina Lyutikova ◽  
Anastasia Gerasimova
Keyword(s):  
Case Theory ◽  
Dependent Case ◽  
Case Marking

scholarly journals On the Acquisition of Polarity Items: 11- to 12-Year-Olds' Comprehension of German NPIs and PPIs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Schwab ◽  
Mingya Liu ◽  
Jutta L. Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Developmental Time ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rating Task ◽  
Positive Polarity ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Polarity Sensitive

AbstractExisting work on the acquisition of polarity-sensitive expressions (PSIs) suggests that children show an early sensitivity to the restricted distribution of negative polarity items (NPIs), but may be delayed in the acquisition of positive polarity items (PPIs). However, past studies primarily targeted PSIs that are highly frequent in children’s language input. In this paper, we report an experimental investigation on children’s comprehension of two NPIs and two PPIs in German. Based on corpus data indicating that the four tested PSIs are present in child-directed speech but rare in young children’s utterances, we conducted an auditory rating task with adults and 11- to 12-year-old children. The results demonstrate that, even at 11–12 years of age, children do not yet show a completely target-like comprehension of the investigated PSIs. While they are adult-like in their responses to one of the tested NPIs, their responses did not demonstrate a categorical distinction between licensed and unlicensed PSI uses for the other tested expressions. The effect was led by a higher acceptance of sentences containing unlicensed PSIs, indicating a lack of awareness for their distributional restrictions. The results of our study pose new questions for the developmental time scale of the acquisition of polarity items.

On Dependent Ergative Case (in Shipibo) and Its Derivation by Phase

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Case Theory ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Dependent Case ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs ◽  
Domain I

Focusing on the Shipibo language, I defend a simple ‘‘dependent case’’ theory of ergative case marking, where ergative case is assigned to the higher of two NPs in a clausal domain. I show how apparent failures of this rule can be explained assuming that VP is a Spell-Out domain distinct from the clause, and that this bleeds ergative case assignment for c-command relationships that already exist in VP and are unchanged in CP. This accounts for the apparent underapplication of ergative case marking with ditransitives, reciprocals, and dyadic experiencer verbs, as opposed to the applicatives of unaccusative verbs, which do have ergative subjects. Finally, I show how case assignment interacts with restructuring to explain constructions in which ergative case appears to be optional.

scholarly journals On the negativity of negation

2015 ◽  
pp. 636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Potts
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Meta Data ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics

Natural language negation is persistently negative in the pragmatic sense, and emphatic and attenuating negative polarity items modulate this effect in systematic ways. I use large corpora of informal texts with meta-data approximating features of the context to characterize this pragmatic negativity, and I attempt to explain it in terms of the ways in which negative sentences engage the questions under discussion. The discussion highlights some of the ways in which quantitative corpus methods can be used to achieve novel results in linguistic pragmatics.

scholarly journals What determines the varying relation of case and agreement? Evidence from the Ugric languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-428
Author(s):  
Katalin É. Kiss
Keyword(s):  
Partial Correlation ◽  
Random Distribution ◽  
Case Theory ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Dependent Case ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Range Of Variation ◽  
Grammatical Functions

AbstractAgreement and case assignment can be interdependent, partially independent, or independent of each other (Baker & Vinokurova 2010; Baker 2014, 2015). These parametric options appear to have random distribution across languages. This paper claims on the basis of the comparison of the Ugric languages (Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian) that the correlation of case and agreement or the lack of it may not be random. A strict correlation of case and agreement is attested in sentence structures displaying a fusion of grammatical functions and discourse roles. When these roles are encoded in distinct clausal domains, case and agreement have separate functions and licensing conditions, with case marking grammatical functions, and agreement associated with discourse roles. At the same time, relics of their former syntactic interdependence may survive in morphology, resulting in a partial correlation between case and agreement. It is shown that dependent case theory can account for the whole range of variation attested in the relation of case and agreement.

scholarly journals Minimizers in Azerbaijani from a comparative perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venera Suleymanova ◽  
Jack Hoeksema
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Western European ◽  
Polarity Sensitive

Abstract Azerbaijani, like many other languages, has a class of negative polarity items denoting minimal measures (along dimensions such as size, length, duration, value, weight etc.), called minimizers. This paper presents an overview of this group of expressions, compares them to minimizers in the western European languages, in particular English and Dutch, identifies the various domains in which these minimizers may be used, and discusses their distribution across polarity-sensitive contexts such as negation, conditional clauses, questions, etc. The distribution we found, on the basis of both corpus data and native speaker judgments, is very similar to that of minimizers in English or Dutch, especially when differences are factored out which are due to the fact that Azerbaijani has strict negative concord, whereas English and Dutch do not. To this end, we distinguish two types of minimizers for Azerbaijani, negated minimizers preceded by heç bir ‘not one’, and minimizers preceded by bir only.

Polarity in the Semantics of Natural Language

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Giannakidou
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Positive Polarity ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Syntactic Dependency ◽  
Habitual Sentences

This paper provides an overview of polarity phenomena in human languages. There are three prominent paradigms of polarity items: negative polarity items (NPIs), positive polarity items (PPIs), and free choice items (FCIs). What they all have in common is that they have limited distribution: they cannot occur just anywhere, but only inside the scope of licenser, which is negation and more broadly a nonveridical licenser, PPIs, conversely, must appear outside the scope of negation. The need to be in the scope of a licenser creates a semantic and syntactic dependency, as the polarity item must be c-commanded by the licenser at some syntactic level. Polarity, therefore, is a true interface phenomenon and raises the question of well-formedness that depends on both semantics and syntax. Nonveridical polarity contexts can be negative, but also non-monotonic such as modal contexts, questions, other non-assertive contexts (imperatives, subjunctives), generic and habitual sentences, and disjunction. Some NPIs and FCIs appear freely in these contexts in many languages, and some NPIs prefer negative contexts. Within negative licensers, we make a distinction between classically and minimally negative contexts. There are no NPIs that appear only in minimally negative contexts. The distributions of NPIs and FCIs crosslinguistically can be understood in terms of general patterns, and there are individual differences due largely to the lexical semantic content of the polarity item paradigms. Three general patterns can be identified as possible lexical sources of polarity. The first is the presence of a dependent variable in the polarity item—a property characterizing NPIs and FCIs in many languages, including Greek, Mandarin, and Korean. Secondly, the polarity item may be scalar: English any and FCIs can be scalar, but Greek, Korean, and Mandarin NPIs are not. Finally, it has been proposed that NPIs can be exhaustive, but exhaustivity is hard to precisely identify in a non-stipulative way, and does not characterize all NPIs. NPIs that are not exhaustive tend to be referentially vague, which means that the speaker uses them only if she is unable to identify a specific referent for them.

Classification of PSIs and Their Lexical Categories

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-69
Author(s):  
Ahmad Alqassas
Keyword(s):  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Positive Polarity ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Fragment Answers ◽  
Opposite Behavior ◽  
Polarity Sensitive ◽  
Negative Counterpart

In chapter 2, the author lays out a classification of polarity-sensitive items (PSIs) and their lexical categories. PSIs include negative polarity items (NPIs), free-choice items (FCIs), positive polarity items (PPIs), and negative concord items (NCIs). General indefinites display different distributions than do NPIs. Indefinite nouns like ħada and iši function as NPIs, and they are distinct from indefinite nouns (general indefinites) that occur in the context of negation. This chapter discusses the distinctive features of NPIs and PPIs, such as scope widening. Two different types of PSIs interact with negation in interesting ways: NPIs and NCIs. One key difference between the two is that NPIs cannot function as fragment answers without negation and can occur in nonnegative contexts, such as interrogative and conditional contexts. NCIs display the opposite behavior. This chapter describes the distribution of the disjunctive particles walla/willa/ʔam ‘or’ and the negative counterpart wala ‘nor’ in polarity contexts and their status as structures for coordinate complexes in Arabic.

Broaden Your Views: Implicatures of Domain Widening and the “Logicality” of Language

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gennaro Chierchia
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Scalar Implicatures ◽  
Negative Polarity Items ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
Domain Widening ◽  
Polarity Sensitive

This article presents a unified theory of polarity-sensitive items (PSIs) based on the notion of domain widening. PSIs include negative polarity items (like Italian mai ‘ever’), universal free choice items (like Italian qualunque ‘any/whatever’), and existential free choice items (like Italian uno qualunque ‘a whatever’). The proposal is based on a ‘‘recursive,’’ grammatically driven approach to scalar implicatures that breaks with the traditional view that scalar implicatures arise via post- grammatical pragmatic processes. The main claim is that scalar items optionally activate scalar alternatives that, when activated, are then recursively factored into meaning via an alternative sensitive operator similar to only. PSIs obligatorily activate domain alternatives that are factored into meaning in much the same way.

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