Minimizer negative polarity items in non-negative contexts

Minimizer strong NPIs such as ˋˋlift a finger'' are known to be more restricted in their occurrence than weak NPIs like ˋˋever''. Sedivy 1990 points to contexts with a ˋˋnegative side message'' in which ˋˋlift a finger'' can occur but ˋˋever'' cannot. The paper provides a short overview over the relevant contexts and proposes an extension of a representational theory of NPI licensing with the following components: First, an utterance content is introduced that enriches the primary truth-conditional content by conventional implicatures and generalized conversational implicatures. Second, ˋˋever''-type NPIs can be licensed by weak NPI licensors, but only in the primary truth-conditional meaning of an utterance. ˋˋLift-a-finger''-type NPIs can only be licensed in the scope of negation, but the licensing can be checked at the representation of the enriched meaning of an utterance.

Sentiment Analysis of Imran Khan’s Tweets

In the recent past, sentiment analysis has been an area of interests of psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, computer scientists, and linguists including corpus linguists and computational linguists. Interdisciplinary approaches to researching various issues especially the analysis of social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are becoming popular nowadays. The availability of data on social media has made it easier to analyse the opinion or sentiments of its users. Analysis of these sentiments could reveal the face of users and it could help in various decision-making processes. Sentiment analysis is a system of knowing polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) in discourse. Moreover, sentiments can enable and disable certain functions of discourse and can divert the attention of the audience from important to a less important issue or otherwise, hence, there is a need to analyse the sentiments. In this research, sentiments (Polarity) of Imran Khan’s tweets are analysed with the help of R studio. Data for this study is collected from Imran Khan’s one-year’s tweets, tweeted from 1st January 2018 to 20th November 2018. Later we saved the data in. csv files. The results of the polarity check revealed that he has used all three types of sentiments that is positive, negative, and neutral. However, he mostly used neutral or free polarity items (FPIs) that is 67.41% in his tweets. Among positive and negative polarity items the number of negative polarity items (NPIs) is higher that is 23.21% as compared to positive polarity items (PPIs) which are only 9.40%. The manual analysis of results revealed that only software is not enough and there is a need to check the accuracy of the results manually. The use of negative polarity/negative face reveals that he tries to be independent and autonomous in his decisions (Goffman, 1967). The use of positive polarity items shows he tries to show his positive face to others. Moreover, sentiment analysis demonstrates the presence of themes propagated through the use of various lexical items.

Licensing Negative Polarity Items

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.

Degree modifiers and common ground operators: The case of at all

At all is among the most common negative polarity items in English. In this paper, I argue that at all has a dual use as a degree modifier and operator on the common ground. I first present an account of degree modifier at all based on Chierchia 2013 that captures its status as a minimizer as well as an NPI. I then show that a very similar account can be used for at all's common ground usage, departing from the usual quantification over worlds approach for common ground management. This degree-based account of common ground at all captures its status as an NPI and provides a possible shared semantic core between degree modifiers and common ground operators.

Sakha 'da(qany)': Negative Polarity, Conjunction, and Focus

This paper discusses the quantifier particle da(qany) in the Siberian Turkic language Sakha (also known as "Yakut"). Focusing on its distribution in negative polarity items (NPIs) and doubled coordination constructions, it is shown that it has a distribution which is far more restricted than similar elements in other languages. In order to account for the semantics of this element, it is argued in an exhaustification-based theory of polarity sensitivity, that da(qany)'s main semantic contribution is to mark the alternative of its host as obligatorily active.

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

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.

The empirical reality of bridging contexts

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.

Exploring negation in Awing

Negation is a universal category and languages differ in many respects in the way they express the latter (see Klima 1964). In this regards, some languages express sentential negation (a subcategorization of negation) with one marker (Dutch, German, English, etc.) while others like French uses two markers. Alongside markers used to express sentential negation, other items, among which Negative Polarity Items, mark negation and tight a particular element within its domain. In this paper, I aim at providing a picture of the expression of negation in Awing (a Bantu Grassfield langue of the Ngemba Group spoken in the North West region of Cameroon). Accordingly, sentential negation is expressed with two discontinuous markers kě…pô. One fact important to the presence of this negative marker is the movement of postverbal elements to a preverbal position turning the SVO structure in non-negative clause to an SOV pattern in negative clauses. In addition, the study describes other negative elements and negation subcategories. In last, the study of negative concord reveals that Awing belongs to the group of Strict Negative Concord (SNC) languages in which n-words must co-occur with negative marker to yield negation.