Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today)

380 Pages·2003·53.26 MB·English

by  Jack Hoeksema

PERSPECTIVES ON NLGATION AND POLARITY ITEMS
LINGUIST1K AKTUELL/LINGUIST1CS TODAY
Linguistik Aktucll/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform
for original monograph studies into synchronic and
diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed
in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and
systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust
empirical generalizations within a universaiistic perspective.
SetUS Editor
Werner Abraham
University ofCalifornia at Berkeley
University ofVienna
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Adviso)y Editorial Board
Guglielmo Cinque (University ofVenice)
Cunther Greweiidorr|).W. Goclhe-Universily. Frankfurt)
Liliane llaegeman (University ofLille. France)
Hubert Haider (University ofSalzburg)
Christer Plal/ack (University of Lund)
Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart)
Ken Sallr (Rutgers University. New Brunswick N))
HoskuldurThrainsson (University ofIceland. Reykjavik)
Lisa deMena Travis (McCill University)
Sten Vikner (University ofStuttgart)
C Jan-Wouler Zwart (University ofGroningen)
.
Volume 40
Jack Hoeksema, Hotze Rullmann. Victor Sanchez-Valencia
and Ton van der Wouden (eds.)
Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items
PERSPECTIVES ON NEGATION
AND POLARITY ITEMS
Edited by
)ACK HOE KS EM A
HOTZE RULLMANN
VICTOR SANCHEZ-VALENCIA
TON VAN DER WOUDEN
University ofGroningen
IOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM / PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used mthis publication meets the minimum requirements of American
OO National Standard lor Information Sciences- Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Malcnals. ANSI 2 .48-1784.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perspectives on negation and polanty items / edited by Jack Hoeksema ... [ela!.).
p cm. (Langutstik aktucll f Linguistics today. ISSN 0166-082 ; v. 40)
.
Papers presented at a conlcrenceheld at the University of Groningen. iyy6.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1 Grammar. Comparative and general-Negatives-Congrcsses. Polanty (Linguistics)-
.
Congresses. L Hoeksema. |ack. II. Linguisnk aktuell: Bd. 40.
p24>7.N4 P47 2000
415"dc2! 00-064166
ISBN yo 272 2761 6 (Eur} f 1 5>6i«; 7yj 4 JUS) (Hb, alk. papcr|
© 2001 - )ohn Beniamms B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any torm, by print, photopnni. microfilm, or any other
means, withoutwrinen permission from the publisher.
lohn Benjamins Publishing Co. P.O.Box 75577 1070 AN Amsterdam The Netherlands
|ohn Benjamins North America - P.O.Box 2751 . Philadelphia PA laiifromi PS'A
Table of Contents
Imroduction vii
Negative quantifier noun phrases: A typology and an acquisition
hypothesis I
Ja\ D. Atlas
On the typology of negative modals 23
Johan van der Auwera
Metalinguistic sentence negation in child Hnglish 49
Kennelh F. Drozd
Lexical sensitivity in negative polarity verbs 79
Gabriel Ftilkenbergf
Varieties of polarilv Hems and the (non)veridicality hypothesis 99
Ahastasia CHannakidau
Scalarity and polarity: A study of scalar adverbs as polarity items 12
Jack Hoeksema ami Haft* Rullmaim
Flaubert triggers, squatitive negation, and other quirks of grammar 173
Lautcm c K. Horn
On the monotonicily of polar adjectixo 201
Christopher Kerned}
Polarity sensitivity and collocational restrictions of adverbs of degree 223
Henay Klein
/:u7/-incorporated NPls in Hindi dehnites and correlatives 237
Utpal Lahiri
TABLE OF CONTUNTS
PcrkctiNc scnU'iKCN under negation and duratixi- .»d\eibial>. A
double-jointed construction 265
Anita Mnimnh
Nccalive |>olarity and the syntax t»l iab*K> 2S3
Grrljan PoiAM
Neg-Raising; Negation as failure 331
/ A/. IbVMM
..
Name Index JS7
Stlbjed index 363
Introduction
I The study of negation and negative polarity items has scon a tremendous
.
upswing in recent years. There have been more conferences on this topic in
the Il>Ws than in the nine preceding d C«dw ot the 2(ilh century. The
present volume contains papers from one such contcrcnce. entitled Terspec
ti\cs on Negation' and held at the UnivciMt\ ol CJroningen in August 1996.'
In these proceedings, one can find contributions on \.iiioiis MpecU of the
N\nt.i\ and semantics ol negation including the «>ld and notorious problem
,
of si ope. the vexing issues surrounding /><//<//m items, the interaction of
negation with presupposttiotts and implirutures. and the oequisition o(
polarity items.
2 Most of the papers in this volume are directly or indirectly devoted to
.
matters of polarity sensitivity, from a variety of analytical perspectives.
Questions to be addressed are. among others.
the semantic licensing question; what scnuniic icatures license polarity
items?
the lexical sensitivity question: what typei of expressions may be
sensitive to polarity.1
the Nvntaclic licensing question: in what types of syntactic conligura-
tions may polarity items be licensed?
The lirst paper, by Jay Atlas, concerns itsell with the first question, more
precisely with the dillercnce between aiut aiUune and ami multiplu ative
quantifiers. Anti-additive quantifiers arc expressions such as nolnnl} or
nothmt;. whereas not everybody or not everything are anti multiplicative.
Both classes of negative expressions ditfcr from negation itself in that they
each do not obey one of the De Morgan laws for negation (albeit a different
one for each classi. In a sense, then, both classes of quantifiers are weaker
viii INTRODUCTION
than negation, but neither is necessarily weaker than the other, just different.
However, as pointed out in the work of Zwarts (1986 and elsewhere) and
others, it appears that anti-additive quantifiers are stronger triggers for
polarity items than anti-multiplicative quantifiers. Atlas' paper tries to make
sense of this observation, by noting thai anti-additive quantifiers arc truly
more negative than anti-multiplicative quantifiers when the matter is consid-
ered inluitionistically, rather than from the perspective of classical logic.
Anasiasia Giannakidou's paper looks at items (such as the Greek
indefinites of the Af/mv /.v-paradigm) which impose weaker requirements on
their licensing context than standard polarity items such as ever. She
proposes that the general notion of nonveridicaiity, which includes, but is not
restricted to the regular contexts of ever, is relevant for the semantic licens-
ing of these items. Giannakidou%s work has already been fruitful in that
sensitivity to nonveridicality in other languages than Greek has become an
object of investigation, and has turned up a number of cases that pattern
much like kanenas (cf. Zwarts 1995, and also the paper by Hoeksema and
Rullmann. this volume).
The paper by Jack Hoeksema and Hoizc Rullmann is concerned with
issues of sensitivity and triggering (the first and second of the above ques-
tions) and studies two closely related adverbial expressions in Dutch, ook
nwar and zclfs nuun. The former has figured quite prominently in the
literature on Dutch polarity items (cf. Zwarts 1981, 19S6: Van der Wouden
1997: Hoeksema 1983), but its near equivalent zeifsmaar has been much less
well-studied. From an extensive corpus investigation it appears that these
,
expressions dill'er along a number of dimensions: (a) scopal preferences, (b)
choice of focus expressions to be modified, (c) triggering. For instance,
triggering by non-anti-additive expressions is significantly more common in
the case of zclfs maot. In addition, it is shown that the division of labour
between the two expressions is of recent origin, and has become more
pronounced in recent years.
Larry Horn's paper is concerned with a wide variety of naturally-
occurring examples of indirect licensing, whereby the licensing element
appears to be a pragmatically-established negative implicature. His conclu-
sion is that a strictly syntactic or strictly semantic account of polarity
licensing will fail for these cases. The paper includes a discussion of squol
and similar expressions of scatological origin, which have recently undergone
part of the Jesperscn Cycle, rendering them negative in force even in the
INTRODUCTION ix
absence of any overt negation: They fold him squat = They duln'/ tell hint squat.
Utpal Laliiri's paper discusses the licensing of scalar indelinilc NPIs in
Hindi. Ever since the work of Fauconnier (1975. 1979) and Ladusaw (I979i.
scalarily has been viewed as an essential property of many polarity items
(this issue is also discussed at length in the contribution by Hoeksema and
Rullmann). Lahiri extends his analysis of these NPIs (indefinites with the
added scalar particle hhii 'also, even') to cases of triggering inside definite
noun phrases and correlative clause constructions.
Chris Kennedy's paper is concerned with the dinbrencc between "posi-
tive" adjectives such as Itmg and their negative counterparts like short. It
discusses ways in which the monolonicily properties of these adjectives can
be formally captured without losing sight of other relevant properties, e.g.
the impossibility of comparative subdeletion with antonymic adjectives, cf.
*He is taller than she is short.
Issues of antonymy also crop up in Henny Klein's paper, which discusses
polarity sensitive adverbs of degree. She shows that these adverbs exhibit
multiple semantic and even connotational dependencies. For instance, some
adverbs are sensitive both to the presence of negation and the presence of
negatively evaluated adjectives or verbs. Both types of "negative" elements
are related in ways which have only just begun to be explored. Klein argues
that Israel's (1996> pragmatic theory of polarity licensing should be extended
lo account for evaluative (in her terms, "emotional") aspects of use.
The paper by Johan van der Auwera deals with the second question
("What types of expressions may be sensitive to polarity ?") as it concerns
,
the interaction of negation with modality from a typological perspective.
Many languages have modals which are reserved for negative statements.
The various lexicalization patterns for combinations of modals and negation
in 29 languages of Europe and India are compared in this paper and some
general tendencies are identified. It turns out that there are multiple patterns
of polarity sensitivity, both with weak {can, may) and strong modals (must).
The paper by the late Gabriel Falkenberg is likewise related to the
second question, and discusses the German negative polarity verbs. He shows
that these verbs do not form a random sample from lexicon, but fall into a
number of semantic classes. The semantic classes involved carry over to
related languages like Dutch and English. It is to be hoped that the ground-
work laid in this paper will one day lead to a more general typological study
of the factors which cause polarity sensitivity in this area. At the moment,
\ INTRODIXTION
only indefinite pronouns (Haspclmath 1997) and lo a lesser extent modal
auxiliaries (De Haan 1997; Auwera, this volume) have been studied in detail.
Anita Miltwoch's paper concerns the proper analysis of negative
sentences involving negation in combination with the temporal connective
until. The long standing debate on the issue whether until is sometimes a
polarity item within the scope of negation, or a non-polarity item scoping
over negation, but sensitive to the aspectual eirects of negation, is resolved
here in favor of a double-jointed analysis: until can have both these roles.
The paper discusses not just English data, but compares them with data from
other languages.
There are two parcirihc VfronmHnfCir\r pThptfmfefUfrllltesd adjkttVQftSDi
as opposed lo ncgali without losing sight of other relevant properties, e.g.
Dro/d. is concerned vomparative subdeletion with antonymic adjectives, cf.
Drozd provides arguris short.
disappears, is used toiy also crop up in Henny Klein's paper, which discusses
(1989). If this is correrbs of degree. She shows that these adverbs exhibit
acquisition of poIarilM even connotational dependencies. For instance, some
that negative polarity both to the presence of negation and the presence of
The other paper,adjectives or verbs. Both types of ne tive* elements
Neg-raising. The ideahich have only just begun to be explored. Klein argues
is nowadays no longagmatic theory of polarity licensing should be extended
lion of the "closed-w:ive (in her terms, "emotional") aspects of use.
of negation as failurohan van der Auwera deals with the second question
finite data. It shoukessions may be sensitive to polarity ?"), as it concerns
importance for the Ration with modality from a typological perspective.
(=clause-mate) license modals which are reserved for negative statements
.
inc Snous icxkatfzation patterns for combinations of modals and negation
in 29 languages of Europe and India are compared in this paper and some
general tendencies are identified. It turns out that there are multiple patterns
of polarity sensitivity, bolh with weak {can, max) and strong modals {must).
The paper by the late Gabriel Falkenberg is likewise related to the
second question, and discusses the German negative polarity verbs. He shows
that these verbs do not form a random sample from lexicon, but fall into a
number of semantic classes. The semantic classes involved carry over to
related languages like Dutch and English. It is to be hoped that the ground-
work laid in this paper will one day lead to a more general typological study
of the factors which cause polarity sensitivity in this area. At the moment.