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A question of strength: on NPIs in interrogative clauses

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Abstract

We observe that the facts pertaining to the acceptability of negative polarity items (henceforth, NPIs) in interrogative environments complex than previously noted. Since Klima [Klima, E. (1964). In J. Fodor & J. Katz (Eds.), The structure of language. Prentice-Hall], it has been typically assumed that NPIs are grammatical in both matrix and embedded questions, however, on closer scrutiny it turns out that there are differences between root and embedded environments, and between question nucleus and wh-restrictor. While NPIs are always licensed in the nucleus of root questions, their acceptability in the restrictor of wh-phrases and in the nucleus of any embedded question depends on the logical properties of the linguistic environment: its strength in terms of exhaustivity [Groenendijk, J., & Stokhof, M. (1984). Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatic answers. Amserdam (NL), Post-Doctoral Dissertation. Heim, I. (1994). In R. Buchalla & A. Mittwoch (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th annual IATL conference and of the 1993 IATL workshop on discourse (pp. 128–144). Akademon, Jerusalem. Beck, S., & 16 Rullmann, H. (1999). Natural Language Semantics, 7, 249–298. Sharvit, Y (2002). Natural Language Semantics, 10, 97–123] and its monotonicity properties (in the sense of von Fintel [von Fintel, K. (1999). Journal of 19 Semantics, 16, 97-148]).

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Correspondence to Yael Sharvit.

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For very valuable comments, we thank Klaus Abels, Chris Barker, David Beaver, Sigrid Beck, Daniel Buring, Gennaro Chierchia, Veneeta Dayal, Kai von Fintel, Jon Gajewski, Susan Glasser, Jane Grimshaw, Martin Hackl, Irene Heim, Larry Horn, Lance Nathan, Barbara Partee, Orin Percus, Ben Russell, Uli Sauerland, Barry Schein, Philippe Schlenker, Roger Schwarzschild, Mandy Simons, Tim Stowell, and two anonymous L&P reviewers. All remaining errors are ours.

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Guerzoni, E., Sharvit, Y. A question of strength: on NPIs in interrogative clauses. Linguist and Philos 30, 361–391 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-007-9014-x

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