Online research in philosophy

Polarity phenomena in language are pervasive and quite diverse. A quite familiar polarity item (PI) is any. Any a PI because it exhibits limited distribution: it is ungrammatical in positive sentences, but becomes fine with negation, in questions, with modal verbs, and in the scope of downward entailing quantifiers like few.

The argument here comes from consideration of a certain sort of linguistic expression called negative polarity items (NPIs). These are expressions such as “any,” “at all” and “ever.” NPIs are of particular interest for semantics because they can only be used in contexts with a certain rather abstract semantic feature. However, the precise characterization of the feature is itself a matter of some controversy. For those interested in the semantics of natural language it is worthwhile to figure out precisely what this feature is. Once we have an account of it, we can use the account to infer facts about the meanings of various expressions that interact with NPIs.

of contexts, most prominently the scope of negation, and therefore called NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEMS (NPIs). The following sentences should exemplify some typical NPIs..

This squib investigates a paradox that arises from the interaction of two well-studied domains of grammar: antecedent-contained deletion and the licensing of negative polarity items. The conflict arises from a simple set of facts that have been overlooked in the literature, given in (1).

In this chapter, we discuss the distribution and lexical properties of common varieties of negative polarity items (NPIs) and positive polarity items (PPIs). We establish first that NPIs can be licensed in negative, downward entailing, and nonveridical environments. Then we examine if the scalarity approach (originating in Kadmon and Landman 1993) can handle the attested NPI distribution and empirical variation. By positing a unitary lexical source for NPIs—widening, plus EVEN— scalarity fails to capture the fact that a significant number of NPIs are not scalar, and does not predict correctly NPI distribution in nonveridical contexts. It also misses the variation within the scalar class between broader (any) and narrow NPIs (either). Finally, scalarity predicts weaker effects (contradictions, presupposition failures) with ill-formed NPIs than is actually the case. The variation approach (Giannakidou 1998, 2001, 2007), on the other hand, posits that besides scalarity, NPIs can be created because of the presence of a variable in the NPI that cannot be interpreted deictically. This approach, by allowing more lexical sources for NPIs, is consistent with the diversity of NPIs, and extends easily to PPIs, which, as a class, appear to be non-scalar (Szabolcsi 2004 for some). Here one can again advance the argument that PPI-status is due to various sources including referentiality (some), and speaker commitment (with PPI adverbs; Ernst 2008).

Negative polarity is one of the more elusive aspects of linguistics and a subject which has been gaining in importance in recent years. Written from within the well-defined theoretical framework of Generalized Quantifiers, the three main areas considered in this study are collocations, polarity items and multiple negations. In this mature piece of research, van der Wouden takes into account, not only semantic and syntactic considerations, but also to a large extent, pragmatic ones illustrating a wide array of linguistic approaches.

Guerzoni and Sharvit (Linguistics and Philosophy 30:361–391, 2007) provide an argument that plural, but not singular, wh-phrases may contain a negative polarity item in their restriction, and connect this with the semantic property of exhaustivity. I will show that this claim is factually incorrect, and that the theory of negative polarity licensing does not need to be complicated by taking number distinctions into account. In addition, I will argue that number distinctions do not appear to be relevant for polarity items in the restriction of definite noun phrases either.

This paper discusses the behavior of three lexically distinct Greek expressions which appear to be the counterparts of English even: akomi ke, oute, and esto. The behavior of these three expressions is examined in positive and negative sentences, and it is demonstrated that they all are polarity sensitive. The distributional constraints of the three even-items, crucially, are shown to follow from their distinct scalar associations. In particular, the low-scalar likelihood of positive even (akomi ke) remains problematic with negation as well as affirmation, a fact supporting the polarity approach to even and the lexical ambiguity that is associated with it. In further support of this conclusion, negative bias in questions is shown to arise not with negative polarity oute (which is ungrammatical in questions) or positive akomi ke (which is fine but creates no bias), but with esto— a low scalar item defined on a context-dependent scale. This finding strengthens Kay's 1990 and Horn's 1989 observation that likelihood alone is not sufficient for capturing the scalar properties of even.

This paper explores the role that the scalar properties and presuppositions of even play in creating polarity sensitive even meanings crosslinguistically (henceforth EVEN). I discuss the behavior of three lexically distinct Greek counterparts of even in positive, negative, subjunctive sentences, and polar questions. These items are shown to be polarity sensitive, and a three-way distinction is posited between a positive polarity (akomi ke), a negative polarity (oute), and a ‘flexible scale’even(esto) which does not introduce likelihood, but is associated with scales made salient by the context. The analysis is a refinement of Rooth’s original idea that negative polarity is involved in the interpretation of English even, and establishes further that the “negative” polarity domain of EVEN includes a sensitivity that is not strictly speaking negative (flexible scale esto). The distributional restrictions of EVEN items are shown to follow from distinct presuppositions (positive polarity and flexible scale EVEN), or from their lexical featural specification (negative polarity EVEN), a result that squares neatly with the fact that ill-formedness is systematic pragmatic deviance in the former case but robust ungrammaticality in the latter. This result supports the by now widely accepted view that polarity dependencies are not of uniform nature, and that we need to distinguish presupposition failures (which are weaker and possibly..