This article offers a unified theory of the licensing of Negative and Positive Polarity Items, focusing on the acceptability conditions of PPIs of the some-type, and NPIs of the any-type. It argues that licensing has both a syntactic and a semantic component. On the syntactic side, the acceptability of PIs is checked in constituents; in fact, for any given PI, only some constituents, referred to as `domains', are eligible for the evaluation of that PI. The semantic dimension of licensing consists (...) in the sensitivity of PIs to the monotonicity properties of the syntactic environments they find themselves in. Two pieces of evidence support the semantic dimension of what I call the ‘environment-based’ approach defended here: PIs are subject to flip-flop and certain inferences affect their acceptability by modifying the monotonicity of their environment. A third property, called ‘entanglement’ and so far unnoticed, is described: the acceptability of PIs depends on the acceptability of other PIs in the same syntactic environment. The latter property is exploited to determine what semantic property some is sensitive to: it turns out that, contrary to the consensus among researchers, some is acceptable in the complement of the set of environments in which any is acceptable, and vice versa. (shrink)

In this editorial, we argue that midwives should focus on climate change, a link which has been underexplored.

Linguists often sharply distinguish the different modules that support linguistics competence, e.g., syntax, semantics, pragmatics. However, recent work has identified phenomena in syntax (polarity sensitivity) and pragmatics (implicatures), which seem to rely on semantic properties (monotonicity). We propose to investigate these phenomena and their connections as a window into the modularity of our linguistic knowledge. We conducted a series of experiments to gather the relevant syntactic, semantic and pragmatic judgments within a single paradigm. The comparison between these quantitative data leads (...) us to four main results, (i) Our results support a departure from one element of the classical Gricean approach, thus helping to clarify and settle an empirical debate. This first outcome also confirms the soundness of the methodology, as the results align with standard contemporary accounts of scalar implicature (SI), (ii) We confirm that the formal semantic notion of monotonicity underlies negative polarity item (NPI) syntactic acceptability, but (iii) our results indicate that the notion needed is perceived monotonicity. We see results (ii) and (iii) as the main contribution of this study: (ii) provides an empirical interpretation and confirmation of one of the insights of the model-theoretic approach to semantics, while (iii) calls for an incremental, cognitive implementation of the current generalizations, (iv) Finally, our results do not indicate that the relationship between NPI acceptability and monotonicity is mediated by pragmatic features related to Sis: this tells against elegant attempts to unify polarity sensitivity and Sis (pioneered by Krifka and Chierchia). These results illustrate a new methodology for integrating theoretically rigorous work in formal semantics with an experimentally-grounded cognitively-oriented view of linguistic competence. (shrink)

Positive Polarity indefinites, such as some in English, are licensed in simplex negative sentences as long as they take wide scope over negation. When it surfaces under a clausemate negation, some can in principle take wide scope either by movement or by some semantic mechanism; e.g., it can take pseudoscope if it is interpreted as a choice function variable. Therefore, there is some uncertainty regarding the way in which PPI indefinites get licensed: can pseudoscope suffice? In this article we show, (...) using novel data from Hindi-Urdu and English, that pseudoscope is not sufficient, and that it is the syntactic position of PPI indefinites at LF, rather than their actual scope, which is relevant for licensing. These facts support a unified view of PPI indefinites as generalized quantifiers, and disfavor analyses where they are, or can be, interpreted as choice function variables. (shrink)

In 24 Gesangen schildert die "Ilias" die Endphase des zehnjahrigen Kampfes um Troja. Im Mittelpunkt der breit angelegten dramatischen Handlung steht der von Agamemnon in seiner Ehre verletzte Achilleus. Homer schopfte zwar aus dem reichen Fundus mundlicher Uberlieferung, konzentrierte jedoch alle kompositorischen und stilistischen Mittel auf ein Zentralmotiv, den Zorn des Achilleus, so dass bereits die "Ilias" eine Dichtung von uberraschender Individualitat ist. Mit Urtext, Anhang und Registern.".

Die ratselhafte Gestalt des Dichters und Rhapsoden Homer ragt aus den dunklen Anfangen des Abendlandes in unsere Gegenwart hinein. Uber sein Leben und seine Umwelt ist wenig bekannt, aber sein Werk hat auch nach mehr als zweieinhalb Jahrtausenden noch nichts von seiner Gultigkeit eingebusst. Die beiden grossen Dichtungen Homers, die Ilias und die Odyssee, bezeichnen nicht nur den glanzvollen Beginn des europaischen Epos, sondern der abendlandischen, ja der Weltliteratur uberhaupt. Sie sind die "Urromane" der Menschheit, wie Jean Paul einmal gesagt (...) hat. Die grossten Geister von der Antike bis zur deutschen Klassik, von Vergil bis Goethe haben ihn bewundert und gepriesen und in seinem machtigen Schatten gedichtet. In Homers Heldengesangen vom Kampf um Troja scheinen alle Motive und Triebkrafte der Menschheitsdichtung beispielhaft vorgebildet zu sein: Kampf und Abenteuer, Sieg und Untergang, Liebe und Hass, Heroentum und Niedrigkeit, Mythos und historische Wirklichkeit. So ist Homers Werk Anfang und Vollendung zugleich. Mit Einfuhrung und Literaturhinweisen von A. Heubeck.". (shrink)

We develop a bounded version of the finite injury priority method in recursion theory. We use this to study the learnability of unions of rectangles over the domain {0, …, n − 1}d with only equivalence queries. Applying this method, we show three main results:1. The class of unions of rectangles is polynomial time learnable for constant dimension d.2. The class of unions of rectangles whose projections at some unknown dimension are pairwise-disjoint is polynomial time learnable.3. The class of unions (...) of two disjoint rectangles is polynomial time learnable with unions of two rectangles as hypotheses. (shrink)