Both indicative and counterfactual conditionals are known to be licensing contexts for negative polarity items (NPIs). However, a recent theoretical account suggests that the licensing of attenuating ...NPIs like English
all that
in the conditional antecedent is sensitive to pragmatic differences between various types of conditionals. We conducted three behavioral experiments in order to test key predictions made by that proposal. In Experiment 1, we tested hypothetical indicative and counterfactual conditionals with the English NPI
all that
, finding that the NPI is degraded in the former compared to the latter. In Experiment 2, we compared hypothetical indicative conditionals and premise conditionals with the same NPI, again finding a degradation only for the former. Both results align with theoretically derived predictions purporting that hypothetical indicative conditionals are degraded due to their susceptibility to conditional perfection. Finally, Experiment 3 provides empirical evidence that comprehenders readily strengthen counterfactual conditionals to biconditionals, in line with theoretical analyses that assume that conditional perfection and counterfactual inferences are compatible. Their ability to still host attenuating NPIs in the conditional antecedent, by contrast, falls into place
via
the antiveridical inference to the falsity of the antecedent. Altogether, our study sheds light on the interplay between NPI licensing and the semantic and pragmatic properties of various types of conditionals. Moreover, it provides a novel perspective on the processing of different kinds of conditionals in context, in particular, with regard to their (non)veridicality properties.
Ordinary superlative descriptions are well-known to provide safe harbor to negative polarity items (NPIs), as in the longest book anyone read. What is less well-known is that relative superlative ...descriptions also sometimes host NPIs, as in the loudest that anyone sang. We observe that this latter pattern is more general than has been previously described. In fact, relative superlatives can license NPIs outside of their own descriptions. On the one hand, we argue that this provides evidence that the superlative adjectives take sentential rather than nominal scope. But on the other, following insights in Howard 2014, we argue that traditional semantic accounts of scope-taking superlatives do not present the right monotonicity profile to account for the NPIs either. A recent, dynamic take on superlative semantics (Bumford 2017) is shown to do better.
The recent success of deep learning neural language models such as Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) has brought innovations to computational language research. The ...present study explores the possibility of using a language model in investigating human language processes, based on the case study of negative polarity items (NPIs). We first conducted an experiment with BERT to examine whether the model successfully captures the hierarchical structural relationship between an NPI and its licensor and whether it may lead to an error analogous to the grammatical illusion shown in the psycholinguistic experiment (Experiment 1). We also investigated whether the language model can capture the fine-grained semantic properties of NPI licensors and discriminate their subtle differences on the scale of licensing strengths (Experiment 2). The results of the two experiments suggest that overall, the neural language model is highly sensitive to both syntactic and semantic constraints in NPI processing. The model's processing patterns and sensitivities are shown to be very close to humans, suggesting their role as a research tool or object in the study of language.
The paper offers a cognitive linguistic analysis of the construction terPRON INF (as in Não têm onde construir o hospital). The construction is shown to have a preference for negative uses, ...reminiscent of negative polarity items (NPIs). This behavior is argued to be an iconic reflection of the construction’s form, distinct from similar constructions such as the relative clause construction or uses involving indefinite pronouns (Não tenho nada a dizer). The construction’s semantic content is analyzed as that of expressing ‘incapacity’. These properties of the construction are discussed in the context of idiosyncrasy and arbitrariness, widely assumed to underlie form-meaning pairings. The present study suggests that the construction is not arbitrary, but largely iconic and predictable
The so-called acquisitive modality or actuality, describing a successful realization of an action, is a largely understudied type of modal values. It is of significant interest both from the ...viewpoint of its grammaticalization paths and of a wide and rich variety of its lexical expression. The article discusses one of the main representatives of this lexical class in Swedish, the hard-to-translate verb orka, and its various counterparts in a Swedish-Russian parallel corpus. We propose a refined classification of acquisitive verbs in both languages and focus on several important components of acquisitive semantics, such as efficiency, volition, control and some others.
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
-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
"any" and
-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
) or by the Mandarin adverbial quantifier
"all". The present study extends this line of research to the Mandarin disjunction word
. A Truth Value Judgment Task was used to investigate the possibility that disjunction phrases that are bound by the adverbial quantifier
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.
This investigation draws from research on negative polarity item (NPI) illusions in order to explore a new and interesting instance of misalignment observed for grammatical sentences containing two ...negative markers. Previous research has shown that unlicensed NPIs can be perceived as acceptable when occurring soon after a structurally inaccessible negation (e.g.,
ever
in *
The bills that no senators voted for have ever become law
). Here we examine the opposite configuration: grammatical sentences created by substituting the NPI
ever
with the negative adverb
never
(e.g.,
The bills that no senators voted for have never become law
). The processing and acceptability of these sentences were studied using three tasks: a speeded acceptability judgment (Experiment 1), a self-paced reading task (Experiment 2), and an offline acceptability rating (Experiment 3). The results are consistent across measures in showing that the integration of the adverb
never
is disrupted by the linearly preceding but structurally inaccessible negative quantifier
no
in the relative clause. In our view, this pattern of results is in line with
Parker and Phillips’ (2016)
proposal that NPI illusions arise when the context containing the inaccessible negation has not been fully encoded by the time the NPI
ever
is encountered, making the embedded negative quantifier transparently available as a licensor. In a similar vein, the disruption effects observed for grammatical sentences containing two negative elements could arise if the negative quantifier is still being integrated when
never
is encountered, forcing the parser to deal with two negative elements simultaneously. This interpretation suggests that the same incomplete encodings that could be ameliorating the online perception of unlicensed NPIs could also be responsible for deteriorating the perception of the sentences under investigation here. This would represent an illusion of ungrammaticality. Furthermore, these results provide evidence against the speculation that NPI illusions are the consequence of misrepresenting
ever
as its near neighbor
never
, given that continuations with
never
are judged as unacceptable in spite of their grammaticality. Together, these findings inform the landscape of hypotheses on NPI illusions and offer valuable insights into the complexity of multiple negations and the relation between processing difficulty and acceptability.
In this article, we discuss two negative polarity item (NPI) adverbials:
(and its cousins
,
, etc.) and
. We argue that much is to be gained by analyzing the two in juxtaposition. We first explore
, ...following our approach in
; on the basis of our analysis of this item, we then explore
. Our approach permits a unified account of
, whose behavior has led researchers to consider it lexically ambiguous. The commonalities between
and our unified
also allow us to explain why both these boundary adverbials are strong as opposed to weak NPIs.
This paper analyzes the syntax and compositional semantics of scalar modifiers of quantifier phrases in expressions like almost every student, absolutely every student and nowhere near every student. ...The semantics is based on scales (positive and negative) of generalized quantifiers.
This study holds that negation phenomena in a natural language involve much more than mere logical entailments in some individual’s epistemic model. The unique characteristics of negation, i.e., the ...persistent diachronic renewal of negative particles cross-linguistically, as well as the prevalent synchronic reinforcement of these particles through emphatic mechanisms, demand an analysis that casts the
speaker, not her epistemic model, in the leading role. Opting for a comprehensive account of negation in Modern Greek, the present analysis highlights this subjective involvement of the individual and suggests that it is the
and – more important – the
speaker that directs the distribution of Modern Greek negators.
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