ON LICENSING OF NEGATIVE ON LICENSING OF NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEMS IN - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
ON LICENSING OF NEGATIVE ON LICENSING OF NEGATIVE POLARITY ITEMS IN EGYPTIAN ARABIC Usama Soltan (usoltan@middlebury.edu) Middlebury College 25 th Arabic Linguistics Symposium March 4-6, 2011 Tucson, AZ Goals 2 First , provide a
Usama Soltan (usoltan@middlebury.edu) Middlebury College 25th Arabic Linguistics Symposium March 4-6, 2011−Tucson, AZ
2
NPIs refer to lexical items that have restricted
3
NPIs refer to lexical items that have restricted
In this presentation, I discuss the behavior of two
/ayy functions as a determiner that combines with
4
/ayy functions as a determiner that combines with
5
NEG-SAW-1SG-EV-NEG
Similarly, walaa combines with indefinite nouns:
6
Similarly, walaa combines with indefinite nouns:
7
NEG-saw-1SG-EV-NEG
8
In the first half of the presentation, I provide a
In the second half of the presentation, I compare In the second half of the presentation, I compare
There are two types of grammatical contexts to
9
There are two types of grammatical contexts to
10
NEG-saw-1SG-EV-NEG any/no
NEG-saw-1SG-EV-NEG any/no
11
COMP
IPFV-talk.3SGM
12
COMP IPFV-buy.3SGF any/no
13
14
15
ʔayy and walaa may occur interchangeably in the ʔayy and walaa may occur interchangeably in the
16
17
18
19
IPFV-know.3SGM
20
Q
ASP-IPFV-understand.3SGM
21
22
23
ASP-IPFV-talk.2SGM and-as-you
24
25
ASP-IPFV-know-3PL
26
IPFV-say.3SGM any/no
27
28
29
ASP-IPFV-harass.3SGF any/no
IPFV-criticize.3SGM-them
30
FUT-look.1SG
IPFV-help.3SGM-me
31
32
IPFV.hope.1SG COMP-EV-YOU IPFV-travel.3SGM
33
IPFV-watch.1SG
34
VOC Waiid
Grammatical context An /ayy-phrase A walaa-phrase Clausemate Negation Yes Yes Without-clauses Yes Yes Before-clauses Yes Yes Distant Negation Yes No َ Polar questions (rhetorical or non-rhetorical) Yes No q ( ) No Wh-questions (rhetorical or non-rhetorical) Yes No Protasis of conditionals (counterfactual or non- counterfactual) Yes No As if clauses Yes No As-if clauses Yes No The restriction of ∀ Yes No The nuclear scope of /ulayyiliin (=few) and /ulayyiliin giddan (=very few) Yes No Comparatives too-clauses Yes No As direct objects or in the complement clause of adversative predicates Yes No Generics Yes No N Future Yes No Modals Yes No In the complement clause of intensional verbs Yes No Habituals Yes No Habituals Yes No Imperatives Yes No
Table 1. Contrastive distribution of /ayy and walaa in EA
35
36
37
The monotonicity-based approach
The veridicality-based approach
38
Downward entailing (DE) functions are order Downward-entailing (DE) functions are order
39
40
41
42
Because not all DE functions are created equal.
43
Because not all DE functions are created equal. Zwarts (1995, 1996) and van der Wouden (1997)
Under the MBA, we have the following answers to
44
Under the MBA, we have the following answers to
Do all the grammatical contexts in Table 1 contain a DE
45
Some of them indeed do: negation, without, before,
But some are not as clearly DE: questions, the protasis
And some are typically characterized as nonmonotone:
Downward entailment thus does not seem to be a
Recall the behavior of walaa in before-contexts:
46
Recall the behavior of walaa in before contexts:
If before were antimorphic, then we would predict
If before were anti-additive, then we would predict
47
DE is not a general enough notion to account for all
Giannakidou (1997, 1998, 2009), developing ideas in
48
G a a dou ( 997, 998, 009), deve op g deas Zwarts (1995), argues for an analysis of NPI-licensing in terms of the semantic notion of (non)veridicality.
The veridicality of a proposition has to do with certainty
and an individual’s commitment to the truth of a proposition proposition.
Nonveridicality characterizes those contexts where no such
commitment is made. commitment is made.
Nonveridical contexts in which a commitment is made to
the falsity of a proposition are said to be antiveridical.
49
“Yesterday” is a veridical operator:
50
“Perhaps” is a nonveridical operator:
Negation is an antiveridical operator:
51
Giannakidou argues that the grammatical contexts
For example, interrogatives and imperatives are
The protasis of a noncounterfactual conditional is
52
The same applies to future events, and those
The restriction of a universal quantifier is also
53
We have already shown that clausemate sentential
Without is veridical with regard to its p argument,
54
Without is veridical with regard to its p argument,
Prediction: walaa may always occur in the q
Before is veridical with respect to its p argument, but
55
Before is veridical with respect to its p argument, but
In some contexts, before is nonveridical with respect
In other contexts, the q argument of before can
56
In other contexts, the q argument of before can
Prediction: walaa will occur in the q argument of
57
58
The VBA fares better than the MBA in its account for
59
The VBA fares better than the MBA in its account for
As it turns out, the VBA also has further empirical As it turns out, the VBA also has further empirical
60
PAPs of the directive-type such as ÷aayiz (=want),
61
IPFV-meet-3SGF
62
COMP-you.SGF
IPFV-meet-3SGF
63
COMP-EV-we
IPFV-let.in.1PL
64
By contrast, PAPs of the epistemic and factive type
65
66
COMP-you.SGF
67
COMP-you.SGF
68
Under the VBA, the contrast between both types of
69
70
The locality constraint on walaa licensing is not tied to the
71
y g semantics of antiveridicality. Rather, locality of grammatical dependencies is better accounted for in syntactic terms. O ibl l i d b Gi kid (1998)
One possible explanation, suggested by Giannakidou (1998)
for Modern Greek, is to assume, that walaa-phrases are quantifiers, hence undergo QR. Since QR is clause-bound, walaa’s licenser has to be clausemate.
Another approach is to assume that walaa has a formal
f t th t i li i i t ti ti feature that requires licensing via a syntactic operation, say Agree (Chomsky 2001). Since Agree is subject to a locality condition (the so-called Phase Impenetrability Condition), the clausemateness condition follows.
The grammatical distribution of the two NPIs /ayy and
72
g yy walaa in EA provides empirical evidence in support of the VBA account of NPI-licensing, and against the MBA l analysis.
For one thing, the MBA is unable to explain the difference
in behavior between /ayy and walaa particularly with in behavior between /ayy and walaa, particularly with regard to the occurrence of walaa in before-clauses.
More generally, the MBA fails to explain why /ayy can
g y, p y yy still occur in non-downward-entailing contexts such as interrogatives or modals.
The VBA, by contrast, can readily explain the difference
73
e V , by co as , ca ead y e p a e d e e ce in behavior between /ayy and walaa by imposing an antiveridicality restriction on the licensing of walaa, which l h h d f l h bl also has the advantage of explaining the variable behavior of walaa in before-clauses.
The VBA also offers a unified account for all contexts of The VBA also offers a unified account for all contexts of
/ayy licensing, including free choice environments, by appealing to the notion of nonveridicality.
Furthermore, the VBA is shown to account for the variable
behavior of /ayy with propositional attitude predicates.
74
I conclude that the VBA is empirically superior
75
The following abbreviations are used in the glosses of the
Egyptian Arabic data in the paper: 1, 2, 3 for first, second, d hi d i l i l l l and third person, respectively; SG = singular; PL = plural; DU = dual; M = masculine; F = feminine; NEG = negation marker; FUT = future; COMP = complementizer; IPFV = imperfective; PTCP = participial; Q = question-particle; IMP = imperative; VOC = vocative particle; EV = epenthetic vowel.
Baker, C. L. 1970. Double negatives. Linguistic Inquiry, 1, 169–186. 76 Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by Phase. In Kenstowicz, Michael (ed.)
Ken Hale: a life in language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1-52.
Giannakidou Anastasia 1997 The Landscape of Polarity Items PhD Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1997. The Landscape of Polarity Items. PhD
Dissertation, University of Groningen.
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1998. Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)veridical
Dependency John Benjamins Amsterdam
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2009. Negative and positive polarity items:
Variation, licensing, and compositionality. To appear in Maienborn, Claudia, Klaus von Heusinger and Paul Portner (eds ) Semantics An International Klaus von Heusinger, and Paul Portner (eds.) Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Klima, S. Edward. 1964. Negation in English. In Jerry Fodor and Jerold Katz
( d ) Th St t f L 246 323 E l d Cliff P ti (eds.), The Structure of Language, pp. 246-323. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall.
Ladusaw, William. 1979. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations. PhD 77
Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
van der Wouden, Ton. 1997. Negative contexts: Collocation, polarity and
multiple negation. London: Routledge.
Zwarts, Frans. 1995. Nonveridical contexts. Linguistic Analysis 25, 286-312. Zwarts, Frans. 1996. A hierarchy of negative expressions. In Wansing,
Heinrich (ed ) Negation: A Notion in Focus 169 194 Berlin: De Gruyter Heinrich (ed.) Negation: A Notion in Focus, 169-194. Berlin: De Gruyter.
78