Abstract
I argue for a distinction between two types of positive polarity items (PPIs) which has not been recognized so far. While for some PPIs, anti-licensing is a strictly local phenomenon, for other PPIs anti-licensing should be stated as a global condition. I aim to contribute to a principled explanation for the distribution of a significant subset of global PPIs, by relating it to specific semantic properties of the relevant items. More specifically, I argue that PPIs such as soit ... soit ..., quelques and almost trigger obligatory exhaustivity effects and scalar inferences, and that independently motivated constraints regarding the generation of such inferences can account for their distribution. The paper also briefly addresses the case of other global PPIs, e.g., at least, for which a similar account is not straightforwardly available. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.7.11 BibTeX info
Highlights
Szabolcsi 2002 — and in French), for other positive polarity items (PPIs) anti-licensing should be stated as a global condition
I have argued that positive polarity items should be distinguished according to whether their anti-licensing conditions apply locally or globally
For a number of global PPIs, the relevant anti-licensing condition can be reduced to an independently motivated hypothesis — namely, that they have to occur in the scope of an exhaustivity operator or in positions where they can trigger strengthened presuppositions
Summary
It argues for a distinction between two types of positive polarity items (PPIs) which has not been recognized so far. The proposal will be extended to English almost and French quelques Items such as at least cannot be treated in the same way. These notations have a relative character, i.e., they are used to report contrasts
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