Abstract

This article shows that the deontic modals must, should and supposed to are all Positive Polarity Items which can raise in order to avoid being in an anti-licensing environment; it also establishes that should has a dual nature, i.e., it is not just a PPI, but it is also a neg-raising predicate, which can achieve wide scope through a homogeneity inference, and that supposed to, also a PPI, exhibits a neg-raising behavior under certain pragmatic conditions which shed new light on the neg-raising phenomenon. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.4 BibTeX info

Highlights

  • Among deontic modal verbs, some, e.g., have to and required to, have obligatory narrow scope under a clausemate negation

  • This article shows that we do not need to postulate a different basegeneration position to account for the variation across the aforementioned verbs, for they are all generated lower than the position that hosts negation; the three wide scope takers are Positive Polarity Items (PPIs), which explains why they are not normally interpreted with narrow scope under a clausemate negation, and they are able to scope out (I call them mobile PPIs): they can raise out of an anti-licensing environment, such as the scope of a clausemate negation, their observed wide scope

  • Should and supposed to are mobile PPIs and that should is a neg-raiser, while supposed to exhibits the neg-raising behavior only in certain dialects and provided that the opinionatedness of some individual is assumed in the context of utterance. (The typology is presented in Table 1.) The examination of supposed to favors a pragmatic approach to neg-raising

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Summary

Introduction

Some, e.g., have to and required to, have obligatory narrow scope under a clausemate negation. It is possible to distinguish neg-raising — neg-raisers, e.g., think, do not move past negation but achieve semantic wide scope through an excluded middle or homogeneity inference, see Gajewski 2007 — from PPIhood, and to establish, as is done for the first time in this article, the polarity sensitivity of must, should and supposed to. Another fact is established: should has a dual nature, i.e., it is both a neg-raiser and a mobile PPI; and in a certain dialect of English, the PPI supposed to is a neg-raiser, but a part-time one. The PPI supposed to exhibits, in the dialect of certain speakers, an even subtler character (Section 5): it is a neg-raiser, but manifests this property only when certain pragmatic conditions are met

Homogeneity
Cyclic neg-raising
Lack of neg-raising
Summary
Deontic must is a mobile PPI
A high syntactic position
Rescuing
Shielding
The dual nature of shoulddeon
Shoulddeon is a neg-raiser
Shoulddeon is a mobile PPI
Assessor dependence of shoulddeon
A generalization
Supposeddeon to: A PPI and a part-time neg-raiser
Dialect A: A pure PPI
43 Shielding also occurs with always and necessarily
Dialect B: A part-time neg-raiser
Questions about neg-raising
About the two dialects
Hypotheses about the triggering of neg-raising
Conclusion
Split scope with simple indefinites
No split scope with exactly-numerals
French deontic devoir
Findings
Vouloir and want
Full Text
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