Nonveridical Contexts Research Articles

The acquisition of Polarity Items in L3/Ln Catalan by speakers of English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish: implications for L3/Ln development theorising and language teaching

ABSTRACT This paper provides fresh insights on how PIs (Polarity Items) in non-veridical contexts (questions and conditionals) are represented in the grammar of multilingual learners of Catalan at different stages of development. It explores how this non-native grammatical system interacts with other previously acquired systems of negation and the implicit and explicit evidence about the negative system as presented in textbooks. We test 89 Ln learners of Catalan (L1 English/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) on the interpretation of PIs in non-veridical contexts. The findings reveal that initially, learners exhibit both facilitative and non-facilitative transfer from their prior languages (L1/L2), and that grammatical restructuring in L3/Ln development is influenced by learners’ language background, syntactic context, and proficiency in Catalan. The results indicate a tendency towards stagnation and reduced accuracy throughout the learning process, especially among learners whose L1 had a facilitative effect either during initial transfer or later stages of development. These observations are discussed in the context of theories of morphosyntactic transfer in L3/Ln acquisition, as well as L3 development. The paper also evidences that the presentation of PIs in textbooks can shape and restructure learners’ interpretation of these items and proposes acquisitionally and pedagogically informed criteria for the instruction of PIs to Catalan learners.

From Latin QUO(D) VELLES to Romagnol Cvël: A Case of Degrammaticalisation from a Free‐choice Indefinite to the Noun ‘Thing’1

AbstractDegrammaticalisation is an oft‐dismissed category of language change. In this paper evidence is provided for its existence, its triggers, and its conditions. This case study details the development of an understudied Old Italo‐Romance indefinite, covelle, a polarity‐sensitive item roughly translating as ‘anything’ which originated from a Latin free relative with Free‐Choice interpretation. It is shown that in Old Italo‐Romance the original Free Choice use was expanded to further nonveridical contexts. Subsequently, a curious development of covelle in Old Romagnol, a 16th‐century Gallo‐Italic variety, is examined whereby polar neutralisation (loss of sensitivity to polarity) of the indefinite was taking place. Contextually, a process of degrammaticalisation had begun through which the indefinite pronoun developed into the classifier ‘thing’. In Modern and Contemporary Romagnol cvël is almost exclusively employed as a noun/classifier. It is argued that two parallel processes have initiated a cycle that led cvël to complete degrammaticalisation: (i) the grammaticalization of the old noun for ‘thing’, co(n)sa, into a wh‐word, calling for lexical replacement, and (ii) competition from the Negative Concord Item gnit. The development of covelle in Romagnol represents a well‐documented case of degrammaticalisation, whose causes and conditions can be thoroughly described and motivated within an interaction with cyclical change.

It’s All Under Control! On Perfective Present Forms in BCS Main Clauses

This study aims to provide a unified analysis of the syntax-pragmatics interface of the (allegedly) anomalous licensing of the perfective present (PresPF) in BCS present-tensed main clauses. Although PresPF forms cannot usually refer to eventualities that are anchored to the time of utterance UT, there seem to be three apparent exceptions to this structural constraint. They are as follows: 1) abusive metonymic performatives; 2) live demonstrations; and 3) nonveridical contexts introduced by the epistemic operator možda ‘maybe’. It is claimed that for PresPF forms to be licensed in BCS main clauses, control needs to be specified as a variable at the level of the so-called Seat of Knowledge in the SpeechActP layer.

Processing of the Mandarin polarity itemrenhe‘any’

AbstractThe Mandarinrenheis similar to the Englishanyin terms of polarity sensitivity (Wang 1993;Wang & Hsieh 1996;Kuo 2003;Cheng & Giannakidou 2013;Shyu 2016). However, the following phenomena regardinganyin relative clause environments have not been surveyed with respect torenhe:(a) the NPI illusion effect reported in studies like Parker & Phillips (2011;2016); (b) the subtrigging effect discussed inLeGrand (1975)and Dayal (1998;2004). We conducted two untimed, offline acceptability judgment experiments and the results suggest that: (i) NPI illusion does not appear in Mandarin in untimed offline processing, (ii) the subtrigging effect ofrenheholds, and (iii)renhecan be licensed by certain types of declarative verbs liketongyi‘agree’ andzancheng‘approve’. The results confirm the strict structural requirement of the c-commanding relation between a negation licensor andrenhe(Wang 1993) and the licensing ofrenhein non-veridical contexts (Cheng & Giannakidou 2013), and further suggest additional licensing environments forrenhe: relative clauses and declarative verbs. This requires reconsideration of positing non-veridicality as a necessary licensing condition forrenheand calls for future research on howrenheis licensed under these two licensing environments.

‘E sí la hoïren tots’: sí and emphatic positive polarity in Old Catalan

This paper explores the semantic value and syntactic distribution of the lexical item sí in Old Catalan. After examining data extracted from El Llibre dels Fets, a 13th century chronicle, it is concluded that sí was an Emphatic Positive Polarity Particle (EPPA) whose appearance was restricted to non-veridical contexts already in this period. This finding strongly contrasts with analyses put forward for sí in Old Catalan and Old Spanish, that date its grammaticalization as an (EPPA) two centuries later, and with analyses of sí in other Old Romance languages, where it has been linked to the satisfaction of the V2 parameter.

Логическая эквивалентность местоимений на ни- и местоимений на -нибудь: опыт анализа русских номинализаций

This paper deals with the two sets of polarity sensitive items in Russian: ni- and -nibud’ pronouns. Non-specific indefinite -nibud’ pronouns (NSIs) are possible only in propositions that do not ensure truth, i.e. non-veridical contexts. Although clause-mate negation creates such a context, NSIs are incompatible with it and are substituted by negative ni- pronouns that are licensed only by negative concord. The incompatibility of NSIs with negation can be resolved in subjunctive sentences and embedded purpose čtoby-clauses, however, the licensing conditions in these cases are not defined. In this paper I introduce another context which licenses both types of pronouns, namely, negated process nominalizations. I determine the licensing conditions for the two types of pronouns in nominalization, and test previous approaches against the new data. In particular, I argue that -nibud’ pronouns are licensed in the scope of the nonveridical operator that is introduced in the main clause.

Degree intensifiers as expressives in Mandarin Chinese

AbstractIn this paper, we provide an empirical description and a theoretical analysis of the adverbial use ofhǎo‘(lit.) good’,lǎo‘(lit.) old’, andguài‘(lit.) strange’ in Mandarin Chinese. The three adverbs represent a small yet theoretically interesting class of lexical items. Because they manifest certain similarities to canonical degree adverbs such ashěn‘very’ andfēicháng‘extremely’, they have been usually treated as pure degree adverbs in the descriptive linguistics literature. Empirical evidence, however, shows that these adverbs actually fuse together both degree intensification and expressive meanings. For instance, they convey strong emotion on the part of the speaker and cannot appear in non-veridical contexts such as negation, modals, information-seeking questions, and antecedents of conditionals. We argue thathǎo, lǎo, andguàiare mixed-content lexical items. Based on their empirical behaviors, we follow recent advances in multidimensional semantics to propose a hybrid formal analysis ofhǎo, lǎo, andguàiby incorporating degree semantics into a multidimensional logic for conventional implicature.

A critical assessment of exhaustivity for Negative Polarity Items

In some recent works on negative polarity, exhaustivity is posited as the single defining property of all negative polarity item (NPI) and free choice item (FCI) paradigms. Chierchia (2006; 2013), and Chierchia & Liao (2015) are the best-known implementations of this theory. They stipulate that all NPIs and FCIs must be exhaustified, and posit a covert O(nly) and a syntactic feature [+Σ] to derive exhaustification and licensing respectively. In this paper, I challenge the exhaustivity hypothesis and find it, after careful empirical investigation, to be inadequate to explain the distribution and interpretation of NPIs in Greek, Korean, and Mandarin, which have been described in the literature as non-exhaustive. We also find the theory to be unable to derive the actual distribution of any in nonveridical contexts. Analytically, the problems with exhaustification are twofold. First, the use of covert O(nly) fails to account for why NPIs are licensed. Licensing is a grammaticality condition, and in order to capture it the syntactic feature [+Σ] is stipulated, NPI-licensing thus amounting to checking the [+Σ] feature. The stipulation of [+Σ], without a coherent characterization of its semantics, is a regression to a Klima-esque (1964) syntactic account, and faces precisely the challenges that that account faced. Second, for any variant of the Chierchia system to work for the data discussed here, the system built around it must posit additional ad hoc rules on a case-by-case basis. This produces a system with very little predictive power beyond each specific case because of the ad hoc nature of the rules posited. Our overall conclusion will be that the exhaustivity hypothesis, as formulated in the works discussed here, is a falsified, therefore unnecessary, hypothesis for NPIs.

Distributionally constrained items in child language: the acquisition of superweak NPI shenme ‘a/some’ in Mandarin Chinese

This paper presents new experimental results obtained from 88 Mandarin speaking children (2; 11 – 4; 09; M = 3; 11; SD = 0; 6; 44 girls) in their acquisition of shenme ‘a/some’, a prototypical superweak Negative Polarity Item (NPI) that survives in nonveridical contexts only (cf. Lin Jing et al. 2014). The existence of NPIs like shenme leads to a learnability problem. Without being confronted with negative evidence, such as corrective feedback or explicit instructions on shenme’s ungrammaticality in contexts that are not nonveridical, how can children detect shenme’s distributional constraint? By analysing children’s performance in an elicited imitation task, this paper investigates the learnability of the superweak NPI in Mandarin Chinese. The results suggest a learning process in which Mandarin children initially analyse shenme as a mere wh-quantifier and reanalyse it as a referentially deficient quantifier later on. The wh-analysis gives rise to a distribution of shenme in wh-questions only, whereas the non-referential analysis generates shenme’s distribution in the whole array of nonveridical contexts. The investigation of the acquisition of the Mandarin NPI shenme shows that children are able to acquire distributionally constrained items in the absence of negative evidence: they start out with a strict assumption (i.e. the wh-analysis) and switch to a less strict and generalising analysis (i.e. the non-referential analysis) later on.

Are All Concessive Scalar Particles the Same? Probing into Spanish "Siquiera"

Concessive scalar particles (CSPs) (Crnic 2011a,b) (Slovenian magari, Greek esto, and Spanish siquiera, among others) are focus sensitive polarity items that get licensed in a variety of non-veridical contexts, where they trigger a characteristic interpretation: CSPs convey a strengthening effect in downward entailing environments, a ‘settle for less’ interpretation in modal contexts, and a negative bias in questions. This paper explores the characterization of this class of items by probing into Spanish siquiera. The paper reveals differences between siquiera and magari that challenge a straightforward extension to siquiera of the analysis of CSPs presented in Crnic 2011a and Crnic 2011b and shows that the analysis of esto in Giannakidou 2007 does not cover siquiera either —partly for reasons already pointed out for magari by Crnic. The central insights of Crnic's and Giannakidou’s work are nevertheless reconciled in an alternative analysis. The picture that emerges is that CSPs might uniformly convey an existential meaning that determines a set of alternatives, but differ with respect to the role that these alternatives play in determining their interpretation and distribution.

What does it take to be a copula?

AbstractThis paper argues that copular sentences without an overt copular predicate do project a VP with a phonologically null head, hence so-called “verbless” copular sentences are illusory. Data from Standard Arabic, Spanish, Maltese, Russian, Jamaican Creole, Finnish and Hungarian copular sentences are used to support this claim. It is also claimed here that variation between the habitual property vs.ad hocproperty interpretations (traditionally called the individual level vs. stage level distinction) of non-verbal predicates found in copular sentences is closely related to the choice of the copula in multiple BE-system languages. Whilst the current accounts explain this variation by introducing an abstract aspectual operator or an incorporated abstract preposition in the functional layer of the copular predicate, the present proposal derives these interpretive differences from the presence or absence of an OPaltalternative state operator, which can bind the temporal variable of non-verbal predicates in two ways.Negation and temporal adverbials show scope ambiguity in copular sentences. They either take scope over the whole proposition or only over the non-verbal predicate. Such interpretive differences are demonstrated in Russian and Hungarian in Section 4 of this paper, however, they are taken to be valid cross-linguistically. These amibiguities cannot be explained under the “verbless copular sentence” account but fall out naturally from the “zero copula” analysis.The “alternative state” approach can be extended to dream narratives and other nonveridical contexts, which serve as alternative triggers. The existing analyses have nothing to say about such contexts.

Modality, antiveridicality and complementation: The Romeyka infinitive as a negative polarity item

In this paper I examine the syntax–semantics of the Romeyka infinitive, still to be found in an endangered Greek variety uninterruptedly spoken in the historical region of Pontus, Turkey. It is shown that the infinitive is found: (a) as a complement to negated past tense modals; (b) in before-clauses; (c) in counterfactuals. My proposal is that the Romeyka infinitive is licensed as a NPI. It is argued that antiveridicalidity (in the sense of Giannakidou, 1998 et seq.) licenses the infinitive and therefore explains the unavailability of the Romeyka infinitive in other nonveridical contexts such as: (i) questions, (ii) nonveridical conditionals, (iii) present and imperfect tense negated modals. The analysis set out here (i) proposes a new type of NPI, namely an infinitive; (ii) reinforces the disengagement between morphological negation and antiveridicality; (iii) highlights parallels with Romance polarity subjunctives, which, like the infinitive, also share a T-C dependency; the latter may have rendered the Romeyka infinitive diachronically more prone to developing a neg-dependency too (Sitaridou, 2014).

Don’t shoot the messenger: How subjectivity affects distributional properties

The present paper discusses the differences in distributional properties between schijnen and lijken: two Dutch raising-verbs that are often translated to English ‘seem’. According to the cartographic approach, for instance Haegeman, L. (2006a. Clitic Climbing and the Dual Status of Sembrare. Linguistic Inquiry 37, 484–501), the differences in distributional properties follow from a difference in their position in the syntactic structure. Lijken is proposed to be a lexical verb inserted in a low position. Schijnen on the other hand is a functional head encoding speaker-related evidential mood, inserted in a high position. This paper shows that postulating different syntactic positions is unnecessary. The distributional differences follow from restrictions on scope as a result of the subjectivity directly (or speaker-related mood). The subjectivity of schijnen results in positive polarity behavior and as such schijnen is ruled out in nonveridical contexts (cf. Ernst, T., 2009. Speaker-oriented adverbs. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 27, 497–544). A benefit of the present approach is that it is able to fit in cases in which schijnen is used non-subjectively and can appear under modals and aspect. In addition, it is able to accommodate the impossibility to embed subjective lijkt-me under modals and aspect.

The contribution of nonveridical rhetorical relations to evaluation in discourse

We examine how nonveridical markers and rhetorical relations contribute to the expression of Appraisal (evaluation) in discourse. First, we define nonveridicality and nonveridical contexts, following Giannakidou (Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1998). We then relate nonveridicality to modality, Appraisal and rhetorical relations, and present a map of all these concepts. Finally, we carry out a corpus study, where we examine all types of nonveridicality markers in the context of two different types of rhetorical relations, conditional and concessive relations, and how they influence the interpretation of some aspects of Appraisal.

Computing Scalar Implicatures

No abstract.

Negative Polarity and Scalar Semantics in Spanish

Licensing of NPIs in Spanish varies depending on the semantics of the trigger. Nonveridical operators license n-words, and antiveridical operators license ni-minimizers. I argue that the NPIs that can occur in antiveridical contexts have a scalar presupposition, but those that are licensed in strictly nonveridical contexts are non-scalar. In this analysis, n-words are scalar (incorporating a silent ni ‘even’) in the scope of antiveridical operators. The distinction between scalar and non-scalar NPIs, I suggest, is the reason for the diversity of polarity sensitivity phenomena in Spanish, as well as in other languages.

The meaning of free choice

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and interpretation of free choice items (FCIs) in Greek, a language exhibiting a lexical paradigm of such items distinct from that of negative polarity items. Greek differs in this respect from English, which uniformly employs any. FCIs are grammatical only in certain contexts that can be characterized as nonveridical (Giannakidou 1998, 1999), and although they yield universal-like interpretations in certain structures, they are not, I argue, universal quantifiers. Evidence will be provided that FCIsare indefinites; the quasi-universal effect is shown to be the result of binding by an operator with universal force. Additionally, the limited distribution of FCIs in non veridical contexts can be accounted for by analyzing them as indefinites which must always be interpreted in an intensional type. The difference between ``regular'' indefinites and FCIs, therefore, is reduced to a type difference which captures the fact that only the latter exhibit limited distribution: because of their intensional type, FCIs will be grammatical only in contexts providing alternatives (worlds or situations), and nonveridical contexts do exactly this. By contrast, FCIs are excluded from veridical and episodic contexts because these provide no alternatives and hence do not satisfy the lexical semantic requirement ofFCIs. The proposed analysis is supported by data from other languages as well (Spanish, Catalan,French) and has important consequences regarding the analysis of English any. If FCIs are not universal quantifiers but indefinites, then the usual ambiguity thesis (free choice any being universal, negative polarity any an existential) can no longer be maintained, at least not as one in terms of quantificational force.