1. |
2. |
3. |
4. |
5. Double negatives, Negative Concord and metalinguistic negationLuis Alonso Ovalle, Elena Guerzoni, 2002, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: Spanish nadie, nada…) do not find a unified account in any of the existing analyses of
Negative Concord (NC): (i) their uses in the special context of denials and (ii) their
incompatibility with factive environments. We suggest that the unifying property of these
two apparently unrelated phenomena is the common sensitivity of these two
environments (denials and factives) to non-truthconditional aspects of meaning. Thereof
we take these properties to reveal that the meaning of n-words involves a nontruthconditional component. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that n-words are
existential quantifiers at the truth-conditional level but that they contribute negative
existentials at the level of their conventional implicatures. This hypothesis explains the
special uses of n-words in denials and their incompatibility with factive environments.
The fact that they are restricted to the scope of negation (or more precisely averidical
expressions
1
(Giannakidou’s 1997,2000)) in non-sentence-initial position follows as a
consequence of the relation between their implicature and their semantic contribution to
the truth conditions of the sentences they appear in. Under certain common additional
stipulations, this view can be extended to preverbal occurrences as well.
Keywords: negative concord, Italian, Spanish
Published in RUNG: 21.02.2024; Views: 265; Downloads: 0
This document has many files! More... |
6. Even and minimizer NPIs in wh-questionsElena Guerzoni, 2003, published scientific conference contribution Abstract: This work follows up on a previous paper of mine on y/n questions with ‘minimizer’ Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) like lift a finger, bat an eyelash, budge (an inch) (i.e. Guerzoni 2002) and brings into the picture the case of wh-questions. In the interest of space, the summary I provide of that paper is very brief; for a fuller understanding the reader should refer to the paper itself.
Keywords: minimizers, negative polarity, constituent questions
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 298; Downloads: 0
This document has many files! More... |
7. Even-NPIs in yes/no questionsElena Guerzoni, 2004, original scientific article Abstract: It has been a long-standing puzzle that Negative Polarity Items appear to split into two subvarieties when their effect on the interpretation of questions is taken into account: while questions with any and ever can be used as unbiased requests of information, questions with so-called `minimizers', i.e. idioms like lift a finger and the faintest idea, are always biased towards a negative answer (cf. Ladusaw 1979). Focusing on yes/no questions, this paper presents a solution to this puzzle. Specifically it is shown that in virtue of containing even (cf. Heim 1984), minimizers, unlike any, trigger a presupposition, which reduces the set of the possible answers to a question to the singleton containing the negative answer.
Keywords: NPIs, minimizers, polar questions, presupposition, negative bias
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 327; Downloads: 2
 Link to file
This document has many files! More... |
8. Intervention effects on NPIs and feature movement : towards a unified account of interventionElena Guerzoni, 2006, original scientific article Abstract: In this paper, I explore the possibility of understanding locality restrictions on the distribution of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) as a consequence of covert movement. The present proposal restates Linebarger’s Immediate Scope Constraint in terms of morphology-driven checking requirements. These requirements cannot be met if a blocking element intervenes between the NPI feature and its morphosemantic licenser at Logical Form (LF). The empirical generalization is that the class of NPI ‘blocking expressions’ (a.k.a. ‘interveners’) overlaps to a large extent with interveners identified in wh-questions. Therefore, the same grammatical checking mechanisms operating in that domain, rather than the presence of an implicature, are here shown to be responsible both for apparent violations to Linebarger’s constraint (contra Linebarger) and for intervention effects (contra Krifka, 1995, and Chierchia, 2004). This approach is argued to be superior on empirical grounds as it predicts facts that are left unaccounted for in a theory like Linebarger’s, where pragmatics rescues otherwise ill-formed structures. In addition, the proposal allows us to view the locality constraints operating in the domain of NPI-licensing as an instance of more general (though yet to be fully understood) principles of the grammar whose effects are attested in other domains, such as wh-questions in German, Discourselinked (D-linked) wh-questions in English, and Negative Concord (NC) configurations (e.g. in Italian and French).
Keywords: negative polarity items, intervention effects, feature movement, indefinit, disjunctio
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 281; Downloads: 2
Link to file
This document has many files! More... |
9. A question of strength : on NPIs in interrogative clausesElena Guerzoni, Yael Sharvit, 2007, original scientific article Abstract: We observe that the facts pertaining to the acceptability of negative polarity items (henceforth, NPIs) in interrogative environments complex than previously noted. Since Klima [Klima, E. (1964). In J. Fodor & J. Katz (Eds.), The structure of language. Prentice-Hall], it has been typically assumed that NPIs are grammatical in both matrix and embedded questions, however, on closer scrutiny it turns out that there are differences between root and embedded environments, and between question nucleus and wh-restrictor. While NPIs are always licensed in the nucleus of root questions, their acceptability in the restrictor of wh-phrases and in the nucleus of any embedded question depends on the logical properties of the linguistic environment: its strength in terms of exhaustivity [Groenendijk, J., & Stokhof, M. (1984). Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatic answers. Amserdam (NL), Post-Doctoral Dissertation. Heim, I. (1994). In R. Buchalla & A. Mittwoch (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th annual IATL conference and of the 1993 IATL workshop on discourse (pp. 128–144). Akademon, Jerusalem. Beck, S., & 16 Rullmann, H. (1999). Natural Language Semantics, 7, 249–298. Sharvit, Y (2002). Natural Language Semantics, 10, 97–123] and its monotonicity properties (in the sense of von Fintel [von Fintel, K. (1999). Journal of 19 Semantics, 16, 97-148]).
Keywords: negative polarity items, interrogative clauses
Published in RUNG: 20.02.2024; Views: 315; Downloads: 2
Link to file
This document has many files! More... |
10. On the Italian Molto and Tanto and the differences with the Slovenian Precej and Veliko : lecture at the 48. Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, IGG48, Dilef, University of Florence, 16. 2. 2023Greta Mazzaggio, Penka Stateva, 2023, unpublished conference contribution Abstract: The present work is based on a previous study in which Stateva and Stepanov (2017) compare speakers’ comprehension of two Slovenian m(any)-words, veliko and precej. S&S argue for a degree analysis of the two quantifiers suggesting that they are semantically equivalent but subject to different mechanisms of pragmatic enrichment. We present the results of two experiments that use the S&S protocol in order to assess i) the comprehension of two Italian translational equivalents of these m-words, namely, molti and tanti, and ii) potential crosslinguistic influence in the context of Italian-Slovenian bilingualism. Our results suggest that Italian m-words have the same numerical bounds even in direct competition in contrast to their Slovenian counterparts. Italian L2 speakers of Slovenian fail to differentiate between the two m-words in Slovenian which suggests that this aspect of L2 acquisition is subject to negative transfer.
Keywords: amount quantifier, Italian, bilingualism, negative transfer, pragmatic enrichment
Published in RUNG: 27.03.2023; Views: 1036; Downloads: 0
This document has many files! More... |
