Polarity item

In linguistics, a polarity element denotes an expression that may occur only in a particular environment, a " licensed " (or " anti- licensed " ) context. Polarity items are already in the works of Otto Jespersen and Edward climate treated (see references below and the external link ).

The best-known polarity elements are those that are sensitive to negative ( and similar ) contexts. This polarity elements are divided into those that must occur in a " somewhat negative " context ( negative polarity element, "negative polarity item " NPI) and those who are not allowed the right ( positive polarity element, " positive polarity item " PPI).

An example of NPIs is the English word any. It is ungrammatical when it occurs outside of a "negative" context. ( An asterisk " *" at the beginning of the sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatical or ill-formed. )

The fact that the occurrence of NPIs like any is permitted by negation, is referred to as licensing; one says that the negation licenses the NPI. NPIs are usually licensed in questions, as in:

In German, for example, ever, especially can help or NPIs.

An example of a PPI is quite. If it is preceded by a negation ( esp. in the semantic representation of the logical form), the sentence is ungrammatical.

They say that a PPI is "anti- licensed " by negation. Other examples of PPIs are pretty, and downright affirm. In general, PPIs are also anti- licensed by questions:

To the question of what contexts as "negative " and thus are considered wicensing, it is in most of the research to polarity elements. In the late 1970s William Ladusaw has ( on the work of Gilles Fauconnier building ) made ​​the generalization that most NPIs are licensed in downward monotone ( downward - entailing ) contexts. This is known as Fauconnier - Ladusaw hypothesis. However, there are cases in which even some non- monotonic contexts NPIs license. So can ever appear under the term exactly N if you want to say by this expression, that it is just a few cases

Typically, NPIs are licensed in English in these contexts:

  • Under sentence negation ( eg, not)
  • Under negative indefinites (eg nobody, nothing )
  • In the antecedent of conditionals,
  • In Questions and interrogative sentences,
  • In the restrictor of universal quantifiers and negative quantifiers,
  • In the restrictor of superlatives
  • In the predicate of comparatives,
  • In with no introduced Infinitivsätzen,
  • In complement clauses kontrafaktiver predicates (eg refuse )
  • Among expressions that indicate a small amount (e.g., a few, rare),
  • Below only / only focus,
  • In Temporalsätzen that are initiated with before,
  • In complement clauses adversativer predicates ( be surprised, for example, sorry )

However, it is of single polarity element depends on which contexts are exactly as ( anti-) licensing specialist. For example, while the NPI is "barely " licensed " human soul " by the downward monotone, " carrion " in the sense of can " anyone " do not occur in this context:

Similarly, it may also happen that an expression that otherwise like a NPI behaves, may appear in certain other contexts.

Based on this observation, there are proposals to form sub-classes of NPIs, must satisfy the stronger or weaker licensing terms. In part, it seems to act but also idiosyncrasies.

Bibliography

  • Otto Jespersen: Negation in English and Other Languages ​​. Hoest, København 1917.
  • E. Air: Negation in English. In: J. A. Fodor, J. J. Katz ( eds.): The Structure of Language. Prentice- Hall, New York 1964, p 246-323.
  • Gilles Fauconnier: Polarity and the scale principle. In: Chicago Linguistic Society. 11, 1975, p 188-199.
  • William A. Ladusaw: Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin 1979.
  • Anke von Bergen, Karl von Bergen: Negative polarity in English. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 1993.
  • Ton van der Wouden: Negative Contexts. University of Groningen, 1994 ( dissertation, http://www.let.rug.nl/ ~ vdwouden / docs / dissertation.pdf ).
  • Ton van der Wouden: Polarity and ' Illogical Negation '. In: Makoto Kanazawa and Christopher J. Piñón (eds. ) (ed. ): Dynamics, Polarity and Quantification. CSLI Publications, Stanford, CA 1994, pp. 17-45.
  • Frans Zwarts: Three Types of Polarity. In: Fritz Hamm, Erhard W. Hinrichs ( eds.): Plurality and Quantification. Kluwer, Dordrecht 1997, pp. 177-238.
  • Anastasia Giannakidou: The Meaning of Free Choice. In: Linguistics and Philosophy. 24, 2001, pp. 659-735.
Co-occurrence Grammar Conditional mood Idiosyncrasy
654968
de