Positive polarity items, negation, activated propositions1

Positive polarity items, negation, activated propositions1

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PIERRE LARRIVÉE

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Abstract The received view on the distribution of polarity items is that positive polarity items (PPIs) such as something are found in positive contexts; they are antilicensed by negative contexts, which license negative polarity items ( NPIs) such as anything. PPI some can however be found under the scope of clausemate negation. Such a paradoxical use has been analyzed by Szabolcsi (2004) as a special case of licensing: two negative polarity licensors are required by the internal constitution of some. Some is however shown to occur under the scope of a single clause-mate negative. Single and dual negative environments are argued to depend on the same determinism. This determinism is shown to be activated propositions in the sense of Dryer (1996). Propositions accessible to the hearer characterize the contexts where some and other PPIs come under the scope of clause-mate negation in English and other languages, as demonstrated by the transferable diagnostics proposed. The reason for this correlation is that activation brings the whole proposition into the focus of negation, which does not interact directly with the PPI to produce infelicitous interpretations. A simple and general pragmatic determinism accounts for the marked character of the sequences, that allows a clear distinction to be maintained between licensed NPIs and anti-licensed PPIs.

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1. Introduction

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Items sensitive to contexts come to bear on the shape of grammars as they raise the issue of the relations and boundaries between the lexicon, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. One example of context sensitivity is provided by items depending on negative contexts for their distribution or interpretation. Negative polarity item anything can thus be the object of the verb in the negative sequence John didn’t say , which normally will not host the positive Linguistics 50–4 (2012), 869 – 900 DOI 10.1515/ling-2012-0027

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polarity item something with a comparable reading. The absence of negation reverses acceptability to *John said anything and John said something. The empirical generalization therefore has been assumed to be that while positive polarity items (PPIs) such as something are found in positive contexts, they are anti-licensed by negative contexts (Giannakidou 1998), which license negative polarity items ( NPIs) such as anything (Israel 2011, 1998; Krifka 1995; Ladusaw 1980; Laka 1990; Linebarger 1980; Progovac 1994). This clear distinction seems however muddled by positive polarity items such as those of the some paradigm occurring under the scope of a clause-mate negation. While *John didn’t say something is unacceptable, I don’t think that John didn’t say something raises no such query. This observation first analyzed by Baker (1970) has been considered in detail by Szabolcsi (2004). She seeks to bring positive polarity items into the fold of items amenable to licensing by negation. Some would not be anti-licensed by negative contexts, it would require dual negative licensing, which is why I don’t think that John didn’t say something is acceptable unlike *John didn’t say something. The reason for this particular sensitivity would be the semantic composition of the positive polarity item, which includes two negative features that each require contextual licensing. The distinction between PPI some and NPI any is maintained, although as two types of licensed items. The proposed analysis of the paradoxical use of positive polarity item some with a clause-mate negation by Anna Szabolcsi (2004) is the starting point of this paper. The analysis presented in Section 2 rests on the internal constitution of some requiring two negative polarity licensors. The limitations of the anal ysis are considered in Section 3 concerning the proposed constitution of some, the assimilation of the PPI to NPIs through licensing, and the status of dual licensing contexts. Whether dual licensing should define a particular treatment is the question raised by attested cases with a single licensor. The fact that environments with one as well as with two negatives allow for different PPIs in different languages suggests the possibility of a common determinism. This determinism is proposed in Section 4 to be activated propositions in the sense of Dryer (1996). After an exposition of the notion involving propositions that are accessible to the hearer, a demonstration is offered on the basis of transferable tests that activation characterizes the contexts allowing positive polarity items under the scope of negation. The argument is summarized in the conclusion, which considers the causes of the correlation between the atypical use of positive polarity items under the scope of a clause-mate negation and activated propositions. Needing no independently stipulated mechanisms, the analysis accounts for the marked character of the sequences and maintains a clear distinction between licensed NPIs and anti-licensed PPIs.

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2. Szabolcsi (2004) The most common crosslinguistic way to produce the equivalent of an n-word such as nothing is to use an indefinite like something with a sentential negation (Haspelmath 1997; Reesink 2002: 250; van der Auwera et al. 2006: 314 –318). The English way is to propose different formal paradigms. Whereas any is routinely used with negation, this is assumed not to be the case of some. (1) John didn’t say anything. (2) *John didn’t say something. Some can however be found with negation in certain environments. This is the issue to which Szabolcsi (2004) devotes her attention. These environments include some scoping over negation, as in the following elicitation: (3) John didn’t mention something (and that was the rising interest rates). Example (3) suggests that there was something that wasn’t mentioned by John. That scope behavior is related by Giannakidou (2008) to the semantic specificity of emphasized some, which is not the case that is the primary object of our consideration here.2 Our attention is devoted to the cases where some does scope under negation. This obtains when negation is non-clause mate: (4) I don’t think that John saw someone. Clause-mate negation focusing on an intervening item is also involved: (5) John didn’t offend someone because he was malicious ( but because he was stupid). (not > because > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 420, example (49)) (6) John didn’t say something at every party. (not > every > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 420, example (50)) Also concerned are denials and contrast (Giannakidou 2008: 409, 413): (7) – He found something. – Wrong! He didn’t find something. (not > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 413, example (7)) (8) If you push the red button, you will see something, but if you press the blue button, you won’t see something. (Giannakidou 2008: 413, example (9)) The negation in such a case is, on the basis of a suggestion by Giannakidou, said to be extra-clausal (Giannakidou 2008: 413, footnote 4), and is thus considered no more problematic than (4) for instance. The proposed generalization is therefore that some PPIs do not occur within the immediate scope of certain clause-mate operators.3 These operators are

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described as anti-additive ones,4 which typically license strong NPIs such as yet.5 (9) John hasn’t talked yet. (10) No one has talked yet. Anti-additive operators can nonetheless have some under their immediate scope in characterized contexts. The following yield perfectly acceptable elicitations:6 (11) (12) (13) (14)

I don’t think that John didn’t call someone. (not > not > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 417, example (33)) I regret that John didn’t say something. (regret > not > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 418, example (36)) If we don’t call someone, we are doomed. (if (not > some)) (Giannakidou 2008: 418, example (37)) Only John didn’t call someone. (only > not > some) (Giannakidou 2008: 418, example (39))

These contrast sharply with the sequence *John didn’t call someone. Such a sequence can be rescued by a higher clause negation, the commanding verb regret, a conditional, and clause-mate only NP, as it could be by a commanding doubt, without, a universal quantifier antecedent of the relative, a clause-mate n-word, clause-mate few. These operators are all decreasing licensors that have the potential to license a weak NPI such as ever, but not necessarily yet. (15) (16) (17) (18)

I don’t claim that John will ever talk. ??I don’t claim that John has talked yet.7 If John ever talks, we are doomed. ??If John has talked yet, we are doomed.

A decreasing operator can thus rescue a clause-mate anti-additive operator scoping over some. The rescuing facts can conceivably be dealt with in at least two ways. Either the crucial decreasing operator impacts on the anti-additive operator or the two operators could together affect PPI some. The first option amounts to cancellation of the lower operator by the higher one. Cancellation of negatives would leave a sequence roughly equivalent to a positive, in which the occurrence of a PPI would therefore be unproblematic. This reasoning is ideally suited to deal with an example such as (11) I don’t think that John didn’t call someone and is attributed to Jespersen (1917), Baker (1970), Ladusaw (1980), Dowty (1994), and also pursued by Hasegawa (1991). Not all the noted contexts are accounted for by cancellation however. Szabolcsi observes that there is no strict cancelling in I regret that John didn’t come up with something scary ( p. 423, example (64)) or in Only John didn’t come up with something scary ( p. 423, example (66)), which indeed does not mean that John came up


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with something scary. A further argument is made concerning the addition of a third negative operator. If two negatives cancel out, negation should by reinstated by a third operator. A third negative should therefore affect the acceptability of the PPI, which it doesn’t: a sequence such as I don’t regret that John didn’t come up with something scary is just as good as I regret that John didn’t come up with something scary (contra Baker 1970). In any case, the cancellation analysis seems to be relevant to only a subset of rescuing environments. It is therefore the second option that Szabolcsi chooses in order to account for PPI some under the scope of a clause-mate negation. It predicates that it is the combined effect of the two operators that impacts on the PPI. The impact would emanate from the semantic constitutions of some. Some would consist of the strong NPI feature requiring the clause-mate (anti-additive) licensor that yet demands and the weak NPI feature allowing the nonlocal (decreasing) licensor that is permitted by ever. These features are described by Szabolcsi as two underlying negative features applying to an existential quantifier (¬¬$) making up the semantic composition of some. These features are dormant in a standard positive context such as John said something, and simply cancel out to yield the existential value. They are awakened when the strong NPI feature is activated by a local anti-additive licensor as in (2) *John didn’t say something. However, this licensor can only legitimize the strong NPI feature. Although awakened, the weak NPI feature remains unlicensed without a decreasing operator, explaining the contrast between the unacceptability of (2) *John didn’t say something and the well-formedness of (11) I don’t think that John didn’t say something. Two operators are therefore required to allow some under the scope of negation. This is hypothesized to be effected by resumptive quantification to form a binary quantifier where the licensing feature absorbs the licensed one. Being sensitive to intervention effects as evidenced in (5), the resumption operation is inspired by the work of de Swart and Sag (2002) on negative concord. Using negative features in the underlying representation of items is done independently by Paul Postal (2000, 2004).8 The idea as presented by Szabolcsi is that surface items may map different underlying representations. A representation such as ¬$ will surface as no if the negative feature stays in place (I saw no one). It will map to any where the negative feature is either raised (I didn’t see anyone) or licensed by a local anti-additive expression such as No one ( No one saw anyone). Leaving aside the case of raising as Szabolcsi does, the in situ features of representation ¬¬$ should surface as some, which, while it has no special licensing requirements in standard positive contexts, will demand licensors for both its negative features when it is dominated by a local strong negative polarity licensor. The opposition between ¬¬$ and ¬$ allows capturing the otherwise puzzling distribution of exceptive phrases, as illustrated below:


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(19) a. I saw no one except Mary. b. I didn’t see anyone except Mary. c. *I saw someone except Mary. The question of why the exceptive requiring universal quantification can be accommodated by NPI any generally conceived of as an existential,9 but not by paradigmatic existential some, finds an immediate answer in the underlying representations. Since ¬$ yielding no and NPI any is equivalent to ∀¬, it satisfies the universal reading demanded by except, which cannot be met by the ¬¬$ underlying some, hence the lack of parallelism with NPI any. This would therefore predict that I don’t think that John didn’t see someone except Mary is unacceptable, contrasting with the presumably acceptable I don’t think that John didn’t see anyone except Mary. The feature analysis is comparable to that by Déprez (2000) on the internal structure of expressions involved in negative polarity and negative concord, and to the foundational proposals on the some / any rule by Klima (1964), although it is a ternary opposition between some, any and no that is being proposed. Thus, an interpretation of Postal’s analysis is exploited by Szabolcsi to bring PPI some with NPI any into the fold of licensed polarized items. This would be desirable because of the common properties of PPIs and NPIs. The acceptability of either is reversed by intervening operators as evidenced by negative focus on the universally quantified phrase at every party. This makes PPI something acceptable under one single local negation (6) and NPI anything (20) unacceptable:10 (2) (1) (6) (20)

*John didn’t say something. John didn’t say anything. John didn’t say something at every party. ??John didn’t say anything at every party.

Licensing is unaffected by the addition of further licensors in both cases:11 (21) (22)

a. b. a. b.

We regret that John didn’t say something. Should we regret that John didn’t say something? We regret that John said anything. Should we regret that John said anything?

In both cases, it could be added, the same licensor can affect several licensees: (23) a. I regret that someone didn’t say something at some point. b. I regret that anyone ever said anything at all. Apart from showing parallelism between negative and positive polarity, this demonstrates that lexical requirements of polarity items are satisfied by one licensor, and that unlike what logical representations might predict, there is no


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cancellation relation between polarity licensors à la Baker (1970). Finally, sensitivity to the same ternary distributive classes of licensors (decreasing, antiadditive, anti-morphic) proposed for NPIs by Ton van der Wouden (1997) applies to PPIs. These parallels would suggest that PPIs are, in certain uses at least, types of NPIs with particularly stringent licensing requirements deriving from their semantic representation. A sophisticated model is proposed by Szabolcsi (2004) seeking to explain the use of PPI some under the scope of a clause-mate negation. The significance of an often dismissed grammatical phenomenon is thus asserted, and rightly so: the sole sequence He didn’t say something yielded 843 000 Google hits in July 2007 (shooting up to 7 080 000 hits in April 2010). The occurrence of some under the scope of negation is proposed to follow from its internal constitution. This would comprise two underlying negative features applied to an existential quantifier. The two negative features cancel in an assertive context to yield an existential reading. A clause-mate anti-additive operator such as not in *John didn’t say something would awaken the strong negative feature of some. This would leave the weak negative feature to be licensed, which is what the decreasing operator does in the acceptable I don’t think that John didn’t say something. Dual licensing thus follows from the two underlying features that make up the representation of some, and this requirement justifies the marked nature of the sequence. These proposals are assessed in the next section.

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3. Assessment The analysis of Szabolcsi (2004), for all its merits, raises some questions. These have to do with the representation of some, the status of polarity items and the centrality of dual licensing contexts. The semantic representation of some is hypothesized to comprise two underlying negative features. This view should be received with skepticism on the basis that double negation is highly marked in natural languages (Horn 2001; Larrivée 2004: Section 3.5). Apart from its apparently lower frequency and its more elaborate prosodic and morphosyntactic manifestations, double negation is found to be marked in that it does not cancel without leaving an interpretative trace. Different interpretations are signaled by the recursive attachment to a constituent of a negative marker in the Peruvian language Capanahua: (24) ha: ‘he’ ha:-ma ‘not he’ ha:-ma-ma ‘not not he’ (= he indeed) ha:-ma-ma-ma ‘not not not he’ (= someone else) (Loos 1969: 41, cited in Adelaar and Muysken 2004: 420, example (30))


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Such interpretative effects are manifested by Latin nonnemo ‘not no one’. Cited by Szabolcsi as meaning someone, which indeed it may, the item may also mean some persons, a few according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary.12 It can even have the interpretation of quite a few, many, following the attestations from Orlandini (2001: 63), whose French translations are cited before the En glish glosses are provided: (25) a. non nemo etiam in illo sacrario rei publiceae, in ipsa [ . . . ] curia, non nemo hostis est (Cic. mur. 84) Il y a même plus d’un ennemi dans le sanctuaire de la République, oui, il y en a jusque [ . . . ] dans la curie! ‘There are many enemies in the sacred temple of the Republic, there are some even in the senate house!’ b. Quas leges ausus est non nemo improbus, potuit quidem nemo conuellere (Cic., Pis. 10) Ces lois, que plus d’un malhonnête homme avait souhaité abolir, sans que nul y eut réussi. ‘These laws, which many a dishonest man had wanted to abolish, without anyone succeeding to do so.’ This quantifying reading on the part of the expression that is the closest natural language reflection of the logical representation proposed for some is not accounted for by that representation. Similarly unexplained are the interpretative traces left by double negative cancellation found at the sentential level. Sequences such as ‘You didn’t not take it’ in the Peruvian language Pano do not mean ‘You took it’, but ‘You did actually take it’ (Forest 1990). A less exotic example may be given by the sequence I don’t think that John didn’t talk to someone, which is compatible with I think that John talked to someone as much as it is with I think that John talked with different people. The point is that double negatives in natural languages yield particular interpretative effects. These may well be pragmatic, deriving from the application of a maxim of manner that leads one to suspect that a contribution that could have been shorter must communicate more than it says. But this is orthogonal to the fact that these effects are not predicted by the cancellation or licensing of two negative operators. It could be proposed that operators are not amenable to the same conditions as natural language items, but that would then amount to an admission that the model cannot be verified on the basis of observable data. The interpretative effects of natural language double negative cancellation illustrate their markedness that should be reflected in their distribution and productivity. While it is true that considerable constraints restrain the distribution of some under the scope of negation, no such markedness affects the common use of the ordinary existential some in affirmatives where cancellation between the negative features is hypothesized to take place, and where this


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hypothesized cancellation leaves none of the effects observed with natural language cancellation of negatives. In other words, to echo Giannakidou, it is not clear why a natural language would bother to comprise an elaborate double negative representation only for it to be cancelled in most of the uses of a common-or-garden item,13 making this look very much like a stipulation (2008: 38; also Farkas 2002: 69).14 The representation of some as a licensed item in its use with clause-mate negation raises the further concern of the division between PPIs and NPIs. The distinction between PPI and NPI is in effect abolished in the analysis under scrutiny, as a PPI in the scope of an anti-additive operator in effect becomes a type of negative polarity item with dual licensing requirements. One reason why this abolition may be undesirable is that any generalities that may have been proposed for NPIs might have to be given up. One such generality is the scalar nature of NPIs (Horn 2001; Israel 1998; Krifka 1995).15 NPIs have the distinct property of bringing about widening effects (Kadmon and Landman 1993). No such effects are found with some however (Szabolcsi 2004: 415). Thus, only the sequence I regret that John didn’t phone anyone gives rise to widening,16 not I regret that John didn’t phone someone. Widening is evidenced by the possibility for the first elicitation with NPI anyone to be naturally continued by the scalar phrase not even Sally,17 which does not apply to the second one with PPI someone. Classifying the non-scalar item some as a licensed item means giving up the generality that NPIs are scalar, as indeed Szabolcsi does. This renders any definition of NPIs an even more difficult affair. This might be judged a trivial point if only some and any were involved. Yet, the issue seems to extend to all PPIs (Baker 1970; Horn 2001: 374, 397– 402; van der Wouden 1997: 64 – 67), which follow the same pattern as some in their co-occurrence with clause-mate negation: (26) (27) (28) (29)

?*John hasn’t already talked to Paul. I regret that John hasn’t already talked to Paul. ?*John hasn’t talked to several people. Only John hasn’t talked to several people.

This point must be kept in mind, as the fact that we are often resorting to saying something for reasons of frequency and comparison cannot be taken as an indication of a phenomenon narrowly restricted to a more or less set phrase. Therefore, there is some substance to the question of whether PPIs should be considered NPIs and how the difference between some and any, already and yet, several and many is to be handled. The argument so far is that the double negative operator representation does not give way to the effects observed with double negatives in natural languages, that the markedness of these does not correspond to the common character of the uses of some in positive environments, and that if the uses of some in


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negative contexts are captured by the representation, it should extend to all PPIs, a costly stipulation. What we will now argue is that not all the uses in negative contexts are captured by Szabolcsi’s representation. The proposed analysis crucially rests on dual licensing. A single clause-mate negation is nonetheless found to occur with some. Different such occurrences are noted by Szabolsci herself. She mentions the case of most (2004: 418, Note 13): (30) Most boys didn’t say something. This is not very troubling, as although not a downward-entailing item, it does license NPIs (Israel 2004: 717; Rothschild 2006; Gasjewski 2010),18 maybe by virtue of the contrast that is established with its complementary set (on which a relatively recent discussion is offered by Nouwen 2003). A single negation suffices in denials, and contrastive environments (Szabolcsi 2004: 409, 413): (7) – He found something. – Wrong! He didn’t find something. (8) If you push the red button, you will see something, but if you press the blue button, you won’t see something. This is confirmed by attested cases: (31) – Did you happen so see what Big Jon had to say? – Well, he didn’t say something about Artest, I did, so I thought it was me. (http://www.kingstalk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3182&pid =54417&mode=threaded&start=) (32) a. “I know that they have prioritized items, but I think that should have been a priority item when you call and say someone’s being shot at,” Wagstaff said. “We should have seen someone, and I didn’t see someone.” (R. Glass, The Herald-Sun, May 9, 2000. Lexis-Nexis) b. I then spied a couple of women with either skin tone or suntan but didn’t see someone along the lines I was thinking until Schmidt asked whether I was interested in “a hot personal trainer.” (Cheryl Johnson, Star Tribune, August 4, 2002. Lexis-Nexis) c. In a poignant expression of regret, Radler said of one payment: “Ultimately I didn’t know if the transaction was legal or not. I didn’t like the transaction. I should have said something and I didn’t say something. I regret today that I didn’t.” (Andrew Clark, The Guardian, July 14, 2007. Lexis-Nexis) d. Here is another gem of uselessness overheard at a wine show: A wine writer-educator was asked by a TV interviewer who was understandably overwhelmed by the sheer number of wines available for tasting: “Which wine shall I taste first?” The


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consultant didn’t say something useful like, “If you’re inexperienced you would do well to start with something white, light and fruity like the such and such.” (M. Anderson, The Gazette, June 23, 2007. Lexis-Nexis)

Cases of single licensors other than those noted by Szabolcsi are attested. Notably, examples are found in subordinates the fact that:19 (33) a. And so their point is, obviously, if he had known about it, he would have said something, and the fact that he didn’t say something, when coupled with the with the ambiguities on the pages, you know, 404 or 405 or 401– 402 . . . you get what we’re talking about, the footnote . . . coupled with that shows that the correct reading of that is he didn’t know about it. (http//:www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2002/2002_02_311/ argument/ ) b. But, my point was only that this decision was clearly within the area where Alito was free to act, but was the only decision that could be even minimally decent. But, doing the minimally decent thing is what should be expected of everyone, and so isn’t a ground for praise. The fact that he didn’t do something awful is grounds to be happy, but it’s not ground for praise. (http://www.volokh.com/posts/1130832558.shtml) These contain an element of contrast clearly evidenced by the larger context, between somebody saying something or not in (a), and the negative or positive assessment of someone’s actions in ( b). The contrast between the negative or positive value of the event is tangible in presuppositional interrogative negatives (Asher and Reese 2005; van Rooij 2003): (34) Didn’t John say something? Finally, contrast is the motivation of focus relations (Rooth 1996; Larrivée 2001) that makes it possible for some to collocate with clause-mate negations, with the alternative between those parties where John spoke and those where he remained silent in the following: (6) John didn’t say something at every party. The fact that contrast is recurring through attested examples supports the view that the uses of some under the scope of a clause-mate negation are governed by the same factor, and that that factor is of an interpretative nature. This raises the question of the legitimacy of a different treatment of clause-mate negation scoping over some depending on whether there are two operators — with a commanding negation, regret, a conditional and a clause-mate only:


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(35) (36) (37) (38)

I don’t think that he didn’t say something.20 I regret that he didn’t say something. If John doesn’t say something, we’re doomed. Only John didn’t say something.

or only one — with metalinguistic negation, denial, contrast, focus, interrogative negatives, and the fact that subordinate clauses: (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44)

John didn’t say something, Jane did. John said something. – Come on, now. He didn’t say something. John should have said something, and he didn’t say something. John doesn’t often say something. Didn’t John say something? The fact that he didn’t say something is good.

That it is legitimate is suggested by Szabolcsi on the basis of a suggestion from Giannakidou. She proposes that licensors in cases of denial and contrast are extra-clausal. This tallies with the intuition that negation in its metalinguistic and denial uses is not at the same level as the propositional material it applies to (Horn 2001: 392, 397). The intuition is formalized by different representations proposed independently to account for particular cases. Metalinguistic negation is represented by Linebarger (1980) by means of a TRUE operator standing between the negation focusing on it and the rest of the propositional material. Similarly, a VERUM operator intervening between the proposition and the extra-clausal negation is proposed by Romero and Han (2004) for presuppositional interrogative negatives. The higher negative operator of double negative interpretations is represented by Corblin (1996) as external to the embedded negative proposition. Similar embedding is proposed for denial by Nuyts (1992) who suggests that it is the whole of the proposition that is rejected by the extra-clausal negation. The similar suggestion that some in these contexts occurs “within the domain of a file subordinated to the negated one” (2002: 66) is made by Farkas within DRT. The underlying assumption in these representations is that the propositional material is not in the immediate scope of the higher negation (Linebarger 1980). This is of course what would be assumed to be the case for focus, where the focused item would stand between the negation and the proposition at some logical level of representation. For our purpose, the indirect relation would be allowing the proposition to comprise elements that would otherwise not easily occur with negation such as PPIs. How the suggested extra-clausal character of the negations concerned is to be tested is not explained, but there is a way to do this. Cases are known of sensitivity to local licensing in negative polarity items. NPI until is one that displays a strong preference for being licensed by a local negation. It should


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therefore be uniformly infelicitous in the contexts under scrutiny if they involve a non-local negation. That prediction is contradicted by the data: (45) ?*I didn’t claim that John finished until 12. (46) ??John didn’t finish it until 12, Jane did.21 (47) – John finished the work by 12, didn’t he? – ??No, he didn’t until 12! (48) He should have finished the work by 10 and he didn’t finish it until 12. (49) ??John didn’t finish the work until 12 because he’s lazy, but because he has too much to do. (50) a. ?*Didn’t John finish it until 12? b. ?Did John not finish it until 12? (51) I don’t think John didn’t finish it until 12. (52) I regret John didn’t finish it until 12. (53) ?Only John didn’t finish it until 12. (54) The fact that John didn’t finish it until 12 is notable. The denial contrastive use of a single negation in (48) does license NPI until, whereas the metalinguistic one in (46) does not. This indicates that negation in these contexts cannot be thought to be uniformly extra-clausal, and that this therefore cannot be the common factor underlying PPI distribution. That a common factor is involved is suggested by crosslinguistic comparison. French sees PPIs quelque chose ‘something’ and déjà ‘already’ for instance occur with a clause-mate negation in exactly the same contexts,22 as shown by attestations brought together in Larrivée (2009) reflected by the following elicitations: (55) Je ne crois pas que Jean ait déjà dit quelque chose. ‘I don’t think that John has already said something.’ (56) Jean n’a pas dit quelque chose à Paul, mais à Marie. ‘John didn’t say something to Paul, but to Mary.’ (57) Jean lui a certainement déjà dit quelque chose. ‘John has certainly already said something to him.’ – Non, il ne lui a pas déjà dit quelque chose. ‘– No, he hasn’t already said something to him.’ (58) Jean aurait vraiment dû, mais malheureusement, il ne lui a pas déjà dit quelque chose. ‘John really should have, but unfortunately, he has not already said something to him.’ (59) Jean ne lui a pas déjà dit quelque chose parce qu’il est vicieux, mais parce qu’il est maladroit. ‘John hasn’t told him something because he’s malicious, but because he’s clumsy.’


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(60) (61) (62) (63) (64)

Jean ne lui a-t-il pas déjà dit quelque chose? ‘Hasn’t John already told him something?’ Je ne crois pas que Jean n’ait pas déjà dit quelque chose. ‘I don’t think that John hasn’t already said something.’ Je regrette que Jean n’ait pas déjà dit quelque chose. ‘I regret that John hasn’t already said something.’ Si Jean n’a pas déjà dit quelque chose, nous aurons des ennuis. ‘If John hasn’t already said something, we’re in trouble.’ Seul Jean n’a pas déjà dit quelque chose. ‘Only John hasn’t already said something.’

A similar combination of single and dual licensor is attested for the case of light negation in German (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006). German sentential negation nicht normally incorporates to a following indefinite determiner ein ‘a’ to produce negative determiner kein ‘no’ rather than the atypical sequence nicht ein: (65) (66) (67)

Fritz kann eine Fremdsprache. ‘Fritz can speak a foreign language.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 179, example (9b)) Fritz kann keine Fremdsprache. ‘Fritz can speak no foreign language.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 179, example (11b)) *Fritz kann nicht eine Fremdsprache. ‘Fritz cannot speak a foreign language.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 179, example (10b))

The atypical sequence is however found in negative polar questions, in a subjunctive conditional, double negation, in surprise subordinates: (68) (69) (70) (71)

Kann Fritz nicht eine Fremdsprache? ‘Doesn’t Fritz know a foreign language?’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 179, example (12b)) Wenn Fritz nicht eine Fremdsprache könnte, wäre er durchgefallen. ‘If Fritz didn’t know a foreign language, he would have failed.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 180, example (13b)) Wir haben keinen angenommen, der nicht eine Fremdsprache kann. ‘We admitted no one who doesn’t know a foreign language.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 181, example (14b)) Ich bin überrascht, dass er nicht das Bild einigen von uns gezeigt hat. ‘I am surprised he didn’t show the picture to some of us.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 191, example (42c))

A similar distribution is evidenced by Hoeksema (1999) for the atypical sequence not anything and its Dutch equivalent.


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German and French data suggest that PPIs are attested with clause-mate negation in a coherent set of contexts, whether these involve one or two licensors. Were this coherence to be related to a common factor, it might help us avoid the problems arising from Szabolcsi’s analysis. It was found to postulate an elaborate internal composition for a common expression, a separation between single and dual negative contexts and an assimilation between PPIs and NPIs. The factor common to the various contexts of distribution is not the extra-clausal status of negation, and the recurrent intervention of contrast points to an interpretative determinism. What that determinism may be is considered in the next section.

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

4. Activated contexts The critical assessment in the previous section has proposed that the set of environments in which PPIs are found under the scope of a clause-mate negation could share by a common factor. Defining that factor may start with the contexts that most obviously infringe on Szabolcsi’s analysis, and the obvious import of pragmatics for those contexts led us to look at whether this aspect of meaning could be relied upon to offer a unified analysis. PPIs such as some are recognized to come under the scope of a single metalinguistic negation (Horn 1985 and 2001: 374, 397– 402). Metalinguistic negation is characterized both by formal (van der Sandt 1991, 2003) and functional (Carston 1996, 1998) approaches as presupposing an anterior assertion of the proposition that it challenges. To challenge the form of a sequence supposes quite naturally that the sequence has been used or could have been used in the antecedent context. The role of antecedent discourse for the use of negation is explored by Scott Schwenter (2005, 2006). He does so on the basis of negation in Brazilian Portuguese. Negation in that Romance variety is normally expressed through a single preverbal use of não ( NEG1), which can accompanied by a post-verbal não ( NEG2) in limited sets of contexts having to do with denial. Post-verbal não is thus only felicitous in the second one of these exchanges: (72) [Speaker walking down the street and suddenly remembers she forgot to turn off the stove] Nossa! Eu não desliguei o fagão (#não)! ‘Damn! I didn’t turn off the stove!’ (Schwenter 2005: 1434, example (2a)) (73) [Same situation as [above]] A: Você desligou o fagão, né? ‘You turned off the stove, right?’


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B: Nossa! Eu não desliguei o fagão não! ‘Damn! I didn’t turn it off !’ (Schwenter 2005: 1435, example (2b))

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What is crucial about that second context is that the denied proposition has been mentioned previously in A’s question. No mention has been made of the proposition in the first, out of the blue sequence, where post-verbal não is infelicitous. NEG2 não therefore lives on discourse-old propositions. Such dependence may be reflected by inheritance of propositional material from the antecedent context. This is exactly what happens in this further contrasted Brazilian Portuguese pair:

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(74) A: B1: B2:

O João votou no Lula? ‘Did João vote for Lula?’ ( Não.) Não votou não. ‘( No.) He didn’t vote (for him).’ ( Não.) Ele não votou. ‘( No.) He didn’t vote (for anyone).’ (Schwenter 2005: 1445, example (17))

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The response with a single preverbal negative in B2 simply denies that somebody voted. The NEG2 response in B1 is necessarily related to the preceding question, which introduces the issue of voting for a specific candidate, and the denial can only concern whether somebody voted for Lula. A discourse-old proposition is what defines the use of a second, post-verbal não in Brazilian Portuguese. The same analysis is shown to account for other markers previously described as emphatic or presuppositional such as postverbal Italian negative mica (Zanuttini 1997 and also Cinque 1976; on Italian constructions depending on discourse-old propositions, Godard and Marandin 2006) and post-verbal negatives in Catalan (Schwenter 2006). Post-verbal negatives are known to be a historical development adding on to the preverbal negation marking in Romance languages. French would go from preverbal ne as the unmarked way to express negation to an embracing negation ne V pas to retain the sole post-verbal marker pas. This evolution known as the Jespersen cycle highlights the role of the post-verbal markers. These might have initially relied on discourse-old propositions in the same way that they still do in the Romance languages that have remained at the early embracing negation stage of the Jespersen cycle. This possible parallel is explored by Hansen and Visconti (2009). They seek to establish whether the emergence of post-verbal negative markers mie and pas in French and mica in Italian is related to discourse-old proposition. This relation would show that the first stage of post-verbal markers becoming negatives would involve activated propositions


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(see Larrivée 2010), a general hypothesis defended by Kiparsky and Condoravdi (2006). The notion of discourse-old information has been defined by Matthew Dryer in his drive to elucidate the nature of presuppositions. His motivation is to assert the difference between presuppositions and beliefs, following the distinction made by Prince (1981) between givenness in the sense of shared knowledge and givenness in the sense of saliency. No belief is involved in the presupposition Somebody saw John deriving from the question Who saw John? If presuppositions were matters of (shared) belief, they could not possibly be contradicted, which of course they are by negative responses such as Nobody. Other accommodated presuppositions should crucially rest on prior knowledge if they involved belief. No prior knowledge is necessary however for the felicity of We regret that H. P. Grice is ill and will be unable to attend the conference (Dryer 1996: 499), which does presuppose the subordinate proposition. Presuppositions would thus be a matter of activation. Activation is defined as the property of a proposition that is accessible to the hearer. Accessibility is obviously the case when a proposition has been explicitly mentioned. The assertion in a conversation about astrology that Leo men are selfish makes the proposition accessible without any necessary prior knowledge or subsequent credence. Neither is needed for presuppositions accommodated by constructions such as WH-questions, clefts and regret subordinates to activate a proposition, the subordinate in I regret that Leo men are selfish forcing to accommodate as accessible the proposition that was probably not part of the hearer’s knowledge and that they do not have to believe in firmly. Let us summarize the argument so far. There is a series of atypical environments where PPI some co-occur with clause-mate negatives that is stable across languages. These environments are not all captured by a formal mechanism relying on dual licensing, and their consideration suggest that they possess a common interpretative property. The idea that this interpretative property be the pragmatic value of activation is suggested by the fact that activation is unambiguously illustrated by metalinguistic and denial uses of negation (Schwenter 2005), and that these negative contexts robustly allow co- occurrence with PPIs (Carston 1996: 321–322; Horn 1985). Activation can be defined as information that is accessible to both speaker and hearer. It corresponds to the traditional notion of presupposition as redefined by Dryer (1996) to insist on shared information rather than shared beliefs. Such information can concern propositions as a whole, or various constituents,23 notably DPs (Lahousse forthcoming). Accessible propositions are found in three types of contexts. One is explicit mention in the antecedent discourse, as with metalinguistic negation. A second is accommodation by relevant constructions, as in complements of factives. A third that is discussed below is contextual inferences. What I want to do in the remainder of this paper is investigate whether


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it can be shown that activation is the factor that defines the co-occurrence of PPI some with clause-mate negators. The interest of the notion of activation lies in its ability to be put to the test. Such a test is necessary to assess whether the stable series of contexts that allow PPI some under the scope of a clause-mate negation involve activation, a hypothesis suggested by the intervention of metalinguistic, denial and contrast contexts. These involve beyond any reasonable doubt activated proposition: (39) (40) (41)

John didn’t say something, Jane did. – John said something. – Come on, now. He didn’t say something. John should have said something, and he didn’t say something.

as they suppose the explicit antecedent use of the proposition or accommodate it.24 Accommodated activation is found with focus, presuppositional interrogative negatives, and the fact that subordinates: (42) John doesn’t often say something. (43) Didn’t John say something? (44) The fact that he didn’t say something is good. as it is by decreasing contexts at the core of Szabolcsi’s analysis: (35) (36) (37) (38)

I don’t think that he didn’t say something. I regret that he didn’t say something. If John doesn’t say something, we’re doomed. Only John didn’t say something.

Focus induces a complementary value and presupposes the underlying proposition: that John sometimes says something, but that he mostly doesn’t. This makes accessible the proposition that John says something in (42). The same proposition is similarly accessible with the focus associated to the use of only in (38), which contrasts John who didn’t speak to those who did.25 Negative interrogatives presuppose the underlying proposition rather than merely enquire about it, and that John did say something is activated in (43). Factive presuppositions of the subordinate proposition is imposed by the fact that and regret, which therefore activate the proposition that John said something in (44) and (36).26 Double negation presupposes that the negative subordinate has been entertained or could have been in the discourse environment, and that John hasn’t talked is activated in (35) — a mundane yet rather convincing further example of this is provided by the name of the American margarine product I can’t believe it’s not butter, which would make little sense if not for the view that margarine is not butter. The conditional in (36) activates the underlying proposition through the debate between the alternative possibilities of John saying something and his remaining silent.


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Let us pause a moment and look back at what has been accomplished so far. The question to be addressed is whether there is a common causality to the use of PPI some under the scope of clause-mate negation. A possible candidate has been considered in the notion of activated proposition. Propositions are activated when they are accessible to the hearer. Different types of activation can be distinguished: explicit activation derives from a proposition being used in the antecedent context, while accommodated activation relies on a construction that imposes the presupposed status of a proposition. These have been shown to characterize the particular negative environments allowing PPIs, which can be further demonstrated by transferable tests elaborating on the contrasting illustrations proposed by Schwenter (as in (72) to (74) above). Answers with some under the scope of negation are fine when the proposition of saying something is activated by the question: (75) A: – I’m sure John would remember if he saw someone around the house at that hour. B: a. – John didn’t see someone. b. – We don’t often see someone around here, you know. c. – I don’t think that John didn’t see someone, but my recollections are vague. d. – I regret that John didn’t see someone. e. – Only John didn’t see someone it seems. f. – The fact that John didn’t see someone doesn’t mean there was no one. When the question does not activate the proposition however,27 the answers are infelicitous. (76) A: – I’m sure John would remember if he talked to someone in the area at that hour. B: a. – % John didn’t see someone. b. – ??We don’t often see someone around here, you know. c. – %I don’t think that John didn’t see someone, but my recollections are vague. d. – %I regret that John didn’t see someone. e. – %Only John didn’t see someone it seems. f. – %The fact that John didn’t see someone doesn’t mean there was no one. Note that this is not due to an irrational exchange, as replacing some by regular NPI any yields acceptable results in the following:


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(77) – I’m sure John would remember if he talked to someone in the vicinity at that hour. – John didn’t see anyone! In such an environment, it is the co-occurrence of some with negation that supposes activation. It is imposed by the other structures, which is why replacement doesn’t work in the other cases. Testing the ability to validate old information and comparison with sequences where either negation or some is removed show that the structures that we are dealing with involve activated propositions. Such status is not limited to accommodated and explicit contexts. Inference can produce activation, as shown by the following example of German light negation in a main subjunctive clause linked to a conditional subordinate: (78) Wenn Fritz dumm wäre, könnte er nicht eine Fremdsprache. ‘If Fritz were stupid, he wouldn’t know a foreign language.’ (Schwarz and Bhatt 2006: 182, example (18b)) Interestingly, such a case is transposed easily to English: (79) If John were insensitive, he wouldn’t have said something. The contextual connection between sensitivity to a situation and a verbal reaction concerning that situation activates the proposition that John said something. More examples of propositions activated through relations between events are provided below, compared to examples where there are no such immediately available relations: a. He didn’t see something and stumbled. b. %He didn’t see something and turned left. a. He didn’t say something(,) because he didn’t know what. b. %He didn’t say something(,) because he’s a married man. a. If John were heartless, he wouldn’t have done something for Jane. b. %If John were a linguist, he wouldn’t have done something for Jane. (83) a. He is a bit lazy, so he didn’t do something for Jane. b. %He is a bit blonde, so he didn’t do something for Jane. (80) (81) (82)

That the infelicity of the ( b) examples depends on the absence of activation that is supposed by the co-occurrence of some and not is shown by the acceptability that results from removing either: (84) (85) (86) (87)

He saw something and turned left. He said something(,) because he’s a married man. If John were a linguist, he would have done something for Jane. He is a bit blonde, so he did something for Jane.


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(88) (89) (90) (91)

He didn’t see anything and turned left. He didn’t say anything(,) because he’s a married man. If John were a linguist, he wouldn’t have done anything for Jane. He is a bit blonde, so he didn’t do anything for Jane.

Inferences can along with accommodating constructions produce the assumption of discourse-old information that will be treated as accessible to the hearer like explicit antecedent propositions are.28 Activation is the property of propositions in which some can be found under the scope of clause-mate negation. After a presentation of the notion, a distinction was made of three types of activation, depending on whether it is induced by explicit mention of the proposition in the antecedent discourse, by a construction that accommodates the presupposition of the proposition, or by discourse relations that lead to the inference of a presupposed proposition. Going beyond the practice that solely relies on intuition, tests are proposed to ascertain the activated status of a sequence. These have to do with the predicted ability to validate old information, as well as by the felicity of (non-accommodated) sequences where some or negation are removed. 5. Conclusions This paper has considered the question of PPI some under the scope of a clausemate sentential negation. It considers the proposal by Szabolcsi (2004) to analyze the PPI as a type of NPI requiring dual licensing. We showed that some can come under the scope of a single negative clause-mate licenser ((39)–(44) repeated below), and asked whether these are driven by a factor that would be common with dual-licensing environments ((35)–(38)). (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (35) (36) (37) (38)

John didn’t say something, Jane did. – John said something. – Come on, now. He didn’t say something. John should have said something, and he didn’t say something. John doesn’t often say something. Didn’t John say something? The fact that he didn’t say something is good. I don’t think that he didn’t say something. I regret that he didn’t say something. If John doesn’t say something, we’re doomed. Only John didn’t say something.

That common factor was demonstrated to be activated propositions. Propositions that are accessible to the hearer were shown through discussion and tests to characterize all the environments in which some comes under negative scope.


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The advantage of the proposal made here that activated propositions allow for co-occurrence of PPIs and negation is that of simplicity. No elaborate, theory-dependent mechanism is needed. Indeed, the intervention of activation comes for free, since it is required in any theory of meaning. The sequences under consideration are nonetheless marked since they involve activation, and they are difficult for native speakers to judge out of context, forcing the linguist to rely on stable attested configurations. The marked nature of such environments means that the empirical generalizations that outside activated propositions, NPIs are licensed and PPIs anti-licensed by negation can be maintained. The contribution offered by this paper is both novel and substantial. The novelty lies in solving the old problem of the atypical sequences with negation scoping over clause-mate PPI some,29 by identifying the unitary factor responsible. The determinism is the pragmatic notion of activated proposition. This is why out of the blue sequences like John didn’t say something are judged illformed, and why such sequences are considered marked, which they are. This analysis need say nothing more about a speculative internal constitution of some, a putative distinction between single and dual licensor contexts, or the unwarranted assimilation of the PPI to NPIs. The substantial character of the analysis comes its transferable character. Transfer obtains because of diagnostics proposed in this article to go beyond the essentially intuitive nature of the traditional notion of presuppositions. This is achieved by distinguishing between explicit, accommodated and inferred activation. Activated status can be demonstrated even in the difficult inference cases by the infelicity of the considered sequences in non-accommodated environments, and the converse felicity of (non-accommodated) sequences where some or negation are removed. Such a demonstration can be applied to now that P environments, which allow PPI some under the scope of clausemate negation: (92) Now that John hasn’t said something, I’ll have to step in, won’t I? This contrasts with the expected infelicity of the sequence in now P contexts: (93) ??Now, John hasn’t said something, I’ll have to step in, won’t I? Acceptability can be restored by removing either some or negation: (94) Now, John hasn’t said anything, I’ll have to step in, won’t I? (95) Now, John has said something, I’ll have to step in, won’t I? Such diagnostics show that not only PPI some, but all PPIs are allowed by activation to be used with clause-mate negation.30 This applies to speakeroriented adverbs (Ernst 2009), which can be found in the local scope of negation in the activated contexts described here.


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(96) ??These coins weren’t probably cached here in the 5th century when Germanic tribes overran the region. (97) Weren’t these coins probably cached here in the 5th century when Germanic tribes overran the region? (Ernst 2009: 520, example (77a)) (98) If they hadn’t probably been cached here in the 5th century when Germanic tribes overran the region, we would not have been interested in the find. (Ernst 2009: 520, example (77b)) The claim by Ernst that these are possible because the sentences fulfill a positive propositional implicature (as also suggested by Farkas 2002) fails to account for cases where no such implicature can be found: (99) Jeff Bridges stated the city could proceed under K.S.A. 12-520 due to the fact that these residences would not probably meet the agricultural requirement. (http://www.andoverks.com/Archive.aspx?ADID=249& PREVIEW=YES) What obtains in all cases is the presupposition that the proposition is accessible to the hearer. While negation is influenced by activation, the latter extends well beyond the issue of negation. Activated propositions seem required to license the odd NPI found in positive environments: the following from Larrivée (2007) provide a case of negative polarity idiom and a strict negative polarity pronoun used in a positive proposition that has been activated in the immediately antecedent context (see also Lee 2006): (100) People don’t give a damn about Indians, but they give a damn about the advantages that come with being an Indian. (Radio-Canada, 16.5.1996. Larrivée 2007: 93, example (20)) (101) ça ne change pas grand chose à mon analyse, ce qui change grand chose, c’est que [ . . . ]. ‘It doesn’t change much to my analysis, what changes much is that [ . . . ].’ (Oral exchange, 5.1997. Larrivée 2007: 94, example (25a)) Further afield, the well-known infraction to the alleged default lower-bound reading of numerals seems to emerge in activated propositions: (102) – You need three children to qualify for family support. Do you have three children? – I’ve got three children all right, in fact, I’ve got four.


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The use of the discourse particle all right seems related to activated contexts and finds equivalents in the German ja (Kaufman 2004; Kratzer 1999; positive and negative particles in Portuguese, Italian, Finnish and West Flemish apparently amenable to an activation analysis are cited by Breitbarth and Haegeman 2008). Echo questions, metalinguistic conditionals and other objects of wonders can be approached through the notion of activation and can benefit from the diagnostics proposed in this paper, among which the distribution of PPIs with clause-mate negation can now be counted. One point that must be addressed is the reason why PPIs might require an activated context to come under the scope of negation. This may be elucidated by referring to an intuitive consideration by Horn (2001: 392, 397; see also Farkas 2002). He has proposed that negation in some cases is not at the same level as the propositional contents. This intuition could be illustrated by NPIs that are not easily in this case licensed by negatives; these however validate NPIs that are not part of the activated proposition, and the exchange John talked to my wife apparently. — He never talked to your wife at all! is perfectly acceptable with a NPI at all that is patently proposed by the speaker rather than reproduced from the antecedent assertion (Chapman 1996). The activated proposition is thus treated as a whole to be rejected by negation.31 The negative does therefore not interact directly with the material inside that proposition in this context. The direct interaction of negation with the PPI is unproductive because the PPI does not lend itself to a scalar or focus32 reading normally produced by negation (Larrivée 2005).33 The indirect interaction with the material inside activated propositions means that these can contain PPIs. The consequence is that the co-occurrence is something possible in activated contexts, rather than something necessary as in frameworks where a rescuing mechanism is proposed. The question that rescuing raises is that of learnability and efficacy. Why would a language bother to have PPIs that by definition are not used in the direct scope of negatives, and then have a rescuing process to allow them to be distributed in that environment? How could such a process be learned, and on the basis of what evidence? Why should fairly atypical uses drive the learning of PPIs? None of these questions is raised by the perspective proposed here, according to which PPIs can find themselves in an activated proposition that is negated because the negative does not interact with them to produce uncertain semantic results, but rather with the proposition as a whole. The activated proposition as a whole that falls under the scope of negation, and the proposition may contain PPIs but obviously need not to. Necessity is not the only source of grammatical manifestations. Received 23 June 2009 Revised version received November 2011


University of Caen

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Notes

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1. Earlier versions of this work benefited from the detailed feedback from Laurence Horn and Paul Postal; from the participants of the September 2007 LAGB Annual Meeting at King’s College, and of the April 2007 Institut de linguistique seminar at Université de Neuchâtel; from the anonymous reviewers of another journal; from the tireless contribution of the anonymous reviewers of this journal; from the linguistic support of Sarah Haas. I wish to express my gratitude to each for their input on this paper, and none should be blamed for its shortcomings. Correspondence address: Département des Sciences du Langage, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, Esplanade de la Paix, BP5186, 14032 Caen Cedex 5, France. E-mail: [email protected] 2. The interested reader may refer among very many studies to Farkas (2002) for a DRT treatment to specificity, and Alexiadou et al. (2007) for a Minimalist approach of DP interpretation. 3. This does not apply to modified some, which is apparently not subject to the same distributional restrictions with negation as bare some is. A reviewer points out an out of the blue use of ‘At least he didn’t say something stupid’ in an internet discussion about the intellectual agility of a Californian politician. The felicity of such configurations is acknowledged by Szabolcsi (2004: note 10) for whom modified some forms a “separate predication domain”, and therefore not clausemate. I follow her example by setting the case aside, and concentrating on unmodified some. 4. The notion of anti-additivity applied to NPIs goes back to the work of Zwarts (1998) and van der Wouden (1997) in their attempts to capture the differences in behavior of subclasses of NPIs in terms of different strengths of licensors. Satisfying De Morgan’s first law, an antiadditive licensor is an Operator Op defined over an algebra of sets A, and for each two element X and Y of A, Op(X ∪ Y) = Op(X) ∩ Op(Y). This would be what would make the equivalence hold between Aristotle didn’t sing or dance and Aristotle didn’t sing and Aristotle didn’t dance. A typical anti-additive licensor is thus clause-mate negation. 5. As pointed out by a reviewer, the example of strong NPI chosen by Szabolcsi is not optimal, as yet can be licensed by weak triggers, as in Few students have arrived yet and Not all students have arrived yet. Other candidates cited in the literature such as lift a finger and so much as do not fare better if Google attestations are to be relied upon — and Few have done so much as lift a finger to help, Not everyone has done so much as lift a finger seem fine. A more robust case is until (He hasn’t started until 12, ?*Few have started until 12, ?*Not everyone has started until 12). This situation illustrates the view taken in this paper that few facts can be taken for granted, and that data are more robustly provided by attested configurations than by speaker intuitions, which is complicated by the difficulty of imagining situations in which something grammatical might be said. In the remainder of this paper, I will carry on referring to yet as a strong NPI where Szabolcsi’s argument is concerned. 6. One reviewer queries the felicity of such atypical sequences. It is true that when they are submitted out of context to native speakers, these sequences may lead to acceptability judgment variation. That is why stable configurations attested in real-life productions are the basis for this study. The idea pursued here that a pragmatic determinism not always readily recoverable in judgments of out-of-context elicitations is involved accounts for the disparity between judgment and production, and indicates that judgments may not be the best source of data for this linguistic issue. 7. Such examples may be more felicitous with neg-raising verbs such as think, as noted by a reviewer. 8. Another forerunner is Anderson (1973), who proposes that the universal quantification comprises an underlying double negation.


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9. In an alternative proposal, Horn (2001) argues that the impossibility for some to be determined by an exceptive (as by almost and absolutely) is due to the fact that unlike any, it does not evoke the end of a scale. See Gajewski (2008) for an analysis of the relations between exceptives and NPI any. 10. Paul Postal finds Example (20) acceptable under a denial reading There isn’t anything such that John said it at every party marked by stress on both anything and every, which is not required of (6). 11. Examples in (22) are said to be far from natural by a reviewer, yet they are well attested, and Google provides 219 000 hits of “regret that * said anything” in April 2010, two of which are the following: (i) (ii)

We put our foot in our mouth, and then regret that we said anything at all. (http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/ blog/tag/communication-problems/ ) I truly regret that I ever said anything positive about you! (http://perezhilton.com/2008-05-29-new-rihanna-3)

12. Latin also has nemo non, which means everyone (Laurence Horn p.c.). Whether this reading can be derived from an underlying existential raises further question for the analysis considered. 13. The related point made by Spector (2004) is that only some of the uses of an item may qualify for PPI status. 14. As noted by a reviewer, “Postulating features is current practice in morphosyntax and semantics. The problem is: to what extent must we accept to resort to [ . . . ] covert entities? In the case at hand, we don’t have simply features, we have this complicated story about “dormant” features and the layered licensing they give rise to. [ . . . ] The dormant feature analysis would ‘look very much like a stipulation,’ no matter whether it would be connected with negation or with anything else. Actually, any system where we postulate complex networks of features, which are not cashed out independently (on a feature-per-feature basis) as morphological, phonetical or distributional observations, runs the risk of ending into mere speculation.” 15. The experimental attempt by Szabolcsi, Bott and McElree (2008) to challenge the possible scalarity of NPIs is inconclusive. 16. With focus on anyone; for a recent assessment of the relations between any and scales, see Duffley and Larrivée (2009). While any is not always scalar, the point remains that some never is. 17. Adjunction by anyone at all is however possible in both elicitations, as Laurence Horn reminds me, but seems to create a widening effect for some that the item does not provide on its own. 18. NPI licensing occurring in the restriction of most (Most boys who have ever been to a ranch liked it), not in its focus as in (30), as pointed out by one reviewer. Another notes that Most first-year students do not know something about Linguistics does not immediately communicate Most first-year students do not know anything about Linguistics. This may be because know something is often a euphemism for assertion of positive knowledge. Most Guineans don’t know someone who has died of the disease seems more felicitous. 19. The ability of this context to promote negation scoping over a preceding indefinite subject is first noted in Attal (1976). 20. On whether (35) is a natural example, taking up the issue discussed in Note 6 again, an alternative contextualized sequence such as the following might provide a better basis for imagining a situation in which it might be used. (i) I really don’t think that John didn’t say something about it to Jane. Surely he couldn’t simply leave his sister in the dark.


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21. A reviewer points out that the elliptical clause in (46) (“Jane did [finish it until 12]) is anomalous. This does not prevent such ellipsis from happening however. (i) I didn’t do anything. She did it — not me. (http://www.whoosh.org/issue35/waite1.html) The point remains that strong NPI until is not uniformly unacceptable across the relevant contexts, indicating the implausibility of the syntactic hypothesis that the negative is extraclausal to account for their clause-mate occurrence with PPIs. 22. Or a straightforward neg-raising environment in (55). 23. On the question raised by a reviewer as to whether activation is a property of propositions or utterances, the answer heavily depends on how this distinction is to be defined. Assuming a general distinction between language use and language representations, it can be said that while it is true that it is in language use that information is activated, the existence of constructions accommodating activation indicates that the notion of activation is part of the linguistic representations prior to their particular use. 24. A reviewer points out that this should allow I should have said something funny, but I didn’t say something, which is nonetheless odd. The reason for this oddity has to do not with the PPI, but with the expectation of ellipsis in the second conjunct whose VP contains information already provided in the first conjunct. That is why the reverse order I should have said something, but I didn’t say something funny yields a felicitous sequence. Hence, as no ellipsis arises, the sequence I should have offered a pleasantry, but I didn’t say something is fine. 25. The debate as to the exact pragmatic nature of the underlying proposition with focus particle only modifying a proper noun in subject position represented by Horn (1996) and Atlas (1996) notably is not taken up here, as it is tangential to the question under consideration. I am leaving to one side the connective uses of only (that could be read into (76e)). 26. A reviewer suggests that I expected that John wouldn’t say something and I am glad that John wouldn’t say something are unacceptable despite the proposition being under a factive expression. Configurations provided by Google suggest that the glad case is fine, but that expect might be less felicitous. This correlates with the fact that the presupposition can be easily cancelled with expected, but not with glad or surprised. (i) When Mr. Radley died, the neighborhood had expected that Boo would come out, but he didn’t. Instead, his older brother, Nathan, moved back to Maycomb [ . . . ]. (http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tkm/ PART1.htm) (ii) ?*I was (glad + surprised) that he would come out, but he didn’t. This suggests that expect is not a factive, and validates the view that factitivity activates a proposition to make PPI some with a clause-mate negative possible. On factitivity and negative polarity licensing, see Giannakidou (2008). 27. That is why, as pointed out by a reviewer, the following exchange is acceptable: – I’m sure John would remember if he talked to someone in the area at that hour. – Well, John didn’t see someone he could talk to. since the subordinate picks up the predicate talk activated in the antecedent sequence. 28. Each configuration may of course have different conditions of intervention, as pointed out by a reviewer of an earlier version of this work. That is why, in the scenario suggested to us where a lady having her morning stroll in the park and seeing a man wake up and starting to drink, the out of the blue statement If you don’t eat something, you will get very drunk is felicitous, much more so than %You haven’t eaten something. You will get very drunk. The conditional accommodates activation, in the absence of which the first sequence cannot rely on antecedent discourse for explicit or inferred activation. This predicts that You will get very drunk, you haven’t eaten something is better, as indeed it is.


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29. It is indeed on not that this work has concentrated, and whether clause-mate n-words such as nothing and never induce the same restrictions on PPI distribution is to be apportioned, a task for which the discovery procedure proposed here should hopefully be operative: it does seem as though Now that no one has said something is more felicitous than ??Now, no one has said something, to take but one contrast. 30. It is those uses under the scope of clause mate negation common to all PPIs that we are concerned about in this paper. A question arises as to whether other contexts to which different subclasses of PPIs are sensitive are subject to the influence of activation. The answer may however well be positive, considering the fact for instance that free-choice French item n’importe qui, which unlike the straight existential quelqu’un is reluctant to appear in normal conditionals (??S’il en a parlé à n’importe qui, il aura des ennuis ‘If he told anyone, he’ll be in trouble’), is fine in those conditional that presuppose the realization of the event (S’il en a parlé à n’importe qui, c’est que c’était nécessaire ‘If he told anyone, it’s because it was necessary) (see Larrivée 2006). 31. A difficulty is however raised by the diversity of attested configurations, as signaled by a reviewer. In denial cases as in (7) –He found something. –Wrong! He didn’t find something!, it is clearly the positive proposition containing some that is activated. In double negative cases such as (35) I don’t think he didn’t say something, it is equally clearly the case that the negative subordinate is activated. Now, that is an undesirable observation because it would mean that the negative has some in its direct scope, which is what we want to avoid. One way to avoid such a conclusion is to say that the subordinate proposition is itself activated. Such nested presuppositions are by no means rare: I don’t think that the king of France isn’t interested in Guernsey oil fields equally presupposes the propositions that the king of France isn’t interest in the said oil fields, that in fact he is interested in those oil fields, not to mention the existence of oil fields in Guernsey and that of a kingly Sarkozy. The fact that the propositions do not have the same enunciative source — it is the proponent of the sentence I don’t think that the king of France isn’t interested in Guernsey oil fields that presupposes the positive interest, while the negation of that interest seems to be attributed to some other speaker. The approach developed by Ducrot on the enunciative sources of presupposition might be called to the task here, provided criteria can be found to define what’s what. One reformulation this might lead to would be to say that the PPI some can superficially appear under the scope of a clause-mate negative if it is part of a positive proposition presupposed by the speaker. This is certainly the case with metalinguistic negation, where some is part of the rejected underlying positive proposition, Clearly, more work is required on the architecture of what is presupposed and by whom. 32. Falaus (2009) reports that the Rumanian expression oarecare ‘whatsoever’ is not a PPI when it is focused by negation, with a reading equivalent to not just. 33. Other explanations as to the infelicity of some with negation have to do with the commitment that some indicates to the existence of a minimal entity on a scale (Israel 1998, 1999) that is not easily negated; and the fact that some does not identify a referent (Farkas 2002; see also Duffley and Larrivée 2012), and must therefore be provided with external descriptive elements that are not provided by (non-activated) negative propositions (Kleiber 1981) — which would also be why according to Kleiber, some is generally acceptable as a subject of stage-level predicates (Somebody’s hungry), but more difficult with individual-level predicates (?Somebody’s Hungarian). The idea that referential identification conditions make the interaction of some with negation problematic may be supported by the observation that such problems hardly arises with modified some. Noting that the existential commitment may be more likely to provide a generalized coverage to all PPIs, we leave this question for future explorations.

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