[14] negative polarity and scalar semantics in spanish by Ambrosio

Negative Polarity and Scalar Semantics in Spanish* Raúl Aranovich University of California Davis

Introduction The Spanish indefinite pronouns nada ‘nothing’, nadie ‘no one’, nunca ‘never’, and ningún N ‘no N’, often referred to in the literature as nwords, have a limited distribution. When they precede the verb, they count as an expression of negation (1a).1 But when they follow the verb, they must occur with the negative adverb no ’not’ or with another nword in preverbal position. (1)

Nadie ha leído este poema. none has read this poem ‘Nobody has read this poem.’ López *(no) sabe nada. López (not) knows nthing ‘López (doesn’t) know(s) anything.’ Nadie ha leído nunca ninguno de estos poemas. nbody has read never none of these poems ‘Nobody has ever read any of these poems.’

The fact that multiple negative expressions (nwords or the negative adverb no ‘not’) can appear in the same clause without giving rise to multiple negations qualifies Spanish as a negative concord language. Among negative concord languages, Spanish belongs to the class that does not allow preverbal nwords to occur with the negative particle no (2). (2)

*Nadie no ha leído este poema. none not has read this poem ‘Nobody hasn’t read this poem.’

There is an abundant literature on Spanish negative constructions and negative concord in

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general, which I cannot review in detail giving space considerations2. Bosque (1980) and Laka (1990) suggest that Spanish nwords are negative polarity items, on account of their limited distribution. Across languages, it is not uncommon to find lexical items that must be licensed by negation or other ’affective’ expressions (the term that Klima 1964 uses to describe the phenomenon). English any, for example, is excluded from simple statements (3a), but it occurs in the scope of negation (3b), in the restriction of universal quantifiers (3c), and in a variety of other environments. (3)

a. b. c.

*Sandy ate anything Sandy did not eat anything Everyone who has eaten anything in that restaurant knows how good it is.

Ladusaw (1979) proposes a semantic generalization to account for the distribution of any. The expression that licenses the NPI (also referred to as the trigger) must be a downwardentailing (DE) operator, defined below. (4)

An operator F is downwardentailing iff p  q  F(q)  F(p).

Ladusaw’s semantic approach to negative polarity has inspired a fruitful line of research, which also extends to negation in the Romance languages and other negative concord languages. Recent work on negative polarity has focused on the noticeable variation in meaning and distribution that NPIs display. Zwarts (1981, 1995), Hoeksema (1983), Hoeksema and Klein (1995) Vallduví (1994), Israel (1996, 2001), Rullmann (1996) Van der Wouden (1997), and Giannakidou (1998, 2000), among others, argue that the sources of this variation can be found in the strength or nature of the triggers and in the semantic features inherent to the NPI. Israel (1996) refers to these two factors as the ‘licensing’ problem and the ‘sensitivity’ problem, respectively. Answers to the licensing problem have been framed in semantic terms (Ladusaw 1979, Van der Wouden 1997, Giannakidou 1999), as well as in pragmatic (Linebarger 1987, Israel 1996) or syntactic terms (Rizzi 1982, Pollock 1989, Laka 1990, Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1992, 1995, Progovac 1994, UribeEtxeverria 1994, and many others). Answers to the sensitivity problem tend to be formulated as claims about the universal or existential force of the NPI (Ladusaw 1979, Laka 1990, Vallduví 1994, Zanuttini 1991), or whether the NPI takes narrow or wide scope with respect to the trigger (Hoeksema and Klein 1995). The goal of this paper is to show that negative polarity displays a significant pattern of variation in Spanish as well. The variation in point concerns the environments that license n words and a class of MINIMIZERS introduced by the particle ni3. Minimizers like English a wink in I didn't sleep a wink are items that denote a minimal quantity, and when they occur in a negative context, as they often do, "the negation denotes the absence of a minimal quantity, and hence the

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

presence of no quantity at all" (Horn 1989:400). Niminimizers, which can sometimes be translated as ‘not even NP’, are a kind of NPI. In preverbal position a niminimizer expresses negation by itself, without any additional negative expressions (5a). In postverbal position it requires a preverbal negative expression, and when the two cooccur they do not give rise to multiple negative readings in the clause (5b). (5)

Ni Gómez (*no) asistió a la reunión. Ni Gómez (not) attended to the meeting ‘Not even Gómez attended the meeting.’ Gómez *(no) lastimaría ni a su peor enemigo. Gómez not hurt ni to his worst enemy ‘Gómez wouldn’t even hurt his worst enemy.’

The parallelism between nwords and niminimizers, which can be observed in negative sentences, breaks down in other environments. Nwords can also appear in some comparative constructions (6a), as well as in the sentential complement of adversative predicates like dudar ‘doubt’ (6b)4. Niminimizers, however, are excluded from those environments. (6)

Esa niña corre más rápido que nadie/*ni una liebre. That girl runs more fast than none/noteven a hare ‘That girl runs faster than anyone/even a hare.’ Dudo que venga ninguno de tus amigos/*ni tu mejor amigo. doubt that comes none of your friends/ni your best friend ‘I doubt any of your friends/even your best friend will come’

I will argue that niminimizers are excluded from sentences like (6a) and (6b) because ni minimizers are scalar, that is, they presuppose a scalar model. The NPIs that can occur in comparatives and in the sentential complement of adversative predicates, on the other hand, do not have a scalar presupposition. While some researchers have offered explanations for the sensitivity of certain lexical items to the polarity of their environment based on the assumption that all NPIs are scalar (Fauconnier 1975, Krifka 1992, Israel 1996, Horn 2000), others have argued that a distinction between scalar and nonscalar NPIs lies at the core of some variation in negative polarity licensing (Heim 1984, Rullmann 1996). The hypothesis that a contrast between scalar and nonscalar items explains the judgments in (6a) and (6b) supports the latter position. I will also argue that the contrast between scalar and nonscalar polarity items in Spanish runs deeper than a superficial examination of the data may suggest. I will provide evidence (from the distribution of the adverb casi ’almost’, and also from the distribution of mass terms) to show that those nwords that occur in negative sentences, like those in (1a)(1c), are also scalar. That

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is, nwords are ambiguous, between a scalar and a nonscalar interpretation. Niminimizers, on the other hand, are inherently (and unambiguously) scalar. The picture that emerges from this analysis is one in which certain triggers (negation, most notably) license scalar NPIs in Spanish, but other triggers (comparatives, adversative predicates) license nonscalar NPIs. An interesting fact is that this distribution, when the nature of the triggers is considered, is not arbitrary. The triggers that license scalar NPIs in Spanish share the semantic property of being antiveridical (or averidical), a semantic concept introduced in Zwarts’ (1995) analysis of Dutch and English polarity, and in Giannakidou (1998) in her analysis of Greek NPIs. Antiveridical operators entail the falsity of the propositional argument. The triggers that license nonscalar nwords, on the other hand, share the weaker property of nonveridicality. that is, they do not entail the truth of their propositional argument. The expression it is not the case that... is antiveridical, while it is possible that... is nonveridical (Zwarts 1995). The concepts are defined below: (7)

a. b.

An operator F is antiveridical iff F(p) p An operator F is nonveridical iff (F(p)p)

It should be clear that from the definitions above antiveridical operators are a subset of nonveridical operators. Not all nonveridical operators, then, are antiveridical. I will refer to that class as the strictly antiveridical operators. These are the ones that license nonscalar NPIs in Spanish. Identifying the semantics of the triggers for the different classes of NPIs in Spanish is a preliminary step in the formulation of an explanation for the variation in distribution. I will argue that scalar NPIs in Spanish are associated with a particular informational requirement: they must be used to deny the existence of alternatives in a scalar model. This requirement can only be satisfied in the scope of an antiveridical operator. Nonscalar NPIs, on the other hand, because of their lexical semantics, are not associated with any informational requirements regarding the existence (or nonexistence) of alternatives. Licensing of nonscalar NPIs, I will argue, involves a mechanism very similar to the one suggested in Heim (1984), Krifka (1992), Kadmon and Landman (1993), Israel (1996, 2001), and Lahiri (1998), for polaritysensitive items in general. The aim of this paper, then, is to show that a semantic approach to NPI licensing can account for the finegrained distribution of polarity items in Spanish. The Spanish data, and my analysis thereof, highlight the importance of antiveridicality and scalarity for a theory of polarity sensitivity, and help to elucidate their interaction. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the syntax of negative concord in Spanish. I argue that Spanish NPIs in general (that is, scalar as well as nonscalar NPIs) are subject to a syntactic constraint that excludes them from some DE environments. In section 3 I present some facts about the distribution of Spanish nwords, noticing the contrast between n words and niminimizers. I argue that nwords have two different senses, scalar and nonscalar, based on the distribution of mass terms and the adverb casi ‘almost’. I also argue that scalar n

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

words appear in the scope of antiveridical operators, and that nonscalar nwords occur in the scope of strictly nonveridical operators. Section 4 develops an explanation for the differential sensitivity of nwords and niminimizers, refining the strengthening/widening model. Section 5 concludes the paper by placing the discussion about the dual nature of nwords in the broader context of contemporary questions about the diversity of polarity phenomena.

1. Syntactic constraints on Spanish negation

1. 1. The negcriterion and licensing by SpecNegP Before addressing the semantic constraints on NPI licensing in Spanish, it is necessary to examine the syntactic requirements on negative concord. The relationship between an nword and its trigger in Spanish has to satisfy the requirements of an Abar dependency. If those requirements are not met, then the NPI cannot be licensed even if the context in which it appears is of the right semantic kind (i.e. antiveridical, nonveridical, or downwardentailing). The goal of this section, then, is to identify those environments that fail to license NPIs for syntactic reasons. Taking this into account will help to find out the right generalizations about the semantic constraints on NPI licensing in the sections that follow. Many studies in the Romance languages suggest that nwords enter into some sort of Abar dependency involving their triggers. A position that enjoys wide support is that nwords must satisfy the negcriterion (Rizzi 1982, Haegeman and Zanuttini 1990, Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1992, 1995)5, and that this is responsible for the Abar dependency that seems to involve the trigger and the nword. (8)

Negcriterion (after Haegeman 1995:106) a. A negoperator must be in a specifierhead configuration with an X0[neg]. b. An X0[neg] must be in a specifierhead configuration with a negoperator.

Approaches to the syntax of negation that adopt the negcriterion often assume the existence of a functional category NegP, which is one of the functional extensions of the VP (cf. Pollock 1989, Zanuttini 1991, 1997, for the split IP hypothesis, and the position of NegP). In a simple negative sentence, Haegeman argues, the negcriterion is satisfied by an empty operator Opi in Spec NegP. This covert operator is licensed by the overt negative head no ’not’. Haegeman assumes that in many Romance languages (Spanish included) the head of NegP moves to adjoin to the higher functional head Agr. Postverbal nwords satisfy the negcriterion in situ, Haegeman argues, forming a CHAIN (in the sense of Brody 1995) with the empty operator in SpecNegP6.

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Preverbal nwords, on the other hand, do not need to be coindexed with an empty operator. Preverbal subjects, for instance, can satisfy the negcriterion directly, finding themselves in a specifierhead relation with a [neg] head in AgrP. Since there is no empty operator in Spec NegP, Haegeman adds, the head of NegP will not be overt. The structures in (9a) and (9b) correspond to the Spanish sentences in (1a) and (1b), respectively (9)

a. b.

[AgrP Nadiei [Agr’ ej ha [NegP tj [TnsP ti leído este poema]]]] [AgrP Lópezi [Agr’ noj sabek [NegP Opl tj [TnsP ti tk nadal]]]]

The consequences of the negcriterion are clearly seen in the licensing of nwords in complex clauses. Negative concord is subject to island constraints, as shown in Longobardi (1988) for Italian, and Giannakidou (1998) for Greek emphatic NPIs. Island constraints in Spanish negative concord are discussed in Aranovich (1994). An nword can be licensed into a declarative complement clause by a negative head in the matrix clause (10a), but not into an embedded interrogative (10b) or an adverbial clause (10c). (10) a.

López no quiere que Gómez haga nada. Lopez not wants that Gomez does nthing. ’López does not want Gómez to do anything.’ *López no se pregunta si Gómez ha hecho nada. Lopez not REFL asks if Gomez has done nthing ’López does not wander whether Gomez has done anything.’ *López no se enfadó cuando Gómez hizo nada. Lopez not REFL becomeangry when Gomez did nthing (’López did not get angry when Gómez did anything.’)

Embedded interrogatives and adverbial clauses are islands for whmovement. A fronted Wh word cannot bind its trace across any of these clausal boundaries. Likewise, the postverbal n words in (10b) and (10c) cannot form a CHAIN with the nonover operator in SpecNegP. The negcriterion is not satisfied in those cases, resulting in ungrammaticality.

1. 2. Licensing of nwords by adversative predicates. NegP is not the only functional category that can bear a [neg] feature. Some complementizers, when they are selected by an appropriate head, do so as well. Progovac (1994) and Laka (1990) argue that adversative predicates select embedded clauses with a negative Complementizer C[neg], which is responsible for NPI licensing in the sentential complement of an adversative predicate.

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

In languages that mark the occurrence of C[neg] overtly this category occurs in the sentential complement of adversative predicates. In Basque, for instance, the C[neg] enik is used instead of the declarative C ela (11)7. (11)

Amaiak [inork gorrotoa dionik] ukatu du. Amaia anyone hatred hasthat denied has ‘Amaia denied that anybody hated her.’

Laka (1990) notices the occurrence of the Basque NPI inork ‘anyone’ in (11). She argues that the trigger for this NPI is the C[neg] enik, not the adversative predicate. The adversative predicate cannot license NPIs without the intervention of C[neg], as (12) shows. (12)

*Josebak ezer ukatu du. Joseba anything denied has ‘Joseba has denied anything.’

In English, C[neg] is not phonologically or morphologically distinct from a declarative C. Its presence is detected indirectly. NPIs can be licensed in the clausal complement of English adversative predicates (13a), but not as direct complements of the predicate itself (13b). Progovac (1988) and Laka (1990) consider this as evidence that C[neg] is the trigger. (13) a. b.

I doubt [that Mary insulted anyone]. *I doubt anything.

Likewise, Spanish nwords can appear in the clausal complement of adversative predicates, but not as direct complements of the predicate (14). (14)

*Dudo ninguna de tus palabras. Doubt nthing of your words ‘I doubt any of your words.’

Laka argues that the fact that nwords can appear with adversative predicates only if they are inside a complement clause shows that these nwords are licensed by C[neg] as well. To satisfy the negcriterion, this C[neg] must be in a spechead relationship with a [neg] operator. Following Haegeman’s analysis, the sentential complement of adversative predicates must contain a non overt negoperator Op in the Spec of CP[neg]. The nword in the complement clause of an adversative predicate must be in a spechead relationship with an X0[neg] as well (C[neg], in this case). This requirement can be satisfied if the postverbal nword and the nonovert operator are

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members of the same CHAIN8. According to this analysis, a sentence like (6b) has the structure in (15). La administración duda [CP Opi que[NEG] [IP el consejo apruebe ningunoi de estos proyectos]].

(15)

1. 3. Licensing of nwords in comparatives The negcriterion makes the prediction that nwords in the Spanish comparative are also licensed by X0[ ]. In this section, I show that this prediction is correct. Following Hazout’s (1995) NEG

analysis of comparative constructions in Hebrew, I argue that nwords in comparative constructions are in the Specifier of an elliptical C[neg]. Evidence for this analysis comes from the existence of two types of comparative constructions que comparatives (16a) and de comparatives9 (16b). These constructions have different syntactic properties, including the fact that de comparatives do not license nwords. Compare (17a)(17b) to the que comparative in (6a). (16) a.

(17) a.

El calor me molesta menos que el frío. The heat DAT disturbs less than the cold. ‘Hot temperatures disturb me less than cold temperatures.’ El calor me molesta menos de lo que me molestaba cuando era niño. The heat DAT disturbs less of the what DAT disturbed when was child ‘Hot weather bothers me less than it did when I was a child.’ *Esta niña corre más rápido de lo que pensaba nadie. This girl runs more fast of the what thought nbody ‘This girl runs faster than what anybody thought she would.’ *El calor me molesta menos [de lo que me molestaba nunca]. The heat DAT disturbs less of the what DAT disturbed ntime. ‘Hot weather bothers me less than it ever did.’

Syntactically different types of comparatives seem to have similar semantic properties. As many linguists have pointed out, the complement of a comparative construction can be a clause, as in (18a), or a phrase, as in (18b) (Hankamer 1973, Bresnan 1973, Napoli 1983, Hoeksema 1983). (18) a. b.

Pat ate more clams [S than he ate oysters]. Pat ate more clams [PP than oysters].

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

Hoeksema and Klein (1995) provide evidence from Dutch to argue that the phrasal as well as the clausal comparative are DE environments. In Dutch the NPI ook maar, ‘at all’ or ‘whatsoever’, can appear in the clausal comparative (19a), while the Dutch NPI enig can occur in the phrasal comparative (19b). In English as well, any can appear in either comparative construction (20a) (20b).10 (19) a. b. (20) a. b.

Het feest duurde langer dan ook maar iemand verwacht had. ‘The party lasted longer than anybody at all had expected.’ Hij deed meer voor ons dan enig ander. ’He did more for us that anyone else.’ This girl is smarter than what any boy judged her to be. That girl runs faster than anyone.

The DE analysis of Spanish nword licensing predicts that nwords should be able to appear in all comparative constructions, but this is not the case: de comparatives do not license nwords. I claim that this is because only que comparatives can satisfy the negcriterion. Following Price (1990), I argue that que comparatives are reduced clausal comparatives, while de comparatives are full clausal comparatives. Price’s evidence against a phrasal analysis of quecomparatives is that the material that follows que (the comparative complement) is not a wellbehaved prepositional complement. In addition to NPs, the comparative complement in a que comparative can also be an adverb (21a), and when a pronoun follows que it does not take the more customary oblique case required by Spanish prepositions (21b). (21) a.

Aquel hombre tenía antes más dinero que ahora. That man had before more money than now ‘That man had more money before than (he has) now.’ Aquel hombre tiene más dinero que yo/*mí. That man has more money than I/me ‘That man has more money than I (do).’

The comparative complement in a que comparative, then, is an elliptical CP. Hazout (1995) proposes an elliptical CP analysis of reduced clausal comparatives in Hebrew. Hebrew has two classes of comparative constructions, introduced by different markers of comparison: full clausal comparatives introduced by mi ma še ‘from what that’ (22a), and reduced clausal comparatives headed by miašer ‘than’ (22b).

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(22) a.

Dan axal yoter tapuxim [mi ma še Dina axla bananot]. Dan ate more apples than what that Dina ate bananas ‘Dan ate more apples than Dina ate bananas.’ Dan ohev et Dina yoter [miašer et Rina] Dan loves ACC Dina more than ACC Rina ‘Dan loves Dina more than (he loves) Rina.’

Hazout argues that a Hebrew macomparative is a full clausal comparative, with the structure in (23a). The complement of miašer in (22b) is not an NP, but rather an elliptical CP. The NP et Rina is in the Specifier of such CP. The structure of (22b) is represented in (23b). (23) a. b.

Dan axal yoter tapuxim [PP mi [CP ma še [IP Dina axla bananot]]]. [IP [IP Dan ohev et Dina yoter e] [PP miašer [CP [NP et Rina][C e]]]]

Spanish que comparatives, since they are elliptical CP comparatives on Price’s (1990) account, have the same structure as miašer comparatives. The phrase that follows que is located in the Spec of an elliptical CP, rather than being an immediate constituent of the PP headed by que. (24) gives the structure of (21b). (24)

[IP [IP Aquel hombre tiene más dinero] [PP que [CP [NP yo][C e]]]]

In this analysis, when an nword appears in a reduced clausal comparative it occupies the specifier of an elliptical CP. The nonovert head of this CP, I claim, is a C[neg] similar to the one that appears in the sentential complement of adversative predicates. The [neg] feature, in these two cases, must be understood as the syntactic encoding of a complementizer in a DE environment, rather than as the expression of logical negation. By occurring in the SpecC[neg], then, the nword in a comparative like (6a) satisfies the negcriterion. (6a) has the structure in (25). (25)

Esa niña corre más rápido [PP que [CP nadie e[NEG] ]].

In Hazout’s analysis of full clausal comparatives, on the other hand, there is an operator (ma) already filling the Spec of the embedded CP. A structure similar to that of (23a) can be assigned to Spanish clausal comparatives, with the neuter article lo occupying the Specifier of the embedded CP. The clausal comparative in (16b) will then have the structure in (26). (26)

El calor me molesta menos [PP de [CP lo que [IP me molestaba cuando era niño]]]

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

SpecCP in a clausal comparative, then, does not have an operator that is suitable to form a CHAIN with a postverbal nword. In this analysis, nwords in decomparatives fail to satisfy the negcriterion. This is the reason for the ungrammaticality of examples like (17a)(17b). The generalization that arises from examination of licensing of nwords by adversative predicates and in comparative constructions is that this is possible when SpecCP available for the nword to find itself in (in the case of que comparatives) or when there is an empty operator in SpecCP that forms a CHAIN with a postverbal nword (sentential complements of adversative predicates). If the Spec of CP is not available (as in the case of de comparatives or when the nword is a direct complement of the adversative predicate), then licensing of the n word fails. In the case of licensing of nwords by sentential negation, the postverbal nword must form a CHAIN with an operator in SpecNegP. If the dependency is established outside the local domain of the operator, then licensing is impossible. Assuming that the head of NegP and the CPs that occur in the complement of adversative predicates and comparatives (i.e. in DE contexts) share a feature [neg], then the negcriterion offers the most general account of the syntactic constraints on nword licensing. The prediction this analysis makes is that there may be other DE environments that should in principle be able to license nwords in Spanish, but fail to do so because of syntactic reasons (i.e. no SpecXP[neg] available for the nword to satisfy the negcriterion). In the next section I will examine some of these cases.

1. 4. Licensing of nwords in other DE environments Earlier work on negative polarity in Spanish (Bosque 1980, 1984, Laka 1990, Piñar 1995, Suñer 1995) pays more attention to the semantic properties that characterize the contexts that license n words in Spanish and polarity items across languages. These works underscore the fact that n words and other NPIs, English any for instance, are licensed in DE environments. They conclude that there are no significant differences among NPIs between English and Spanish, which leads them to overlook some of the empirical factors under discussion here. Thus, the fact that nwords can appear in comparative constructions is taken as an indication that they are indeed NPIs in Bosque (1980) and Laka (1990), since comparative constructions license NPIs in English (Hoeksema 1983). But this conclusion is not immediately warranted, because only que comparatives license nwords. The existence of the other type of comparative construction, the decomparative, and the fact that it does not license nwords, is for the most part ignored in the main works on the subject on Spanish, but similar facts have been pointed out for French (Muller 1983:286).11 The examples in (17a)(17b) are important in that they give clear evidence that the set of contexts that licenses Spanish nwords is narrower than the set of contexts that licenses English NPIs, i.e. the set of DE environments12. There are other environments that license NPIs in English but fail to do so in Spanish, in addition to clausal comparatives. Conditionals, questions, the restriction of certain quantifiers,

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and the scope of focus particles, for instance, are DE contexts that license NPIs in English but not nwords in Spanish13. (27) a. b. c. d. (28) a.

If anyone can move that stone, I’ll be amazed. Have you talked to anyone today? Everyone who had any interest in the election showed up for the rally. Only now do I have any thoughts on this matter. *Si invitas a ninguno de tus amigos, me iré a casa. If invite to none of your friends, REFL go to home ‘If you invite any of your friends, I will go home.’ *Has hablado con nadie hoy? Have talked with nbody today? ‘Have you talked to anyone today?’ *Todo conductor que haya recibido ninguna multa debe tomar clases de manejo. Every driver that has gotten none ticket must attend courses of driving ‘Every driver who got any tickets must attend driving school.’ *Sólo ahora comprendo nada acerca de macroeconomía. Only now understand nthing about macroeconomics ‘Only now do I understand anything about macroeconomics.’

I suggest here that the sentences in (28a)(28d) incur violations of the negcriterion, which results in their ungrammaticality. That is, the nwords fail to be licensed in these cases because of syntactic reasons, not semantic reasons. In these sentences there is no SpecXP[neg] available for the nword to satisfy the negcriterion. In the restriction of the universal quantifier, for instance, a silent operator introducing the relative clause sits in SpecCP, making it impossible for the postverbal nword to form a chain in a specifierhead relationship with a [neg] head. Similar arguments can be given for the exclusion of nwords from the other environments in (28a)(28d). The goal of this section was to specify the syntactic conditions for NPI licensing in Spanish, identifying those environments that fail to license nwords because of syntactic reasons. N words, I have argued, must satisfy the negcriterion. The same is true for niminimizers. With this aspect of the licensing problem taken care of, it is possible now to move ahead in the discussion of the finegrained differences between nwords and niminimizers, and the semantic features of the triggers for one class or the other. This is the topic of the next sections of the paper.

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

2. Scalar and nonscalar NPIs in Spanish

2. 1. The licensing problem: Antiveridicality, niminimizers, and nwords As stated in section 1, nwords and niminimizers do not behave alike in the comparative and in the sentential complement of dudar, from which niminimizers are excluded. Examples (6a) and (6b), repeated below for the reader’s convenience, illustrate the point. (29) a.

Esa niña corre más rápido que nadie/*ni una liebre. That girl runs more fast than none/ni a hare ‘That girl runs faster than anyone/even a hare.’ Dudo que venga ninguno de tus amigos/*ni tu mejor amigo. doubt that comes none of your friends/ni your best friend ‘I doubt any of your friends/even your best friend will come’

This phenomenon is not particular to Spanish. In many languages, polarity items display a selective preference for certain triggers over others. A rich body of work searches for the best way to characterize such selective sensitivity. Zwarts (1981), Hoeksema (1983), and Van der Wouden (1997), argue that a hierarchy of triggers in Dutch polarity dependencies can be determined on account of the trigger’s boolean properties. There is a subset of the DE operators, the antiadditive ones, which map disjunctions onto conjunctions, and also a subset of the anti additive operators, the antimorphic ones, which map conjunctions into disjunctions. The Dutch NPIs kunnen uitstand ‘can stand’, ook maar ‘anything’, and the Dutch idiomatic adjective mals ‘tender’ are sensitive to the difference. Kunnen uitstaan is a ‘weak’ NPI, since it can be licensed by all DE operators. Ook maar, on the other hand, is an NPI of ‘medium strength’, since it can only be licensed by those DE operators which are also antiadditive. Finally, mals can only be licensed by antimorphic operators. Ladusaw (1992) applies this theory to negative concord languages, arguing that Romance nwords and ‘negative’ expressions like nobody or nothing in nonstandard English dialects are indefinites licensed by an antimorphic operator. Giannakidou (1998) observes a contrast between Greek NPIs and affective polarity items, (API), which can only be distinguished phonologically by the fact that APIs do not bear emphatic stress. Both types of Greek PSIs (exemplified by kanena ‘any’, in small caps when stressed) can appear in the scope of negation (30a), but only APIs may appear in the sentential complement of adversative predicates or in comparative constructions.

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(30) a.

O papus dhen idhe kanena/KANENA apo ta egonia tu. the grandpa not saw any from the grandchildren his ‘Grandpa didn’t see any of his grandchildren.’ Arnithike oti idhe tipota/*TIPOTA. denied that saw anything ’He denied that he saw anything.’ Apodhixtike pjo eksipni apoti perimene kanenas/*KANENAS proved more intelligent than expected anybody ’She turned out to be more intelligent than anybody expected.’

Following concepts introduced by Zwarts (1995), Giannakidou argues that antiveridicality is the semantic property that distinguishes the contexts that license emphatic NPIs from those that do not. I repeat the definitions below, for the reader’s benefit. (31) a. b.

An operator F is antiveridical iff F(p) p An operator F is nonveridical iff (F(p)  p)

Sentential negation is antiveridical, but contexts like the sentential complement of an adversative predicate and comparatives are nonveridical. Both types of Greek polaritysensitive items (APIs and NPIs) can appear in the scope of antiveridical operators, but APIs can also appear in the scope of nonveridical operators. In most cases, nonveridical contexts and DE contexts overlap, but Giannakidou argues that nonveridicality is more empirically accurate to describe the contexts that license NPIs in Greek14. Antiveridicality is also the property that distinguishes the environments that license ni minimizers and nwords from those that only license nwords. Sentential negation, which is the prototypical antiveridical operator, licenses both types of NPI. The triggers that license nwords but fail to license niminimizers, on the other hand, are characterized by the weaker property nonveridicality. Adversative predicates, which license only nwords, do not entail the truth of their sentential complement. They do not entail the falsity of their sentential complements either, a fact that shows that they are not antiveridical. Likewise, comparatives do not entail the truth (or falsity) of their complements, once the elliptical material is replenished. These observations can be summarized in the generalization in (33). (32) a.

López duda que [Gómez haya llegado a tiempo] = T ‘L. doubts that G arrived on time.’  Gómez llegó a tiempo = T  F ‘G arrived on time.’

Polarity and Scalar Semantics b

María corre más rápido que Pedro = T  Pedro corre (rápido) = T F ‘M. runs faster than P.’ ‘P. runs fast.’ Antiveridicality Generalization: a. Niminimizers are licensed in antiveridical contexts. b. Nwords are licensed in nonveridical contexts.

(33)

This analysis predicts that if there is another environment which can license NPIs in Spanish and is antiveridical, then it should be able to license both niminimizers and nwords. Considering the entailments in (34a) and (34b), the prepositions antes (de) ‘before’ and sin ‘without’ are antiveridical15. These environments license nwords, and, as predicted, niminimizers as well (35a)(35b). (34) a. b. (35) a.

López entró sin [saludar a Gómez] = T  López saludó a Gómez = F ‘L. came in without greeting G.’ ‘L. greeted G.’ Nos fuimos antes de que nos pegaran = T  Nos pegaron = F ‘We left before they beat us up.’ ‘They beat us up.’ López salió sin saludar a nadie/ni al anfitrión. Lopez left without greeting to nbody/ni tothe host ‘López left without saying goodbye to anyone/not even to the host.’ Atraparon al ladrón antes de que robara nada/ni un alfiler. Caught tothe thief before of that stole nthing/ni a pin ’They caught the thief before he stole anything/not even a pin.’

2. 2. The sensitivity problem: Scalar and nonscalar polarity items The antiveridical generalization in (33) takes care of the ’licensing problem’, that is, the issue of what are the features that characterize the contexts that have different licensing properties. The other side of the coin, in Israel’s (1996) terms, is the ’sensitivity’ problem, i.e. what are the features that characterize the different NPIs. In this section I argue that the key concept is the difference between scalar and nonscalar items. There is an abundant literature on scalar semantics, which bears directly on the study of polarity. Adverbs like still and already (Michaelis 1993), particles like even (Kay 1990), and the adverb almost itself (Anscombre 1989, Lundquist and Jarvella 1994, Van der Wouden 1997) have been analyzed as scalar items. In the field of polarity sensitivity, Fauconnier (1975), Horn and Lee (1995), and Horn (2000) analyze English any as an expression denoting the lowest point in a scale. Fauconnier notices a parallelism between any and superlatives when they are "used with the logical value of

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quantifiers" [1975: 355]. hence the equivalence between (36a) and (36b). (36) a. b.

He did not hear the faintest noise. He did not hear any noise.

To account for this similarity, Fauconnier suggests that the semantics of any is that of a bottom ofscale superlative, an expression denoting the lowest point on an arbitrary scale pragmatically associated with the predicate of the clause. Developing Fauconnier’s ideas further, Israel (1996, 2001) distinguishes between those NPIs that denote the low end and those that denote the high end of a quantity scale. The former include minimizers like a wink, and the latter quantifiers like much. Their use in negative contexts is illustrated by (37a) and (37b). (37) a. b.

Margo didn’t sleep a wink before her big test. Margo didn’t sleep much before her big test.

Rullmann (1996) suggests that some NPIs in Dutch, which he calls evenNPIs, are also scalar. But he distinguishes these from whNPIs, which are nonscalar. Dutch scalar NPIs consist of an indefinite preceded by the particle ook maar, and the nonscalar NPIs consist of a whphrase followed by the expression dan ook. (38) a.

Niemand heeft met ook maar een student gesproken. Nobody has with not even one student spoken ‘Nobody has talked to even one student’. Niemand heeft met welke student dan ook gesproken. Nobody has with which student at all spoken ‘Nobody has spoken with any student’.

Rullmann notices several differences between evenNPIs and whNPIs. First, the interpretation of evenNPIs is sensitive to focus, but the interpretation of whNPIs is not. Second, with numerals greater than one, only evenNPIs give rise to scalar presuppositions. Third, measure nouns like een minut ‘a minute’ and minimizers like een rode cent ‘a red cent’ can only be used with evenNPIs. These facts, Rullmann argues, can be accounted for if evenNPIs are scalar, but whNPIs are not. Individual items and lexical classes, then, show great variation as to how their semantics is evaluated against a scalar model, both within a language and crosslinguistically. Grammatical contrasts among expressions with similar shape, meaning, function, or distribution, can be the result of contrasting sensitivity to scalar models (quantity versus kind), or lack of scalar semantics altogether. Spanish polarity items also display variation in scalarity. Niminimizers are

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

inherently scalar. Its use in a sentence like (5b) entails that one’s worst enemy is the most likely person that one would hurt. The examples in (39a) and (39b) also point to the scalar nature of ni. This focus particle can appear with measure nouns like hora ‘hour’, and is used in idiomatic minimizers like ni pío ‘not a peep’, meaning ‘not a word’. Similar properties characterize scalar NPIs in Dutch, according to Rullmann (1996). (39) a.

La tormenta no duró ni media hora. The storm not lasted ni half hour ‘The storm didn’t even last a half hour.’ Los alumnos no dijeron ni pío. The students not said ni chirp ‘The students didn’t even utter a peep.’

When nwords are considered, however, their nature is equivocal. Some nwords seem to behave like scalar NPIs, others like nonscalar NPIs. This observation is one of the main issues this paper is intended to bring up. The equivocal nature of nwords becomes apparent with respect to the distribution of the adverb casi ’almost’. Casi can modify nwords in negative sentences (in both pre and postverbal position), and in the clausal complement of sin ’without’ and antes ’before’, but not in the complement of adversative predicates or in comparatives. Compare (40a)(40c) with (40d)(40e). (40) a.

Casi nadie vino a la fiesta. Almost none came to the party ‘Almost nobody came to the party’ Carlos no bebe casi nunca. Carlos not drinks almost never ‘Carlos almost never drinks.’ Carlos vino a la fiesta sin avisar(le) a casi nadie. Carlos came to the party without tellDAT to almost none ‘Carlos came to the party without telling almost anyone.’ *Esa niña corre más rápido que casi nadie. That girl runs more fast than almost none ‘That girl runs faster than almost anyone.’ *Dudo que venga casi nadie a la fiesta. Doubt that come almost none to the party ‘I doubt that almost anyone will come to the party.’

The generalization that arises from these data is that ‘casi + nword’ phrases are only licensed in

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antiveridical environments, and they are excluded from strictly nonveridical contexts. This is the same distribution that niminimizers have. To account for this generalization, it is necessary to consider that casi presupposes a scalar model16. Casi can modify nwords only in those contexts in which the scalar NPI ni can occur, I suggest, because nwords are scalar in the scope of an antiveridical operator, but nonscalar in the scope of a strictly nonveridical operator. I propose the following hypothesis about the variety of NPI licensing in Spanish: (41)

Scalar Polarity Licensing Hypothesis: In Spanish, NPIs licensed in antiveridical contexts are scalar, those licensed in strictly nonveridical contexts are not scalar.

This proposal, however, introduces a contextual ambiguity in the treatment of nwords, since depending on the context nwords are scalar or nonscalar. To solve this ambiguity, I suggest that nwords can incorporate a silent ni, which contributes the scalar semantics to the nword. The idea that scalar NPIs are indefinites that incorporate a polarized EVEN is not original. Following Schmerling (1971), Heim (1984) argues that an NPI like so much as X (where X may be an NP like a dime) is equivalent to even so much as X. Lee and Horn (1994), Horn and Lee (1995), and Horn (2000), suggest a similar analysis for English any, which, they argue, is an endofscale indefinite of the form ’a ____, even the Xest’. In Hindi, the compositional nature of scalar NPIs is apparent in their morphology. Hindi NPIs like koii bhii ’anyone’ or kuch bhii ’anything’ consist of an ’emphatic’ particle bhii ’even’ and an indefinite koii ’someone’ or kuch ’something’ (Lahiri 1998). Likewise, ni (or, rather, the semantic features associated with it) can incorporate to an nword, yielding a scalar indefinite, but only where ni is independently licensed, i.e. in antiveridical contexts. In strictly nonveridical contexts the silent ni, which is responsible for the scalar interpretation of other polarity items, is absent, since it cannot be licensed there. In this analysis, there is no ambiguity in the semantics of nwords, and the fact that niminimizers and scalar nwords have the same distribution is predicted.

2. 3. An alternative: Zanuttini’s ambiguity analysis There is an alternative analysis of the nature of Romance nwords, which takes into account their contrasting properties in negative and in nonnegative contexts. Zanuttini (1989) notices that Italian quasi ‘almost’, like its Spanish cognate and synonym casi, can modify nwords in negative sentences, but not in other contexts such as the interrogative. (42) a.

(Quasi) nessuno ha telefonato. (almost) nbody has telephoned ‘(Almost) nobody has called.’

Polarity and Scalar Semantics b.

Non ha telefonato (quasi) nessuno. not has telephoned (almost) nbody ‘(Almost) nobody has called.’ Ha telefonato (*quasi) nessuno? has telephoned (almost) nbody ‘Has (almost) anybody called?’

Based on these data and on the assumption that quasi only modifies universal quantifiers, Zanuttini concludes that the nwords that appear in negative contexts in Italian are universal quantifiers, while those that appear in nonnegative contexts (such as interrogatives) are existential quantifiers, more similar to English NPIs17. Assuming a lexical and grammatical that equivalence between Spanish casi and Italian quasi 18 , it should be possible to carry over Zanuttini’s existential/universal analysis of Italian nwords to Spanish. The existential/universal analysis misses a generalization, however, since the identical distribution of niminimizers and ‘casi + nword’ must be stipulated. Moreover, the existential/universal analysis cannot account for the fact that casi can modify nwords in existential sentences (43), which disallow universal quantifiers (Suñer 1995). No había casi nadie en la exposición. [Suñer 1995:#32a] not was almost nbody at the exhibition ‘There was almost nobody at the exhibition.’

(43)

The fact still remains that Spanish casi, like its equivalents in other languages, can modify universal quantifiers (44a), but it cannot occur with existential quantifiers (44b). (44) a.

Hemos vendido casi todo. have sold almost everything ‘We have sold almost everything.’ *Hemos vendido casi algo. have sold almost something ‘We have sold almost something.’

Under the hypothesis that casi is a scalar operator, these facts can be explained if universal quantifiers denote the extreme point of a quantity scale (‘every X’ meaning ‘the largest quantity of X’), but existential quantifiers do not (‘some quantity of X’ does not mean ‘the smallest quantity of X’).

Raúl Aranovich

2. 4. Additional evidence for the existence of two types of nwords: mass terms Another test for the existence of two kinds of nwords in Spanish is the ability of an nword to combine with a mass noun. In Spanish, when a mass noun combines with a universal quantifier it takes on a definite article, and when the mass noun combines with an existential quantifier it appears as the complement of the preposition de ‘of’. An nword can also take a mass term as a complement, in a negative sentence like (45c). (45) a. b.

La niña bebió toda la leche. ‘The girl drunk all the milk.’ López ha bebido algo de vino. López has drunk some of wine ‘López has drunk some wine’ Nadie ha bebido nada de vino. Nbody has drunk nthing of wine ‘Nobody has drunk any wine.’

The distribution of nwords with mass terms mirrors the distribution of casi + nword phrases and niminimizers. Antiveridical contexts like the negative sentence in (45c) and the nonfinite complement of sin license them, but strictly nonveridical contexts like the complement of adversative predicates (46b) or comparative construction (46c) do not. (46) a.

Carlos vino a la fiesta sin haber bebido nada de vino. Carlos came to the party without having drunk nthing of wine ‘Carlos came to the party without having had any wine.’ *Dudo que haya nada de vino en la fiesta. Doubt that thereis nthing of wine in the party ‘I doubt there will be any wine at the party.’ *Un poco de agua te hará mejor que nada de vino. A bit of water DAT do better than nthing of wine ‘A little bit of water will do you better than any wine.’

The hypothesis that nwords are scalar in antiveridical contexts but nonscalar in the scope of strictly nonveridical operators makes it possible to account for the distribution of mass terms in a most general way: mass terms can only combine with scalar nwords, not with nonscalar n words. If there was no distinction between scalar and nonscalar nwords, then the similarity in distribution between niminimizers, casi + nword phrases, and nword + mass term phrases would have to be stipulated, since mass terms are excluded from strictly nonveridical contexts

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

only when they are in combination with nwords. (47)

López bebe más agua que vino. ’López drinks more water than wine.’

Comparatives, like modals and habitual statements, are generic contexts. In comparatives, generic indefinites give rise to a ‘superlative’ reading19. (48) means that the girl runs faster than the fastest of hares. (48)

Esta niña corre más rápido que una liebre This girl runs more fast than a hare ‘This girl runs faster than a hare.’

If my suggestion that nwords in strictly nonveridical contexts are nonscalar indefinites, then the generalization that they receive the same ‘generic’ interpretation as indefinite NPs in those contexts follows naturally. The generic reading of nwords in comparatives explains their inability to combine with mass terms. Following Krifka et al. (1995) I assume that neither mass terms nor bare plurals can be used as generic NPs the way singular indefinites can. In generic statements, mass terms and bare plurals are kindreferring expressions, more akin to definite NPs. This definite, kindreferring sense of a mass term in the comparative is incompatible with the indefinite generic reading of the nwords that appear in the comparative. A question that arises at this point is why is a kindscale interpretation impossible for nwords with mass terms in the comparative.20 The answer is already at hand: nonscalar nwords do not have a scalar interpretation, not even against a kindscale model. When scalar nwords combine with mass terms, on the other hand, a scalar reading arises. In a sentence like (45c) the combination of the mass term vino ‘wine’ with the nword nada is evaluated against a quantity scale, denoting the consumption of not even the smallest quantity of wine. Crucially (45c) cannot be interpreted against a kind scale, expressing the fact that not even the least likely kind of wine to be served (Cabernet, Pinot, Chardonnay, etc.) was consumed.

3. Explaining the distribution of Spanish NPIs

3. 1. Widening and strengthening: an explanation for polarity sensitivity. The question that NPI licensing poses to linguistic theory is not just where NPIs are licensed, but why. One line of thought argues that NPIs have limited distribution because of contradictory

Raúl Aranovich

semantic and pragmatic requirements. Kadmon and Landman (1993), for instance, suggest that English NPIs must make reference to even the most marginal cases in their denotation (what they call semantic widening), but that at the same time the clause with the NPI must provide more information than the corresponding clause without any (what they call pragmatic strengthening). In upwardentailing contexts widening clashes with strengthening, since semantic widening weakens the sentence the NPI occurs in. It is only in DE contexts where by widening the denotation the sentence is strengthened. Explanations for polarity sensitivity similar to Kadmon and Landman’s (1993) are also presented in works dealing with other languages and other polarity items (Heim 1984, Krifka 1992, Lahiri 1998), but as more data showing the diversity of polarity sensitive phenomena are brought up in the literature, the quest to find an explanation for polarity sensitivity becomes more complex. The question is now why are certain NPIs sensitive to some subsets of the environments that reverse information relations among propositions. The answer may be that the semantic and pragmatic requirements of NPIs are more diverse that initially thought. Israel (1996, 2001) follows this lead to explain why certain English polaritysensitive items with apparently opposite meanings tend to be licensed in those environments that reverse entailments. Israel distinguishes between emphatic NPIs like a wink, and understaters like much. These NPIs, Israel argues, are associated with two opposite informational values, also defined over a scalar model (for a characterization of the notion of scalar model, see discussion of Kay’s (1990) treatment of even shortly after this). Emphatic NPIs must strengthen the proposition in which they appear (i.e. the proposition has to be more informative) with respect to a contextually salient proposition. Understaters, on the other hand, must appear in a proposition that is weaker than the contextually salient proposition. The only contexts in which a minimizer can be used for emphasis and a highend scalar item can be used as an understater are precisely those in which informational scalar values are reversed. (49) a. b. c.

Margo didn’t sleep a wink before her big test. Margo didn’t sleep much before her big test. Margo didn’t sleep before her big test.

In this section I argue that a contradiction between the semantic and the informational (i.e. pragmatic) requirements of scalar nwords in Spanish is what restricts them to appear in the scope of antiveridical operators. My account, then, follows in the spirit of Kadmon and Landman’s (1993) approach. But to explain the more restricted distribution of scalar NPIs in Spanish, I suggest that niminimizers and scalar nwords are subject to a stronger informational requirement than runofthemill NPIs. Scalar NPIs are limited to occur in the scope of antiveridical operators, I claim, because they must be used to communicate a denial of contextually salient alternatives.

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

To understand the pragmatic requirements on scalar NPIs in Spanish I assume Kay’s (1990) characterization of a scalar model, which he uses in his analysis of the English scalar operator even. Scalar models are structured sets of propositions, such that a proposition in the model entails another if an argument of the former is lower than an argument of the latter in a relevant pragmatic scale. As a convention, I will place the least likely element to satisfy a predicate closer to the origin or bottom of a scale. Given a scale S of arithmetic operations of increased difficulty, for instance, an assertion about an ability lower down the scale entails an assertion about an ability higher up, as in (50b) and (50c). (50) a. b. c.

S: multiply < add < count He knows how to add  He knows how to count. He knows how to multiply  He knows how to add.

A scalar operator like even can be used in a sentence if the proposition that sentence expresses (the text proposition TP) is more informative than (i.e. it entails) one of the alternative propositions the scalar model provides (the context proposition CP). A CP can be presented as a question that requires a TP as its answer. The TP in (51b) is an adequate answer to the CP in (51a), then, but (51c) is not, given the entailments in (50b) and (50c) (51) a. b. c.

Does he know how to add? Yes, he even knows how to multiply. #Yes, he even knows how to count.

In a simple affirmative sentence like (51b), as in other UE environments, even is associated with a low point in the presupposed scale, while in the CP this argument is exchanged for one higher up in the same scale. This ensures that even satisfies the strengthening requirement, because entailments flow upwards, from the lower elements in a scale to the higher ones. DE operators, on the other hand, reverse the direction of entailments. The status of the term associated with even must change accordingly, to satisfy the strengthening requirement. Under negation, for instance, even must be associated with a higher scalar item. The appropriate response to (51a) is (52b), not (52a). The requirements on even, then, can be summarized in a condition like (53). (52) a. b. (53)

#No, he doesn’t even know how to multiply. No, he doesn’t even know how to add. Given a scale p1 < p2 < ... < pn (such that pi  pi+1), even can appear in a complex proposition of the form f(pi) (where f is possibly null) if this proposition entails a contextually salient proposition f(pj).

Raúl Aranovich

If f is an upwardentailing operator, then pi will entail pj. If f is a downwardentailing operator, pj will entail pi. Adding the provision that f may be null (i.e. f is just an assertion operator) extends this condition to those cases in which even occurs in simple statements like (51b). A strengthening requirement alone is not enough to account for the behavior of ’polarized’ scalar items, like English as much as. This NPI can occur in DE contexts, but not in UE ones. (54) a. b.

#This restaurant charges as much as a dime for iceberg lettuce. If this restaurant charges as much as a dime for iceberg lettuce, i’ll leave.

Like even, as much as is an emphatic item. But in addition to this pragmatic requirement, as much as is a minimizer, i.e. it can only be associated with an argument that is relatively high in a pragmatic scale. Thus, as much as can only satisfy the strengthening requirement in DE contexts. Returning to the example in (54b), a dime seems to be the most likely price to be charged for a worthless garnish such as iceberg lettuce. A sentence like (55a), then, is more informative than a sentence like (55b), because a higher, less likely charge for iceberg lettuce is certain to cause the reaction expressed in the main clause of the conditional. This is what licenses the NPI in (54b). The condition in (56), then, accounts for the polarity sensitivity of as much as. (55) a. b. (56)

If this restaurant charges a dime for iceberg lettuce, I’ll leave. If this restaurant charges a dollar for iceberg lettuce, I’ll leave. Given a scale p1 < p2 < ... < pn (such that pi  pi+1), as much as can appear in a complex proposition of the form f(pj) if this proposition entails a contextually salient proposition f(pi), such that i < j.

3. 2. Licensing of scalar NPIs in Spanish Like other scalar NPIs, niminimizers and scalar nwords are emphatic items that associate with an element higher up in a pragmatic scale. This explains why they are excluded from simple assertions, or from other UE environments, but it is not enough to account for the fact that they have a more restricted distribution than English scalar NPIs like as much as. The Spanish scalar NPIs can only appear in a subset of the nonveridical environments, which I have characterized as the scope of antiveridical operators. Assuming that Spanish scalar NPIs are associated with a minimal element in a pragmatic scale, then the requirement that they occur in a sentence expressing a proposition that is more informative than a contextually available alternative is too weak. My analysis is that niminimizers and scalar nwords are subject to a more stringent informational requirement: the proposition expressed by the sentence containing the scalar NPI (i.e. the TP) must be used to deny all the alternative, more informative propositions made

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

available in the scalar model (i.e. the CPs). This requirement, added to the scalar presuppositions of niminimizers and scalar nwords, accounts for their restriction to antiveridical contexts. The condition that accounts for this is stated in (57). (57)

Given a scale p1 < p2 < ... < pn (such that pi  pi+1), ni can appear in a complex proposition of the form f(pj) if this proposition entails a contextually salient proposition pi, such that i < j.

(57) states that niminimizers and scalar nwords must entail the falsity of all CPs associated with the scalar presupposition of the NPIs. Given a CP pi, such that there is a proposition pj that entails it in a scalar model, pi can be denied (in the sense that its falsity follows from) by the negation of the weaker proposition pj. But if pj is in a context that is strictly nonveridical, instead of antiveridical, then the falsity of pj does not follow, and neither does the falsity of the propositions that entail pj, as stated in (58). This is because the truth of a complex statement of the form f(p), where f is an antiveridical operator, entails the falsity of p, but if f is an antiveridical (or a DE) operator then p can be true or false. (58)

Given two propositions p, q such that p q, and two functions F, F’ such that F is antiveridical and F’ is nonveridical, then a. F(q) p, and b. F'(q)  (p  p).

A sentence like (59b), for instance, does not entail the falsity of (59c) (the sentential complement of the adversative predicate), or the falsity of any of the sentences that result from replacing contar 'count' by the more informative sumar 'add' or multiplicar 'multiply', for that matter. In nonveridical environments like the sentential complement of an adversative predicate, then, the informational requirement on niminimizers (and scalar nwords) is not satisfied, and this is the reason why (59a) is ungrammatical. (59) a.

*Dudo [que López sepa ni contar]. doubt that López knows ni count ’I doubt Lopez knows even how to count.’ Dudo [que López sepa contar]. doubt that López knows count ’I doubt Lopez knows how to count.' López sabe contar. López knows count ’Lopez knows how to count.’

Raúl Aranovich

Giannakidou (2003) suggests an alternative explanation for the restriction of scalar NPIs to the scope of antiveridical operators. Her analysis of the Greek scalar NPI oute kan rests on the idea that this NPI has a presupposition of nonexistence. Like Spanish ni, oute kan is a minimizer with an emphatic requirement, and is also restricted to antiveridical contexts. Building on Rooth’s (1985) analysis of even,21 Giannakidou suggests that oute kan has a scalar presupposition and also a presupposition of nonexistence. A sentence like (60a), then, has the conjunctive presupposition in (60b) (the proposition C(x) insures that the individuals considered are contextually relevant): (60) a.

O pritanis dhen proskalese oute kan ti Maria. The dean not invited even the Mary ’The Dean did not invite even Mary.’ Presupposition of oute kan a) nonexistence of alternatives: x(x  Mary  C(x)  invite(Dean, x)) b) reversed scalar implicature: x(x  Marylikely(invite(Dean, Mary))  likely (invite(Dean, x)))

The presupposition of nonexistence for oute kan states that (60a) can only be true or false if, besides Mary, no one else was invited by the Dean. The fact that Mary was not invited by the Dean is what (60a) asserts. The reversed scalar implicature, in conjunction with a strengthening requirement on oute kan, ensures that this NPI will not be felicitous in UE contexts. Giannakidou’s analysis of the more stringent requirement on oute kan, i.e. the fact that it can only appear in the scope of antiveridical operators, is that these are the only environments that can satisfy the presupposition of nonexistence of alternatives she associates with oute kan. On this point, however, Giannakidou’s analysis may fall short. DE (or nonveridical) operators do not presuppose or entail the truth or falsity of their propositional arguments. A sentence like (61a) does not presuppose that the restriction of the universal quantifier, paraphrased in (61b), is true or false. But even if (61b) is false, the truth of (61a) can be asserted, albeit vacuously. This means that given a scale of mathematical skills, a sentence like (61a) entails (62a), even if (61b) and the more informative presupposition of (62a), presented in (62b), are false. (61) a. b. (62) a. b.

Everyone who knows how to add will solve this equation. Someone knows how to add. Everyone who knows how to multiply will solve this equation. Someone knows how to multiply.

That is, no matter whether anyone knows any math, if minimal skills (i.e. counting) are enough to solve the problem, more advanced skills (multiplying) should suffice too. Universal

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

quantifiers do not presuppose the truth (or falsity) of their restriction, and they can be used meaningfully even if the restriction is false, reversing the restriction’s entailments. I see no reason, then, to argue that the informational requirement of oute kan is not satisfied in nonveridical contexts like the restriction of universal quantifiers, even with the assumption that the presupposition of nonexistence of alternatives holds. Giannakidou’s analysis, then, does not exclude oute kan (and the equivalent Spanish scalar NPIs) from nonveridical contexts. But if the falsity of all the alternative propositions the scalar model makes available is not presupposed, but rather entailed by oute kan as part of its informational requirements, as I have suggested in my analysis of Spanish niminimizers and scalar nwords, then the restriction of oute kan to the scope of antiveridical operators is accounted for.

3. 3. Licensing of nonscalar polarity items. Most semantic explanations for the polarity sensitivity of emphatic NPIs assume that their denotation is the weakest, least surprising individual in a model, and that this weakness comes from being at the top of a pragmatic scale. But this brings up a pressing issue: are all polarity sensitive items scalar? The issue of the scalar nature of English any is particularly contentious. For some, any is a scalar item (cf. the proposals of Fauconnier 1975, Horn and Lee 1995, and Horn 2000, which I summarized in section 3. 2.), but the issue of whether polarity sensitivity always presupposes a scalar semantics is not settled. Szabolcsi (2004) suggests that NPIs are scalar, but PPIs like someone/something are not, their sensitivity to polarity being grounded in ’referential’ semantics. Others, however, argue that any is not a scalar item at all. For Rullmann (1996) English any behaves like the nonscalar whNPIs he identifies in Dutch. Heim (1984) finds evidence to distinguish NPIs like any from scalar NPIs like so much as X, which she analyzes as having a silent even (Following Schmerling 1971). Her argument is that while even NPIs sound odd when there is no relevant connection between the pragmatic scale presupposed by the NPI and its context, that relevant connection seems to be unnecessary for anyNPIs. Hence the contrast between (63a) and (63b). For this reason, she rejects the idea that anyNPIs include a silent even (Lahiri 1998 expresses similar doubts about Horn and Lee’s 1995 claim). (63) a. b.

#Every restaurant that charges as much as a dime for iceberg lettuce has four stars in the guide. Every restaurant that charges anything for iceberg lettuce has four stars in the guide.

Krifka (1990) states the distinction between anyNPIs and evenNPIs like (not) a drop, lift a finger, etc., in a different way. In his analysis, all NPIs are the minimal element of a polarity

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lattice, which can be informally characterized as an ordering among denotations of the same sort as the NPI. But while the polarity lattice for evenNPIs is ordered according to a pragmatic scale, the polarity lattice for anyNPIs (which Krifka calls an inclusion lattice) is not. "The ordering of inclusion lattices can be associated with a very general relation, namely, set inclusion. In contrast, the ordering relations of noninclusion lattices seem to be rather idiosyncratic. They are related to orderings such as quantities of matter, monetary value, or amounts of labor." (Krifka 1990:169) The distinction between inclusion lattices and idiosyncratic lattices may explain the contrast between (63a) and (63b). Since the property that is responsible for the low ’scalar’ value of any NPIs is not tied to an idiosyncratic pragmatic scale, then the issue of the relevance of the DE environment for the scalar property of the NPI does not arise. While I believe that Krifka’s claim that all polarity items presuppose a polarity lattice is to strong, I think his analysis of the difference between evenNPIs and anyNPIs shows that a lexical item need not be associated with a pragmatic scale to be semantically weak. What I mean by semantically weak is that the item’s presence in a sentence results in a proposition that is not very informative. But instead of evaluating the informative strength of the proposition against that of the alternatives a scalar model makes available, the informative strength of a sentence containing a nonscalar NPI is measured in general logical terms. Armed with this notion of semantic weakness, the reasons for the limited distribution of nonscalar NPIs can be understood. One of the claims I presented in this paper is that the nwords that appear in strictly nonveridical contexts in Spanish are nonscalar, that they do not presuppose a scalar model. In previous sections I explained the distribution of scalar NPIs as a way to resolve the conflict between their low scalar value and their high informational value. The distribution of nonscalar nwords can be accounted for in a similar way, replacing the notion of a low scalar value with the notion of semantic weakness. I suggest, then, that nonscalar nwords are existential quantifiers with an emphatic informational requirement. Nwords must strengthen the statement they appear in. But existential quantifiers are the weakest (or least informative) operators in the language. An existentially quantified propositional function can be interpreted as the disjunction of all propositions obtained by replacing the variable in the function by each individual in the domain (64a). A disjunction is entailed by each of the disjoint propositions (64b), and each proposition is in turn entailed by the conjunction of all of them (64c). (64) a. b. c.

x(Px)  Pa  Pb  ...  Pn Pa  Pa  Pb  ...  Pn; Pn  Pa  Pb  ...  Pn Pa  Pb  ...  Pn  Pa; Pa  Pb  ...  Pn  Pn

Polarity and Scalar Semantics

In a boolean model, then, existentially quantified propositions are the least informative ones. To satisfy the strengthening requirement, emphatic existential quantifiers like nonscalar nwords must occur in the scope of nonveridical (or DE) operators. Given that the weak semantic value of nonscalar nwords does not spring from being the minimal (or higher) element in a scale, they do not presuppose existence of alternatives either. In the previous section I argued that niminimizers and scalar nwords are restricted to the scope of antiveridical operators because they entail the falsity of the alternative propositions the scalar model makes available. If nonscalar nwords do not presuppose alternatives, however, their informational value cannot have this additional entailment. This predicts that nonveridical contexts (as opposed to antiveridical ones) are the narrowest contexts that can license nonscalar NPIs. The existence of a contrast between scalar and nonscalar NPIs in Spanish is one of the central claims in this paper. What I have shown in this section is that the distinction is not only empirically justified, but that it also provides a natural account of the differential sensitivity of scalar and nonscalar NPIs to antiveridical and nonveridical contexts.

Conclusion Current research in the area of polarity sensitivity is dominated by the need to describe and explain the diversity of phenomena observed. Subclasses of polarity items and triggers have been described in syntactic terms or semantic terms. But regardless of the nature of the characterizations, the success of a theory of polarity sensitivity depends on the extent to which it can predict which items will be licensed by which triggers. In this paper I described a case of variation in polarity sensitivity in Spanish, and I developed an explanation for the differential sensitivity of the NPIs based on the semantic properties of their subclasses and their triggers. I claimed that there is a distinction between scalar NPIs (niminimizers and scalar nwords) and nonscalar NPIs (nonscalar nwords). Scalar NPIs occur in antiveridical contexts, and non scalar NPIs in strictly nonveridical contexts. Spanish scalar NPIs are minimizers that must be used to deny all alternatives connected to the NPI as a result of its scalar presuppositions. This informational requirement, I argued, can only be satisfied in antiveridical statements. Nonscalar NPIs, on the other hand, can satisfy the strengthening requirement in nonveridical contexts. My explanation for the distribution of Spanish NPIs follows the general thrust of the arguments in Heim (1984), Krifka (1992), Kadmon and Landman (1993), Israel (1996, 2000), and Lahiri (1998). NPIs have to satisfy a requirement of Pragmatic Strengthening, which is in contradiction with the requirement of Semantic Widening. That conflict is resolved only in the scope of DE (or nonveridical) operators. In this paper I argue that denial, a stronger requirement than pragmatic strengthening, is the characteristic feature of a subclass of Spanish NPIs the scalar NPIs. Pragmatic strengthening is the requirement that the proposition that contains the

Raúl Aranovich

NPI should entail, or be more informative than, the scalar alternatives. Denial is the requirement that the sentence that contains the NPI entail the falsity of the alternatives provided by the scalar model. Previous work dealing with the diversity of polarity phenomena has identified the semantic properties of different subclasses of triggers: antimorphic or antiadditive (Zwarts 1981, Hoeksema 1983, Van der Wouden 1997), nonveridical or antiveridical (Zwarts 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 2000). What I suggest in this paper is that denial is the reason why scalar NPIs can only appear in the scope of antiveridical operators. The hypothesis that subclasses of NPIs can be distinguished based on their semantic properties (scalar or nonscalar, minimizers or maximizers) or on their pragmatic properties (emphasis, denial, understatement) opens up new horizons in the search for explanations for limited distribution of polarity sensitive items. Besides providing insights for analyses about the nature of anyNPIs and evenNPIs in English, to which I have made reference in the previous section, my analysis of the contrast between scalar and nonscalar NPIs in Spanish may hold the key to understand similar facts in other languages. For instance, Vallduví (1994) shows that Catalan nwords in questions and conditionals cannot be modified by the equivalent of almost in that language. He also shows that Catalan niminimizers are excluded from those environments. Extending my analysis to Catalan leads to the conclusion that there is a distinction between scalar and nonscalar NPIs in Catalan as well, and that scalar nwords are limited to antiveridical contexts. It may be possible to develop similar arguments for the distribution of quasi in Italian (Zanuttini 1991), or for the distinction between emphatic and nonemphatic NPIs in Greek (Giannakidou 1998, 2000). These issues are left for further research.

References Acquaviva, Paolo. 1997. The Logical Form of Negation, New York/London: Garland. Anscombre, JeanClaude. 1989. Théorie de l'argumentation, topoï, et structuration discursive, Revue Quebecoise de Linguistique 18, 1356. Aranovich, Raúl. 1994. Negative concord in Spanish and in situ licensing, in Erin Duncan, Donka Farkas and Philip Spaelti, eds., Proceedings of the XII West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Stanford: CSLI, Pp. 203218. Aranovich, Raúl. 1995. Spanish casi as a scalar operator, in Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela Bilmes, Joshua Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser, and Ju Namkung, eds., Proceedings of the TwentyFirst Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, Berkeley, pp. 1223. Aranovich, Raúl. 2006. A polaritysensitive disjunction: Spanish ni ... ni, in JeanPierre Montreuil and Chiyo Nishida, eds., New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics, Vol. I. Dordrecht: Benjamins, pp. 1 12. Bolinger, Dwight. 1960. Linguistic science and linguistic engineering, Word 16, 374391. Bosque, Ignacio. 1980. Sobre la negación, Madrid: Ediciones cátedra.

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Bosque, Ignacio. 1994. La negación y el principio de las categorías vacías, in Violeta Demonte, ed., Gramática del español, México: El colegio de México, pp. 167199. Bosque, Ignacio. 1996. La polaridad modal, Seúl: Actas del IV Congreso Asiático de Hispanistas,. Bresnan, Joan. 1973. Syntax of the comparative clause construction in English, Linguistic Inquiry 3, 275 343. Brody, Michael. 1995. LexicoLogical form: A Radically Minimalist Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press. Carlson, Gregory. 1981. Distribution of freechoice any, in Carrie S. Masek, Roberta A. Hendrick, and Mary Frances Miller, eds., Papers from the Seventeenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, pp. 823. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework, in Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, eds., Step by Step, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 89155. Den Dikken, Marcel, and Anastasia Giannakidou. 2002. From hell to polarity: "Aggressively nonD linked" whphrases as polarity items, Linguistic Inquiry 33, pp. 3161. Fauconnier, Gilles. 1975. Pragmatic scales and logical structure, Linguistic Inquiry 6, 353375. Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay, and Mary Catherine O’Connor. 1988. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical gonstructions: The case of let alone, Language 64, 501538. Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1998. Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)veridical Dependency, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2000. Negative... concord?, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, pp. 457523. Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2003. Polarity and the presuppositions of EVEN. MS, University of Chicago. Haegeman, Liliane. 1992. Negation in West Flemish and the Neg criterion, in K. Broderick, ed., Proceedings of the XXII conference of the Northeast Linguistic Society, Amherst: GSLA Publications, pp. 195208. Haegeman, Liliane. 1995. The Syntax of Negation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haegeman, Liliane, and Raffaella Zanuttini. 1990. Negative concord in West Flemish, Ms., U. of Geneva. Hankamer, Jorge. 1973. Why there are two Than’s in English, in Claudia Corum, Cedric SmithStark, and Ann Weisser, eds., Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, pp. 179191. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Hazout, Ilan. 1995. Comparative ellipsis and logical form, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13. 137. Heim, Irene. 1984. A note on negative polarity and downward entailingness, in Charles Jones and Peter Sells, eds., Proceedings of NELS 14, Amherst: University of Massachusetts, pp. 98107. Hendriks, Petra. 1993. Comparatives and monotonicity. In A. de Boer, J. de Jong and R. Landeweerd, eds., Language and Cognition 3, Groningen: University of Groningen, pp. 6978. Herburger, Elena. 1999a. On the interpretation of Spanish nwords’, in Esthela Treviño and José Lema, eds., Semantic Issues in Romance Syntax, Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 89104. Herburger, Elena. 1999b. Lexical ambiguity is not always evil: The example of nini, in Javier Gutiérrez Rexach and Fernando MartínezGil, eds., Advances in Hispanic Linguistics, Sommerville: Cascadilla Press, pp. 378393. Hoeksema, Jack. 1983. Negative Polarity and the Comparative, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

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1. 403 434. Hoeksema, Jack, and Henny Klein. 1995. Negative predicates and their arguments, Linguistic Analysis 25, pp. 146180. Horn, Larry. 1978. Some aspects of negation, in Joseph Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Human Language, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 127210. Horn, Larry. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Horn, Larry. 2000. Pick a theory (not just any theory)’, in Larry Horn and Yasuhiko Kato, eds., Negation and Polarity: Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 147192. Israel, Michael. 1996. Polarity sensitivity as lexical semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 619666. Israel, Michael. 2001. Minimizers, maximizers, and the rhetoric of scalar reasoning. Journal of Semantics 18, 297331. Kadmon, Nirit and Fred Landman. 1993. Any, Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 353422. Kay, Paul. 1990. Even, Linguistics and Philosophy 13, 59111. Klima, Edward. 1964. Negation in English, in Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz, eds., The Structure of Language, Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, pp. 246323. Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Some remarks on polarity items, in D. Zaefferer, ed., Semantic Universals and Universal Semantics. Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 150189. Krifka, Manfred, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Gregory N. Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Gennaro Chierchia, and Godehard Link. 1995. ‘Genericity: An Introduction’, in Gregory N. Carlson and Francis Jeffry Pelletier, eds., The Generic Book, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ladusaw, William. 1979. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations, Austin: University of Texas at Austin Ph.D. Dissertation. Ladusaw, William. 1992. Expressing negation, in Chris Baker and Davis Dowty, eds., Proceedings of the Second Conference on Semantics and Linguistic Theory: Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, 40. Columbus: The Ohio State University. Lahiri, Utpal. 1998. Focus and negative polarity in Hindi, Natural Language Semantics 6, 57123. Laka, M. Itziar. 1990. Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections, Cambridge: MIT Ph. D. Dissertation. Lee, YoungSuk, and Larry Horn. 1994. Any as an indefinite plus even, ms., Yale University. Linebarger, Marcia. 1987. Negative polarity and grammatical representation, Linguistics and Philosophy 19, 325387. Lundquist, Lita, and Robert J. Jarvella. 1994. Ups and downs in scalar inferences, Journal of Semantics 11, 3353. Michaelis, Laura. 1993. "Continuity" within three scalar models: The polysemy of adverbial still’, Semantics 10, 197237. Muller, Claude. 1983. Les comparatives du français et la négation, Lingvisticae Investigationes VII, pp. 271316. Muller, Claude. 1991. La négation en français, Geneva: Librairie Droz. Muller, Claude. 2006. Polarité négative et free choice dans les indéfinis de type que ce soit et n'importe, Langages 162, pp. 731. Napoli, Donna Jo. 1983. Comparative ellipsis: A phrase structure analysis, Linguistic Inquiry 14, 675 694.

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Piñar, Pilar. 1995. Quantifier/negation construal and negative concord’, in Raúl Aranovich, William Byrne, Susanna Preuss, and Martha Senturia, eds., Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Stanford: CSLI Publications, pp. 483498. Pollock, JeanYves. 1989. Verb movement, UG, and the structure of IP, Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365424. Price, Susan. 1990. Comparative Constructions in Spanish and French Syntax, London/New York: Routledge. Progovac, Liljana. 1994. Negative and Positive Polarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rivero, MaríaLuisa. 1970. A surface structure constraint on negation in Spanish, Language, 46, 640 666. Rivero, MaríaLuisa. 1971. Mood and presupposition in Spanish, Foundations of Language 7, 305336. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax, Dordrecht: Foris. Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with focus, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Ph.D. Dissertation. Rullmann, Hotze. 1996. Two types of negative polarity items’, in K. Kusumoto, ed., Proceedings of the XXVI conference of the Northeast Linguistic Society, Amherst: GSLA Publications, pp. 335350. Sáez, Luis. 1990. Aspectos de la comparación de desigualdad en español, Tesis doctoral, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Schmerling, Sue. 1971. A note on negative polarity, Papers in Linguistics 4.1. Suñer, Margarita. 1995. Negative elements, island effects, and resumptiveno, The Linguistic Review 12, 233273. Szabolcsi, Anna. 2004. Positive polarity negative polarity, Natural language and Linguistic Theory 22, pp. 409452. UribeEchevarría, María. 1994. Interface Licensing Conditions on Negative Polarity Items: A Theory of Polarity and Tense Interactions, Storrs: University of Connecticut Ph.D. dissertation. Vallduví, Enric. 1994. Polarity items, nwords, and minimizers in Catalan and Spanish, Probus 6, 263 294. Van der Wouden, Ton. 1997. Negative Contexts, London: Routledge. Von Fintel, Kai. 1999. NPI licensing, Strawson entailment, and context dependency, Journal of Semantics 16, 97148. Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1987. Negation and negative concord in Italian and Piedmontese, Canadian Journal of Italian Studies 10,135149. Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1989. Two strategies for negation: Evidence from romance, in Joyce Powers and Kenneth de Jong, eds., Proceedings of ESCOL V, Columbus: The Ohio State University, pp. 535546. Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1991. Syntactic Properties of Sentential Negation, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania dissertation. Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and Clausal Structure, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zwarts, Frans. 1981. Negatief polaire uitdrukkingen 1, Glot 4, 35132. Zwarts, Frans. 1995. Nonveridical contexts, Linguistic Analysis 25, 286312.

Raúl Aranovich

Summary Negative Polarity and Scalar Semantics in Spanish Licensing of NPIs in Spanish varies depending on the semantics of the trigger. Nonveridical operators license nwords, and antiveridical operators license niminimizers. 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 nonscalar. In this analysis, nwords are scalar (incorporating a silent ni ’even’) in the scope of antiveridical operators. The distinction between scalar and nonscalar NPIs, I suggest, is the reason for the diversity of polarity sensitivity phenomena in Spanish, as well as in other languages. Keywords: Negation, nword, negative concord, polarity, Spanish, comparative, scalar implicature, minimizer, antiveridical operator.

Author's address: Raúl Aranovich Department of Linguistics University of California Davis. One Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 U.S.A raranovich@ucdavis.edu

*) Acknowledgments: The ideas and data in this paper have matured during a long series of revisions. I have benefited from comments and insights by too many people to thank in one paragraph, including several anonymous reviewers. Particular thanks go to Bill Ladusaw, S. Y. Kuroda, John Moore, and Michael Israel. Any shortcomings are my own fault. 1) The following abbreviations are used in the glosses: REFL (reflexive), ACC (accusative), DAT (dative). 2) These include Rivero (1970), (1971), Bosque (1994), (1996), Ladusaw (1992), Vallduví (1994), Piñar (1995), Suñer (1995), Aranovich (1994) and Herburger (1999a, 1999b), among others. 3) See Bosque (1980), Vallduví (1994), and Herburger (1999b) for a detailed analysis of the grammatical properties of ni. Ni is subject to similar distributional constraints when used as a coordinating particle. In this capacity ni can be translated as ‘neither...nor’, and it must occur with all the coordinated terms except in postverbal position, where it may be absent from the first term. In Aranovich (2006) I propose that the coordinating particle ni is a polarized disjunction, and I argue that its properties follow from the general theory of polarity presented here. In this paper I limit the discussion to niminimizers. 4) The claim that adversative verbs like dudar ‘to doubt’ licenses postverbal nwords appears in Bosque (1980), who also claims that verbs like resistir(se) ‘to resist’, rehusar ‘to refuse’ quitar ‘to remove’, and indignar ‘to be appalled’, among others, are triggers for postverbal n words. These judgements, however, are not shared by all native speakers of Spanish (cf. Vallduví 1994, and section 2. 4., for additional critical comments on the examples and judgements in Bosque 1980). In the case of dudar, I consider a sentence like (6b) to be marginally acceptable. 5) See UribeEchevarría (1994) and Acquaviva (1997) for criticism of standard views about the negcriterion and the role of CP[neg] in licensing NPIs.

6) Older versions of the negcriterion (Rizzi 1982, Haegeman and Zanuttini 1990, Zanuttini 1991, Haegeman 1992) assume that postverbal nwords move covertly (at LF) to SpecNegP. Haegeman’s (1995) analysis is more in line with a contemporary approach in which all dependencies are evaluated in the surface representation of a sentence. Another alternative, suggested by an anonymous reviewer, is to eschew abstract levels of representation altogether, and to analyze the dependency between the [neg] head and the nword as an instance of AGREE, in the sense of Chomsky (2000). Drawing an analogy to Chomsky’s analysis of whmovement (Chomsky 2000:128), nwords carry an uninterpretable feature [neg] and an interpretable feature [N], which corresponds to semantic negation. The head of NegP has an uninterpretable feature [N]. [N] in Neg0 is a 'probe' that needs to locate an interpretable instance of [N] (i.e. its goal). The feature [neg] activates the nword so that the probe can find the matching [N] feature. The uninterpretable features [N] (in Neg0) and [neg] delete, and The derivation converges at LF, with only one instance of the interpretable negative feature [N]. Since AGREE does not presuppose

movement, the probe can find its goal in situ, even if the nword occurs postverbally. See Giannakidou (2003) for a similar proposal regarding Greek. A detailed development of this proposal far exceeds the goals of this paper, and I must leave it as a suggestion for further work. 7) In Latin also the morphological negative complementizers quin and quominus can be used in the complement of adversative predicates (i), but only when the main predicate is negated (Horn 1978). (i)

Non dubitavit [quin ei crederemus]. Not doubted that him believed ‘He didn’t doubt that we believed him’

In French, Muller (1990:406) notices, adversative predicates cannot license expletive negation unless they are themselves in the scope of a negative operator. This points towards a general requirement that NPIs take wider scope than the adversative predicates when they are in their immediate domain. 8) There are disagreements as to which constituent of CP[neg] is responsible for licensing NPIs. Laka (1990) argue that it is C[neg], while Progovac (1994) suggests that an abstract operator in the SpecCP[neg] is the trigger. The analysis of nonscalar nword licensing I propose in this paper favors Progovac’s position over Laka’s. 9) The comparative construction in (i) seems to belong to a third class, which Sáez (1990) calls ‘comparatives with preposed focus of comparison’, and Price (1990) identifies as full sentential constructions of partial comparison To be more concise, I will not consider this type of comparative construction here. (i)

Juan compró más manzanas que peras vendiste tú. John bought more apples that pears sold you. ‘John bought more apples than you sold pears.’

10) Haspelmath (1997:80) suggests that the distribution of NPIs is evidence that there is a semantic difference between the two comparative constructions, the clausal one being more similar to negation. His data comes from Dutch (Hoeksema 1983) and SerboCroatian. The data I discuss in examples (19) and (20), however, shows that distribution of NPIs alone does not offer conclusive evidence for the existence of a semantic contrast between the two constructions. 11) In French, Muller says, comparatives introduced by que 'than' license indefinites like personne 'anyone', but comparatives introduced by que ce que 'than what' do not. The French facts seem to parallel the Spanish ones, but a more detailed analysis of both languages is needed before any conclusions can be drawn. 12) It is interesting to notice that Greek emphatic nwords are excluded from the clausal

comparative, while nonemphatics can appear in that environment (i). In this sense, again, scalar nwords pair up with Greek NPIs. (i)

Apodhixtike pjo eksipni apoti perimene {kanenas/*KANENAS}. proved more intelligent than expected anybody ’She turned out to be more intelligent than anybody expected.’

13) Bosque (1980) and Laka provide the following example of an nword in the restrictive clause of a universal quantifier: (i)

[Todo aquel [que tenga nada que decir]] hablará en la sesión. All that which has nthing that say speak in the meeting ‘All those who have anything to say will speak during the meeting.’

This is one of many examples they offer as evidence that the class of contexts that license NPIs in Spanish and English are the same. However, their judgments are not shared by most native speakers I have had a chance to question, including myself. The example in (i), for instance, is very formulaic, and it may belong to a conventionalized style of speaking that most native speakers reject as artificial. Additional criticism of Bosque’s judgments can be found in Vallduví (1994). 14) Giannakidou (1998) shows that the parallelism between DE environments and nonveridical environments breaks down in some cases. The sentential complement of ‘strong’ intensional verbs like suggest, for instance, licenses Greek APIs but not English any, because this is a nonveridical environment which is not DE. 15) In Greek, emphatic NPIs are also licensed in the scope of xoris ’without’ and prin ’before’ (Giannakidou1998). 16) Aranovich (1995) shows that, besides modifying quantificational expressions, casi functions as a predicate adverb. He argues that in this capacity casi is a scalar operator too. The distribution of predicate adverb casi is conditioned by aspectual features. Casi can modify predicates denoting an achievement or an accomplishment, or negated activities. The right generalization about the distribution of predicate adverb casi, according to Aranovich, is that it applies to predicates denoting the end of a scale of events. (i.e. an accomplishment denotes the endpoint of a process that can be modelled as a scale of events arranged along a time line leading to the endpoint). This generalization can be extended to the uses of casi, almost, and their synonyms as quantifier modifiers, as discussed in Anscombre (1989) and Van der Wouden (1997). 17) In later work Zanuttini (1991) rejects the claim that there are two types of nwords, suggesting instead that all nwords in Italian are universal negative quantifiers. To account for

the differences between nwords in negative and nonnegative (i.e. interrogative) sentences she suggests that the former have to be in SpecNegP at LF, while the latter have to undergo LF movement to the Spec of CP[neg], available for Italian yes/no interrogative clauses. This analysis misses the semantic generalization I am trying to capture in this paper regarding antiveridicality and the licensing of scalar NPIs. 18) Nwords do not have an identical distribution in Spanish and Italian. The sentential complement of adversative predicates licenses nwords in both languages, but Spanish nwords cannot appear in interrogatives, as noticed before. Moreover, Italian nwords can appear in full clausal comparatives, but not in reduced comparatives the mirror image of what happens in Spanish (Zanuttini 1991). These differences aside, the generalization that stands for both languages is that nwords cannot be modified by casi or quasi in strictly nonveridical contexts. 19) See Hendriks (1993) for similar claims regarding Dutch comparatives. 20) This interpretation is available for freechoice any in combination with mass terms, as Horn (2000) argues. NPI any can combine with mass terms, as in I didn’t drink any wine. Free choice any can do so too, but only under a kind reading. In a sentence like Any wine can be served with fish nowadays, any can only mean ‘any kind of wine’, not ‘any quantity of wine’. Horn (2000) suggests that negative polarity any is a minimal element in a quantity scale and freechoice any is a generic indefinite associated with a kind scale. Nonscalar nwords are similar to freechoice any to the extent that quantity scalar readings are unavailable for either one. 21) Following Rooth (1985), Giannakidou (2003) argues that even is ambiguous between a negative polarity and a positive polarity sense. In the first case even is a maximizer, in the second case a minimizer. She also identifies another sense, which she calls the concessive even. English even is ambiguous between the three senses, but in Greek all three are lexicalized by separate items: PPI akomi ke, NPI oute kan, and concessive esto ke.