Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals
Name
Iatridou-2013-Negation, Polarity.pdf
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642.33 KB
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Author(s)
Iatridou, Sabine
Zeijlstra, Hedde
Date Issued
October 2013
Journal
Linguistic Inquiry
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Iatridou, Sabine, and Hedde Zeijlstra. “Negation, Polarity, and Deontic Modals.” Linguistic Inquiry 44, no. 4 (October 2013): 529-568. © 2013 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Universal deontic modals may vary with respect to whether they scope over or under negation. For instance, English modals like must and should take wide scope with respect to negation; modals like have to and need to take narrow scope. Similar patterns have been attested in other languages. In this article, we argue that the scopal properties of modals with respect to negation can be understood if (a) modals that outscope negation are positive polarity items (PPIs); (b) all modals originate in a position lower than I[superscript 0]; and (c) modals undergo reconstruction unless reconstruction leads to a PPI-licensing violation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00138
