(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages
Authors
Espinal, MT
Llop, A
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
Languages
ISSN
2226-471X
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
7
Issue
1
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Espinal, M., & Llop, A. (2022). (Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages. Languages, 7 (1) https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010030
Abstract
<jats:p>This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire ‘much, many’ is a PI, pas ‘at all’ is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’ come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here, a distinction must be made between indefinite pronouns such as dengún ‘anyone, n-one’ and scalar minimizers such as gota (lit. drop), which come in parallel PI and NCI sets, whereas NPIs such as brenca (lit. crumb) have developed an enriched meaning. This paper reveals the different status of pas across Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties either as an NPI at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, which further constrains conventional implicatures, or as a negative operator.</jats:p>
Keywords
polarity items, negative polarity items, negative concord items, Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese, Occitan
Sponsorship
Government of Catalonia (2017SGR634, ICREA Academia award)
Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FFI2017-82547-P, POID2020-112801GB-100, Batista i Roca Fellowship)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010030
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/333796
Rights
Licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.
Recommended or similar items
The current recommendation prototype on the Apollo Repository will be turned off on 03 February 2023. Although the pilot has been fruitful for both parties, the service provider IKVA is focusing on horizon scanning products and so the recommender service can no longer be supported. We recognise the importance of recommender services in supporting research discovery and are evaluating offerings from other service providers. If you would like to offer feedback on this decision please contact us on: support@repository.cam.ac.uk