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Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 18:2 (2017) ► pp.228–253

Is it syntactic or pragmatic?

A hybrid analysis for lf-intervention effects

| Sophia University/JSPS

The main aim of this study is to reconsider Tomioka’s (2007) pragmatic account of the lf-intervention effects (IE), and to claim that Polarity Sensitive Items (psis) are genuine syntactic interveners. I will examine the parallelism among psis in IE configurations, which is distinct from other interveners, and further claim that the study of IE should not be monolithic, but hybrid: Syntactic lf-interveners (psis), blocking scopal interactions/Pragmatic interveners, causing illegal information structures. The predictions will be borne out that psis actually cause IE in other contexts as well, which pragmatic accounts cannot explain (Funakoshi & Takahashi 2014). Such hybrid perspectives bring back enormous findings on IE (e.g. lf wh-movement) to the field of syntax, without relegating all of them to pragmatics.

Keywords: lf-intervention effects, polarity sensitive items, wh-movement
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatic accounts of the intervention effects
    • 2.1Cancellation effects by scrambling
    • 2.2The root-embedded contrasts
    • 2.3Interim conclusion
  • 3.Problems of pragmatic accounts of lf-intervention effects
    • 3.1Why are npis different from other interveners?
    • 3.2The parallelisms among psis in lf-intervention effects
  • 4.Polarity sensitive items as genuine lf-interveners
    • 4.1 npis in nominative object constructions
    • 4.2 apis and bpis in nominative object constructions
    • 4.3Affirmative polarity and bipolar sensitivity as a syntactic phenomena
  • 5.Further discussions: neg-raising and apis/bpis under neg
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.18.2.03kob
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