Negative Polarity and Scalar Semantics in Spanish

Raúl Aranovich | University of California Davis

Licensing of NPIs in Spanish varies depending on the semantics of the trigger. Nonveridical operators license n-words, and antiveridical operators license ni-minimizers. 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 non-scalar. In this analysis, n-words are scalar (incorporating a silent ni ‘even’) in the scope of antiveridical operators. The distinction between scalar and non-scalar NPIs, I suggest, is the reason for the diversity of polarity sensitivity phenomena in Spanish, as well as in other languages.

Keywords: Negation, n-word, negative concord, polarity, Spanish, scalar implicature, comparative, minimizer, antiveridical operator

Published online: 07 March 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.30.2.03ara

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Bravo, Ana

2017. In Imperatives and Directive Strategies [Studies in Language Companion Series, 184],

Mendia, Jon Ander

2020. One more comparative. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38:2 ► pp. 581 ff.

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