PPI effects with an NPI/FCI in Telugu
Rahul Balusu
November 2016
 

The puzzle that this paper aims to solve is the following. An NPI/FCI item in Telugu, ee-N- ainaa built from a wh-item, ee-N, and the particle -ainaa, cannot normally occur in a nega- tive episodic context –it is a Bagel Polarity Item (Progovac 1994) that is usually banned in positive episodic and negative episodic contexts but can occur in downward entailing con- texts, and in imperative and modal contexts –but there are special conditions under which it can occur under negation, symptomatic of PPIs (Szabolcsi 2004) –scoping under metalin- guistic negation; Shielding by an intervening operator; Locality; and, Rescuing/Flip-Flop. Why is an NPI/FCI showing PPI properties? On the face of it, this looks like ee-N-ainaa can be analysed as a bipolar element (van der Wouden 1997) –a superweak NPI that is licensed in non-veridical contexts and simul- taneously a weak PPI, due to which it is anti-licensed in Anti-Morphic contexts. In support, it would seem that its PPI nature comes through in the PPI effects. But how to ground a bi- polar item in the meaning/structure is unclear. Can both [+POLARITY] and [–POLARITY] be primitives? This again seems a distributional rather than a grammatical explanation with any depth. We discount this analysis for one with more explanatory adequacy based on a compositional analysis using an exhaustification and alternative based model (Chierchia 2013). An exhaustification based approach to ee-N-ainaa based on its composition, and interaction of the exhaustification operator with other propositional operators, plus compe- tition with another particle based NPI, ee-N-VV, which comes with its own exhaustification pattern owing to its compositional make-up, derives the right distribution. Both the bagel distribution and the PPI behaviour of ee-N-ainaa fall out of these conditioning factors. In the process we also explain how in some contexts where it looks like their complementary distribution is broken, both ee-N-ainaa and ee-N-VV are permitted. We show that the hole (ee-N-VV) and bagel (ee-N-ainaa) pattern of complementary distribution is not just allo- morphy (Pereltsvaig 2004) but a more complex division of labour between the two polarity items based on principles of economy of interpretation.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003940
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Proceedings of NELS 47
keywords: ppi exhaustification npi, semantics, syntax
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