Universal Quantifier PPIs

Abstract

Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) that denote lower scalar endpoints, such as existentials like any or ever, are often said to be only fine in Downward Entailing contexts, since outside such contexts their semantics would give rise to a contradiction. According to Chierchia (2006Chierchia ( , 2013, this contradiction arises as such NPIs both obligatorily introduce domain alternatives and trigger the presence of a covert exhaustifier. Following this line of reasoning, I argue it should be expected that elements with the same properties that denote the highest endpoint of a scale, such as universal quantifiers, are Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). Indeed, universal quantifier PPIs have been attested in the domain of modals (quantifiers over possible worlds) -English must and should are good examples of such universal quantifier PPIs (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2010, 2013; Homer 2015) -but not in the domain of quantifiers over individuals. In this paper, I argue that PPIs that are universal quantifiers over individuals actually do exist. However, since the covert exhaustifier that is induced by these PPIs (and responsible for their PPI-hood) can act as an intervener between the PPI and its anti-licenser, universal quantifier PPIs may still scope below negation and thus appear in disguise; their PPI-like behaviour only becomes visible once they morpho-syntactically precede their anti-licenser. Universal quantifier PPIs may surface under negation, but may not reconstruct under negation once they appear above it. This article concludes that Dutch iedereen ('everybody'), unlike English everybody, is actually such a PPI.

Modals, negation and movement: a reassessment

“…It is assumed that when an utterance has alternatives, an exhaustification operator applies to strengthen the utterance by excluding these alternatives from the meaning of the utterance, or 41 Other theories of scalar alternatives will say otherwise; if one wants to keep a more standard theory, we can encode scalelessness in must differently, namely to follow previous authors like Chierchia (2013); Zeijlstra (2017) and say the alternatives projected by quantifiers are fully lexically specified, which would make it irrelevant whether or not there is an actual scalemate in the lexicon.…”

A pragmatic explanation of the mei-dou co-occurrence in Mandarin

“…the formal definitions in Chierchia 2013: 138; Xiang 2020: (25)). Indeed, Zeijlstra (2017), based on some of the positive polarity properties of Dutch iedereen 'everybody' (it can appear under negation, but cannot reconstruct below negation once it is above it at the surface, unlike English everybody), claims that it is a universal quantifier that obligatorily triggers domain alternatives.…”

A diachronic explanation for cross-linguistic variation in the use of inverse-scope constructions

“…In about a third of the languages in the sample, inverse scope is even the most common strategy for expressing "Not all X are Y" propositions (e.g., the most common and neutral way of saying Not all of the students passed the exam is a construction equivalent to All of the students didn't pass the exam). Furthermore, in many languages, the 1 The scope of this study is restricted to main declarative clauses because there are languages that normally do not allow an inverse-scope interpretation in sentences where a subject universal quantifier precedes clausal negation, but they do allow this interpretation when the clause is embedded in a downward-entailing context, e.g., Dutch (Zeijlstra 2017) and Hebrew (Amiraz 2019). Given that this type of data is not available for all the languages in the sample, only main declarative clauses are considered.…”

“…Echo denial is a sentence that rejects a previous utterance by repeating it with the addition of a negative marker, e.g., in (i). In this case, too, an inverse-scope interpretation is possible even in languages that normally do not allow it (Zeijlstra 2017;Amiraz 2019). Another piece of evidence that echo denial differs from ordinary clausal negation is that it allows positive polarity items (PPIs) to occur in the scope of negation (Baker 1970: 169), e.g., in (ii), where the PPI already scopes below clausemate negation.…”