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This paper explores the learnability of English indefinite any, Dutch modal verb hoeven, and Mandarin Chinese (WH-)indefinite/pronoun shenme. These three expressions, belonging to different syntactic categories in different languages, have been referred to as Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in the literature, as they are all restricted to contexts that in some sense count as negative although there are differences in the types of semantic environment that may license them. By investigating the distribution of these three expressions in both child and child-directed speech recorded in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2009), this paper argues that children in their acquisition of these NPIs employ the same conservative widening learning strategy (Berwick and Weinberg 1986; Manzini and Wexler 1987), which prevents them from overgeneration. A two-stage acquisition process is detected for each of the three NPIs. However, distinct learning pathways are found, which we take as evidence indicating different underlying analyses of these expressions at different stages in child language. Taking into consideration the input characteristics, the distributional patterns of the three expressions in adult grammar, and the children's lexical development, we hypothesize what the analyses of any, hoeven, and shenme at different acquisition stages look like. This provides us with a different view of the nature, or the reason underlying the restricted distribution of these expressions in adult language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neg-Raising concerns the phenomenon by which certain negated predicates (e.g. think, believe, expect) can give rise to a reading where the negation seems to take scope from an embedded clause. The standard analysis in pragma-semantic terms goes back to Bartsch (Linguistische Berichte 27:1-7, 1973) and has been elaborated in Horn (Pragmatics, Academic Press, New York, 1978, 1989), Gajewski (Neg-raising: polarity and presupposition, PhD Dissertation, MIT, 2005; Linguistics Philosophy 30:298-328, 2007), Romoli (Linguistics Philosophy 36:291-353, 2013), and many others. Recently, this standard approach has been challenged by Collins and Postal (Classical NEG Raising, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014), who argue, by providing various novel arguments, that Neg-Raising involves syntactic movement of the negation from the embedded clause into the matrix clause. The syntactic structure of ‘I don’t think you’re right’ would then be like: I do[n’t]i think you’re ti right, and the Neg-Raising reading would result from the interpretation of the lower copy of the negation. In this paper I present three novel arguments against this account. First, following up work by Horn (Black Book: a festschrift in honor of Frans Zwarts, University of Groningen, Groningen, 2014), I show that Collins and Postal (Classical NEG Raising, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014), and their reply to Horn (Collins and Postal, ‘Dispelling the Cloud of Unknowing.’ Ms., NYU. LingBuzz/002269, 2015), predict that every negated predicate that can license so-called Horn-clauses (non-negative clauses containing NPIs in a position where subject-auxiliary inversion is licensed) should receive a Neg-Raising reading, contrary to fact. Second, Collins and Postal (Classical NEG Raising, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014) adopt various instances of phonological deletion of negative operators—a necessary ingredient for their account—but these instances of phonological deletion cannot be independently motivated. Third, it turns out that for certain constructions, Collins and Postal (Classical NEG Raising, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014) must also allude to the original Bartschian approach. I further demonstrate that the standard, pragma-semantic approach to Neg-Raising actually explains the grammaticality of Horn-clauses and other phenomena, such as the distribution of negative parentheticals, that were presented by Collins and Postal (Classical NEG Raising, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014) as arguments in favour of the syntactic approach to Neg-Raising, equally well, if not better, than this syntactic alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I provide a unified explanation for two puzzling phenomena concerning sentence-initial negation: the ban on True Negative Imperatives that is attested in many languages and the ban on sole negative markers in sentence-initial position in V-to-C languages. I argue that both phenomena can be explained once it is assumed after Han () that operators encoding the illocutionary force of a speech act take scope from matrix C and may not be outscoped by negation. Consequently, a morphosyntactically negative element can appear in a position in C or SpecCP only if it is semantically non-negative or if it can reconstruct to a lower position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative Indefinites (NIs) in languages such as Dutch and German may give rise to split-scope readings. Sentences like German Du must keine Krawatte anziehen ('you must wear no tie') have a reading where the modal takes scope in between the negation and the indefinite. In this paper I argue that West Germanic NIs are not negative quantifiers (in the Montegovian sense), but complex syntactic structures that consist of an abstract negative operator and an indefinite that are spelled out as a single word. Split-scope effects result from application of the copy theory of movement. I argue that in split-scope constructions, though they are spelled out as a single word, after Quantifier Raising the negative operator is interpreted in a higher copy and the indefinite in a lower copy of the NI. Furthermore I demonstrate that alternative analyses that take NIs in Dutch and German to be negative quantifiers, n-words, or the result of amalgamation or incorporation processes face problems that the analysis presented in this paper does not encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction addresses some key issues and questions in the study of negation and polarity. Focussing on negative polarity and negative indefinites, it summarizes research trends and results. Special attention is paid to the issues of synchronic variation and diachronic change in the realm of negative polarity items, which figure prominently in the articles and commentaries contained in this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]