LING 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Pacifier, Asteroid Family, Minimal Pair
23 Jun 2018
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Practice…
*before = downward entailing
John left the house before eating fruit (an apple)
*after, everyone, someone = upward entailing
John left the house before eating an apple (does not entail John left the house after earring an
apple, he could have eaten a pear and the sentence would still be true)
*without, rarely = downward entailing
Nora left without talking to an artist (a sculptor, a painter)
Cf. Nora left after having talked to an artist
Does not entail: Nora left the house after having talked to a sculptor (she might as well have
talked to a painter for the sentence to be true)
—> upward entailing
Hypothesis 2:
An NPI must occur in a sentence containing a licenser, an element that induces a downward
entailing environment
Affirmative is upward entailing but as soon as you put that negation (or a licenser), it triggers
downward entailing
Nobody will ever beat Roger
Few will ever bear Roger
Roger will not speak to anybody
I do not think Roger will speak to anybody
But… licenser doesn't c-command:
*Roger will ever beat nobody
*Roger will ever beat few
*Anybody did not speak to Roger
*Anybody expects that few would lie to him
Hypothesis 3: An NPI must be preceded by an NPI licenser
Hmm-have you turned into a syntactician by now?
—> sceptics antennas should go up
Precedence is a linear concept, not a hierarchical one!
And.. indeed - not just precedence
*The person nobody likes will ever beat Roger
*The person that did not leave spoke to anybody
*After they talked to few people, they ever ran away
In each case, the downward entailing expression precedes the NPI, and yet the sentence is not
good
We conclude.. we also need syntax
Hypothesis 4: An NPI must be c-command by an NPI licenser
Note: the same condition we needed for the licensing of anaphors!
Conclusion:
Semantics: NPIs must be licensed by a downward entailing term
—> Equivalent classes exist also in semantics
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Syntax: the downward entailing term must c-command the NPI
—> Structure is also important
NPI licensing occurring at the syntax-semantics interface
Once again we have confirmation that knowledge of language involves very abstract
representations!
The conditions governing the distribution of NPIs are not part of conscious knowledge, but
exemplify completely tacit I-language
The c-command condition repeated
C command def:
X c-commands Y just in case X does not dominate Y, but every node that dominates X
dominates Y
Domiate def:
A node X dominates Y if you can draw a line going from X to Y always going down
Interim conclusion:
NPIs are a juncture point of syntax and semantics
Semantics: NPIs must be licensed by a downward entailing term —> we find equivalence
classes also in semantics
Syntax: the downward entailing term must c-command the NPI —> structure is also important
NPI licensing occurs at the syntax-semantics interface
Back to NPI any
Data point-
(1) *John has eaten anything
(2) Has John eaten anything?
How is the NPI any licensed in (2)?
Do yes/no questions downward entailing environments?
E.g. does
(3) Has John eaten an apple entail
(4) Has join eaten a green apple
Not quite!
But note that (3) also does not “entail” the question in (5). (It also does not upward entail)
(5) Has John eaten a fruit?
(3)-(5) are just not the same questions
Very difficult to establish what question entails!
The only way we could make sense of it is that if the answer to (3) is no, then the answer to (4)
is, by entailment, also no
We will leave aside the precise mechanisms of how the semantics deals with (this goes beyond
what we can do in this course)
Second data point:
(6) *Anyone has seen the movie
(7) Has anyone seen the movie?
(8) *Which movie has anyone seen?
(cf. which movie has no one seen?)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
John left the house before eating fruit (an apple) John left the house before eating an apple (does not entail john left the house after earring an apple, he could have eaten a pear and the sentence would still be true) Nora left without talking to an artist (a sculptor, a painter) Nora left after having talked to an artist. Does not entail: nora left the house after having talked to a sculptor (she might as well have talked to a painter for the sentence to be true) An npi must occur in a sentence containing a licenser, an element that induces a downward entailing environment. Affirmative is upward entailing but as soon as you put that negation (or a licenser), it triggers downward entailing. I do not think roger will speak to anybody. *anybody expects that few would lie to him. Hypothesis 3: an npi must be preceded by an npi licenser.
