On the ambiguity of N-words in French
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Masakazu Kuno
Abstract
This paper argues that n-words in French are ambiguous between negative quantifiers and bipolar items, which are a type of polar sensitive items that must occur in the contexts that license both negative and positive polarity items. The ambiguity thesis is basically in line with Herbuger’s (2001) analysis of n-words in Spanish, but diverts from it in that she argues them to be lexically ambiguous between negative quantifiers and negative polarity items. I will show that the difference between n-words in French and n-words in Spanish falls out from the difference with respect to the structural position of sentential negation. Also, I will suggest a way of deriving the semantic ambiguity of n-words from a single underlying lexical entry.
Abstract
This paper argues that n-words in French are ambiguous between negative quantifiers and bipolar items, which are a type of polar sensitive items that must occur in the contexts that license both negative and positive polarity items. The ambiguity thesis is basically in line with Herbuger’s (2001) analysis of n-words in Spanish, but diverts from it in that she argues them to be lexically ambiguous between negative quantifiers and negative polarity items. I will show that the difference between n-words in French and n-words in Spanish falls out from the difference with respect to the structural position of sentential negation. Also, I will suggest a way of deriving the semantic ambiguity of n-words from a single underlying lexical entry.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
