Home PPIs under negation: A case study of Italian già
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

PPIs under negation: A case study of Italian già

  • Olga Kellert EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: February 13, 2018
Linguistics
From the journal Linguistics Volume 56 Issue 2

Abstract

This paper investigates the Italian element già ‘already’ under negation in various contexts, including questions. The occurrence of già under negation in questions is unexpected because già cannot be licensed in declarative sentences with sentential negation (It. *Non ho già fatto colazione. literally ‘I did not have breakfast already.’). The empirical contribution of this paper is to provide a corpus analysis and to describe the contexts in which già can appear under negation. The main research questions of this paper are as follows: (i) how do we account for the distribution and the licensing conditions of già under negation? and (ii) how is the meaning of già related to its distribution? This paper shows that some syntactic restrictions are responsible for the distribution of già under negation, and that in contexts where già appears under negation in questions or conditionals, it is not interpreted under the direct scope of negation.

Keywords: temporal adverb; questions; conditionals; negation; scope

References

Andorno, Cecilia. 2000. Focalizzatori fra connessione e messa a fuoco: Il punto di vista delle varietà di apprendimento. Milan: Francoangeli.Search in Google Scholar

Bazzanella, Carla. 1995. I segnali discorsivi. In Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi & Anna Cardinaletti (eds.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, vol. 3: Tipi di frase, deissi, formazione delle parole, 225–257. Bologna: il Mulino.Search in Google Scholar

Castroviejo, Elena & Laia Mayol. 2012. Conclusion, consequence and solutionhood: The semantics of three Catalan connectives. In Ana Aguilar Guevara, Anna Chernilovskaya & Rick Nouwen (eds.) Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 16 (SuB16), vol. 1. (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 16.1), 157–168. Cambridge, MA: MIT Department of LinguisticsSearch in Google Scholar

Chierchia, Gennaro. 2004. Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syntax/ pragmatics interface. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond, 39–103. Oxford: Oxford University Press,.Search in Google Scholar

Chierchia, Gennaro. 2013. Logic in grammar: Polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697977.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads. A cross-linguistic perspective, New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Conroy, Anastasia. 2006. The semantics of how come: A look at how factivity does it all. Maryland working papers in linguistics 14. 1–24.Search in Google Scholar

CORIS=Corpus di italiano scritto. 2001. Centro Interfacoltà di linguistica teorica e applicata. Università di Bologna. http://corpus.cilta.unibo.it:8080/coris_ita.htmlSearch in Google Scholar

Donazzan, Marta & Alexandru Mardale. 2010. Aspectual and additive particles: Towards an analysis for Romanian mai. Revue de linguistique romane LV(3). 247–269.Search in Google Scholar

Fitzpatrick, Justin. 2005. The whys and how comes of presupposition and NPI licensing in questions. In John Alderete, Chung-Hye Han & Alexei Kochetov (eds.), Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 24, 138–145. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar

Frana, Ilaria & Kyle Rawlins. 2013. ‘mica’ questions and bias. Poster presented at the 44th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 44), University of Connecticut, Storrs, 18–20 October.Search in Google Scholar

Frana, Ilaria & Kyle Rawlins. 2015. Italian negation in ‘mica’ questions and assertions. Poster presented at Sinn und Bedeutung 20 (SuB 20), University of Tübingen, 9–12 September.Search in Google Scholar

Franco, Irene, Olga Kellert, Guido Mensching & Cecilia Poletto. 2016. A diachronic study of the (negative) additive anche in Italian. Caplletra 61. 227–258.10.7203/caplletra.60.8456Search in Google Scholar

Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1997. The Landscape of polarity items. Groningen: University of Groningen dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Grosz, Patrick Georg. 2012. On the grammar of optative constructions (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 193). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.193Search in Google Scholar

Guerzoni, Elena. 2003. Why even ask? On the pragmatics of questions and the semantics of answers. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Guerzoni, Elena. 2004. Even-NPIs in yes/no questions. Natural Language Semantics 12. 319–343.10.1007/s11050-004-8739-0Search in Google Scholar

Gutzmann, Daniel & Elena Castroviejo. 2011. The dimensions of verum. In Olivier Bonami & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 8, 143–165. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss8Search in Google Scholar

Hamblin, Charles L. 1973. Questions in Montague English. Foundations of Language 10. 41–53.10.1016/B978-0-12-545850-4.50014-5Search in Google Scholar

Höhle, Tilman. 1992. Über Verum-Fokus im Deutschen. In Joachim Jacobs (ed.), Informationsstruktur und Grammatik (Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 4), 112−141. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.10.1007/978-3-663-12176-3_5Search in Google Scholar

Horn, Laurence R. 1970. Ain’t it hard anymore. Proceedings of the 6th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) 6. 318–327.Search in Google Scholar

Horn, Laurence R. 1972 [1976]. On the semantic properties of logical operators in English. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Search in Google Scholar

Israel, Michael. 2011. The grammar of polarity: Pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511975288Search in Google Scholar

Karttunen, Lauri. 1977. Syntax and semantics of questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 1. 3–44.10.1007/BF00351935Search in Google Scholar

Karttunen, Lauri & Stanley Peters. 1979. Conventional implicature. In David A. Dinneen & Oh Choon-Kyu (eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 11: Presupposition, 1–56. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar

Krifka, Manfred. 1992. Some remarks on polarity items. In Dietmar Zaefferer (ed.), Semantic universals and universal semantics, 150–189. Dordrecht: Foris.10.1515/9783110870527-009Search in Google Scholar

Krifka, Manfred. 2000. Alternatives for aspectual particles. Semantics of ‘still’ and ‘already’. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS 26). 401–412.10.3765/bls.v26i1.1125Search in Google Scholar

Ladusaw, William A. 1980. Polarity sensitivity as inherent scope relations. New York: Garland.Search in Google Scholar

Liu, Mingya. 2012. Multidimensional semantics of evaluative adverbs. Leiden & Boston: Brill.10.1163/9789004248496Search in Google Scholar

Löbner, Sebastian. 1988. Ansätze zu einer integralen semantischen Theorie von Tempus, Aspekt und Aktionsarten. In Veronika Ehrich & Heinz Vater (eds.), Temporalsemantik: Beiträge zur Linguistik der Zeitreferenz, 163–191. Tübingen: Niemeyer.10.1515/9783111357751.163Search in Google Scholar

Löbner, Sebastian. 1989. German schon – Erst – Noch: An integrated analysis. Linguistics and Philosophy 1. 167–212.10.1007/BF00627659Search in Google Scholar

Meibauer, Jörg. 1999. Pragmatik: Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Search in Google Scholar

Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt & Erling Strudsholm. 2008. The semantics of particles: Advantages of a contrastive and panchronic approach: A study of the polysemy of French déjà and Italian già. Linguistics 46 (3).471–505.10.1515/LING.2008.016Search in Google Scholar

Progovac, Ljiljana. 1994. Negative and positive polarity: A binding approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511554308Search in Google Scholar

Romero, Maribel. 2005. Two approaches to biased yes/no questions. In John Alderete, Chung-Hye Han & Alexei Kochetov (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th West Coast conference on formal linguistics (WCCFL), 352–360. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Search in Google Scholar

Romero, Maribel & Chung-Hye Han. 2004. On negative yes/no questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27. 609–658.10.1023/B:LING.0000033850.15705.94Search in Google Scholar

Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with focus. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Amherst dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Schwarz, Bernhard & Rajesh Bhatt. 2006. Light negation and polarity. In Raffaella Zanuttini, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger & Paul H. Portner (eds.), Crosslinguistic research in syntax and semantics: Negation, tense and clausal architecture. 199–220. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Szabolcsi, Anna. 2004. Positive polarity – Negative polarity. Natural language and linguistic theory 22(2). 409–452.10.1023/B:NALA.0000015791.00288.43Search in Google Scholar

Thurmair, Maria. 1989. Modalpartikeln und ihre Kombinationen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.10.1515/9783111354569Search in Google Scholar

van der Auwera, Johan. 1993. ‘Already’ and ‘still’: Beyond duality. Linguistics and Philosophy 16. 613–653.10.1007/BF00985436Search in Google Scholar

Visconti, Jacqueline. 2004. Sintassi e uso delle particelle perfino, persino e addirittura in italiano antico. In Maurizio Dardano & Gianluca Frenguella (eds.), La sintassi dell’italiano antico. Rome: L’Aracne.Search in Google Scholar

Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and clausal structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2008. On the syntactic flexibility of formal features. In Theresa Biberauer (ed.), The limits of syntactic variation. 143–174. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.132.06zeiSearch in Google Scholar

Zimmermann, Malte. 2014. Wird schon stimmen! A degree operator analysis of schon. https://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~zimmermann/papers/MZ2014-schonMarburg.pdf (accessed 13 December 2017).10.1093/jos/ffy010Search in Google Scholar

Zobel, Sarah. 2015 On the distribution of German discourse particles across types of questions. http://sarahzobel.net/materials/zobel-vienna-17032015.pdf (accessed 13 December 2017).Search in Google Scholar

Appendix. Scalar implicature in negative wh-questions

The following derivation in (55) is a simplified version of a wh-question that contains the item già that introduces a scalar operator E(ven), which is interpreted on the level of FocP. The question denotation is a set of alternatives of the kind {we are not conscious of x} in (55h) The scalar operator E(ven) triggers the scalar presupposition, the negative proposition that we are not conscious of, every x is less likely than that we are conscious of every x. [9] Therefore, it is more likely that we are conscious of every x than the opposite. This scalar presupposition is exactly what is expressed in the answer given by B: ‘Indeed, we are conscious of everything.’

(55)

Di cosa non siamo già consapevoli?

‘What aren’t we concious of’

B: Infatti. ‘Indeed’

(CORIS)

  1. ‖FinP/TP siamo consapevoli ‖g=λw. we are not conscious ofw(g(1))

  2. ‖E(ven)‖g=λp<s,t> λws : ε q [q ∊ g(C) ∧ q(w)=1 → p<likely q].p (w)

  3. ‖FocP‖g=λw: ε q [q ∊ g(C) ∧ q(w)=1 → λw’. we are not conscious of’ (g(1))<likely q]. λw’. we are not conscious of’ (g(1)) (w‘) (w))

  4. ‖C°[Q]‖ λq λp [q=p]

  5. ‖C’‖g=λp. λq [q=p] (λw: εq [ q∊ g(C ) ∧ q (w)=1 → λw’. we are not conscious about (w) (g(1)))<likely q]. (λw’ we are not conscious of (w’)(g(1))) (FA)

  6. ‖Spec,CP‖=‖cosa‖g=λP<e,t> ∃x [thing (w) (x) & P(x)]

  7. ‖CP‖g=λp. ∃x thing‘ (x) ∧ p=λw: ε q [q ∊ g(C) ∧ q(w)=1 → λw’. we are not conscious of’ (x) (w’)<likely q]. λw’. we are not conscious of’ (x) (w)

  8. Q={we are not conscious of x, we are not conscious of y,….}

  9. Scalar presupposition=that we are not concious about every x is less likely than that we are conscious of every x.

Published Online: 2018-2-13

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Introduction: Current perspectives on positive polarity
  4. Positive polarity indefinites? On how (not) to identify them: An exhaustification-based perspective
  5. PPIs under negation: A case study of Italian già
  6. Positive polarity predicates
  7. ‘Doing the devil’: Deriving the PPI-hood of a negation-expressing multi-dimensional idiom
https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0040
Keywords for this article
temporal adverb; questions; conditionals; negation; scope

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Introduction: Current perspectives on positive polarity
  4. Positive polarity indefinites? On how (not) to identify them: An exhaustification-based perspective
  5. PPIs under negation: A case study of Italian già
  6. Positive polarity predicates
  7. ‘Doing the devil’: Deriving the PPI-hood of a negation-expressing multi-dimensional idiom
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 1.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ling-2017-0040/html
Scroll to top button