Negative polarity items: a case for questions as licensers
Bernhard Schwarz · Proceedings from Semantics and Linguistic Theory · 2017
Existing analyses of NPI licensing in questions instantiate two differentapproaches. One approach holds that questions are NPI licensers in their own right(Kadmon & Landman 1990; Krifka 1995, 2003; van Rooy 2003); the other holdsthat, in virtue of their syntax, questions host silent expressions that do the licensingfor them, such as a silent version of exclusive only (Nicolae 2013, 2015) or negationnot (Guerzoni & Sharvit 2014). Based one a pattern of NPI licensing in alternativequestions, this paper presents a case for the former approach. Specifically, it offersan argument for the analysis developed in Krifka 1995, 2003 and van Rooy 2003,which centrally refers to questions’ information theoretic entropy (Shannon 1948).