Polarity sensitivity of question embedding: experimental evidence. van Gessel, T., Cremers, A., & Roelofsen, F. In Maspong, S., Stefansdottir, B., Blake, K., & Davis, F., editors, Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 28), pages 217–232, 2018.
Polarity sensitivity of question embedding: experimental evidence [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   3 downloads  
Attitude predicates can be classified by the kinds of complements they can embed: declaratives, interrogatives or both. However, several authors have claimed that predicates like be certain can only embed interrogatives in specific environments. According to Mayr, these are exactly the environments that license negative polarity items (NPIs). In his analysis, both NPIs and embedded interrogatives are licensed by the same semantic strengthening procedure. If this is right, one would expect a correlation between acceptability of be certain whether and NPIs. The analysis also predicts a contrast between antecedents vs. consequents of conditionals and restrictors vs. scopes of universal quantifiers. This paper tests these predictions experimentally through an acceptability judgment task. We find that judgments for be certain whether do not correlate with judgments on NPIs, which suggests that be certain whether and NPIs are in fact licensed by different mechanisms.
@inproceedings{Gessel:18salt,
	abstract = {Attitude predicates can be classified by the kinds of complements they can embed: declaratives, interrogatives or both. However, several authors have claimed that predicates like be certain can only embed interrogatives in specific environments. According to Mayr, these are exactly the environments that license negative polarity items (NPIs). In his analysis, both NPIs and embedded interrogatives are licensed by the same semantic strengthening procedure. If this is right, one would expect a correlation between acceptability of be certain whether and NPIs. The analysis also predicts a contrast between antecedents vs. consequents of conditionals and restrictors vs. scopes of universal quantifiers. This paper tests these predictions experimentally through an acceptability judgment task. We find that judgments for be certain whether do not correlate with judgments on NPIs, which suggests that be certain whether and NPIs are in fact licensed by different mechanisms.},
	author = {van Gessel, Thom and Cremers, Alexandre and Roelofsen, Floris},
	booktitle = {Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 28)},
	date-modified = {2021-08-17 00:00:00 +0000},
	doi = {10.3765/salt.v28i0.4424},
	editor = {Sireemas Maspong and Brynhildur Stefansdottir and Katherine Blake and Forrest Davis},
	keywords = {inquisitive semantics,theoretical linguistics,questions,attitude predicates,experimental linguistics,npi,negation},
	mendeley-tags = {inquisitive semantics,theoretical linguistics},
	pages = {217--232},
	title = {{Polarity sensitivity of question embedding: experimental evidence}},
	url = {https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/view/28.217},
	year = {2018},
	Bdsk-Url-1 = {https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/view/28.217},
	Bdsk-Url-2 = {https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v28i0.4424}}
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