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Scalar Additive Particles in Negative Contexts

Scalar Additive Particles in Negative Contexts German has a family of expressions corresponding to the English scalar additive particle even, featuring the negative polarity items einmal and auch nur in addition to affirmative sogar. This study reports novel findings on the meanings of einmal and auch nur which are unexpected under existing analyses of English even. First, the particles einmal and auch nur are shown to differ from sogar in that they consistently contribute information about the truth values of alternative propositions, as opposed to their mere likelihood. Second, it is shown that the implications in question do not have the compositional behavior of presuppositions and instead call for the assumption that einmal and auch nur quantify existentially over alternative propositions at the level of truth conditions. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Natural Language Semantics Springer Journals

Scalar Additive Particles in Negative Contexts

Natural Language Semantics , Volume 13 (2) – Aug 24, 2004

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References (62)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by Springer
Subject
Linguistics; Philosophy of Language; Semantics; Syntax
ISSN
0925-854X
eISSN
1572-865X
DOI
10.1007/s11050-004-2441-0
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

German has a family of expressions corresponding to the English scalar additive particle even, featuring the negative polarity items einmal and auch nur in addition to affirmative sogar. This study reports novel findings on the meanings of einmal and auch nur which are unexpected under existing analyses of English even. First, the particles einmal and auch nur are shown to differ from sogar in that they consistently contribute information about the truth values of alternative propositions, as opposed to their mere likelihood. Second, it is shown that the implications in question do not have the compositional behavior of presuppositions and instead call for the assumption that einmal and auch nur quantify existentially over alternative propositions at the level of truth conditions.

Journal

Natural Language SemanticsSpringer Journals

Published: Aug 24, 2004

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