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Article published In: Interfaces in Romance: A constraint-based approach
Edited by Gabriela Bîlbîie
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 43:1] 2020
► pp. 129–168

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A constraint-based modeling of negative polarity items in result clause constructions in Romanian

 | Solomon Marcus Center for Computational LinguisticsBucharest
 | Goethe University Frankfurt a.M.
Published online: 16 October 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/li.00042.riz
Summary
The paper discusses the occurrence of emphatic negative polarity items (NPIs) in high degree result clause constructions. We will identify four distributional patterns for Romanian emphatic NPIs. These will range from NPIs that only occur occasionally in result constructions to NPIs that are bound to such constructions and even do not show any truth-conditionally relevant semantic contribution. We reformulate a scalar, pragmatic theory of NPIs in a constraint-based, representational framework, Lexical Resource Semantics. We propose a scalar extension of a standard semantics of result clauses in order to capture the high degree, i.e. intensification readings. The constraint-based, representational perspective of this paper allows for an elegant modeling of the data: (i) We can capture the four distributional patterns as a lexical property of the discussed NPIs. (ii) The semantics and pragmatics of Romanian result clause constructions is accounted for by lexical properties of the result clause complementizers. (iii) A scalar analysis of emphatic NPIs can be applied in embedded clauses and even when the NPI itself does not contribute to the at-issue content of the overall utterance.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
    • 2.1Finite result clause construction
    • 2.2Four types of emphatic NPIs in result clause constructions
      • 2.2.1Minimizer NPIs
      • 2.2.2Intensifier-minimizer NPIs
      • 2.2.3Intensifier NPIs
      • 2.2.4De-Intensifier NPIs
    • 2.3Summary
  • 3.Framework: Lexical Resource Semantics (LRS)
  • 4.Scalar analysis of Mins
  • 5.Analysis of result clauses
  • 6.Analysis of implicit result relations
  • 7.Analysis of figurative interpretation
  • 8.Analysis of plain high degree readings
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
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