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In:Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIV–XXV: Papers from the annual symposia on Arabic Linguistics. Texas, 2010 and Arizona, 2011
Edited by Samira Farwaneh and Hamid Ouali
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 1] 2014
► pp. 181–206

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On the distribution and licensing of polarity-sensitive items in Egyptian Arabic:

The cases of ʔayy and walaa

 | Middlebury College
Published online: 29 August 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.1.12sol
The goal of this paper is twofold: First, to provide a descriptive account of the grammatical distribution and behavior of the two Egyptian Arabic (ea) polarity-sensitive items (psis) ʔayy (= ‘any’) and walaa (a negative element used in negative concord structures); second, to discuss the implications that these ea facts have for two approaches to the licensing of psis in natural language: The monotonicity-based approach, first proposed in Ladusaw (1979), and the veridicality-based approach, first articulated in Giannakidou (1997, 1998). I conclude that the empirical facts related to the grammatical distribution and contrastive behavior of ʔayy and walaa in ea are more in line with (non)veridicality as the licensing grammatical property regulating the occurrence of psis.
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