Eva Csipak, Regine Eckardt, Mingya Liu and Manfred Sailer (Eds.) Beyond ‘Any’ and ‘Ever’ Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs Editor Volker Gast Editorial Board Walter Bisang Hans Henrich Hock Natalia Levshina Heiko Narrog Matthias Schlesewsky Niina Ning Zhang Editor responsible for this volume Heiko Narrog Volume 262 Beyond ‘Any’ and ‘Ever’ New Explorations in Negative Polarity Sensitivity Edited by Eva Csipak Regine Eckardt Mingya Liu Manfred Sailer ISBN 978-3-11-030372-8 e-ISBN 978-3-11-030523-4 ISSN 1861-4302 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: PTP-Berlin Protago-TEX-Production GmbH, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Contents Acknowledgements   1 Regine Eckardt and Manfred Sailer Beyond “any” and “ever”   3 Johan van der Auwera & Lauren Van Alsenoy Mapping the West Germanic any’s   21 Jack Hoeksema Polarity items in Strawsonian contexts – A comparison   47 Volker Gast From æghwæðer to either: The distribution of a negative polarity item in historical perspective   79 Johan Brandtler Evaluability – An Alternative Approach to Polarity Sensitivity   103 Luka Crnič How to get even with desires and imperatives   127 I-Ta Chris Hsieh On NPI Licensing in Possibility Conditionals   155 Jon Gajewski An analogy between a connected exceptive phrase and polarity items   183 Elena Herburger and Simon Mauck The chance of being an NPI   213 Robert Levine The modal need VP gap (non)anomaly   241 Regine Eckardt and Eva Csipak Minimizers – Towards pragmatic licensing   267 vi       Contents Ai Matsui Revisiting the Licensing Problem through Understating NPIs: The Case of Japanese Anmari ‘(not) very/much’   299 Edgar Onea and Manfred Sailer Really all that clear?   323 Mingya Liu, Regine Eckardt, and Janina Radό Polarity in Context   351 Subject index   369 Acknowledgements This volume resulted from a workshop “Beyond Any and Ever: Challenging Theo- ries of NPI Licensing” which took place in Göttingen in 2011. The selection of papers reflects our experiences and discussions on the occasion: Most of us started with some preconception of what NPIs are, and what a good licensing theory might look like. When thinking about other people’s favourite data and examples, however, we all got a feeling that some eventual theory of NPI licens- ing would need to reconcile a larger number of incommensurable proposals, each equally lucid, insightful and well-motivated in its own realm of data. Finding the unifying general principle behind this mulitplicity of patterns was, and remains, the challenge in the field. The papers in this volume reflect this variety of strate- gies, principles and mechanisms that seem necessary, and will hopefully spur future research towards the optimal eventual theory. We would like to express our warm thanks to Ilaria Frana, Jon Gajewski, Remus Gergel, Anastasia Giannakidou, Yurie Hara, Jack Hoeksema, Gianina Iordachioaia, Agnes Jäger, Larry Horn, Michael Israel, Magda Kaufmann, Stefan Kaufmann, Utpal Lahiri, Robert D. Levine, Eric McCready, Ira Noveck, Doris Penka, Frank Richter, Roland Schäfer, Anna Szabolcsi and Thomas Weskott, who took part in the review process and offered critical and stimulating comments. We are also grateful to Birgit Sievert and Julie Miess from De Gruyter Mouton and to the series editor, Heiko Narrog, for their encouragement and support in the preparation of the final manuscript. The book emerged as part of a research project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which we gratefully acknowledge. Regine Eckardt and Manfred Sailer Beyond “any” and “ever” 1 The problem Negative polarity items (NPIs) are restricted in use to contexts which can be superficially characterized as “negative”. Words like any and ever are acceptable in sentences like (1) but ungrammatical in (2). (1) John didn’t buy any bagel (ever). (2) a. * John ever bought a bagel. b. * John was buying any bagel. At least since Klima 1964 it is clear that while negation is the classical licensing context for NPIs, NPIs may also occur in other contexts which can be considered more or less “negative.” Some of these contexts are illustrated in (3) (the putative licensors are given in boldface). (3) a. Few students have ever attended this class. b. Every student who has ever attended this class, will pass the test. c. Only Pat has any objection against the proposal. d. If Pat has any objection against the proposal, we should brainstorm again. The exact characterization of the licensing contexts as well as the question of why an expression should show such a sensitivity to a particular context – or to a particular polarity – have been a continuing challenge for syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In this introduction we will sketch the types of theories that have been pro- posed in formal linguistics since Klima 1964 and situate the contributions of this volume with respect to these theories. We highlight two underlying questions in NPI research: the problem of defining what an NPI is once we go beyond any and ever, as well as its dual problem: permissible contexts of use for any/ever which are not expected in mainstream theory. We outline below how authors in this volume address these questions.