Research Catalog

Title

Negative and positive polarity : a binding approach / Ljiljana Progovac.

Author

Progovac, Ljiljana.

Publication

Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 168 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• In Negative and positive polarity, Ljiljana Progovac presents cross-linguistic data on negative polarity, reflexive binding and the subjunctive mood, and proposes a unified analysis for various languages, including English and Serbian/Croatian.
• She argues that Negative Polarity Items (NPIs), such as 'anyone' and 'ever', are anaphoric in nature and must be bound in their governing category, while Positive Polarity Items (PPIs), such as 'someone' and 'already', are subject to Principle B of the Binding Theory. She also suggests that possible binders (and SUBJECTS) for polarity items are negation or else a polarity operator in the complementiser of questions, conditionals, and other clauses with an unfixed truth-value.
• Her analysis not only captures many similarities between polarity and anaphora, but also accounts for a number of hitherto unexplained facts about polarity items, for example, their scope restrictions, Comp involvement in NPI licensing, cross-linguistic variation, and their behaviour in subjunctive clauses.

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in linguistics ; 68

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in linguistics ; 68.

Subject

• Grammar, Comparative and general > Syntax
• Anaphora (Linguistics)
• Government-binding theory (Linguistics)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Negative contexts: Serbian/Croatian -- 2. Negative contexts: English -- 3. Non-negative polarity contexts -- 4. Language variation -- 5. Rhetorical questions -- 6. Subjunctive: domain extensions -- 7. Free-choice items -- 8. Ladusaw and Linebarger.

ISBN

0521444802 (hc)

LCCN

93012938

OCLC

ocm27936850

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries