Course Meeting Times
Class meetings: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course, but permission of the instructor is required for enrollment.
Course Description
In this course, we will study Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). While raising familiar foundational questions for linguistic theory, Negative Polarity Items enter into complex and often revealing interactions with a host of other phenomena in grammar. We will investigate several such interactions, with the goal of advancing our understanding of not only Negative Polarity Items but also these other phenomena. This investigation will help us address the overarching question of the course: Is the classic insight that the distribution of Negative Polarity Items should be described and explained by recourse to a notion of entailment tenable, and if so, how should it be cashed out?
Selected Topics
- Environments vs. operators in the description of the distribution of NPIs
- Modified numeral quantifiers, definite descriptions, and collectivity
- Free choice, modal, and modal-like environments
- Even and explanation
- Even and variation
- Intervention
Course Requirements
- Participation in classroom discussion
- Classroom presentation
- Homework assignments (optional)
- Final paper