This dissertation investigates the peculiar behavior of negative polarity items in questions and argues that a unified account of their distribution across declarative and interrogative constructions is feasible. These items are acceptable in questions, despite the fact that questions do not prima facie share anything in common with the other environments in which NPIs surface. Specifically, given current analyses of questions there is no way to argue that questions give rise to downward-entailing inferences, which is what otherwise unifies all other NPI licensing environments. In Chapter 2 I argue for a new semantics of questions wherein strength of exhaustivity is encoded not in different answer-hood operators (cf. Heim 1994), but rather in terms of the presence/absence of a null only that adjoins at the level of the question nucleus, building on an observation by Guerzoni and Sharvit (2007) that question strength appears to be the determining factor in whether or not a question allows NPIs. Chapter 3 focuses specifically on the distribution of NPIs in constituent questions and shows how the analysis put forward in Chapter 2 can account for an array of facts, namely their distribution both in the question nucleus, and in the restrictor of the wh-phrase. Further predictions related to NPIs that had not been discussed before are examined, such as how their scope relative to adjunct wh-phrases affects their acceptability, as well as the distributional differences between weak and strong NPIs. In Chapters 4 and 5 we turn to non-wh questions, namely alternate and polar questions. In Chapter 4 I argue that alternate questions can and should be given an analysis akin to that of wh-questions based on both old and new empirical evidence that the distribution of NPIs is sensitive to the same set of restrictions. In Chapter 5 I argue, contrary to previous analyses, that the acceptability of NPIs is not a function of strength, but rather of how polar questions are interpreted, namely as speech act conditionals. Lastly, Chapter 6 focuses on complex questions and puts forward an analysis of these questions that sets the stage for an arguably unified semantics of all types of questions. / Linguistics

abstract: This thesis explores the distribution of certain lexical items in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and their relationship with two linguistic phenomena, negative concord (NC) and negative polarity items (NPIs). The present study examines two central questions: the first question investigates whether or not MSA shows the patterns of negative concord languages. The second question concerns the distribution of N-words and NPIs in MSA, and in which environments they appear. To answer the research questions, the thesis uses the framework of generative grammar of Chomsky (1995) and The (Non)veridicality Approach by Giannakidou (1998, 2000, 2002). The data reveal that MSA shows the patterns of strict negative concord languages that are suggested by Giannakidou (2000) in the sense that the negative particle obligatorily co-occurs with the N-words which strengthen the degree of negation, and never lead to a double negation interpretation. Moreover, the data show that there is only one pure NPI which appears optionally in two environments, antiveridical and nonveridical environments, and it is disallowed in veridical environments. On the other hand, the investigated indefinite nouns show a mixed picture since they work differently from their counterparts in Arabic dialects. Their descendants in Arabic dialects appear as NPIs while they tend to be indefinite nouns rather than NPIs in MSA. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2013

This paper presents the results of a production experiment on the intonation of sentences containing a negative polarity item (NPI) in Tokyo Japanese. The results show that NPI sentences exhibit a focus intonation: the F₀-peak of the word to which an NPI is attached is raised, while the pitch contour after the NPI-attached word is compressed until the negation. This intonation pattern is parallel to that of wh-question, in which the F₀ of the wh-phrase is raised while the post-wh-contour is compressed until the question particle.

In this thesis, I focus on scalar implicatures, presuppositions and their connections. In chapter 2, I propose a scalar implicature-based account of neg-raising inferences, standardly analyzed as a presuppositional phenomenon (Gajewski 2005, 2007). I show that an approach based on scalar implicatures can straightforwardly account for the differences and similarities between neg-raising predicates and presuppositional triggers. In chapters 3 and 4, I extend this account to “soft” presuppositions, a class of presuppositions that are easily suspendable (Abusch 2002, 2010). I show how such account can explain the differences and similarities between this class of presuppositions and other presuppositions on the one hand, and scalar implicatures on the other. Furthermore, I discuss various consequences that it has with respect to the behavior of soft presuppositions in quantificational sentences, their interactions with scalar implicatures, and their effects on the licensing of negative polarity items. In chapter 5, I show that by looking at the interaction between presuppositions and scalar implicatures we can solve a notorious problem which arises with conditional sentences like (1) (Soames 1982, Karttunen and Peters 1979). The main issue with (1) is that it is intuitively not presuppositional and this is not predicted by any major theory of presupposition projection. (1) I’ll go, if you go too. Finally, I explore in more detail the question of which alternatives should we consider in the computation of scalar implicatures (chapter 6). Traditionally, the answer has been to consider the subset of logically stronger alternatives than the assertion. Recently, however, arguments have been put forward in the literature for including also logically independent alternatives. I support this move by presenting some novel arguments in its favor and I show that while allowing new alternatives makes the right predictions in various cases, it also causes an under- and an over-generation problem. I propose a solution to each problem, based on a novel recursive algorithm for checking which alternatives are to be considered in the computation of scalar implicatures and the role of focus (Rooth 1992, Fox and Katzir 2011). / Linguistics