Positive Polarity as a Syntactic Phenomenon
郷路 拓也（メリーランド大学／東北大学）
This paper investigates properties of Positive Polarity Items (PPI) in English and Japanese, and claims that the effect of positive polarity is driven by covert syntactic movement. We present novel empirical data that show the effect of positive polarity is insensitive to various kinds of non-overt negations. The observation leads us to propose that positive polarity is purely a syntactic phenomenon that happens to have semantic consequences in certain limited contexts. Our syntactic account of positive polarity also explains why positive polarity is subject to a locality effect.
