Negative polarity item

A negative polarity item is an expression that is restricted to negative contexts and some other semantically related such as questions and conditional clauses although its semantic properties would seem to allow occurrence in positive contexts as well.

Examples

English indefinite pronouns such as any, either, minimizers such as a fig, a drop, a wink, and verbal idioms such as lift a finger, budge an inch.

Negative polarity items are attested in most languages.

Comments

• “Since negative polarity items are not restricted to negative contexts..., this term (coined by Baker 1970) is not particularly felicitous. As the discussion in §5.5 will show, a term like scale reversal would be much more appropriate than negative polarity (and negative polarity items should be called scale reversal items).” (Haspelmath 1997:34)

Origin

The term was first used in print by Baker (1970), and must have been coined by him (Larry Horn, p.c. to Martin Haspelmath, 16 December 1992). Earlier authors who noted the phenomena just called them “facts restricted to negative contexts” (Buyssens 1959) or “constituents whose occurrence is favored by NEG” (Klima 1964:287).

Reference

• Baker, C.L. 1970. Double negatives. Linguistic Inquiry 1:169-186.
• Buyssens, Eric. 1959. Negative Contexts. English Studies 40:163-169.
• Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz (eds.) The structure of language. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 246-323.
• Ladusaw, W.A. 1980. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations, Phd. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, IULC: Bloomington, Indiana.

Links

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

 Wikipedia: Polarity item (English)