Find in Library

This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, <i>gaire</i> ‘much, many’ is a PI, <i>pas</i> ‘at all’ is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as <i>ningú</i> ‘anybody, n-body’ come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here, a distinction must be made between indefinite pronouns such as <i>dengún</i> ‘anyone, n-one’ and scalar minimizers such as <i>gota</i> (lit. drop), which come in parallel PI and NCI sets, whereas NPIs such as <i>brenca</i> (lit. crumb) have developed an enriched meaning. This paper reveals the different status of <i>pas</i> across Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties either as an NPI at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, which further constrains conventional implicatures, or as a negative operator.