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Negative polarity items in Ewe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

CHRIS COLLINS ,
PAUL M. POSTAL  and
ELVIS YEVUDEY
CHRIS COLLINS*
Affiliation:
New York University
PAUL M. POSTAL*
Affiliation:
New York University
ELVIS YEVUDEY*
Affiliation:
Aston University
*
Author’s address: Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, 10003 New York, USAcc116@nyu.edu
Author’s address: paul.postal@nyu.edu
Author’s address: School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UKyevudeye@aston.ac.uk
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Abstract

Collins & Postal (2014) argue that English NPIs have two distinct syntactic structures: a unary NEG structure and a binary NEG structure. They suggest that this distinction is generally valid for natural languages. This formal difference was taken to reconstruct the common distinction in NPI studies between strong and weak NPIs. The present analysis of Ewe NPIs seeks to provide cross-linguistic support for this dual conception of NPIs by showing that the ke-NPIs in this language are all properly analyzed exclusively as unary NEG structures.

Keywords

bipartite negationeventsEwenegative polarity itemsweak and strong NPIs
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , 01 April 2018 , pp. 331 - 365
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

[1]

We thank the editor and the three Journal of Linguistics referees of this paper for their feedback. Abbreviations in the glosses follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules.

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