Speaker: Iva Kova? (University of Vienna)
Title: Can the distribution of weak NPIs be derived from Scope Economy?
Time: Wednesday, October 14, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:
The same condition, paraphrased in (1), has been independently proposed to license covert scope shifting of quantifiers (Generalized Scope Economy; Mayr & Spector 2010) and to govern the distribution of weak NPIs such as any (Kusumoto & Tancredi 2013; Barker 2018).
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Scope Conditiona. A quantifier Q may covertly outscope an element S only if …b. An NPI must be in the scope of an element S such that …the reading that would result from the Q/NPI taking wide scope with respect to S does not entail the reading resulting from the Q/NPI taking narrow scope with respect to S.
In this talk, I explore some consequences of this correspondence. Empirically, if both strands of research are on the right track, we expect weak NPIs to be licensed in exactly those configurations in which (non-NPI) indefinites are allowed to extend scope covertly. I discuss corroborating evidence as well as challenges and open issues. If, despite the challenges, the analogy can be upheld, it opens up a new way of capturing the distribution of weak NPIs, as an indirect consequence of Scope Economy.