Minimizers and EVEN

Abstract

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that polarity sensitivity pertains to the lexical nature of NPI minimizers, phrases denoting a minimal quantity, extent or degree. This paper, however, proposes that so-called “negative polarity” of Mandarin Chinese minimizers (yi-CL-N ‘one.CL+N’ and yidian-N ‘one.point N’) is not lexically determined, but is facilitated by utilizing the existing lian... dou ‘including... all’ EVEN construction. Specifically, total negation is decomposed into a scalar operator lian, which evokes a set of order ranked alternatives determined in context, and the maximizing/universal operator dou ‘all’ that quantifies over the contextual alternatives plus the focused minimizer, which is placed at the end of the scale. The scalar minimizer syntactically scopes over the negation to represent the logic of ∀¬. This paper further distinguishes minimizers from lexical NPI renhe ‘any’ with respect to (i) scoping out of the negation for the former, (ii) being irrelevant to the non-veridical licensing conditions that otherwise license any and NPI-renhe, (iii) a clausemate relation between dou and negation, and (iv) the lack of intervention effects of strong quantifiers between the minimizers and negation. The study lends further support to the claim that scalar EVEN is construed with minimizers. A comparison of Chinese minimizers with those in Hindi and Japanese has an implication for varieties of coding polarity ranging from purely lexical to syntactical means crosslinguistically.

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