Two Types of NPIs: Universals vs. Existential

초록

A negative polarity item, according to the standard view in the literature (Ladusaw 1979, among many others), is an existential quantifier that should be under the syntactic scope of its licensor for a proper interpretation. I argue, however, that negative polarity items in Korean vary in quantificational force, that is, universal vs. existential. An interesting contrast emerges between amwuto 'anyone' NPIs and bare wh-word NPIs with respect to their distribution and locality in that the latter show a far broader distribution than the former and are not subject to locality in contrast to the former. I will show that the contrast in distribution and locality essentially reduces to the differnt quantificational force of the two NPIs: Amwuto is universal in quantificational force, whereas the bare wh-word NPI is existential in nature.

키워드