This is a provisional page of project B05 Negative Polarity Items in non-negative contexts. The project belongs to the Collaborative Research Center 1629 Negation in Language and Beyond (2024-2027).
Project team
Project members
- Nicolas Lamoure
- Pascal Hohmann
- Frank Richter
- Manfred Sailer
Cooperation partners
- Dirk Buschbom (Vienna)
- Gianina Iordăchioaia (Graz)
- Monica-Mihaela Rizea Casa (Bucharest)
News
July 2024
- July-September, 2024. Research visit of Jong-Bok Kim (Seoul) as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
December 2024 (planned)
- December 17 & 18, 2024: Presentation at the CRC Workshop
Past and ongoing project activities
July 2024
- July 9-10, 2024. Manfred Sailer: Horn clauses and strict NPIs under negated matrix clause. Paper at the 31st International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG 2024), Olomouc.
Download: abstract, slides - July 1-3, 2024. Research visit of E. David García Martínez (Nicosia).
June 2024
- June 24-26, 2024. Research visit of Jack Hoeksema (Groningen)
- June 20-21, 2024. Manfred Sailer: Negation-transparent matrix predicates: Licensing of embedded NPIs. Poster at the MECORE Closing Workshop, Konstanz.
Poster: MECORE-Sailer-Poster.pdf
May 2024
- May-June, 2024. Research visit of Gerald Penn (Toronto)
- May 13, 2024. Frank Niu (Toronto): Dissecting Language Models: From Black Boxes to Interpretable AI. Guest lecture.
Time: 10.15-11.45am (UTC+2)
Room: IG 1.418
April 2024
- April 19, 2024. Nicolas Lamoure, Frank Richter & Manfred Sailer. Negative polarity items with coffee stain distribution. Presentation at the NegLab kick-off workshop.
February 2024
The project is hiring a doctoral student!
Find our job ad
- on linguistlist: https://linguistlist.org/issues/35/440/
- and at: https://www.english-linguistics.de/2024/01/31/phd-position-semantics-and-pragmatics-of-npis/
Project description
B05: Negative Polarity Items in non-negative contexts
Project information on the official CRC page: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/149335782/Project_B05__Negative_Polarity_Items_in_non_negative_contexts
The project aims to reconcile conventional assumptions regarding the licensing of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) with observed exceptions, with a focus on English, German, and Romanian. The initial hypothesis posits that weak NPIs necessitate at least a weak licenser in the at-issue meaning, while strong NPIs require a strong licenser, which may appear in either the at-issue or non-at-issue content. The project’s empirical approach will combine quantitative and qualitative data analyses, including acceptability judgments. The ultimate objective is to develop an empirically grounded theory of NPI licensing within a constraint-based grammar framework.
Full project proposal: b05.pdf
Information on the CRC Negation in Language and Beyond
Spokesperson: Cecilia Poletto
Duration: 1.4.2024-31.12.2027
URL: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/149292001/Negation_in_Language_and_Beyond
Press announcement of Goethe University: https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/english/dfg-approves-two-new-collaborative-research-centers-at-goethe-university-frankfurt/