Universal Quantifier PPIs

Abstract

Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) that denote lower scalar endpoints, such as existentials like any or ever, are often said to be only fine in Downward Entailing contexts, since outside such contexts their semantics would give rise to a contradiction. According to Chierchia (2006, 2013), this contradiction arises as such NPIs both obligatorily introduce domain alternatives and trigger the presence of a covert exhaustifier. Following this line of reasoning, I argue it should be expected that elements with the same properties that denote the highest endpoint of a scale, such as universal quantifiers, are Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). Indeed, universal quantifier PPIs have been attested in the domain of modals (quantifiers over possible worlds) – English must and should are good examples of such universal quantifier PPIs (cf. Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2010, 2013; Homer 2015) – but not in the domain of quantifiers over individuals. In this paper, I argue that PPIs that are universal quantifiers over individuals actually do exist. However, since the covert exhaustifier that is induced by these PPIs (and responsible for their PPI-hood) can act as an intervener between the PPI and its anti-licenser, universal quantifier PPIs may still scope below negation and thus appear in disguise; their PPI-like behaviour only becomes visible once they morpho-syntactically precede their anti-licenser. Universal quantifier PPIs may surface under negation, but may not reconstruct under negation once they appear above it. This article concludes that Dutch iedereen (‘everybody’), unlike English everybody, is actually such a PPI.

Keywords

• negation
• universal quantifiers
• positive polarity items
• modal auxiliaries
• exhaustification