Séminaire de Recherche: Hedde Zeijlstra (U. Amsterdam)

Deontic modality, negation and polarity - Mar 14 Dec - 12h15 - L208

In English deontic must, ought and should scope over negation. On the other hand, have to, need to, may and can scope under negation. In addition need (without to) is a Negative Polarity Item.

1. Sue mustn’t/oughtn’t to/shouldn’t leave [necc> neg]

2. Sue doesn’t have to/need to leave [neg] > [necc]

3. Sue can/may not leave [neg] > [poss]

4. Sue need *(not) leave [neg] > [poss]

In Iatridou & Zeijlstra (2009) we argue that 1-4 is explained if it is assumed that (i) polarity effects arise in the domain of universal DMs and that moreover this entails that they will not arise in the domain of existential DMs; and (ii) that all deontic modals must be interpreted VP-in situ if their polarity requirements allow for that. In short, it is argued that must, ought and should are Positive Polarity Items (PPIs) (cf. Homer 2009 for a similar view on English must), whereas have to and need to, as well as can and may are polarity neutral. Since only PPIs cannot be interpreted in their VP-internal base position, they are the only ones being triggered to raise to a position outscoping negation.

In this paper we present two phenomena that at first sight appear to be problematic for this analysis. The first phenomenon concerns the variation w.r.t. must and Negative Indefinite (NI) subjects. While speakers agree on must having scope over the sentential negative marker (as in 1), speakers differ in their judgments on NI subjects (Iatridou and Sichel 2009): whereas all speakers assign a reading necc > [neg] > [exist] to sentences like 5, some speakers of English also permit [neg] >  [exist] > [necc ].We refer these two varieties of English as “English A” and “English B”.

5. Nobody must leave

a. necc> neg>exist, *neg > exist> necc (English A)

b. necc > neg > exist, neg> exist > necc (English B)

In the second phenomenon we see that PPI must can remain in the scope of negation when other scopal material intervenes, as shown in 6 (from Homer 2009), exactly like some other PPIs can (cf. Szabolcsi 2004). However, PPI should cannot do this and must still scope over negation (7).

6. Everything mustn’t be expensive to be worthwhile neg > univ> necc

7. Everything shouldn’t be expensive to be worthwhile necc > neg> univ

The above facts automatically lead to the following questions:

Q1. How can the distinction between English A and B be accounted for?

Q2. How can the distinction between must and should be accounted for?

We will argue that Q1-2 can be successfully answered once it is understood that English A must, English B must and should reflect different types of PPIs along the lines of Van der Wouden 1994 and Szabolcsi 2004: weak, strong and superstrong PPIs. Thus the observed differences between modals outscoping negation naturally follows from their status as PPI

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