Abstract
This paper highlights some central aspects of negative polarity and negative concord in Greek (Gr). The principal goal is to attempt a solution to the so-called diversity problem,i.e. to the fact not all polarity items are licensed in the same environments, by motivating, on both syntactic and semantic grounds, a distinction between strong and weak polarity licensing. The proposal builds on a conjecture expressed in Ladusaw (1992, 1994) that there might be two mechanisms involved in the licensing of negative polarity items (NPIs) and negative indefinites. I will show that in Gr strong and weak licensing are explicitly marked at s-structure by means of emphatic stress. It will be suggested that the analysis presented here can prove helpful in accounting for the diverse distribution of NPIs in languages other than Gr.
I want to express my gratitude to a number of people for encouragement and comments: Elena Anagnostopoulou, Donka Farkas, Jack Hoeksema, Sabine Iatridou, Sila Klidi, Bill Ladusaw, Jason Merchant, Josep Quer, and Frans Zwarts. My thanks also to the audience of the Workshop on Greek Syntax in Berlin and to Artemis Alexiadou for organising an exciting Workshop and for giving us all the chance to be there.
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Giannakidou, A. (1999). Weak and Strong Polarity: Evidence from Greek. In: Alexiadou, A., Horrocks, G., Stavrou, M. (eds) Studies in Greek Syntax. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9177-5_6
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