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On the Processing of Alternatives, Exhaustification and Covert Negation: the Case of Mai

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Alternatives in Semantics

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

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Abstract

In this chapter, we focus on the linguistic behavior and online processing of the Italian word mai. We are interested in mai as it exhibits typical properties of negative polarity items (NPIs) on the one hand and of negative-words (N-words) on the other. Mai exhibits sensitivity to the entailment patterns associated with the sentence in which it occurs, a feature that characterizes NPIs in general. Moreover, mai gives rise to different meanings depending on its position with respect to the verb, a characteristic of N-words. In this chapter, we propose an alternative-based analysis of mai as an NPI with the additional capacity of introducing a covert negation in certain environments in preverbal position. The main goal of this project is to investigate, through the case study of mai, the online processing of the theoretical mechanisms that we argue are involved in its semantics, such as alternatives, exhaustification and insertion of covert negation. With this goal in mind, we make explicit hypotheses on how such mechanisms are connected to online processing, and we test these hypotheses using the event-related potential (ERP) methodology. In the experiment we report below, we manipulated the presence of negation and the position of mai with respect to the verb, and we presented speakers of Italian with a set of sentences where only these two factors were varied, while their electroencephalography was recorded.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Göttingen, Germany

    Daniele Panizza

  2. Macquarie University, Australia

    Jacopo Romoli

Authors
  1. Daniele Panizza
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  2. Jacopo Romoli
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain

    Anamaria Fӑlӑuş

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© 2013 Daniele Panizza and Jacopo Romoli

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Panizza, D., Romoli, J. (2013). On the Processing of Alternatives, Exhaustification and Covert Negation: the Case of Mai. In: Fӑlӑuş, A. (eds) Alternatives in Semantics. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317247_8

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