Abstract
In an experimental investigation of NPIs and their licensing conditions in
German, Richter & Radó (2013) showed that Weak Licensors can partially license Strong NPIs.
In two experiments we investigate these results for English. In Experiment 1 we empirically
identify 16 Strong and 16 Weak NPIs by examining their acceptability when licensed by
sentential negation and weak adverb licensors and find results similar to German. In
Experiment 2 we compare the licensing abilities of two different types of conditionals, normal,
causal conditionals and rhetorical conditionals, such as `If you win, I’ll eat my hat’. We did not
find statistically significant evidence for our prediction that rhetorical conditionals might be
able to license strong NPIs better than normal conditionals, but we discuss possible changes in
the experimental design that might lead to different results. Experiment 2 thus serves as a pilot
study for future investigations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Black Book |
| Subtitle of host publication | A Festschrift in honor of Frans Zwarts |
| Editors | Jack Hoeksema, Dicky Gilbers |
| Place of Publication | University of Groningen |
| Pages | 298-310 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- NPIs
- Negative Polarity
- Conditionals