Rethinking negative polarity and free choice in comparatives: A crosslinguistic perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we study patterns of polarity items in comparatives, including data from Greek, English, Korean, and Dutch described in Jack Hoeksema’s work. Our conclusions challenge the status of the comparative as a licensing environment for negative polarity items (NPIs). NPIs that appear in the comparative are not licensed but rescued in the sense of Giannakidou (2006), i.e., they can appear without a syntactic licenser in the logical form. Free choice items, (FCIs) on the other hand, do appear in comparatives systematically; and because FCIs typically avoid negation, their occurrence serves as evidence that the comparative is not a negative environment. The implication of our data is consistent with the long-standing observation, including Hoeksema’s own, that the comparative lacks monotonic properties. Polarity items with free choice or generic readings are admitted because these items can refer to a class, and are therefore appropriate for class comparisons.