Regine Eckardt: "The many careers of polarity sensitive items"

I will review possible grammaticalization clines of negative polarity items (NPI). Part one will revisit the elements of pragmatic NPI licensing (Eckardt 2008; Krifka 1995) and discusses the emergence of polarity items specifically as an interaction of synchronic pragmatic processes (presupposition, emphasis, reference to alternatives) with diachronic processes such as generalization, reanalysis, bleaching, and “grammaticalization” in a specific sense. This leads to a concise historical record of polarity sensitive items, and determines possible new usages with great precision.

In the second part, I will take a look at some phrases which are classed as polarity sensitive items in the literature and which have not emerged along the developmental path delineated in part I. I will cover three cases: Firstly, a series of Dutch “nonsense” NPIs, second, NPIs on basis of the also + only pattern (Dutch ook maar, Italian anche solo, German auch nur), and third, the use of brauchen (‘need’) in the sense of ‘must’ in the scope of negation (compare: need not = does not have to ...). I will argue that in each case, the mode of emergence is mirrored in the resulting grammatical properties of the new item. I propose that historical evidence, among other things, should serve as a strong argument to class these items as pseudo NPIs.