A New Type of NPI Licensing Context: Evidence from French Subjunctive and NE Expletif

A New Type of NPI Licensing Context: Evidence from French Subjunctive and NE Explétif ∗ Yoon-Hee Choi Department of French Education Seoul National University Seoul 151-742, Korea youni@snu.ac.kr Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new type of NPI licensing context through French subjunctive and ne explétif. The distribution of NPIs on previous studies does not exactly correspond to negative function types. French subjunctive and ne expletif are good guidelines for reclassifying NPI licensing context. My classification is by a hierarchy of strength in negative force: overtly negative proposition > negative entailment > negative implicature. A new type of NPI licensing context is: (i) I-domain for negative implicature (ⅱ) E-domain for negative entailment and (ⅲ) overt negation. Keywords: NPI licensing context, French subjunctive, ne explétif, negative force 1. Introduction Despite their huge contribution, previous studies on NPI licensing context are problematic in that they treat it as a simple filter. Moreover some contexts are still unexplainable within them. My proposal in this paper can provide an answer of why they license NPIs, also explaining the unexplainable. This paper is organized as follows: In section 2, I will briefly present the previous researches. In section 3, I show that French subjunctive is equivalent to nonveridicality specially focusing on its licensing property of weak NPIs. In section 4, I give you the answer of the question “why and where ne expétif comes about”. In section 5, I will propose a new type of NPI licensing context. 2. Previous Research Among the studies of NPIs, downward entailment (DE, Ladusaw 1979, cited in 1996) is the first to show the property of NPI licensing context. Later on more accurate properties (Zwarts 1993 cited in Ladusaw 1996 and Nam 1998) were proposed, creating a hierarchy of negative ∗ Copyright 2007 by Yoon-Hee Choi 115 expressions since DE simply distinguishes negation from affirmation. The followings are three negative functions (examples are from Lee 1999). (1) Three negative functions (ⅰ) Downword entailment If A and B are two Boolean algebras, the function f from A into B is polarity reversing iff for any a1, a2 ∈A, if a1 ≤ a2, then f(a2) ≤f(a1). e.g. at most (weak) (ⅱ) A functor f is anti-additive iff f(X∨Y)=f(X)∧f(Y). e.g. no, before, every (strong) (ⅲ) A functor f is antimorphic iff f is anti-additive and additionally f(X∧Y)=f(X) ∨f(Y). e.g. not (the strongest) Zwarts (1995) added here a weaker function, that is ‘nonveridicality’ and Giannakodou(2002, 2007) developed it with Greek subjunctive mood. Zwarts' (1995) definition about nonveridicality is as below: (2) Nonverdicality Let O be a monadic sentential operator. O is said to be veridical just in case Op⇒p is logically valid. If O is not veridical, then O is nonveridical. A nonveridical operator called averidical iff Op ⇒ ~p is logically valid. Despite the fact that three negative functions and nonveridicality have been instrumental in our understanding of NPI licensing context, some problems remain unsolved: emotive factive predicates that are veridical but license NPIs (e.g. I am happy …

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