Licensing of negative polarity particles yet, anymore, either and neither: Combining downward monotonicity and assertivity

This dissertation focuses on the negative polarity items yet, anymore, either and neither, which I call negative polarity particles (NPP). Their distribution is examined and a licensing condition is proposed.;On the other hand, the negative polarity particles are not licensed in antecedents of conditionals, restrictors of quantifiers, comparatives, superlatives and emotive factives. (6) *Everyone who is here anymore will receive a prize. (7) *If you have been to Amsterdam, you probably visited the Rijksmuseum, and neither have I. (8) *I regret that my car has arrived yet. (9) *I feel better than I have ever felt before either.;In this dissertation I propose assertivity as an additional condition needed to distinguish between these two sets of environments. Clausal assertivity is combined with downward monotonicity to create a complete licensing condition for the negative polarity particles. The brief definitions of clausal assertivity, downward monotonicity and the licensing condition are as follows. A clause x is downward monotone relative to z if the predicate position of x is downward monotone in z. A clause x is assertive relative to z iff asserting z illocutionary entails asserting x or asserting -x with some assertion strength. A clause x is semantically negative relative to z if x is downward monotone relative to z, and x is assertive relative to z. A clause x is semantically negative iff there exists z (which may be x itself), such that x is semantically negative relative to z. Negative polarity particles are licensed in semantically negative clauses.;This condition explains the differences between the downward monotone clauses that license the negative polarity particles and those that do not. The downward monotone clauses in which the NPPs are licensed are also assertive and hence semantically negative. The downward monotone clauses in which the NPPs are not licensed, are not assertive relative to the clause containing the licenser, therefore such clauses are not semantically negative.;The negative polarity particles are licensed in many environments known to license negative polarity items. They are licensed by sentential negation, the words few, rarely, barely, the negative implicative verbs like fail and refuse, and the negative implicative constructions such as without with a clausal complement and too of excess: (1) He didn't like me and I didn't like him either. (2) Few Americans have ever been to Spain. Few Canadians have, either. (3) That has rarely happened yet, but it's going to happen at lot. (4) She barely acknowledged Ruthie, and neither did anyone else, understandably. (5) I was too scared to hitchhike anymore.;I also examine negative polarity particles in some other languages: Spanish tampoco 'either', French non plus 'either', German (nicht) mehr 'anymore' and Russian bol'she 'anymore'. It is shown that these particles only occur in semantically negative environments. In addition, I investigate the relationship between the notion of semantic negativity and the notions of argumentative orientation and psycholinguistic negativity.