Negative Idioms

doi:10.1017/9781108674195.007

5 - Negative Idioms

from II - Syntax–Semantics Interface

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2019

José Camacho

Edited by

Mónica Cabrera and

José Camacho

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Mónica Cabrera: Affiliation:
Loyola Marymount University, California
José Camacho: Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey

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Summary

Polarity-sensitive items are a peculiar kind of linguistic object. As Israel (2004, p. 207) notes: they are a class of items “which do not themselves express negation or affirmation, but which are restricted to sentences of one or the other polarity.” Broadly speaking, polarity items are expressions whose distribution is sensitive to contexts that express contradiction, contrariety, or reversal (Israel, 2004).

Idioms are also peculiar kinds of objects that have complex syntactic structure but behave like individual lexical units. It turns out that many polarity-sensitive items are idioms, and that intersection provides an interesting insight about both categories, which I will explore in this chapter.

Type: Chapter
Information: Exploring Interfaces , pp. 111 - 140

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108674195.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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