Uztaro

Polaritatea giza lengoaiaren fenomeno orokor bat da: hizkuntzetako osagai batzuek badute oro har sintaxi-arauen bidez ezin aurresan daitekeen sintaxi-portaera. Berez, polaritate positiboko edo negatiboko osagaiak deitu izan direnak sentikor dira hurrenez hurren perpausaren baiezko edo ezezko izaerarekin. Hala ere, ezaguna da era berean PPO eta PNO horiek ez dutela banaketa osagarria erakusten hizkuntza jakin baten gramatikan. Zehazkiago, deskribatu da PNO direlakoek beheranzko irakurketa delako bat eragiten dutela. Alegia, ezezkotasun horren besarkadura perpausean bertan ageri ez diren osagai batzuetara ere iristen da. Euskarazko datuetan oinarrituta, beheranzko irakurketa hori era lexiko batera deskribatzen du lan honek: ezezkotasuna, perpauseko osagaiaren hiponimo guztietara iristen da, hiponimoak perpausean ageri ez badira ere. Areago, beheranzko irakurketa hori, predikatu mota desberdinen ezaugarri lexikoekin estuki lotuta azaltzen da, eta ez bakarrik ageriko ez daramaten perpausekin. Horrela, erakusten da nolakoak diren PNO direlako horiek azaldu daitezkeen baiezko perpausak.

GAKO-HITZAK: Polaritate negatiboko osagaiak · Beheranzko irakurketak.

Negative polarity items in affirmative clauses

Polarity is considered a phenomenon of human language in which some lexical items show a behavior that is not predictable by general syntactic rules. In fact, the socalled positive-polarity items and negative-polarity items are sensitive to whether a sentence is affirmative or negative. However, it is well known that both PPIs and NPIs do not show a complementary distribution in the grammar of a particular language, which is again an unexpected fact. More precisely, NPIs are described as downward-entailment items. I.e. they bear a negation wide scope over some other items in an overtly negative sentence. Using data from Basque, this paper defines this downward entailment lexically as having a (lexical) scope over all the hyponyms of the item in the sentence. Moreover, downward entailment is shown to be a phenomenon closely related to the lexical features of the predicate rather than to the overt negation. Therefore, it is shown that some Basque NPIs appear in a wide range of overtly affirmative sentences, which are described in some detail.

KEY WORDS: Negative Polarity Items · Downward entailments.