Aproximación sintáctica a los términos de polaridad negativa en inglés

Abstract

Negative Polarity items are those lexical elements and expressions which are only licensed in non-assertive contexts (i.e. any, ever, in years, lift a finger...). The purpose of this paper is to explore the structural conditions which regulate their appearance in the sentence. After reviewing some of the proposals on the issue made under the generativist approach, we focus on the role played by the so-called functional categories, in particular the negation, the complementizers or subordinators, and certain quantifiers and degree words. We conclude that Negative Polarity items must be expanded under the categorial command of a non-assertive constituent, and that this structural relationship has to be mediated by one functional category.