Disjunction in negative contexts: a cross-linguistic experimental study

Oana Lungu (1) , Anamaria Falaus (1) , Francesca Panzeri (2)

1 LLING - Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes
2 UNIMIB - Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca = University of Milano-Bicocca

This squib reports experimental findings from a study investigating the interpretation of simple disjunction in negative contexts in four languages: Italian, French, English, Romanian. We provide evidence that casts doubt on the robustness of the distinction between PPI disjunction languages and non-PPI disjunction languages. The difference turns out to be less clear-cut than assumed in the theoretical (e.g., Szabolcsi 2002, Spector 2014, Nicolae 2017) or experimental literature (e.g., Crain 2012, Guasti et al 2017). The results reported here inform current accounts of positive polarity and flesh out some methodological issues raised by the various tasks used in experimental investigations of the polarity sensitivity of disjunction.

Mots clés: positive polarity; Disjunction; experimental semantics

Domaines: Linguistique

Oana Lungu, Anamaria Falaus, Francesca Panzeri. Disjunction in negative contexts: a cross-linguistic experimental study. Journal of Semantics, 2021, 38 (2), pp.221-247. ⟨10.1093/jos/ffab002⟩. ⟨hal-03087667v1⟩