Like the clouds that simultaneously obscure and reveal the sun in Alfred Stieglitz's 1926 photograph "Equivalent #314," negative polarity items may appear mysterious but can give us a window on the interaction of logic and grammar. (Public domain image courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Luka Crnic
MIT Course Number
24.979
As Taught In
Fall 2018
Level
Graduate
Course Description
Course Features
Course Description
This course is concerned with Negative Polarity Items. While raising familiar foundational questions for linguistic theory, Negative Polarity Items enter into complex and often revealing interactions with a host of other phenomena in grammar. Investigating several such interactions, the course touches on topics such as focus, presupposition, exhaustification, quantification, (in)definiteness, modals and attitudes, comparison and superlatives, and questions.