Polarity Sensitive Any in Bengali

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2012
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
Bengali uses two different sets of morphemes for the negative polarity any. One set consists of expressions morphologically related to the existential some. The other set consists of expressions morphologically related to an overt emphatic particle meaning even. Lahiri (1998) proposed that Hindi polarity morphemes similar to the ones in Bengali are singular, non-specific referential terms. I propose that treating the Bengali polarity morphemes in this way allows us to explain why they are licensed in subject position unlike polarity morphemes in many other languages (e.g. English). In particular, I propose that due to their singular, non-referential status, Bengali polarity morphemes become syntactically negative with wide scope negation. The agreement between a semantically non-negative element (e.g. a Bengali polarity morpheme) and a semantically negative element (e.g. negation) in the structure constitutes evidence in favor of the agreement - based approach to polarity in Chierchia (2011).
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