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<Paper uid="W06-1511">
  <Title>Licensing German Negative Polarity Items in LTAG</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="81" end_page="83" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 The LTAG Semantics Framework
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We use the Kallmeyer and Romero (2005) framework for semantics. Each elementary tree is linked to a semantic representation containing Ty2 terms and scope constraints. Ty2 terms are typed l-terms providing individuals and situations as basic types. The terms can be labeled, and they can contain meta-variables. The scope constraints are subordination constraints of the form x [?] y ('y is a component of x') with x and y being either propositional labels or propositional meta-variables.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The semantic representations are equipped with feature structure descriptions. Semantic computation is done on the derivation tree and consists of certain feature value equations between mother and daughter nodes of edges in the derivation tree.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  The meta-variables from the semantic representations can occur in the feature structure descriptions. In this case they can receive values following from the feature value equations performed on the derivation tree.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> As an example see Fig. 1 showing the derivation tree for (9) with semantic representations and semantic feature structure descriptions as node labels. null (9) John always laughs The additional feature equations in this example are depicted with dotted links. They arise from top-bottom feature identifications parallel to the unifications performed in FTAG (Vijay-Shanker and Joshi, 1988) and from identifications of global features. They yield 1 = x and 4 = l1. Applying these identities to the semantic representations after having built their union leads to (10). The constraint 3 [?] l1 states that l1 : laugh(x) is a component of 3.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> We assume a scope window for quantifiers specifying an upper boundary MAXS ('maximal scope') and a lower boundary MINS ('minimal scope') for the nuclear scope. In this we follow Kallmeyer and Romero (2005). In addition, however, we make use of the feature MINP ('minimal proposition'). In their analysis, which was developed for English, MINS and MINP are the same, in other words, there is no separate MINP feature. In German, the minimal scope of a quantifier seems to depend not only on the verb the quantifier attaches to but also on other factors (see Kallmeyer  and Romero, 2006 in this volume for the influence of word order on quantifier scope in German). This justifies the assumption that German MINS if different from English MINS. The scope order is of course such that MAXS is higher than MINS which is in turn higher than MINP.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> In order to deal with NPI-licensing we introduce three new features: a global and a local NEG-feature and the global feature N-SCOPE. Not surprisingly, the latter represents the scope of a negative operator, while the former is needed to check the presence of a negative operator. The next section offers detailed examples.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="83" end_page="84" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 The Analysis of Licensers
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this section we give the elementary trees for non-contrastive nicht (not) and niemand (nobody).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> A strong trigger for NCN is nicht attached to the verb. Based on the topological field theory for German the attachment takes place at the right satzklammer, a position that together with the left satzklammer contains the verbal expression.4 As an example see the derivation for (11) in Fig. 2.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  tures VF ('Vorfeld'), LK ('Linke Satzklammer'), MF ('Mittelfeld'), and RK ('Rechte Satzklammer')  for the topological fields. In German, the vorfeld, the position preceding the left satzklammer, must be filled by exactly one constituent. We guarantee this with the feature VF: The different VF features at the highest VP node in the tree for ruft an make sure that adjunction to the vorfeld is obligatory. At the same time, elements adjoining to any of the topological fields (see the tree for Peter) have a foot node feature VF = [?] and have equal top and bottom features VF at their root. When  ('... that Peter does not go to the movies') Here the NC-nicht is always attached to the adverb that expresses the direction or target of the movement, thus not to the second satzklammer directly. For this paper, we leave these cases aside.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  adjoining to the vorfeld, these receive values +. Consequently, further adjunctions of similar elements at the new root node are not possible. An adjunction at the foot node of the auxiliary tree of the vorfeld element can be excluded by some other feature. This guarantees that exactly one element gets adjoined into the vorfeld.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Note that we consider the base position of the subject NP being in the mittelfeld and consider the subject as being moved into the vorfeld. Alternatively, any other element could be moved in to the vorfeld instead.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The semantic combination of nicht and ruft an is shown in Fig. 3.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> The MINP feature from ruft indicates the proposition contributed by the verb which is the minimal proposition of the whole elementary tree. It is included in the scope of all operators (quantifiers, negation, modals, . . . ) attaching to this verb (An exception is of course neg raising where the scope of the negation does not include the MINP value of the NR-verb.).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> The unifications between the two feature structures in Fig. 3 are depicted with dotted lines. They yield in particular 9 = 7 , therefore, with constraint 7 [?] l1, l1 is in the scope of the negation. The presence of a negation is indicated by a global NEG = yes. In case there is no negation, we have to make sure we obtain NEG = no and not just an unspecified NEG value. Therefore, the VP spine is articulated with non-global NEG features that switch from no to yes once a negation occurs. Here this is the case at node position V, consequently 6 = 5 = 4 = 3 = yes. The topmost  nicht an NEG then becomes the global NEG.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> Cases of double negation, though not considered here, could be captured by assuming that each negation on the verbal spine makes the value of the local NEG feature switch (from no to yes or, if there was already negation, from yes to no). This way, double negation would lead to a global NEG feature with value no.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> The negative quantifier niemand has the distribution of an NP. The elementary trees in Fig. 4 for niemand reflect the [?]! reading which is preferred by an analysis assuming that the NPI must be in the scope of a negation with no quantifiers intervening. The features NEG, MINP and N-SCOPE work in the same way as in the case of nicht. The global I feature linked to the initial tree with the trace passes the argument variable to the verb.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Note that this is an analysis for the case where niemand is 'moved'. If niemand is in base position, the lexical item comes with an initial tree that is substituted at the corresponding NP slot. However, since the NEG-feature can only be switched to yes by adjoining an auxiliary tree carrying negation to a VP node, even in these cases we need an additional VP auxiliary tree contributing the sentential negation.5 5Another option would be to let the initial tree of niemand directly access the semantic features of a VP node.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"/>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="84" end_page="86" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 The Analysis of NPIs
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> For this paper we restrict ourselves to verbal NPIs and minimizers.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> As an example for a verbal NPI consider scheren ('to give a damn about sth.') in (3). Its lexical entry is shown in Fig. 5. As in the case of ruft, the verbal spine is articulated with the NEG feature. Furthermore, GLOBAL contains the requirement of a negation (NEG = yes). In particular, the topmost NEG feature on the verbal spine is yes while the value of the lowest NEG feature is no. This means that at some point on the verbal spine a negation must be added that switches the value from no to yes.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Concerning the scope relation between NPI and negation, the following should hold: 1. the NPI must be in the scope of the negation, and 2. quantifiers must not intervene between negation and NPI.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The first condition is guaranteed with constraint 9 [?] l1.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> In order to capture the second restriction, the distinction between MINS and MINP allows us to draw a border line between the domain where quantifiers can take scope and the domain where the negation and the NPI are positioned. Other scope taking operators (modals, adverbs, . . . ) are not concerned by this limit. This border line is the MINS value, and the crucial NPI-specific constraint is 8 [?] 9 stating that the negation must  with and without the involvement of an NPI.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> As mentioned in 1.3 minimizers show a more restrictive distribution than verbal NPIs. In addition to the two licensing conditions of verbal NPIs stated above minimizers also obey a third licensing condition in German: the negation must precede the minimizer in the same clause or the negation must have wide scope with respect to the sentence containing the minimizer, such as in NR constructions. Consider the minimizer auch nur einen Cent ('any cent at all') in example (5) and its proposed lexical entry in Fig. 7.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6">  We propose a multicomponent lexical entry for minimizers here, since they have to access the semantic feature structure of the VP spine, and therefore have to be adjoined. This is different from verbal NPIs (that are part of the VP spine by definition), but similar to the negative quantifier niemand. As for verbal NPIs the presence of a negation is ensured by the global NEG feature, that is required to be yes. The scope condition is satisfied by the constraints 4 [?] l1 and 5 [?] 4 : the former one ensures that the semantic contribution of auch nur einen Cent is part of N-SCOPE, while the latter one prohibits any intervening regular quantifier (by requiring N-SCOPE to be a subexpression of MINS).6 In order to meet the third condition we have to make sure that the negation appears somewhere to the left of the minimizer. In other words, the negation is not attached between the right satzklammer and the minimizer, but somewhere else (as ensured by the global NEG feature). Remember that the position of a negation is signaled by the local NEG feature on the VP spine and its switch from no to yes. One way to exploit this is to let the minimizer semantically specify the VP node to which  it can be attached. This is accomplished by the VPf feature in the lexical entry for auch nur einen Cent, where the local NEG is required to be no, while the global NEG is yes. Thereby it is guaranteed that somewhere between the position where the adjunction of the minimizer takes place and the maximal projection of the VP the NEG feature has to switch to yes with the aid of a negative item.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="86" end_page="87" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5 The Analysis of Neg Raising
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Now let us turn to the neg raising examples from section 1.4. Attitude verbs that optionally offer neg raising are mapped onto two lexical entries representing a non-NR- and a NR-reading. In the latter, the negation takes wide scope within the embedded clause. In other words, quantifiers cannot scopally intervene between the embedding verb and the negation. This is exemplified in (12).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1">  ('Peter does not believe that each of his friends will come') The NR-reading (believes(p,***!***) does not exclude that Peter believes that some of his friends will come. A reading where Peter believes that none of his friends will come is not available. In other words, the quantifier has to scope under the negation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The lexical entry for glaubt with the NR-reading is shown in Fig. 8. In the syntax we assume a substitution node for the sentential complement. Long-distance dependencies are then analysed with multicomponents. This choice was motivated because in German, taking into account scrambling, more movement-based word order variations are possible than in English. For these we need multicomponents anyway (see the elementary tree set for niemand), and then sentential complements might be treated in parallel. The S substitution node carries a syntactic feature NR indicating that this is a neg raising construction. The lowering of the negation is expressed as follows: the N-SCOPE of glaubt (variable 7 ), i.e., the scope of the attaching negation, does not contain the MINP of glaubt as in non-NR readings. Instead, it contains the MAXS (variable 9) of the embedded sentence (constraint 7 [?] 9 ). This MAXS is usually contained in the propositional argument  of believe (see Kallmeyer and Romero, 2005); in this special neg raising entry we even require the N-SCOPE to be contained in this argument (constraint 8 [?] 7 ). The MAXS feature 9 marks the upper limit for the scope of all quantifiers occurring inside the embedded clause. Consequently, wide scope of the lowered negation with respect to the embedded sentence is ensured.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The lexical entry for glaubt with NR-reading also has to make sure that a negative element is attached to its verbal spine. In this respect its semantic feature structure resembles the one of a verbal NPI, that is the NEG value has to be switched to yes by adjunction. However, semantically the negation is interpreted in the embedded sentence and NPIs cannot be licensed in the matrix clause.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Therefore, the value of the global NEG feature is no.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The complementizer of the embedded clause takes care of setting the value of the embedded global NEG to yes by identifying the NEG feature of its S node with the topmost NEG feature on the  verbal spine of the embedded clause. In a non-NRreading, the complementizer only passes the NEG value upwards, i.e., the global NEG of the embedded clause specifies whether a negation is present in the embedded clause.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6">  struction With this analysis, if a NR-verb embeds an NPI as in (8), the NPI requires the NR-reading; otherwise the global NEG feature of the embedded clause is no.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> Next, we want to give an example derivation of a sentence that contains an unlicensed NPI and which amounts to contradicting scope constraints. It concerns the following sentence:  gives a damn about it.') The NPI schert is not licensed due to the intervening quantifier jeden (every). The defective dervation of (13) is shown in Fig. 10. Syntactically, the S leaf of the Hans glaubt nicht tree is substituted by the dass es schert tree and the jeder tree is substituted into the dass es schert tree. This works fine. In the semantic representation, however, we observe a clash of the scope constraints. Remember that we analyse the verbal NPI schert as requiring immediate scope, that is MINS [?] N-SCOPE. On the other side, the NR-verb glauben demands the negation to have wide scope with respect to the embedded sentence, hence N-SCOPE [?] MAXS (constraint l2 [?] 3 ) . If we put these two constraints together we obtain the constraint MINS = MAXS, which means that the area where quantifiers take scope (the MAXS-MINS window) is empty and hence there cannot be any quantifiers. A quantifer such as jeden is then ruled out due to two semantic constraints it contributes: its semantic content is a subexpression of MAXS (constraint 3 [?] l3) and MINS is  glaubt nicht, dass es jeden schert</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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