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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.610-624
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 23 Jun 2023 Revised 06 Jul 2023 Accepted 18 Aug 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202308.610

Sentential Polarity under Ellipsis

Myung-Kwan Park ; Wooseung Lee
(1st author) Professor, Department of English Language, Dongguk University parkmk@dgu.edu
(corresponding author) Professor, Department of English Education, Konkuk University wlee6@konkuk.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper sheds light on a relatively under-studied phenomenon observed in an elliptical construction – polarity reversal under Sluicing. Specifically, we look into a Sluicing construction in which the unstated proposition in the elliptical site bears inverse polarity to the presumable antecedent. After reviewing Kroll’s (2019) latest work among the relevant literature and presenting an array of intriguing empirical facts, we make the following three generalizations and proposals: [1] In exclusive disjunction contexts, in which verum focus does not play a grammatical role, polarity reversal under Sluicing is readily observed. In line with Rudin’s (2019) syntactic condition, we propose that functional categories such as sentential polarity as well as aspect, modal, tense, and complementizer enter syntax without being specified concerning their lexico-syntactic features. Crucially, we propose that identity in ellipsis be computed before such features are determined at LF. Then, it is only the vP that counts in the calculation of identity for the license of ellipsis. [2] In other non-exclusive disjunction contexts, in which verum focus plays a crucial role in yielding relevant interpretations, polarity reversal under Sluicing is not allowed. This suggests that what is involved in so-called Neg-‘raising’ and implicative verb contexts is, in fact, not polarity reversal but polarity concord under Sluicing. [3] Unlike English, Korean allows polarity reversal under (pseudo-)Sluicing relatively freely in non-exclusive disjunction contexts, which is attributed to the fact that it does not require phonological realization of verum focus. This contrastive property is conjectured to be due to the fact that verum focus is given to an auxiliary verb in English while it is attracted to a Wh-XP in Korean.

Keywords:

polarity reversal, Sluicing, exclusive disjunction, pseudo-Sluicing, verum focus

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. All errors are our responsibility.

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