Beyond negation and verum: Can contrast license NPIs?

Abstract

We present the results of an acceptability judgment experiment, which indicate that contrastive environments contribute to the licensing of (some) NPIs in the absence of conventional negative licensors. We relate the findings to previous claims that verum focus licenses (some) NPIs, a phenomenon which we argue is actually a sub-type of licensing by contrast.We provide a rough sketch of how Sailer’s (2022) theoretical account of licensing by “negative side message” could be extended to the facts we observe in the cases of NPIs in contrastive environments.