Spanish Neg-raising: Mood effects on NPI licensing

Abstract

Although Neg-raising (NR) has been subject to a considerable amount of attention over the last decades, the interaction of NR with other linguistic phenomena such as mood is currently not well understood. This paper addresses this gap from both an empirical and theoretical perspective by investigating how mood interacts with NR in terms of licensing the NR reading and strict NPIs. In particular, two simultaneous online experiments were conducted that showed that, whereas the NR reading availability is not influenced by mood, the grammaticality of the strict NPIs is significantly lower when in the indicative. To account for these results, the paper follows Gajewski’s (2011) theory of NPI licensing, whereby not only the asserted content but also the implicatures and presuppositions of the sentence are factored in when testing for anti-additivity. The paper explores two implications potentially induced by indicative mood: (a) the speaker is committed to the embedded proposition p (Quer, 1998; Homer, 2008), and (b) the embedded proposition p has previously been discussed by the conversationalists (Ridruejo Alonso, 1999). It is then shown that when either implication is factored in, the environment is no longer anti-additive and thus blocks strict NPIs without affecting NR.