When is not-believing believing that not?

Abstract

We present two experiments that studied the licensing conditions of two Czech expressions in neg-raising and non-neg-raising environments: ani jeden ‘even one’ and až do ‘until’. English counterparts of these expressions are often treated as belonging to the same class, that of strict NPIs. However, our experiments revealed subtle differences between the two expressions, which we argue could be explained if we assume that only ani jeden ‘even one’ is a strict NPI, while až do ‘until’ is an expression sensitive to durativity of the predicate it modifies. The experiments furthermore showed that mood affects licensing of both ani jeden ‘even one’ and až do ‘until’ under neg-raising predicates. The role of mood on licensing is explained in Romoli’s theory of neg-raising.