On the Inherent (non-) Negativity of Negative Sensitive Items

On the Inherent (non-) Negativity of Negative Sensitive Items. This paper explores the idea that Korean Negative Sensitive Items, which are better viewed as Negative Concord Items (NCIs) (Kim 2001, 2006, Watanabe 2004), should not be construed as inherently negative in spite of the fact that NCIs are able to appear as an elided form without the presence of a negative licenser. Among several diagnostics, which are designed to draw syntactic and semantic distinctions between traditional Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) and NCIs employed in previous studies, the ability of an NCI to appear as a fragment answer raises the question of whether the negativity of NCIs is inherent or not. Contrary to Kim (2001, 2006) and Watanabe (2004), who are in favor of the inherent negativity of NCIs, I claim that non-negative Korean NCIs still need contentful negation to be licensed, and therefore their ability to appear as a fragment answer should be considered as a matter of ellipsis, in support of Giannakidou (2000, 2006). The main argument will be strengthened by the fact that Korean NCIs do not express negative meaning themselves, and that double negation readings are not allowed no matter how many NCIs occur simultaneously.