Abstract
This paper offers a systematic semantically-based approach to NPI licensing in temporal clauses based on Beaver and Condoravdi (2003, in progress). It motivates the presuppositional nature of temporal clauses and shows how temporal ordering induces an ordering of semantic strength in each case. The proposed analysis is uniform across veridical and non-veridical readings of before and brings under the semantic fold seemingly exceptional or pragmatically-based cases of NPI licensing observed with after, since and until. Crucial throughout is the more restricted, presupposition-dependent notion of entailment, Strawson entailment, proposed by von Fintel (1999). The paper also relates Strawson entailment to the alternative-based analysis of NPIs by Krifka (1995), proposing a particular kind of contextual update, Strawson update, for calculating informational strength.
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Condoravdi, C. NPI licensing in temporal clauses. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 28, 877–910 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-010-9115-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-010-9115-z