French Polarity-Sensitive Items

@cite{haspelmath-1997} @cite{zanuttini-1997}

Lexical entries for French polarity-sensitive items (n-word series and related), typed by the theory-neutral categories from Typology.PolarityItem. Standard sentential negation lives in the sibling Fragments/French/Negation.lean; this file holds only the lexical reactives (operator/lexical-reactive split documented in Core/Lexical/NegMarker.lean).

The French n-word series

French personne, rien, jamais, plus originate as ordinary nouns or adverbs ('person', 'thing', 'ever', 'more') that grammaticalized into negative polarity items via the Jespersen cycle. In modern French they co-occur with ne (where ne is preserved): Je n'ai vu personne 'I haven't seen anyone', Il n'y a plus de pain 'There's no more bread'. In ne-drop registers, the n-word alone carries the negation: J'ai vu personne.

The bipartite-marker dependency (the "ne-clitic requirement" of older schemas) is encoded here as the .negation licensing context — the syntactic detail that ne is the visible licenser when present is captured in the notes field. A future typed model of bipartite licensing would live in the substrate, not per-Fragment.

def Fragments.French.PolarityItems.personne : Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry

personne — N-word for human ('nobody'). Grammaticalized from the noun 'person'. Co-occurs with ne in formal French; stands alone in colloquial ne-drop registers.

Equations

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def Fragments.French.PolarityItems.rien : Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry

rien — N-word for non-human ('nothing'). Grammaticalized from a Latin noun 'thing'. Same distribution as personne.

Equations

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def Fragments.French.PolarityItems.jamais : Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry

jamais — Temporal n-word ('never'). Grammaticalized from 'ever'. Pre-Jespersen jamais was a positive indefinite; modern jamais is the negative, requiring ne-licensing in formal register.

Equations

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def Fragments.French.PolarityItems.plus : Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry

plus — Temporal/quantitative n-word ('no more', 'no longer'). Same lexeme as positive plus 'more'; the negative reading requires co-occurrence with ne (or ne-drop register) and contextual triggering.

Equations

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def Fragments.French.PolarityItems.items : List Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry

The French polarity-item inventory: the Fragment-side joint listing every polarity item this fragment defines.

Equations

• Fragments.French.PolarityItems.items = [Fragments.French.PolarityItems.personne, Fragments.French.PolarityItems.rien, Fragments.French.PolarityItems.jamais, Fragments.French.PolarityItems.plus]

theorem Fragments.French.PolarityItems.all_npis_licensed_by_negation : (items.all fun (e : Typology.PolarityItem.PolarityItemEntry) => e.licensingContexts.contains Features.LicensingContext.negation) = true

All French n-words are weak NPIs licensed by negation.