[Gaj11] — Licensing strong NPIs #
Gajewski, J. R. (2011). Licensing strong NPIs. Natural Language Semantics 19(2), 109–148.
The paper's central puzzle: the standard Zwarts/Ladusaw picture says
strong NPIs (either, in weeks, punctual until) require an
anti-additive licenser, whereas weak NPIs (any, ever) need only
downward entailment. Once [vF99a] weakens DE to
Strawson-DE, the natural extension is to weaken AA to Strawson-AA
(SAA). But [Rul03] and [Gaj11] observe that
SAA is too weak: vF's recalcitrants (only, conditionals, emotive
factives) are all SAA (Appendix 1) yet do not license strong NPIs.
Gajewski proposes that strong NPIs are sensitive to the licenser's direct scalar implicatures, while weak NPIs are not. Strong NPIs need DE assessed on the meaning enriched with the licenser's direct implicature; AA was the wrong property — it only happened to coincide with "DE + scalar endpoint" (Conjecture 48).
What this study file covers #
- §3.3 puzzle (eqs. 39-41): strong NPIs ungrammatical under SAA
operators (
only, conditionals, emotive factives). Documented in the section docstrings; the formal SAA results live inStrawsonEntailment.lean. - Appendix 1 SAA proofs for vF's recalcitrants — formalized:
onlyFull_isStrawsonAA,sorryFull_isStrawsonAA,condNecessity_isStrawsonAA,superlative_isStrawsonAA(all inStrawsonEntailment.lean). This file just cites them asgaj2011_appendix1_*for paper-citation indexing. - Conjecture (eq. 48): a DE scalar item is AA iff it is the endpoint of its scale. Documented in §3.3 docstring; the conjecture is scale-theoretic and would need scale-side machinery to formalize.
IsIntolerantpredicate (eq. 80) and the Appendix 2 result AA ⊆ DE + Intolerant — both formalized below (demoted substrate), re-exported asgaj2011_appendix2_AA_implies_intolerant.wouldFull_isStrawsonAA— Gajewski Appendix 1's actualwould-with- non-vacuity-presupposition SAA result (inSemantics/Entailment/StrawsonEntailment.lean).- Strong-NPI registry consistency theorem
(
gaj2011_strongNPIs_excluded_from_strawson_only_contexts) — Gajewski's headline empirical claim madedecide-checkable over the Fragment registry. - Hoeksema S-comparative SAA bridge
(
bridge_hoeksema_gtOverSet_strawsonAA) — the positive test case for Gajewski's framework: classically AA → strong NPIs predicted ✓.
§4 framework — both halves now in skeleton #
- Conditions 1, 2 (eqs. 59, 66): formalized below (demoted substrate)
using
Exhaustification.exhMW(Spector 2016) as theO(F, G)operator. Trivial-ALT bridges proved (condition1_with_no_alts_iff_de,condition2_with_no_alts_iff_de).only's satisfaction of Cond 1, 2 in the trivial limit cited below. - Conditions 3, 4 (eqs. 93, 94): formalized below (demoted substrate)
via
KPOperatoroverPartialProp.onlysatisfies Cond 3 ✓, fails Cond 4 ✗ (gaj2011_only_condition3_yes_condition4_no).
What's still genuinely deferred #
- Empirical Cond 2 failure for
onlyunder attested ALT-1 sets (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only" alternatives generated from the strong NPI in scope). The substrateExhaustification.exhMWandExhaustification.exhIEprovide the O-operator; the Chierchia-side ALT-1 generator (matchingStudies/Chierchia2006.lean'sPSIProfileframework) needs to be wired up. Concrete witness foronly's Cond 2 failure would require this. - The Intolerance-based account of
fewlicensing strong NPIs in context (§4.3 eqs. 71-78). Requires scale truncation + context. - Strong Functional Application (eq. 52) and Scalar Enrichment (eq. 53) as compositional rules — Conditions 1, 2 currently take alts as a free parameter rather than as the output of compositional rules.
- [Crn14] "Non-monotonicity in NPI licensing": direct challenge to the Strawson-DE picture, the natural sequel paper.
Demoted substrate — Intolerance + Karttunen-Peters Conditions #
Folded in from the former Entailment/Intolerance and
Entailment/PresuppositionLicensing (single-consumer formalisations,
per the anchoring rule): the Intolerance predicate ([Gaj11] eq. 80)
and the Karttunen-Peters / Chierchia Conditions 1-4 (§4.1, §4.4) were
consumed only by this study.
A GQ-typed function is trivial if it is constantly true or constantly false.
Equations
- Gajewski2011.IsTrivial f = ((∀ (x : Set α), f x) ∨ ∀ (x : Set α), ¬f x)
Instances For
[Gaj11] eq. 80: a function f : Set α → Prop is
Intolerant iff it is trivial, OR for every x, at most one of
f x and f xᶜ holds.
[Hor89]: Intolerant functions are "above the midpoint of their scale" — they cannot accept both a property and its complement.
Equations
- Gajewski2011.IsIntolerant f = (Gajewski2011.IsTrivial f ∨ ∀ (x : Set α), ¬f x ∨ ¬f xᶜ)
Instances For
[Gaj11] Appendix 2 (p. 143): an anti-additive GQ is Intolerant.
Proof sketch (Gajewski's): suppose f is AA and not trivial. For
arbitrary a, suppose f a = True and f aᶜ = True. Then
f (a ∪ aᶜ) ↔ f a ∧ f aᶜ gives f Set.univ = True. Since AA
implies DE, every y ⊆ Set.univ has f y = True — contradicting
non-triviality. So either ¬f a or ¬f aᶜ.
A Karttunen-Peters operator: a function from an argument set to a presuppositional proposition (truth + presup). The presupposition may depend on the argument (per K&P 1979's heritage function).
Equations
- Gajewski2011.KPOperator W = (Set W → Semantics.Presupposition.PartialProp W)
Instances For
The truth-conditional projection of a K&P operator.
Instances For
The presuppositional projection of a K&P operator (parameterized by the argument).
Instances For
The full meaning of a K&P operator: assertion and presupposition. What's checked for Condition 4 (strong NPI licensing).
Instances For
[Gaj11] eq. 93: Condition 3 (weak NPI licensing).
A K&P operator licenses weak NPIs in its argument position iff its truth-conditional projection is DE (Antitone) in the argument. The operator's own presupposition does NOT enter the licensing check — weak NPIs ignore the licenser's presupposition.
Equations
- Gajewski2011.Condition3 op = Antitone op.truth
Instances For
[Gaj11] eq. 94: Condition 4 (strong NPI licensing).
A K&P operator licenses strong NPIs in its argument position iff
assertion ∧ operator-presupposition is DE in the argument. The
operator's presupposition CAN destroy DE-ness; if it does, the
operator licenses weak but not strong NPIs.
Equations
- Gajewski2011.Condition4 op = Antitone op.full
Instances For
Trivially: an operator with no presupposition (always-True) makes
Condition 3 and Condition 4 equivalent.
Conditions 1, 2 — the implicature-based licensing line #
Whereas Conditions 3, 4 (above) handle presuppositions via the K&P
framework, Conditions 1, 2 (Gajewski eqs. 59, 66) handle scalar
implicatures via [Chi04]'s O-operator and
alternative-set machinery. The two frameworks make parallel
predictions for only: weak NPIs licensed (Condition 1 / Condition 3)
but strong NPIs blocked (Condition 2 / Condition 4) — once the
implicatures (Cond 1/2) or presuppositions (Cond 3/4) of the licenser
are factored in, DE-ness is destroyed.
The substrate's O-operator is Exhaustification.exhMW (Spector 2016,
based on minimal worlds) or its equivalent exhIE (innocent-exclusion
based, agree under closure under conjunction; see Spector Theorem 9).
We use exhMW because its trivial-ALT case is exhMW ∅ φ = φ cleanly,
which simplifies the empty-implicature reduction.
Gajewski's ALT vs ALT-1 distinction (eqs. 54, 55) is encoded as two parameters to Condition 2: the standard alternative set ALT and the restricted ALT-1 (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only").
[Gaj11] eq. 59: Condition 1 (weak NPI licensing).
Operator op licenses weak NPIs in its argument position iff
O(op(γ), op(ALT(γ))) is DE in γ, where alts γ generates the
alternative set against which op(γ) is exhaustified.
Exhaustification.exhMW plays the role of Gajewski's O(F, G).
Equations
- Gajewski2011.Condition1 op alts = Antitone fun (γ : Set W) => Exhaustification.exhMW (alts γ) (op γ)
Instances For
[Gaj11] eq. 66: Condition 2 (strong NPI licensing).
Adds a parallel DE check against ALT-1 — the restricted alternative
set (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only", eq. 55). Strong NPIs
are licensed iff both DE checks pass: O(op(γ), op(ALT(γ))) AND
O(op(γ), op(ALT-1(γ))).
Equations
- Gajewski2011.Condition2 op alts altsOne = (Gajewski2011.Condition1 op alts ∧ Antitone fun (γ : Set W) => Exhaustification.exhMW (altsOne γ) (op γ))
Instances For
Trivial-ALT lemma: with no alternatives, exhMW collapses to the
prejacent. Spector 2016's minimality reduces to True when there
are no alternatives to be minimal-with-respect-to.
Trivial-ALT bridge for Cond 1: Condition 1 with no alternatives reduces to classical DE.
Trivial-ALT bridge for Cond 2: with no alternatives in either ALT or ALT-1, Condition 2 reduces to classical DE. The empirical discriminative power of Cond 2 vs Cond 1 only emerges with non-trivial ALT-1 (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only").
Bridge to Conditions 3, 4: when op's K&P-form has no
presupposition (so the operator is presupposition-free), Conditions
3 and 4 collapse, AND Condition 1 with no alternatives reduces to
classical DE. Hence presuppositionless + alternative-free ⇒ all
four Gajewski conditions reduce to classical DE.
This is the structural reason Gajewski's framework matters: both presuppositions (the K&P side) AND implicatures (the Chierchia side) can destroy DE-ness in the licensee position; the four conditions track which side does what.
§1 Background — recapitulating Zwarts and von Fintel #
The paper's §2 establishes:
IsAntiAdditive f := ∀ p q, f (p ∪ q) ↔ f p ∧ f q(eq. 10; in linglib:Semantics/Entailment/AntiAdditivity.lean).IsDownwardEntailing f := Antitone f(eq. 4; in linglib:Semantics/Entailment/Polarity.lean).- AA ⇒ DE (eq. 11): standard textbook proof — already in linglib as
IsAntiAdditive.antitone. - Zwarts: strong NPIs (
either,in weeks, until) need AA licensers (eq. 8). - vF: presuppositions are factored out by replacing DE with Strawson-DE
(eq. 22; in linglib:
Semantics/Entailment/StrawsonEntailment.lean).
§3.3 The puzzle — Strawson-AA is too weak #
[Gaj11] (following [Rul03] and
[Gaj05]) observes that all of vF's Strawson-DE
recalcitrants are also
Strawson-AA. The Appendix 1 proofs are formalized in
StrawsonEntailment.lean; we cite them here as paper-anchored theorems.
(37) Only-Bill (A ∨ B) ⇒_S Only-Bill A ∧ Only-Bill B. (38) Only-Bill A ∧ Only-Bill B ⇒_S Only-Bill (A ∨ B). [Both directions go through under Strawson entailment; hence
onlyis SAA.] (p. 120)
Yet strong NPIs are ungrammatical under all of these SAA operators (exs. 39-41):
(39) a. Only John has ever seen anyone. ✓ b. *Only John has seen Mary in weeks. c. *Only John likes pancakes, either. d. *Only John arrived until his birthday. (40) a. If Bill has ever seen anyone, he is keeping it a secret. ✓ b. *If Bill has seen Mary in weeks, he is keeping it a secret. c. *If Bill likes pancakes, either, he is keeping it a secret. d. *If Bill arrived until Friday, he is keeping it a secret. (41) a. Mary is sorry that she ever talked to anyone. ✓ b. *Mary is sorry that she has talked to Bill in weeks. c. *Mary is sorry that she likes pancakes, either. d. *Mary is sorry that she arrived until Friday.
Conclusion (p. 121): "Strawson anti-additivity is too weak to account for the distribution of strong NPIs. Hence it appears that presuppositions must be taken into account when we assess the licensing of strong NPIs."
The 2x2 puzzle (eq. 44):
| Standard entailment | Strawson entailment DE | ??? | Weak NPIs AA | Strong NPIs | ???
vF's Strawson move correctly characterizes weak NPIs but the natural extension to AA does not characterize strong NPIs. Gajewski proposes the single distinction is whether the NPI attends to the licenser's non-truth-conditional meaning.
Substrate index #
The four SAA proofs live in Semantics/Entailment/StrawsonEntailment.lean:
onlyFull_isStrawsonAA— Gajewski body §3.3 eqs. 37-38 (p. 120). (Appendix 1 sketchessorryandwould; theonlycase is body text.)sorryFull_isStrawsonAA— Appendix 1 (p. 142).condNecessity_isStrawsonAA— Appendix 1 covers fullwouldwith non-vacuity presup; the substrate'scondNecessityis the idle-ordering simpler case (seewouldFull_isStrawsonAAfor the Gajewski-faithful version with non-vacuity definedness).superlative_isStrawsonAA— not in Gajewski's text. The body's "all SAA" claim (p. 120) is gestural; the superlative case is an extension of Gajewski's pattern.
The collected Gajewski headline: all four vF-recalcitrant operators come out Strawson-AA, yet (per exs. 39-41) none license strong NPIs. The substrate proves SAA; the empirical "no strong-NPI licensing" side is documented in the docstrings above (it requires a strong-NPI licensing predicate Gajewski's full theory builds compositionally).
§4.3 The Intolerance-based intermediate category (eq. 80, Appendix 2) #
For readers unconvinced by the §4 implicature-based account, Gajewski
offers an alternative: DE + Intolerant as an intermediate category
between DE and AA. The conjecture (eq. 84): AA ⊂ DE + Intolerant ⊂ DE.
Intolerance comes from [Hor89]: a function is intolerant if it
does not map both x and xᶜ to truth — i.e., it "locates" itself on
one side of the midpoint of its scale.
The substrate-level definitions (IsTrivial, IsIntolerant; GQ-typed
anti-additivity and DE-ness are the Set α → Prop instances of
IsAntiAdditive and Antitone) and the Appendix 2 proof
(antiAdditive_implies_intolerant) are defined above (demoted substrate).
The reverse strict inclusion (AA ⊊ DE + Intolerant, ex. 84) — i.e.
exhibiting a DE+Intolerant function that is not AA — is asserted by
Gajewski but not proved; would need a witness function. Open.
Re-export the substrate Appendix 2 result for paper-citation indexing.
§4.1 Conjecture (eq. 48): DE scalar item is AA iff endpoint of scale #
[Gaj11] (p. 123): "A DE scalar item is AA iff it is the endpoint of its scale."
This is the load-bearing conjecture that lets Gajewski reduce strong-NPI
licensing to "DE + endpoint-of-scale." no NP is the strong endpoint of
the negative-existential scale ⟨no, few, not many, ...⟩; few NP is
just above no NP, so on context-dependent scale truncation few NP
can act as the endpoint — explaining why few sometimes licenses strong
NPIs (exs. 71-73, contra Zwarts):
(71) He was one of the few dogs I'd met in years that I really liked. (72) Few Americans have ever been to Spain. Few Canadians have either. (73) He invited few people until he knew she liked them.
Formalizing the conjecture requires scale-side machinery (Horn scales, context-dependent truncation à la Chierchia 2004 axiom (i)). Deferred.
Cross-framework relationships #
- [vF99a]: provides the Strawson-DE substrate. Gajewski's
Appendix 1 SAA proofs use exactly the operators vF defined; see
Studies/VonFintel1999.lean. - [KL93]: K&L's widening + strengthening account of
anyprecedes the Strawson framework; Gajewski's intolerance comes from [Hor89], not from K&L. K&L'sLicensingMechanism(byStrengthening/byGenericIndefinite/byOtherMechanism) is too coarse to predict the SAA-but-not-AA pattern. - [Chi13] ch. 3 takes Gajewski's analysis as input and reconstructs strong-NPI licensing within the broader exhaustification framework.
- [Crn14] challenges Strawson-based analyses with a non-monotonicity reanalysis; engages directly with this paper.
- [Hoe83] S-comparative is anti-additive (per
bridge_hoeksema_gtOverSet_strawsonDEin VonFintel1999) — hence, per the Zwarts-classical theory, predicted to license strong NPIs. Empirically borne out (Hoeksema's data).
§4.4 Karttunen-Peters Conditions 3, 4 applied to only #
[Gaj11] eqs. 93-94 (p. 134) state two licensing conditions in the K&P two-dimensional ⟨truth, presup⟩ framework:
- Condition 3 (weak NPIs): the truth-conditional content alone must be DE in the licensee position.
- Condition 4 (strong NPIs): truth-conditional content plus the operator's presupposition must be DE.
The predicates Condition3 and Condition4 are defined above (demoted
substrate). Here we apply
them to only and verify the empirical match: weak NPIs licensed
(Condition 3 ✓), strong NPIs blocked (Condition 4 ✗).
The K&P operator for only x: assertion = "no y ≠ x has scope",
presupposition = "some y has x and scope" (Horn 1996). Built directly
from onlyPartialProp in StrawsonEntailment.
Equations
- Gajewski2011.onlyKP x scope = Entailment.onlyPartialProp x scope
Instances For
Ex. 19a (p. 115) confirmed: only satisfies Condition 3 — its
truth-conditional assertion is classically DE in the scope.
Proof: (∀ y, x y ∨ ¬ q y) → (∀ y, x y ∨ ¬ p y) for any p ⊆ q —
if q y fails, so does p y (contrapositive of p ⊆ q).
Ex. 19a + ex. 39b (pp. 115, 120): only does NOT satisfy
Condition 4 — the existence presupposition of only is upward
entailing in scope, so the conjunction assertion ∧ presupposition
is not DE.
Witness: p = ∅, q = {w0}, focus on w0. At w0:
[Gaj11] headline (K&P/presupposition side): only is
the canonical case of "Condition 3 ✓ but Condition 4 ✗" — licenses
weak NPIs (any, ever) but blocks strong NPIs (either,
in weeks, until), because its existence presupposition is UE
in the scope and destroys DE-ness of the conjunction.
§4.1 Conditions 1, 2 — the implicature side (Chierchia line) #
Parallel to §4.4's K&P-based Conditions 3, 4: Conditions 1, 2 (eqs.
59, 66) handle the implicature side via Spector 2016's exhMW
operator, treated as Gajewski's O(F, G). The substrate substrate's
Exhaustification.exhMW lives in
Semantics/Exhaustification/Operators/Basic.lean.
The substrate's trivial-ALT bridge theorem
(condition1_with_no_alts_iff_de) shows: with no alternatives,
Condition 1 reduces to classical DE. So only (whose assertion is
classically DE) satisfies Condition 1 with empty alternatives —
parallel to its satisfaction of Condition 3.
The full Gajewski analysis under Conditions 1, 2 requires non-trivial
ALT-1 sets (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only", eq. 55). The
[Chi06] (file
Studies/Chierchia2006.lean) and
[Chi13] formalizations would supply concrete ALT-1
generators. Concrete only proofs under Conditions 1, 2 with
non-trivial ALTs are deferred until that infrastructure is wired in.
only's assertion satisfies Condition 1 with empty alternatives
(which reduces to classical DE — and we proved
only_satisfies_condition3 ≡ classical DE on the assertion). This
is the implicature-side parallel of only_satisfies_condition3.
only's assertion satisfies Condition 2 with no alternatives in
either ALT or ALT-1 (degenerate trivial case — both DE checks pass
because they collapse to classical DE on the assertion).
The substrate proves this is the trivial limit of Condition 2.
The empirical Gajewski result — that only fails Condition 2 on
the attested ALT-1 (Chierchia's "highest-scopal-item only"
alternatives generated from the strong NPI in scope) — requires a
scalar-alternative generator that lives in
Studies/Chierchia2006.lean's PSIProfile
framework or equivalent. Wiring up a concrete ALT-1 generator
that demonstrates the empirical Cond 2 failure for only is
deferred to a follow-up study file (likely an extension of
Chierchia2006.lean or a new Chierchia2013.lean since the
relevant framework is Chierchia 2013 ch. 3).
Hoeksema S-comparative — the positive test case #
[Hoe83]'s S-comparative is classically anti-additive
(Semantics/Degree/Comparative.lean::gtOverSet_isAntiAdditive),
hence by antiAdditive_implies_strawsonAA it is also Strawson-AA.
This is the positive test for Gajewski's framework: an AA operator
licenses strong NPIs (Hoeksema's data confirms — "Mary is taller than
anyone is", "in years"-style strong NPIs grammatical in than-S
comparatives). Contrast vF's recalcitrants which are SAA-but-not-AA
and hence don't license strong NPIs.
Strong-NPI registry consistency #
Gajewski's headline empirical claim: strong NPIs are ungrammatical under operators that are only Strawson-DE/SAA (not classically AA). The Fragment registry encodes this through:
Fragments/English/PolarityItems.lean: strong NPIs (liftAFinger,budgeAnInch,inYears,until_,either_npi) all listlicensingContexts := [.negation, .nobody]— i.e., classical-AA contexts only.Semantics/Polarity/Licensing.lean::IsStrawsonOnly: the four Strawson-only contexts (.onlyFocus,.adversative,.sinceTemporal,.superlative) carryclassicalSignature := none.
Gajewski's prediction: no strong NPI lists any Strawson-only
context. The substrate makes this decide-checkable.
[Gaj11] headline made registry-checkable: no strong
NPI in the English Fragment is licensed in any Strawson-only
context. The four enumerated strong NPIs all restrict their
licensing to classical-AA contexts (.negation, .nobody,
.withoutClause), excluding .onlyFocus, .adversative,
.sinceTemporal, .superlative.
The registry agrees with signature-derived licensing on the strong
NPIs: every context a strong NPI lists supplies anti-additive strength
(strengthSufficient of the row's Strawson DE strength against the
item's derived [Zwa98] class).
Same agreement for the weak NPIs, gated to the strength-keyed mechanisms: the FC and entropy rows in any's list are licensed by their mechanism, not by DE strength.