NPIs
I noticed I used "positive either" today, similar to my "positive anymore"s:
"I forget how it came up."
Me: "Yeah, I forget either."
I don't know that I'd ever noticed that one before. I'm trying to remember if i use any other NPIs like that.
Because what's going on there, like what's going on with my positive anymore, is not that I'm using NPIs anywhere. My idiolect still requires a negative context to license them, but it's much more liberal about what constitutes a negative context, and it's not restricted to syntactically negative contexts, it can be semantic or even pragmatic.
The negative context in the example which licenses the NPI is the verb "forget" which is semantically negative to me. I couldn't say:
*"I remember either."
At least not without a more careful set-up than i can think of at the moment. But the fact that "forget" is negative verb, lining up with "not remember" licenses the NPI to me.
The negative context can even be pragmatic, as in the example Nick and I discussed when he was contemplating doing a term paper on positive anymore:
"Do you drink soda?"
"I drink juice anymore."
Where the NPI is licensed by the fact that the sentence is a negative answer tot he question, that is "No, I don't drink soda anymore" is a pragmatic implicature of the my answer.
"I forget how it came up."
Me: "Yeah, I forget either."
I don't know that I'd ever noticed that one before. I'm trying to remember if i use any other NPIs like that.
Because what's going on there, like what's going on with my positive anymore, is not that I'm using NPIs anywhere. My idiolect still requires a negative context to license them, but it's much more liberal about what constitutes a negative context, and it's not restricted to syntactically negative contexts, it can be semantic or even pragmatic.
The negative context in the example which licenses the NPI is the verb "forget" which is semantically negative to me. I couldn't say:
*"I remember either."
At least not without a more careful set-up than i can think of at the moment. But the fact that "forget" is negative verb, lining up with "not remember" licenses the NPI to me.
The negative context can even be pragmatic, as in the example Nick and I discussed when he was contemplating doing a term paper on positive anymore:
"Do you drink soda?"
"I drink juice anymore."
Where the NPI is licensed by the fact that the sentence is a negative answer tot he question, that is "No, I don't drink soda anymore" is a pragmatic implicature of the my answer.