NPIs

[sedesdraconis]

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

Comments

[animate_mush]

Have you looked at Bill's dissertation? The context for NPIs has to be at least partially semantic ANYWAY - the crucial issue is "downward entailing" contexts. That won't account for all of your data, but it might be interesting to look at.

Also, think about the German "doch" or French "si" - these can only be answers to negative questions, which seems a bit similar.

I'm actually living in a part of the country where positive anymore is quite frequent, although I don't quite know the contexts or data for it. I've been told though that it seems to mean something like "these days" and is restricted to changes you're unhappy about. Something like

"kids sure are stupid anymore"

This lines up in part, but not in whole with your attestation. There's probably literature on this as well, but I don't know it.

There's something that may or may not be similar, which a grad student here observed in the field, which is:

"Do you want dippy eggs awhile?"

where "awhile" means something like "soon" or "now", but crucially not "in awhile."

[sedesdraconis]

The context for NPIs has to be at least partially semantic ANYWAY - the crucial issue is "downward entailing" contexts.

Yeah, but it seems in the standrad usage, the context has to be created by something that is syntactically present in the same utterance. Maybe I misunderstand the standard usage, though.

[sedesdraconis]

is restricted to changes you're unhappy about. Something like

"kids sure are stupid anymore"

Hmm. That seems very similar to my example with forget. Here, "stupid" ≈ "not smart", creating the negative polarity context.

My guess is that is closer to the real license than "unhappy about" in the dialect there, too.

You could test with a positive, but unhappy thing:

"Gas prices are pretty high anymore."

Huh. That's grammatical to me.

??"Gas prices are high anymore"
??"Gas prices are over $3"

Those both seem bad. Perhaps the "pretty high" imports a context where the prices are implied to prevent something. I dunno.

[animate_mush]

My feeling is that it has more to do with definiteness (in your examples). "Gas prices are high" and "Gas prices are over 3$" are both more specific/definite feeling than "Gas prices are pretty high