ABSTRACT
It is a well known fact that Negative Polarity Items (henceforth NPI) can be licensed across clause boundaries without the occurrence of overt negation (Klima (1964), Linebarger (1980) and references therein). Some examples of this interclausal licensing are given below:
It has been usually assumed since Klima (1964) that it is the negative force of the main verbs deny and doubt that makes the embedded clause a NPI licensing domain1. If this assumption is correct, we should expect that in (2) the NPIs are licensed as well, since they are direct objects of the same verbs deny and doubt. However, as noted by Progovac (1988), this is not the case: the NPIs in object position are not licensed. These NPIs can only receive, marginally, a 'free choice' reading2, characteristic of unlicensed NPIs (Ladusaw (1979)):
Negation in Syntax
(2) a. *The witnesses denied anything b. *The professor doubts any explanation
As noted by Feldman (1985), examples like (3) clearly illustrate that this asymmetry is a fact about the structural relation betweeen deny and its sister:
(3) I deny that the witnesses denied anything
In (3), the matrix occurrence of deny licenses the object NPI of the lower clause deny, although the embedded clause is ungrammatical if it is not embedded, as shown in (2a).
