Exclusive Company: Only and the Dynamics of Vertical Inference ...

28 Only and the Dynamics of Vertical Inference
c. #Only tenured faculty can vote on
promotions; indeed, only tenured
faculty can vote on promotions to
full professor.
d. Only tenured faculty can vote on
promotions to full professor, indeed,
only tenured faculty can vote on
(any) promotions.
which on semantic grounds should be DE
only in their nuclear scope. Thus if not every
Catholic priest is a bachelor, it follows that
not every priest is a bachelor, but not vice
versa (the married and spinster priests may all
be Episcopalians). But while the restrictor of
not all, not every is a UE position, it also allows
NPIs within a relative clause:
Nor is Linebarger's discovery of the non-DEness
of the focus of only a new one: the
fourteenth-century tracts of Alnwick and
BiUingham both cite Tantum homo currit; igitur
tantum animal currit as a valid instance of the
upward 'ab inferiori ad superius' inference
(DeRijkio82:8, 51). 41
What, then, explains the acceptability of
NPIs in the upward-oriented environment of
(Aic) I would maintain that polarity items
are possible in this context not because of the
semantic properties of only but in spite of
them. 42 Given minimal pairs like those in
(Aj)smd(As'),
(A5) a. Only the students who had ever read
anything about polarity passed,
b. Only the students who hadn't ever
read anything about polarity passed.
(A6) a. Only the guests who had seen any of
the suspects were questioned,
b. Only the guests who hadn't seen any
of the suspects were excused.
there is no point in seeking to extend DE-ness
to cover only as has been suggested for determiners
like most and few (see note 39), for
adversatives like sorry and glad (cf. Ladusaw
1980; Linebarger 1987; Krifka 1990), and for
the only and related superlative triggers
discussed in note 26. The above pairs illustrate
the untenability of the assumption,
made explicitly by Krifka (1990: 174) and
tacitly by others, that triggering proceeds
algorithmically, with an NPI licensed just in
case it falls within the scope of an odd
number of downward entailing NPI licensors.
43
It's worth noting that another site where
unlicensed NPIs show up is in the restrictor
of determiners of the form not all, not every.
(A7) a. Not all the guests who ate any of the
contaminated squid became ill.
b. Not everyone who has ever been to
Groningen works on polarity.
It appears that the downward or negative
property of only or not all with respect to one
argument position is somehow illicitly
extended to the inappropriate (UE) argument.
In any case, it must be recognized from the
data in (4o)-(45) that not just any position
within the focus of only licenses polarity
items; the licensing is best when the NPI
occurs within a restrictive relative within
subject only phrases. Moreover, not just any
NPI occurs in these environments. As seen in
(A8), only the most permissive NPIs, any and
ever, show up here, and in particular the minimizers
that are licensed by the only (see note
26) are blocked within the focus of only:
(A8) a. Only those travelers who (get any
sleep/#sleep a wink) on the plane
will enjoy their layover in Amsterdam.
b. Only (those) students who have
ever smoked any hashish . . .
#been to Europe in years.. .
# missed so much as one question
eaten {any/#all that much) squid
The only student to
#Only those students who
move a muscle
lift a finger
drink a drop
say a word
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