Disruption of NPI Licensing: the Case of Presuppositions

The main goal of this paper is to establish empirically that, contrary to the view best represented by von Fintel (1999), the licensing of NPIs can be disrupted by presuppositions. We provide original data in English and Romance, and make the novel observation that weak NPIs are sensitive to some but not all presuppositions, while strong NPIs are sensitive to all of them. Section 1 presents evidence in support of our claim; section 2 argues that presuppositions should be included in the meaning relevant for NPI licensing and draws a parallel with implicatures; section 3 exposes the flaws of Strawson-entailment, which ensures licensing in the presence of presuppositions; in section 4, we offer reasons to prefer our theory of licensing based on strict downward entailingness. As a preliminary clarification, we state the licensing condition we adopt in the paper: