What’s Not to Like

1 Introduction

The interpretation of sentences in which negation appears above certain verbs like think and want is typically stronger than expected. Such sentences generally license an inference not just that the individual in question fails to have a positive attitude, but also that the individual has the corresponding negative attitude (Horn 1978, among many others). For instance, a sentence like (1a) is generally interpreted in the same way as (1b).

(1)

a. James doesn’t think that Marie will be hired.

b. ⇝James thinks that Marie will not be hired.

The traditional name for this phenomenon is neg-raising.¹ Neg-raising readings are generally the most prominent, but not the only, available reading; thus, (1a) could be followed by He doesn’t think that she will not be hired either; he just doesn’t know whether she will be, in which case (1a) will clearly not be interpreted in the same way as (1b). If we combine a standard Hintikkan semantics for neg-raising predicates like think with a classical treatment of negation, we only predict that a sentence like (1a) will have an agnostic reading, and we do not account for its stronger reading on which it licenses the inference to (1b). Accounting for neg-raising is an enduring challenge at the intersection of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics.

As is well-known, neg-raising is not possible with all attitude predicates. For instance, is certain interacts with negation in the way we would expect from a classical point of view: (2a) has only an agnostic reading, not a neg-raised reading.

(2)

a. James is not certain that Marie will be hired.

b. James is certain that Marie will not be hired.

Another crucial feature of neg-raising predicates is that, when negated, they generally license strong negative polarity items (NPIs), like until tomorrow or in years/days. By contrast, non-neg-raising predicates do not license strong NPIs (e.g., Lakoff 1969).

(3)

a. James doesn’t think that Marie has been here in years.

b. *James isn’t certain that Marie has been here in years.

Traditional theories of strong NPIs and neg-raising are formulated to predict a tight connection between the two phenomena. In particular, most approaches predict that neg-raised predicates always license strong NPIs.

More recently, however, Gajewski (2011) and Chierchia (2013) have proposed a theory of strong NPIs on which, at least in principle, they may fail to be licensed by neg-raising constructions. The gist of the idea is that strong NPIs, like all other NPIs, are licensed only in downward-monotonic environments. However, the calculation of monotonicity properties for strong NPIs, but not weak NPIs, is sensitive to non-truth-conditional components of meaning like presupposition and scalar implicature. Going back to the contrast in (3), the reason why (3a) but not (3b) licenses strong NPIs is that the latter gives rise to a positive implicature (viz., that James leaves it open that Marie has been here in recent years), which disrupts the downward monotonicity of the context in which in years appears. This means that in this theory the alignment between neg-raised predicates and strong NPI licensing is only indirect: neg-raised predicates generally license strong NPIs because they do not give rise to non-truth-conditional meanings that would disrupt monotonicity, whereas non-neg-raisers typically do give rise to such non-truth-conditional meanings. But nothing in this approach excludes the possibility of there being a predicate that is neg-raising but gives rise to a presupposition or implicature that disrupts strong NPI licensing. In fact, given that non-truth-conditional meanings are pervasive in natural language, one might indeed expect there to be such a class of predicates, given this approach.

In this squib, we show that there is indeed a class of predicates that give rise to neg-raising inferences but do not license strong NPIs: namely, factive emotives like appreciate, be glad, be happy, and like. This is a striking fact that we believe provides support for the Gajewski-Chierchia theory of NPI licensing, together with a semantic...