Talk:Polarity item

[Untitled]

A conditional also licenses "any", doesn't it? I.e. "if you have any overdue library books, turn them in this weekend and pay no fee." Ledelste (talk) 18:00, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

"Any" is actually licensed in many constructions, including conditionals.

• Questions: Does John have any milk?
• "only": Only John needs anyway.
• "every": Everyone who ate anything bought something.

There is also a form of "any" that appears in constructions like the following. These kinds of "any" are considered distinct from the above (so-called "Free choice any"):

• Modal: Anybody can do it.
• Modified: Anything that wasn't eaten was discarded.

The article should probably be updated to reflect this.

joo-yoon (talk) 00:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Conditionals and some other licensing contexts for NPI are mentioned. See also veridicality for more examples. --X-Man (talk) 22:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Licensed ?

This article might have some chance of meaning something to people who are not already expert linguists, if only it gave some idea of what it meant by 'licensed' ! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 10:55, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the meaning of licensed is clear from the intro section. If it's not, would you propose creating a separate article for the notion of licensing, or expanding/rewriting the intro to clarify the meaning of the word? --X-Man (talk) 22:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)