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<Paper uid="W06-1511">
  <Title>Licensing German Negative Polarity Items in LTAG</Title>
  <Section position="8" start_page="87" end_page="88" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusion and further research
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We propose an LTAG analysis of the distribution of German NPIs. The crucial criterion for an NPI is the requirement to be in the scope of a negation that is semantically in the same finite clause such that no quantifier can scopally intervene between negation and NPI. Technically we achieved this using the features NEG and N-SCOPE, that signal the presence of a negation and make its immediate scope available for the NPI. 7 The specific constraints for quantifiers when occurring with 7Note however, that, even though we have called the feature signalling the presence of a potential NPI licenser NEG, we might as well call it differently and give it a different meaning (for example, encoding downward entailment instead of negation). The licensing mechanism and the way this feature is used could stay the same. In this sense our analysis is independent from the concrete logical characterization of NPI licensers.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1">  NPI licensing negations are obtained by a distinction between the feature MINS characterizing the lower boundary of quantifier scope and the minimal proposition contributed by a verb that characterizes the lower boundary for the scope of negations. null We think LTAG is particularly well suited to describe this phenomenon since the relation between licenser and licensee can be localized within single elementary trees.8 The only exception are neg raising constructions where the licensing property needs to be passed down to the embedded clause.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> This is not non-local either and can be easily modelled in LTAG. This shows that LTAG's extended domain of locality has advantages not only for syntax (see Kroch, 1987) but also for semantics.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The analyses discussed in this paper have demonstrated the usefulness of semantic feature structure descriptions that specify the combination possibilities of semantic representations and that are separated from the semantic representations themselves. On the one hand the semantic features encode the contributions of the semantic representations to functional applications. I.e., they state which elments are contributed as possible arguments for other semantic expressions and which arguments need to be filled. They thereby simulate lambda abstraction and functional application. On the other hand they also serve to model the scopal behaviour of different operators and to capture the different boundaries for scope. The combination of LTAG's extended domain of locality with a semantics using feature structure unification enables us to capture these constraints within a mildly context-sensitive framework: The structures underlying the computation of syntax and semantics are the context-free derivation trees.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> One line of further research we want to pursue is an extension of the proposed analysis to adjectival and adverbial NPIs. We already started working on this. But for reasons of space we left this out in this paper.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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