How to get even with desires and imperatives

The scalar particle even imposes a constraint on the likelihood of its prejacent and the alternatives on which it operates. This semantic import of even restricts its distribution: even that associates with a weak predicate in its immediate surface scope – weak even, for short – is acceptable only if it is appropriately embedded (cf. Lahiri 1998). This paper investigates the occurrence of weak even in three modal environments: under non-factive and factive desire predicates and in imperatives. The structure of the paper is the following: Section 1 describes an approach to even according to which even may move at LF (Karttunen & Peters 1979, Lahiri 1998 and others). A prediction of the approach is that weak even is licit only if it is embedded under a non-upward-entailing operator. Section 2 presents an apparent puzzle for the approach: weak even may occur in non-negative desire statements and in imperatives, i.e. in environments that appear to be upward-entailing. Section 3 discusses two strategies for dealing with these facts: according to the first strategy, desire predicates and the imperative operator are non-monotone (e.g. Heim 1992); according to the second strategy, they are upward-entailing (e.g. von Fintel 1999) and weak even is rescued by covert exhaustification. Section 4 briefly discusses the licensing of certain negative polarity items in desire statements and imperatives. It is shown that if these negative polarity items are treated as weak associates of a silent even (Krifka 1995), their distribution can be explained by the two strategies described in Section 3. Section 5 provides an outlook and concludes the paper. 1 The meaning and distribution of even The primary semantic import of the focus particle even, which we assume is adjoined at a clausal level at LF, is a scalar presupposition that orders the prejacent of even with respect to the alternatives on which it operates. There have been various proposals about the flavor and the quantificational strength of this presupposition (Karttunen & Peters 1979, Kay 1990, Merin 1999, Herburger 2000 and many others). The choice between them is inconsequential for the ∗Special thanks to Gennaro Chierchia, Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox and Irene Heim for discussion as well as to the audiences at the Gottingen workshop on polarity, WCCFL 29 and SALT 21. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers of the present volume on NPIs. 1Another inference that is often assumed to be triggered by even is the additive (or existential) presupposition. Since additivity is largely tangential to the purposes of this paper, we leave it aside and refer the reader to Rullmann 1997, Guerzoni 2003 and the references cited therein.