Licensing and Antilicensing Relations

In this paper we draw some connection between the relation linking polarity items with their licensors, and the one holding between wh-phrases and weak-islands. Moreover, we briefly sketch how these relations can be modelled into Categorial Type Logic. 1 Composition Relations Linguistic signs of a same semantic type may differ in their distribution behavior. This can be expressed by differentiating the composition relation which governs the assembly of linguistic expressions. In particular, some items are compatible or incompatible with a certain semantic property. Thus, they are grammatical or ungrammatical when in construction with expressions having such a property. Moreover, there exist items which are in a licensing or antilicensing relation with a certain property. Therefore, they are grammatical only when in construction with the expressions having this property; or ungrammatical when in construction with these expressions and grammatical in construction with the signs which do not have the property they repel. In this paper, we show how these forms of composition can be expressed by categorial types. To express these demands of the items we need something more than simple function application and abstraction. By way of illustration, we look at negative and positive polarity items as a case of expressions in a licensing and antilicensing relation with their triggers, respectively. Moreover, we will show how the behavior of wh-phrases with respect to weak islands can also be described in terms of antilicensing relations. In our apporach, the binary operators of the classical Lambek calculus model the merging of linguistic structures, and the unary operators of Categorial Type Logic (CTL) are seen as logical features to express more fine-grained distinctions among expressions of the same semantic type. A first reason to be interested in sorting out these different composition relations is that they provide a classification of items belonging to the same semantic domain. The property an item can be sensitive to may be shared by several expressions creating a net of licensing relations. In other words, the licensing relation, holding between an item and a trigger having that specific property attracting it, is inherited by the others expressions sharing that same property with the (direct) trigger. Semantically, the connections among phrases sharing some properties is expressed in terms of inclusion relations within the