It is commonly argued that weak negative polarity items (NPIs) (e.g., any) can occur in any (Strawson) downward-entailing environment. This generalization, however, is challenged by Wagner’s (2006) observations with the NPI-licenser only: although an only-clause is (Strawson) downward-entailing in its unfocused part, NPIs are not necessarily licensed there. In particular, DPonly does not license an NPI that appears within the unfocused part of its left argument (as seen in *Only a chair of any HUMANITIESF department met with the president), and VP-only does not license an NPI if this NPI and the focused item appear within the same island (as seen in *The president only met with a chair of any HUMANITIESF department). These observations suggest that the licensing status of an NPI in an only-sentence is not just determined by the polarity pattern of the environment where this NPI gets interpreted. To explain Wagner’s (2006) observations, I argue that only is not just an NPI-licenser but also an “NPI-unlicenser.” Following Chierchia (2006, 2013), I assume that an NPI carries a domain feature [D] which activates domain alternatives, and that an NPI is unlicensed if exhaustifying its domain alternatives yields a contradiction. I further propose that only can check off the [D] feature of an NPI that appears within its syntactic argument. If the argument of only is downwardentailing with respect to an NPI, using only to check off the [D] feature of this NPI would return an inference that contradicts the prejacent presupposition and make this NPI unlicensed. In the case of VP-only association, if an NPI is not focused and doesn’t appear within a focus-contained island, the contradiction can be avoided by F-movement.

中文翻译：

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仅：NPI许可证颁发者和NPI非许可证颁发者

通常认为，弱的负极性项目（NPI）（例如，任何一个）都可能在任何（斯特劳森）向下的环境中发生。但是，这种概括性受到Wagner（2006）仅使用NPI许可者的观察的挑战：尽管（Strawson）唯一条款在其不专心的部分中是向下的，但NPI并不一定在那里获得许可。特别是，DPonly不会许可出现在其左参数未聚焦部分内的NPI（仅*见任何HUMANITIESF部门的主席会见总统），并且仅VP不会许可该NPI和重点项目出现在同一个岛中（如*中所见，总统仅会见了任何HUMANITIESF部门的主席）。这些观察结果表明，仅语句中的NPI许可状态不仅取决于解释该NPI的环境的极性模式。为了解释Wagner（2006）的观察结果，我认为不仅是NPI许可证颁发者，而且还是“ NPI许可证颁发者”。根据Chierchia（2006，2013），我假设NPI带有激活域替代方案的域特征[D]，并且如果穷尽其域替代方案会产生矛盾，则NPI是无牌的。我进一步建议，只能检查出现在其句法参数内的NPI的[D]功能。如果only参数相对于NPI而言是向下的，则仅使用该NPI的[D]功能进行检查将返回与先前的前提相矛盾的推论，并使该NPI未经许可。