Ramachandran, Subhadra.2009-03-232009-03-2319911991Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 31-02, page: 0559.9780315704893http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7632http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-15435This thesis considers topics in the area of negation-NPI-licensing and the scope interaction of quantifiers with negation. No prior approaches have been able to answer questions that might lead to a standard and uniform analysis of negative polarity items across languages. We explain NPI-licensing by means of a semantico-pragmatic outlook. We consider non-truthfunctional aspects of meaning which imply that certain pragmatic conditions are necessary for a sentence to be fully understood in the context of discourse. It becomes easier to argue that negation, be it overt or covert, is the only licenser for NPIs; and chances of major cross-linguistic variation are nullified in this generalization and subsuming all categories of licensers under the nomenclature of Negative Implicature Terms. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)121 p.Language, Linguistics.Thesis