Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere? NPIs

Why can't we just use "ever" or "at all" in any sentence we want? What do we have to change about how a sentence works to let words like those in? In this week's episode, we talk about negative polarity items, or NPIs: when they can show up, why their name is misleading, and how changing what a sentence entails changes everything for these little terms.
This is Topic #74!
This week's tag language: Khmer!
Related episodes:
Clues to Meaning: Implicatures, Entailments, and Presuppositions - • Implicatures, Entailme...
Let's Talk about Sets: Set Theory and Adjectives - • How Do We Build Meanin...
Quantifying Sets and Toasters: Generalized Quantifiers - • What Does "Most" Even ...
Last episode:
So Many Meanings, So Little Time: Ambiguities - • Why Are There So Many ...
Other of our semantics and pragmatics videos:
Sheepish Semantics: The Lambda Calculus - • How Can One Greek Lett...
Operation Relevance: Relevance Theory - • How Do We Decide What'...
Building Common Ground - • How Do We Create a Sha...
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Sources:
Most of the information for this episode comes from Anders Schoubye's lecture notes, Formal Semantics for Philosophers:
schoubye.org/teaching/Formal-S...
See you all in two weeks!

[@daksheshvasan6073]

Thank you so much. I am a Math Major trying to explore linguistics on my own and stumbled upon NPIs. They're pretty interesting and your video helped me grasp it and confirm my thoughts.

[@FatimaMohRamzi]

you are helping students from Morocco. I thought you would be happy to know that. God bless.

[@ShadowMageAlpha]

Tom Scott sent me here. And you guys were HEAAAVILY inspired by Crash Course, weren't you? That outro is almost word for word! :P

[@DeCorachannel]

You, Sir, just helped this poor college student with her final exam! :)

[@valkin07]

Thanks for making this stuff! I'm sure it requires a lot of effort to produce one of these episodes. Keep up the great work :)

[@dangerkeith3000]

Is your shirt on backwards and inside out?

[@trevorsullivan2331]

I was explaining exactly this topic to some friends yesterday, I'll show them this, you've done a great job here. I stumbled on your channel recently, and I need to go through the backlog to find some videos that I can use for undergrads.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks a lot! It's an interesting topic, and it was fun to take a crack at it. And sure, we have a lot of videos on a lot of topics already - I hope you'll find some stuff you want to share! ^_^

[@brianconn6434]

Extremely cogent explanation of an aspect of language I've been really interested in lately. Thanks!

[@RainaRamsay]

:) Love the Inside-Out references.

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! We find putting those things in a lot of the fun in the process. ^_^

[@jerrykoh9692]

Wow this is super interesting, although pretty hard to follow, thanks for this video!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! Well, we did our best to keep it clearer, anyway. Glad to hear you found it interesting! ^_^

[@kantamana1]

5:20 there is a counterexample to this rule about "general" and "specific". If one swan is white (a specific), it doesn't mean all swans are white (a general). However, the rule holds when we can entail that a particular swan has a color (general) from the fact that it is white (specific). how can we make this destinction?

[@EinhornPony]

Thank you so much for your video!

[@thelingspace]

Glad to be able to help!

[@nicholasw996]

Does the French word 'ne' appear if and only if a clause is L and R downward entailing?

[@frankharr9466]

That is SO COOL!

[@altosaxophonie]

the inside out t-shirt really disturbs me, why have you done this to me

[@tjejojyj]

altosaxophonie Once I saw it I couldn't take my eyes off it. My guess is that they saw it as well and either it's deliberate(!?) or these takes took so much effort they couldn't be bothered to re-shoot.

[@wilfredhather]

Why is your shirt inside out and back to front?

[@thelingspace]

Because this week's episode has its examples themed around Inside Out, and rather than trying to find a t-shirt to match that like we usually do, we thought, why not just wear an inside-out t-shirt? And then I wore it backwards because it made it more obvious it was inside out. ^_^

[@wilfredhather]

The Ling Space I see. Good video though, keep at it.

[@IslaDrummond]

The Ling Space I was really proud of myself for making that connection right away. Really funny! :)

[@FatimaMohRamzi]

+The Ling Space Great semiotics

[@xylophon1520]

Your videos are so interesting. But this one was too complex for me to follow

[@frankharr9466]

O.K., this is likely my fourth viewing and I'd like to know if I got a couple of things straight. 1. NPI's like to exist in downard entailing environments. 2. Isn't "at all" in "at all sad" an adverb? O.K., that's it.

[@michaelisrael6635]

Broccoli on pizza sounds fine to me. Definitely not an ungrammatical form of pizza.

[@ferulebezel]

You didn't address whether this is specific to English and it's close relatives or a general thing. I have no way of knowing since I don't speak Foreign.

[@misse1228]

it would apply, because all languages have negation and affirmation. These call for the existence of NPIs.

[@brianconn6434]

Theoretically it should, and it certainly does in Japanese. For instance, the word 全く (mattaku; the equivalent of the English "at all") can only be licensed with downward entailing sets.

[@Garbaz]

But I like broccoli on my pizza :|