(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages

Abstract

This paper identifies the set of properties that polarity items (PI), negative polarity items (NPI) and negative concord items (NCI) satisfy in Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquese and Occitan. It shows that in Catalan, gaire ‘much, many’ is a PI, pas ‘at all’ is an NPI with enriched meanings and indefinites such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’ come in two sets, as both PIs and NCIs. It further shows that in the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties studied here, a distinction must be made between indefinite pronouns such as dengún ‘anyone, n-one’ and scalar minimizers such as gota (lit. drop), which come in parallel PI and NCI sets, whereas NPIs such as brenca (lit. crumb) have developed an enriched meaning. This paper reveals the different status of pas across Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties either as an NPI at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, which further constrains conventional implicatures, or as a negative operator.

1. Introduction

The linguistics literature has often referred to a set of phenomena sometimes labelled (negative) polarity (Ladusaw 1979; Giannakidou 1997 and others) and other times negative concord (Labov et al. 1968; Labov 1972 and others), without the difference between these two labels being clearly defined. Let us assume (following Espinal et al. 2021) that polarity sensitivity is a formal relationship between two constituents X and Y, where X c-commands Y, X is a semantically non-veridical licensor and Y is a licensee semantically sensitive to non-veridicality (Giannakidou 1997, 1998, 1999, and ff.).1 Negative polarity is a formal relationship between two constituents X and Y, where X c-commands Y, X is a semantically anti-veridical licensor and Y is a licensee semantically sensitive to anti-veridicality. According to these definitions, negative polarity is, strictly speaking, a subtype of polarity sensitivity. By contrast, negative concord is a formal relationship between two constituents X and Y, where X c-commands Y, and both X and Y encode a syntactic formal feature [neg] that enters syntactic Agreement and composes a single negation reading.2 Therefore, we assume here that a distinction must be made between semantic dependencies (Ladusaw 1980, 1996; Giannakidou 1997 and ff.) and syntactic dependencies (Zeijlstra 2004 and ff.), as recently discussed by Dočekal (2020).

In order to refine our understanding of the distinction between (negative) polarity and negative concord, the present study aims to present an overview of the set of items that behave like Polarity-Sensitive Items (PIs for short) in Catalan and other Romance varieties spoken in the Pyrenees, including Languedoc Occitan, Gascon Occitan and its Aranese variety, Benasquese and Aragonese (Llop 2020). The existing research on the varieties of this area has provided important data not only on the linguistic continuum embodied in these varieties (Bec 1968; Nagore 2001; Suïls 2011; Suïls et al. 2010) but also some inter-linguistic connections and intra-linguistic differences among them which would go unnoticed if the distinction between polarity and concord were forced to conform to the (often very artificial) geographic boundaries ostensibly separating these language varieties (Bucheli and Glaser 2002; Brandner 2020). Additionally, synchronic micro-syntactic differences between and within these dialects can be taken as a mirror of diachronic patterns and diachronic changes which would otherwise go unattested due to the lack of historical evidence (Ledgeway 2013).

According to the definitions above, we also assume here that so-called negative polarity items (NPIs), licensed in a broad spectrum of non-veridical contexts (such as conditionals, questions, negation, before-clauses, comparatives, etc.), would be more accurately referred to as PIs and that the term NPIs should be used exclusively for PIs whose licensor must be an anti-veridical operator.3

By showing polarity sensitivity, PIs are identified by a set of properties, namely (a) the impossibility of their occurring alone as negative fragment answers, (b) the impossibility of their occurring with no c-commanding licensor, (c) the possibility of their being licensed long-distance, (d) the licensing of an existential reading when they occur in non-declarative non-negative contexts and (e) the impossibility of their contributing to a double negation reading when multiple PI indefinites combine with a c-commanding negative marker (Déprez et al. 2015; Fălăuş and Nicolae 2016; Larrivée 2021). These five properties are exemplified in (1) for the Catalan indefinite PI gaire ‘much, many’.4

(1)	a.	Q:	Que	tens	sucre?
			int part	have	sugar
			‘Do you have sugar?’
		R:	*Gaire.	R′: No	gaire.
			much	not	much
	b.		*Gaires	estudiants	no	han	aprovat.
			many	students	not	have	passed
	b′.		No	gaires	estudiants	no	han	aprovat.
			not	many	students	not	have	passed
			‘Not many students passed.’
	c.		No	crec	que	els	hospitals	tinguin	gaires	llits	lliures.
			not	think	that	the	hospitals	have	many	beds	available
			‘I don’t think that hospitals have many beds available.’
	d.		Si fa		gaire		fred,	haurem	d’engegar	la	calefacció.
			If makes		{some, much}		cold	have	of.turn on	the	heating
			‘If it is very cold, we will have to turn on the heating.’
	e.		No	tinc	mai	gaire	por	d’anar	enlloc	sola.
			not	have	ever	much	fear	of.go	anywhere	alone
			IT CANNOT MEAN: ‘I’m always very much afraid of going everywhere alone.’

The aim of this article is to present an overview of those items in Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance languages that behave like gaire. The behaviour of the PI gaire ‘much, many’ contrasts with the behaviour of other indefinites that are characterized by: (a) the possibility of their occurring alone as negative fragment answers, (b) the possibility of their occurring with no c-commanding licensor in preverbal position of declarative sentences, (c) the impossibility of their being licensed long-distance, (d) the licensing of a negative reading when they occur in preverbal position in declarative negative sentences (in the absence of a negative marker in the case of Non-Strict NC structures, and in combination with a negative marker in the case of Strict NC structures5) and (e) the possibility of their contributing to a double negation reading when multiple negative indefinites, distributed preverbally and postverbally, combine with an overt negative marker.6 Those indefinites that share these properties were originally labelled n-words (Laka 1990). We will refer to them here as Negative Concord Items (NCIs).

Accordingly, in this study we address the following questions:

• Are there any other items in Catalan varieties that follow the properties attributed to PIs? Answering this question will require considering a subclass of minimizers (not preceded by ni ‘not even’) (Tubau 2020), and a series of indefinites (e.g., ningú, cap, res, gens, mai, enlloc) that are shown to behave both as PIs and NCIs (Espinal et al. 2021).
• Is the distinction between PI, NPI and NCI relevant in Catalan? We consider the need to distinguish between PIs licensed in non-veridical contexts (Giannakidou 1997, 1998), a reduced subset of PIs that are only licensed in anti-veridical contexts and that present collocational restrictions (Postal 2004)—here referred to as NPIs, and an independent subset of PIs that behave like NCIs and are involved in a syntactic Agreement relationship.
• Which PIs satisfy the abovementioned criteria in other Romance varieties spoken in the Pyrenees (Llop 2017, 2020)? Do the varieties that show homophonous PI–NCI sets exhibit behaviours like those seen in Catalan?

The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 2 we focus on the different types of polar sensitive items that can be distinguished in Catalan, namely PIs (gaire ‘much, many’), NPIs (pas ‘at all’), homophonous PIs–NCIs (ningú ‘anybody, n-body’, cap ‘any, no’, res ‘anything, n-thing’, gens ‘anything, n-thing’, mai ‘ever, n-ever’, enlloc ‘anywhere, n-where’) and minimizers (including those without ni ‘not even’, which behave like PIs, and those with ni, which behave like NCIs).

In Section 3 we argue that some PIs are strictly dependent on the sentential anti-morphic operator no ‘not’ (van der Wouden 1994; Zwarts 1996; Giannakidou 1998 and ff.) and therefore behave like NPIs (thus showing a diachronic change from a broad semantic dependency to a narrow semantic dependency), while other PIs show NCI-like behaviour (thus reflecting a diachronic change from a semantic to a syntactic dependency). We argue that, on close inspection, no items appear to follow the postulated ‘ordered passage from weak NPIs to strong NPIs to n-words’ (Larrivée 2021; see also Larrivée and Kallel 2020; among others), but rather either a transition from PIs to NPIs (from requiring non-veridical licensors to anti-morphic licensors), or a transition from PIs to NCIs (from a semantic licensing relationship to a syntactic Agreement dependency), thus supporting the conclusion that NPIs and NCIs are independent subspecies of PIs (Espinal et al. 2021).

In Section 4 we move to other trans-Pyrenean Romance languages and, on the basis of Llop (2020), we describe the set of items that behave either like PIs/NCIs, like scalar minimizers or like NPIs with additional pragmatic enriched meanings (Hansen 2009; Hansen and Visconti 2009, 2014; Batllori 2015; Larrivée 2010, 2020; among others).

Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper.

The sources of the data discussed in this article are examples from the authors unless otherwise stated.

2. Types of Polarity-Sensitive Items in Catalan

In Central Catalan7 gaire ‘much, many’ is the only item that behaves like a full PI, since it follows the whole set of properties illustrated in (1). This item may correspond to an indefinite determiner, in which case it shows number agreement with the plural count noun it specifies (2), or it may correspond to an adverb, in which case it is either the specifier of a second adverb (3a) or a verbal modifier (3b).

(2)	No	em	queden	gaires	taronges.
	not	me	left	many	oranges
	‘I don’t have many oranges left.’

(3)	a.	No	em	trobo	gaire	bé.
		not	me	feel	very	well
		‘I’m not feeling very well.’
	b.	No	ha	estudiat	gaire.
		not	has	studied	much
		‘(S)he has not studied much.’

In this section we review the set of items that behave either partially or entirely like gaire. On the basis of this behaviour we will be able to conclude whether these items are PIs, NPIs or NCIs. We first consider items such as ningú, second minimizers and finally pas.

Firstly, indefinite pronouns including ningú ‘anyone’, res ‘anything’, gens ‘anything’, mai ‘ever’, enlloc ‘anywhere’ and indefinite determiners such as cap ‘any’ and gens de ‘anything of’ behave like PIs with respect to: (a) the impossibility of being licensed unless they appear under the scope of a non-veridical operator such as the interrogative operator (Giannakidou 1997, 1998), (b) the possibility of being licensed long-distance and (c) the licensing of an existential reading in non-declarative non-negative contexts.

See the examples in (4) to (6) with ningú, the only item in this group that is negative in its origin (from Latin nec ūnu ‘not even one’). We refer to the PI set made up of ningú ‘anyone’, cap ‘any’, res ‘anything’, gens (de) ‘anything (of)’, mai ‘ever’ and enlloc ‘anywhere’ when these indefinites behave as in examples (4) to (6). We also refer the reader to

Table A1. The etymology of polar items in Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties. Aragonese; Ben = Benasquese; Cat = Catalan; GascOcc = Gascon Occitan; LangOcc = Languedocian Occitan; Occ = Occitan; PallCat = Pallarese Catalan; RibCat = Ribagorçan Catalan.

(i) items coming from collocations in Latin
ningú (Cat)/dengún (Ar)/degun, degús, digun (Occ)/degú, digú (Ben)	<nec ūnu (‘not even one’)
mai (Cat, ben)/jamai,jamei (Occ)	<iam magis (‘any/ever more’)
nunca (Ar)	<ne umquam (‘not + at any time’)
enlloc (Cat)/enlòc, enluòc (Occ)	<in locu ‘in X place’
(ii) items originating from minimizers (‘nouns denoting a minimal amount or part of something’)
brenca (Ar, Ben, RibCat)	<*brinos ‘thread’ + mica(m) ‘crumb’
bric/brica (Occ)	<*brikan (gothic)/[*brinos + mica(m)] ‘shard, shred, broken piece’
cap (Ben, Cat, Occ)	<capu(m) (vulg. Lat.) ‘head, end piece’
garra (Ar)	<celt. garra ‘back of the knee’
gota (Ar)/got (PallCat, RibCat)	<gutta(m) (M) ‘drop’
mica/miaja (Ar, Ben, Cat)	<mica(m) (M) ‘crumb’
molla (Cat)	<medulla(m) (M) ‘crumb’
pas (Ar, Cat, Occ)	<passu(m) ‘step’
pon(t)/punt (Ar, RibCat, Occ)	<punctu(m) ‘point’
(iii) items originating from generalizers (‘nouns denoting a maximally general class’) and other maximal expressions
gaire/guaire (Cat, Ar, Ben, Occ)	<Frankish *waigaro ‘much’
gens (Cat), ge(s) (Occ)	<gĕnŭs-eris ‘kind’
res (Cat, Ben, LangOcc), arrés/arrén (GasOcc)	<re(m) nata(m) ‘(thing) born’
nat/nada (Occ)	<rē(m) nata(m) ‘(thing) born’

in Appendix A for the etymology of the various PIs studied here and in the remainder of the paper.

(4)	a.	Que	ha	trucat	ningú?
		that	has	called	anybody
		‘Has anybody called?’
	b.	*Ha	trucat	ningú.
		has	called	n-body

(5)	No	m’imagino	que	deixin	ningú	en	llibertat.
	not	me.imagine	that	leave	anybody	in	liberty
	‘I can’t imagine they’ll let anybody go free.’

(6)	Si	truca	ningú,	digues	que	no	hi	soc.
	If	calls	anybody	say	that	not	here	am
	‘If anybody calls, tell them I’m not here.’

By contrast, we refer to the NCI set made up of ningú ‘n-one’, cap ‘no’, res ‘n-thing’, gens (de) ‘n-thing (of)’, mai ‘n-ever’ and enlloc ‘n-where’ when these indefinites show: (a) the possibility of occurring alone as negative fragment answers; and (b) the possibility of occurring with no c-commanding licensor in preverbal position in declarative negative sentences, as exemplified in (7) and (8) for res ‘n-thing’.8 As an NCI, preverbal res can license postverbal PIs/NCIs such as enlloc ‘anywhere, n-where’ in what is usually known as an NC structure. See (8), where the two items res and enlloc form a chain expressing a single negation reading.9

(7)	Q:	Què	et	passa?	R:	Res.
		what	you	happen		n-thing
		‘What’s wrong?’				‘Nothing.’

(8)	Des de	l’atemptat	res	és	com	abans	enlloc.
	since	the.attack	n-thing	is	as	before	anywhere
	‘Since the terrorist attack, nothing is as it used to be anywhere.’

Secondly, we consider the case of minimizers (Pott 1857; Wagenaar 1930; Bolinger 1972; Horn 1989; and others). These items are minimal measure-denoting expressions such as English a word, a wink, an inch or Catalan un duro (lit. a small denomination coin) ‘a penny’, una ànima (lit. a soul) ‘a person’, una mosca (lit. a fly) ‘a person’, which give rise to an even reading. Catalan minimizers can be optionally preceded by ni ‘not even’ (Tubau 2020). However, as the following examples illustrate, only when ni is present does the minimizer exhibit the distribution characteristic of an NCI, as exemplified in (10) and (11).

(9)	Si	passés	(*ni)	un	bri	d’aire	podríem	respirar.
	if	pass	not.even	a	shred	of.air	could	breathe
	‘If there were even the tiniest breeze, we would be able to breathe.’

(10)	Q:	Et	queden	gaires	diners?
		you	left	much	money
		‘Do you have much money left?’
	R:	*(Ni)	un	duro.
		not.even	a	penny

(11)	*(Ni)	una	ànima	no	es	veia	enlloc,	de	tan	fosc	que era.
	not.even	a	soul	not	cl	saw	anywhere	of	as	dark	as was
	‘So dark was it that not a soul could be seen.’

The third item we must consider in Central Catalan is pas (lit. step). An experimental study carried out by Tubau et al. (2018) has demonstrated that pas increases neither the amount of negative interpretation of no in the context of fear predicates that trigger expletive negation, nor the amount of double negation in the context of a preverbal NCI. This study calls into question the alleged strengthening role of Central Catalan pas since it does not reverse by itself the truth or falsity of a proposition. In other words, unlike its French counterpart, in Central Catalan, pas is unable to reverse the polarity of a sentence and hence to perform on its own the role of a sentential negation marker.10

(12)	a.	En	Joan	*(no)	menja	pas	carn.
		D	Joan	not	eats	pas	meat
		‘John doesn’t eat meat.’
	b.	Ningú		*(no)	porta	pas	maleta.
		n-body		not	carries	pas	suitcase
		‘Nobody carries a suitcase.’ (from Tubau et al. 2018, p. 125, exs. (6a) and (6c))

Example (12b) illustrates an interesting phenomenon that deserves special attention. Central Catalan has been characterized elsewhere (Espinal 2000, 2002; Espinal and Tubau 2016; and others) as a Non-Strict NC language (Giannakidou 1998) since, when a preverbal NCI is present the negative marker can be omitted, as is also the case in other Romance languages such as Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.11 However, when pas occurs in postverbal position, its only possible licenser is an overt negative marker no. In other words, pas differs from the other PIs we have considered so far in that it requires an anti-morphic licensing operator, and from this we conclude that pas is an NPI. Furthermore, pas differs from NCIs in that in Central Catalan it can appear neither as a fragment answer nor in preverbal position.

(13)	Q:	Que	vindràs?	A:	*Pas.
		that	come.fut		pas
		‘Are you going to come?’

(14)	*Pas	ho	faré.
	pas	it	do.fut

Finally, the licensing of pas in the context of a raising predicate is illustrated in (15). As we saw in (1c), this behaviour indicates that pas is an NPI, since its licenser is restricted to the negative marker no.

(15)	a.	Crec	que	no	vindrà	pas.
		think	that	not	come.fut	pas
		‘I think (s)he will not come.’
	b.	No	crec	que	vingui	pas.
		not	think	that	come.subj	pas
		‘I don’t think (s)he will come.’

To sum up, in this section we have provided support for a distinction between PIs, NPIs and NCIs in Contemporary Central Catalan. Gaire is exclusively a PI, pas is exclusively an NPI, while indefinites of the sort exemplified by ningú and minimizers come in two sets, as PIs and as NCIs.

3. Diachronic Changes

In this section we distinguish the emergence of NPIs from the emergence of NCIs, which will in turn support the distinction between the diachronic development of the contemporary negative marker pas and the diachronic development of negative indefinites (Zeijlstra 2016).

The former is characterized by a diachronic change according to which a nominal item ends up strictly constrained by a semantic dependency with respect to the anti-morphic operator no ‘not’, while PIs in general are licensed under the scope of various non-veridical licensers.

We hypothesize (in accordance with Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent 2021) that a reanalysis from the nominal expression passu(m) ‘step’ to the minimizer denoting the minimal distance covered by walking may be the origin of the NPI variant.12 As illustrated in (16), a nominal passum ‘step’ in combination with pedis ‘foot’ appears under the scope of the negative marker nec already in Late Latin (nec passum pedis lit. no step of foot).

(16)	Quod autem dedit nec passum pedis, dicit Stephanus.
	‘Because he did not give him a single pace, says Stephen’ (Collection Doat, vol. XXXVI, f. 120 [apud Schweighæuser 1852, p. 232])

In Old Catalan pas also occurs in negative sentences in indefinite DPs preceded by the indefinite quantifier un.

(17)	Que Curial	no	vage	un pas	sens	tu.
	That Curial	not	goes	a step	without	you
	‘Let Curial not go a single step without you.’ (15th century, Curial e Güelfa: 12 [apud Batllori 2015, p. 359]) (Old Catalan)

This use alternates already in the 13th century with other uses in which there is no indefinite marker and a bare pas is supposed to strengthen the negative marker either from an immediate postverbal position or from a close position, but without a quantificational meaning.13

(18)	No	perdonaria	Déus	pas	lo	pecad.
	not	forgive	God	pas	the	sin
	‘God would not forgive the sin.’ (13th century, Homilies d’Organyà, p. 122 [apud Batllori 2015, p. 359]) (Old Catalan)

However, the NPI status of pas is also illustrated in the 13th century when pas syntactically precedes the negative marker, a possibility excluded in Contemporary Central Catalan.14

(19)	Que	vós	pas	no	sabíets	aquest	cavaler	qui	era.
	that	you	pas	not	knew	this	knight	who	was
	‘You did not know who this knight was.’ (13th century, Desclot, Crònica ii, p. 58 [apud Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent 2021, p. 36, ex. (85b)])

The possibility of an optional pas, also characteristic of Old and Middle French ne…(pas) (Labelle and Espinal 2014), is the core behaviour of this item in Contemporary Central Catalan, from which we conclude that this discontinuous negative marker is at stage II of Jespersen’s (1917) cycle (Jespersen 1917; Dahl 1979; van der Auwera 2009; Larrivée and Ingham 2011), with the proviso that—unlike French—pas in Catalan introduces additional semantic and pragmatic constraints. Tubau et al. (2018) experimentally support an analysis of pas according to which it has two components: on the one hand, it is an NPI, but on the other hand it either semantically constrains the implicatures that can be drawn from an accessible discourse context (Espinal 1993, 1996), or contributes a denial of a salient discourse-old proposition (Schwenter 2006) or adds emphatic content (Batllori 2015). This enforced pragmatic meaning could be thought of as analogous to English ‘at all’.15 Note, furthermore, that pas in Contemporary Catalan is no longer a nominal expression (as it was in its etymological origin), nor an indefinite one (as characteristic of most PIs), but rather an adverb (see DIEC2), thus indicating that NPIs are the output of both a semantic and a categorial change. This means that, whereas as a minimizer pas is associated with a minimal quantificational meaning, as a so-called strengthener of negation (in appropriate contextual settings) it has lost its quantificational meaning and has developed new meanings that are enriched at the time of utterance interpretation.16

Let us now consider the evolution from PIs to NCIs in Catalan. In the previous section we already noted that in Contemporary Catalan, items such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’, cap ‘a, no’, res ‘anything, n-thing’, gens (de) ‘anything (of), n-thing (of)’, mai ‘ever, n-ever’ and enlloc ‘anywhere, n-where’ come in two sets. As suggested by the word translations just provided, these items are used both as PIs—licensed under the scope of all sorts of non-veridical semantic operators (e.g., conditionals, questions, comparatives of inequality, downward entailing operators, the negative operator, etc.)—and as NCIs—licensed by a syntactic Agree relation.17 What is constant in their diachronic evolution from PIs to NCIs is that these items have maintained their indefinite meaning; what is different is that, once these indefinites acquire a syntactic feature [neg] this feature must be checked at syntax.

Focusing on ningú ‘anybody, n-body’, Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent (2021, Table 56.5) point out the existence in the history of Catalan of several alternative forms, namely negú/-un (the predominant form in written texts from the second half of the 11th century to the second half of the 15th century), together with nengú/-un, degú/-un and dengú/un (rarely used from the second half of the 13th century to the 16th century). Ningú becomes the most frequent form starting in the first half of the 16th century. However, most important for our purposes is the fact that the forms negú/-un, nengú/-un, degú/-un and dengú/un, regardless of whether they occur in preverbal or postverbal position, always coappear with a licensing overt negative marker in a scope position. Furthermore, negú/-un, as a PI in a non-veridical licensing context, is associated with an existential meaning.

(20)	Sempre	que	veen	venir	neguna	vela	de	neguna	part […]
	always	that	see	come	any	sail	from	any	part
	‘Whenever they see a (ship’s) sail coming from somewhere…’ (13th century, Desclot, Crònica ii, p. 58)

It is only in the 15th century that it becomes possible to associate a negative meaning with a preverbal ningú even in the absence of the negative marker no. Consider (21), which exemplifies an NCI use of ningú.18

(21)	Molts	pequen	parlant,	mas	ningú	pecca	callant.
	many	sin	talking	but	n-body	sins	remaining silent
	‘Many sin by speaking, but no one sins by remaining silent.’ (15th century, Flors de Virtut 1497, p. 182 [apud Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent 2021, p. 18, ex. (35a)])

Similarly, an NCI use of cap ‘no’, illustrated by a preverbal occurrence with no overt negative marker that conveys a negative meaning, is also documented for the 15th century.

(22)	Aprés	cap	més	crit	s’hoia.
	afterwards	no	more	cry	cl.heard
	‘Afterwards, no further cry was heard.’ (15th century, Cobles tristor 1460 [apud DCVB])

Concerning ningú and cap, it is worth noting that the emergence of an NCI use with a plain negative meaning does not exclude a PI use. Thus, Rigau (1998, p. 66) points to sequences such as those exemplified in (23) and (24) in the Contemporary Catalan variety spoken in Ports de Morella (see also Hualde 1992, p. 160; Morant 1993, p. 127). These examples illustrate the occurrence of cap and ningú in fragment answers under the immediate scope of an overt negative marker.19

(23)	Q:	On	has	estat?	A:	En	no	cap	lloc.
		where have been				in	not	any	place
		‘Where have you been?’				‘Nowhere.’

(24)	Q:	Qui	ha	vingut?	A:	No	ningú.
		who	has	come		not	anybody
		‘Who came?’				‘Nobody.’
		(from Espinal 2002, pp. 2761–62, exs. (96c,d))

Concerning res, Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent (2021, p. 13) point to the simultaneous existence since the 14th century of two associated meanings for the pronominal form no res, ‘negation of any thing’ and ‘insignificant thing’. Example (25) illustrates one of the diachronic developments commonly manifested in natural languages, by which a nominal expression res ‘thing’ turns into a generalizer when used as a PI (Kiparsky and Condoravdi 2006).

(25)	clemència		ab	justícia	fan	ferm	lo	regna	al	príncep,
	clemency		with	justice	make	firm	the	kingdom	to the	prince
	e	lo	contrari	lo	porta	a	no	res
	and	the	contrary	it	takes	to	no	thing
	‘Clemency with justice makes the kingdom stand firm for the Prince, while the contrary leads to nothing.’ (14th century, Eiximenis, Cartes: 246 [apud Pérez-Saldanya and Torrent 2021, p. 16, ex. (26b)])

In Contemporary Catalan, the PI res ‘anything’ licensed by the overt negative marker (i.e., no res lit. not thing ‘nothing’) is broadly used and lexicalized as a fragment answer, which alternates with the NCI res ‘nothing’ (Institut d’Estudis Catalans 2016, 35.4.1.2c).

(26)	Q:	Què	fas?	A:	No	res.	A’:	Res.
		what	do		not	thing		n-thing
		‘What are you doing?’			‘Nothing.’			‘Nothing.’

Gens is used as a nominal specifier (27), a pronoun (28) or a verbal modifier (29). Notice that in all these examples it is licensed by an overt negative marker, and therefore these examples show the polar variant of this term.

(27)	Aquella		menoritat	en	què	no	à	gens	de	bontat	virtut
	that		minority	in	which	not	be	much	of	kindness	virtue
	glòria
	glory
	e	fi,	és pus	prop	a	no	esser	que	neguna	altra	menoritat.
	and	end	is more	close	to	not	being	than	any	other	minority
	‘That minority in which there is no kindness, virtue, glory or determination at all is closer to non-being than any other minority.’ (13th century, Llull, Taula, p. 405 [apud PS&T 2021, p. 19, ex. (39a)])

(28)	Prege-li	que	me’n	donàs	lo	delme	e	dix	que	no	me’n
	pray.him	that	me.cl	give	the	tithe	and	said	that	not	me.cl
	darie	gens.
	give	any
	‘I prayed him to give me the tithe and he said he would not give me anything at all.’(a. 1242, Pujol Docs. 16 [apud DCVB])

(29)	No	són	gens	creguts.
	not	are	any	believed
	‘They are not believed at all.’ (14th century, Metge Somni III [apud DCVB])

In (29) the use of gens is close to pas, with the meaning ‘at all, absolutely not’. In fact, it can even appear with pas, which it may precede (30).

(30)	Que	gens	pas	no	és	raó	que	negú	puixa	ni
	that	any	pas	not	is	reason	that	n-body	could	nor
	deia	hauer	poder ...
	must	have	power
	‘There is no reason at all why anybody should be able to have or must have the power…’ (17th century, Consolat, c. 51 [apud DCVB])

In Contemporary Central Catalan this indefinite maintains its use both as a PI (in the context of a non-veridical operator such as the interrogative or negative operator) and as an NCI (in fragment answers, when an overt no is omitted). Consider (31).

(31)	Q:	Que	us	queda	gens	de	sucre?	A:	(No)	gens.
		that	you	left	any	of	sugar		not	any
		‘Do you have any sugar left?’							‘None.’
		(Espinal 2002, p. 2761, ex. (96b))

Mai is a temporal expression, the first written evidence of which appears in the 14th century and whose use predominates over other temporal expressions (e.g., anc, jamés, jamai, nunca, null(s) temps, ne(n)gu(n) temps) during the first half of the 16th century. It is used as an NCI already in the 14th century, as the following examples illustrate.

(32)	Cercà	tot	lo	camp	e	may	trobà	negú.
	searched	all	the	field	and	n-ever	found	anybody
	‘He looked everywhere and he never found anybody.’ (14th century, Muntaner Cròn., c. 90 [from DCVB])

This use is still common in Contemporary Catalan, both in preverbal position and in fragment answers.

(33)	Q:	Quan	ho	farà?	A:	Mai.
		when	that	do.fut		n-ever
		‘When will you do that?’				‘Never.’

On the other hand, a PI use of mai is also common with an existential interpretation, as illustrated in (34).

(34)	Si mai	veniu	a	casa,	sereu	ben rebuts.
	if ever	come	to	house	be.fut	welcome
	‘If you ever come to our house, you will be welcome.’

This PI use has also been documented under the scope of the negative marker no (Morant 1993, p. 81; Institut d’Estudis Catalans 2016, 35.4.1.2c), as illustrated in (35).

(35)	Q:	Quan	tornaràs?	A:	No	mai.
		when	come.back.fut		not	ever
		‘When will you come back?’			‘Never.’

Finally, we consider the locative indefinite enlloc (<Latin in locu)—and its forms in Old Catalan, en loch and enloch. In the 14th century, the positive meaning of a modified bare nominal (36) alternates with a negative meaning in the scope of an overt negative marker (37a). The latter is at the origin of a grammaticalized PI, as exemplified in (37b).

(36)	us	pregam	que	donets	endreça	que	us	vejats	ab	los
	you	pray	that	put	in order	that	you	meet	with	the
	prohòmens		de	Morella	e	de	Castelló	en	loch	covinent
	important.people		of	Morella	and	of	Castelló	in	place	convenient
	‘We pray that you arrange to meet the important people of Morella and Castelló in a convenient place.’ (14th century, Consells: 355)

(37)	a.	per què	yo no	gosaria	aparèxer	en	loch	on	ela	fos
		for	I not	dare	appear	in	place	where	she	be
		‘For I would not dare to appear where she is.’ (1388–1413, Jerusalem: 36)
	b.	Et	no	s’aturàs	enloch.
		and	not	cl.stop	anywhere
		‘… And not stop anywhere.’ (14th century, Muntaner, Crònica: f. 26ra)

As a PI, enlloc requires an overt scope marker in fragment answers already in the 14th century, as illustrated in (38), and today continues its polar use in the form of en no cap lloc (lit. ‘in not any place’) in the variety of Ports de Morella (see above, ex. (23a)).

(38)	E,	can	foren	al	monestir,		faeren	la	reverència
	and	when	were	at.the	monastery		made	the	reverence
	al	sant,
	to.the	saint
	lo	qual	lus	dix	aytan tost:	‘En	cal	loc	avetz	menjat?’
	the	who	them	said	immediately	in	which	place	have	eaten
	E	éls	resposeren:			No	enloc.
	and	they	replied			no	in.place
	‘And when they reached the monastery, they made reverence to the saint, who asked immediately: Where have you eaten? And they replied: Nowhere.’ (14th century, Diàlegs: 25r)

By contrast, as a preverbal NCI, enlloc licenses other indefinites (PIs and NCIs) in postverbal position, while conveying a single negation interpretation (39a). Furthermore, as an NCI, enlloc occurs alone as a fragment answer, as illustrated in (39b); see Institut d’Estudis Catalans (2016, 35.4.1.2).

(39)	a.		Enlloc	trobareu	res	millor.
			n-place	find.fut	anything/n-thing	better
			‘Nowhere will you find anything better.’
	b.	Q:	On	vas?		A:	Enlloc.
			where	go			n-where
			‘Where are you going?’			‘Nowhere.’

To sum up, in this section we have argued that, whereas pas in Central Catalan has evolved as an NPI, only licensed nowadays in the context of an overt negative marker, items such as ningú ‘anybody, n-body’, cap ‘a, no’, res ‘anything, n-thing’, gens (de) ‘anything (of), n-thing (of)’, mai ‘ever, n-ever’ and enlloc ‘anywhere, n-where’ come in two sets. In the PI set, the items are characterized by their dependence on a non-veridical operator (including the anti-morphic no ‘not’); we associate the above indefinites with PIs whenever an overt negative scope marker shows up preceding any of these indefinite expressions in fragment answers, when an overt negative marker head of NegP in preverbal position licenses an indefinite expression in postverbal position, and when licensed in non-declarative non-negative contexts with an existential reading. In the NCI set, the items are characterized by the possibility of being self-licensed as negative. In other words, we associate the above indefinites with NCIs whenever these indefinites occur isolated as fragment answers, when they occur in preverbal position and may license single negation in combination with postverbal indefinites (additional PIs or NCIs) without the need for an overt negative marker and when—while in preverbal position—they co-occur with no, the overt Spell-Out of a [neg] feature that is copied in a scope position with respect to TP (Espinal et al. 2021). Recall that postverbal indefinites in Catalan may correspond either to PIs or to NCIs, since in this language they are not distinguished by stress.20 If they are PIs, they are licensed by a c-commanding non-veridical operator. If they are NCIs, we assume that the negative feature these items have is first copied in a scope position (with respect to Tense) while the negative feature of the original NCI is deleted; furthermore, the copied feature may be instantiated as no at the time of lexical insertion and NCIs may still move to left-peripheral positions.

4. Types of PIs in the Trans-Pyrenean Varieties

In this section we present the set of PIs found today in the trans-Pyrenean varieties under study, and we investigate whether they behave like PIs, NPIs or NCIs.

In Section 1 we showed that in Central Catalan gaire ‘much, many’ is the only item that behaves like a full PI, according to the set of properties identified earlier, namely: (a) the impossibility of occurring alone as negative fragment answers, (b) the impossibility of occurring with no c-commanding licensor, (c) the possibility of being licensed long-distance, (d) the licensing of an existential reading in non-declarative non-negative contexts and (e) the impossibility of contributing to a double negation reading when multiple PIs combine with a c-commanding negative marker. Likewise, the item equivalent to gaire in all the Pyrenean varieties under study (guaire) behaves like a PI, as can be seen in the following samples; replies in (40A) and (40A’) illustrate properties (a) and (b), (41) illustrates property (c) and (42) exemplifies property (d).21

(40)	Q:	Quánto		hetz	avanzau?
		how.much		have	progressed
		‘How much progress have you made?’
	A:	*Guaire	A’:	No	guaire. (Aragonese; Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, 13.6.3.1)
		much		not	much

(41)	[De diners]	no	te	pienses	que	teneba	guaire.
	of money	not	you	think	that	had	much
	‘Don’t think I had much money.’ (Aragonese; Bal Palacios 2002)

(42)	Si	pleve	guaire	no salgas	de	casa.
	if	rain	much	not leave	of	house
	‘If it rains much, don’t leave the house.’ (Aragonese; Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, 2.5.1)

In what follows we describe the set of items available in the Romance varieties spoken in the Pyrenees on the basis of the set of these properties that characterize full PIs. In Section 4.1 we focus on a group of indefinite pronouns that can be analysed as items of two homophonous but separate PI–NCI sets; we exemplify this case with degun/dengún ‘anybody/n-body’. In Section 4.2 we deal with a specific group of originally nominal minimizers which have been reanalysed and incorporated into the negative system of the trans-Pyrenean varieties under study as scalar minimizers (Israel 1995) and are used as PIs or NCIs; we exemplify this with gota (lit. drop). Finally, in Section 4.3 we investigate the properties of a group of PIs that are available as NPIs, but with some additional semantic and pragmatic constraints, similar to pas in Contemporary Catalan.

4.1. Indefinite Pronouns: PIs and NCIs

We here consider a set of indefinite pronouns of the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties under study that include the indefinite cap (Benasquese, Languedocian and Gascon Occitan), nat/nada/nats/nades (Languedocian and Gascon Occitan) ‘any, no’; degús (Languedocian Occitan), degun (Languedocian and Gascon Occitan), digun (Gascon Occitan), dengún (Aragonese), degú/digú (Benasquese) ‘anybody, n-body’; arrés (Gascon Occitan) ‘anybody, n-body’; arrén (Gascon Occitan), res (Languedocian Occitan), cosa (Aragonese) ‘anything, n-thing’; jamai/jamei (Occitan), mai (Benasquese), nunca (Aragonese) ‘ever, n-ever’; and enluòc, enlòc (Languedocian and Gascon Occitan) ‘anywhere, n-where’ (see

Table A2. The distribution and meaning of indefinite pronouns and specifiers in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties.

	Aragonese	Benasquese	Ribagorçan Catalan	Pallarese Catalan	Aranese Gascon Occitan	Gascon Occitan	Languedocian Occitan
‘Anything, n-thing’
arrés/arrén					PI-NCI	PI-NCI
cosa	PI-NCI
res		PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI			PI-NCI
‘Any, no’
cap		PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI
garra	PI-NCI
nat/nada/nats/nades						PI-NCI	PI-NCI
‘Anybody, n-body’
degun/degús/digun					PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI
dengún	PI-NCI
degú/digú		PI-NCI
ningú			PI-NCI	PI-NCI
‘Anywhere, n-where’
enlloc/			PI-NCI	PI-NCI
enlòc/enluòc					PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI
en garra sitio	PI-NCI
‘Ever, n-ever’
jamai/jamei					PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI
mai		PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI
nunca	PI-NCI

in Appendix A for a summary of the distribution and meaning of these items).22 These elements behave like PIs with respect to (a) the impossibility of being licensed unless they appear under the scope of a non-veridical operator (e.g., conditionals, questions, comparatives of inequality, downward entailing operators, the negative operator, etc.), (b) the possibility of being licensed long-distance and (c) the licensing of an existential reading in non-declarative non-negative contexts.23 See examples (43)–(45) as an illustration of the PI behaviour of dengú in Aragonese.

(43)	*(No)	ha	veniu	dengún.
	not	have	come	anybody
	‘Nobody has come.’ (Aragonese, Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, 2.5.1)

(44)	No	parixe	que	aiga	denguno	que	siga	propio	d’a	redolada.
	not	seem	that	have	anybody	that	be	typical	from	around
	‘It seems there isn’t any that is typical from around’
	(Aragonese, Rolde Revista de Cultura Aragonesa 1986, p. 3)

(45)	Ha	veniu	dengún	ta	la	fiesta?
	has	come	anybody	to	the	party
	‘Did anybody come to the party?’ (Aragonese, EFA: 54)

PI items of the trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties also have homophonous NCI sets, which can occur either alone as negative fragment answers24 or in subject or topic position of declarative negative sentences with no c-commanding licensor. This is exemplified in (46) and (48) for dengún ‘nobody’ in Aragonese, and in (47) and (49) for degun in Languedocian Occitan.

(46)	Q:	Qui	ye	en	a	puerta?	A:	Dengún.
		who	is	at	the	door		n-body
		‘Who is at the door?’						‘Nobody.’ (Aragonese, Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, p. 273)

(47)	Q:	Qual	dins	aquesta	paura vida,	es	content	de	son	sòrt?
		who	in	this	poor life	is	happy	of	his/her	fate
		‘Who in this poor life is happy with their fate?’ ‘Nobody.’ (Languedocian Occitan; BaTelÒc n.d.: Perbòsc 1924)
	A:	Degun.
		n-body

(48)	Dengún	(non)	ha	veniu.
	n-body	neg	have	come
	‘Nobody has come.’ (Aragonese)
(49)	Degun	es	vengut.
	n-body	is	come
	‘Nobody has come.’ (Languedocian Occitan)

According to the analysis presented in Section 2, the items dengún/degun in preverbal position in (48) and (49) are considered NCIs because they are the only items contributing a single negation reading to the sentence. In our terms, optional non in (48) should be considered the overt Spell-Out of a [neg] formal feature that adjoins to TP for scope reasons before dengún is moved to a sentence-peripheral position.

In example (50), two preverbal NCIs combine with and license a postverbal PI/NCI in an NC structure in Languedocian Occitan.

(50)	Degun	jamai	demanda	res.
	n-body	n-ever	asks	anything/n-thing
	‘Nobody ever asks anything.’ (Gascon Occitan; BaTelÒc n.d.: Bodon 1964)

The reason why this example with two preverbal NCIs yields a single negation interpretation rather than a double negation reading is accounted for in the following way. Let us assume that NCIs are inherently negative (Larrivée 2021), which we interpret as encoding a syntactic [neg] formal feature. In the absence of a negative head out-scoping Tense, when a sentence contains various NCIs, at least one of them (with its [neg] feature) must move from its sentence-internal position to a position from which it takes scope over the event predicated by the verb, thus rendering the sentence negative. In (50), jamai is the NCI responsible for this reading, since it is the constituent that is closest to Tense. In the output configuration following this movement, any other [neg] feature—be it the one corresponding to the postverbal res (if it also corresponds to an NCI) or the left peripheral degun—has no effect on the interpretation of the sentence after an operation of Concord, and therefore does not render a double negation reading (Espinal et al. 2021).

In contrast to this example, (51) contains an instantiation of the negative operator pas. Recall here the difference between the anti-morphic operator pas in Languedocian Occitan (and Gascon Occitan) and the NPI pas in those Catalan varieties presented in Section 2 (as well as in Aragonese, Benasquese and Aranese Occitan, as discussed in Section 4.3). Given the fact that a sentence such as (51) conveys a single negation meaning, we postulate that degús, jamai, res and enluòc are PIs under the scope of a postverbal negative operator pas that modifies the event denoted by the predicate. For this to take place, the PI degús must be reconstructed to a sentence-internal position at LF (Chomsky 1977).

(51)	Degús	ditz	pas	jamai	res	enluòc.
	anybody	says	not	ever	anything	anywhere.
	‘Nobody ever says anything anywhere.’ (Languedocian Occitan; Sauzet 2006)

On the PI/NCI distinction, it is of interest to point out that in the Aragonese prescriptive grammar (2021, p. 55) the possibility of using preverbal negative indefinites without a licensing overt negative marker is accepted. However, the use of indefinite pronouns with an overt marker no is recommended ‘because this was the historically preferred option in Aragonese.’ A similar situation holds for parallel items in Languedocian Occitan, where nowadays jamai ‘ever’, res ‘anything’, degun ‘anybody’, nat/nada or cap ‘any’ and enlòc ‘anywhere’ appear in preverbal position either with the overt licensing negative marker pas (which corresponds to their use as PIs) (51), or without it (which corresponds to their use as NCIs) (50).

Some data confirm the status of such elements as PIs in Old Occitan, where they could be licensed by any non-veridical operator, such as for example the conditional operator (52); see Jensen (1986, pp. 176–81), also Medina (1999).

(52)	Se	negus	hom	ο	fazia ...
	If	any	man	that	did
	‘If anyone did that …’ (Old Occitan; Charles 479.5 [apud Jensen 1986, p. 176])

When used in preverbal position, it was the former Occitan negative marker no(n) that secured the proper licensing of the PI forms, as stated by Jensen (1986, p. 168). Consider (53).

(53)	a.	Negus	hom	non	mor.
		any	man/one	not	die
		‘Nobody dies.’ (Old Occitan; Uc de Saint Circ 4.12 [apud Jensen 1986, p. 176])
	b.	Res	no	volon.
		anything	not	want
		‘They do not want anything.’ (Old Occitan; G. de Montanhagol 1.44 [apud Jensen 1986, p. 179])

Interestingly, Contemporary Languedocian Occitan offers some evidence in favour of an independent negative quantifier set (parallel to French personne, rien), members of which hold a negative meaning in the absence of the negative marker. Thus, (54) and (55) illustrate that cap and jamai are self-licensed as negative in postverbal position, a possibility that is excluded from PIs and NCIs (see Llop 2017, p. 317).

(54)	S’ausissià [Ø]	cap	de	bruch.
	cl.heard	none	of	noise
	‘No noise could be heard.’ (Languedocian Occitan; Alibèrt 1976, p. 344)

(55)	La	quista	del	grasal […]	es	jamai	vana.
	the	quest	of the	Grail	is	never	vain
	‘The quest for the Grail is never vain.’ (Languedocian Occitan; BaTelÒc n.d.: Lapin 2003)

In contrast to Languedocian Occitan, special note should be made of the distinction between PI and NCI sets for indefinites in Gascon Occitan, a language that shows a discontinuous ne/non … pas to express unmarked negation (Bernini and Ramat 1996; Romieu and Bianchi 2005; Oliviéri and Sauzet 2016).25 In those cases in which degun ‘n-one’, arrés ‘n-body/n-thing’, arren ‘n-thing’, jamès ‘n-ever’, cap ‘no’ or enlòc ‘n-where’ are placed in preverbal position, the presence of one of the elements of the bipartite discontinuous negation (ne/non … pas) is compulsory. Consider first arren ‘n-thing’ in (56), which illustrates the NCI status of this item, whereas ne/non is conceived as the overt Spell-Out of a [neg] formal feature copied to an adjunct position to TP for scope reasons before arren reaches the final left-peripheral position.

(56)	a.	Arren	non	l’ interèssa. (Gascon Occitan; Romieu and Bianchi 2005, p. 222)
	b.	Arren	ne	l’ interèssa. (Gascon Occitan; Romieu and Bianchi 2005, pp. 139–40)
		n-thing neg		him/her.interest
		‘Nothing interests him/her.’

By contrast, example (57)—possible only in some South-Eastern Gascon varieties in contact with Languedocian Occitan—reveals a PI use of arren in combination with the postverbal negative marker pas.

(57)	Arren	t’empacharà	pas	de	hèr	coma	dises.
	anything	you.stop.fut	not	from	do	as	say
	‘Nothing will stop you from doing as you say.’ (Gascon Occitan; BaTelÒc n.d.: Bladèr 1966)

To sum up, according to the analysis of Gascon discontinuous negation in Llop (2017, 2020), ne/non is not considered to be the sentential negative marker, whilst pas is. Non/ne is assumed to act as a marker of the scope of negation, and we therefore hold that non/ne is the morphological realization of a morphosyntactic [neg] feature. Thus, the examples in Gascon can be considered to be parallel to those in the other Pyrenean varieties, where the indefinite pronouns are self-licensed NCIs. However, in Gascon varieties in contact with Languedocian Occitan, where indefinite pronouns are combined with a postverbal pas, the head of NegP, these indefinite pronouns must be considered PIs.

4.2. Scalar Minimizers: PIs and NCIs

The second set of items in the trans-Pyrenean continuum we are studying is made up of nominal minimizers which are used as either PIs or as NCIs depending on the variety. Minimizers are items originally denoting a minimal part or amount of something. We exclude from our discussion minimizers with overt ni ‘not even’ which, as we saw for Catalan in Section 2, behave like NCIs. Instead we focus here on bric/brica (lit. shard/shred, broken piece), found in Gascon and Languedocian Occitan; brenca (lit. ‘twig’), found in Aragonese, Benasquese and Ribagorçan Catalan); gota (lit. drop), used in Aragonese, Benasquese and in some Catalan varieties, namely in Northern Central Catalan varieties, as well as in North-Western, Ribagorçan and Pallarese Catalan; molla and mica/miaja (lit. crumb), used in Pallarese, Ribagorçan and North-Western Catalan; and pon (lit. point), used by some Aragonese and Benasquese speakers. The etymological origin of these items is presented in Table A1 in the Appendix A.

The salient characteristic of minimizers is that they are scalar items, whose interpretation depends on the availability of a scalar model (Fauconnier 1975), with a set of propositions ordered so as to support inferences between them (Kay 1990). According to Israel (1995, p. 164), minimizers ‘mark a phantom minimal element on the scale’, which means that, in order to refer, they entail other instances within a set and encode a low quantitative value within the scalar ordering of propositions. At the same time, as emphatic items, they do not obey the default interpretation—that of a minimal element on the scale—but instead pragmatically entail an ordered set of alternatives. Given that they are restricted to scale-reversing contexts, the pragmatic inferences they trigger go from low to high values within the scalar model.26 Crucially for our study, the difference between minimizers and the indefinite pronouns presented in Section 4.1 is that the latter are not inherently emphatic and, thus, do not denote the existence of an ordered scale along which alternative values are ordered, as scalar minimizers do. For Israel (1995, p. 164), instead, ‘indefinites are pure phantoms encoding only an arbitrary instance randomly selected from an array of possible instances’.

We seek to determine whether scalar minimizers in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties are PIs or NCIs. Consequently, we review how far they conform to the set of properties that identify PIs (listed in Section 1) and summarize their behaviour in the varieties under study. A full list of these items can be seen in

Table A3. The distribution and meaning of scalar minimizers in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties33.

	Aragonese	Benasquese	North-Western Catalan	Ribagorçan Catalan	Pallarese Catalan	Aranese Gascon Occitan	Gascon Occitan	Languedocian Occitan
molla			PI	PI	PI
gota	PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI	PI	PI
mica	PI-NCI-NPI	PI-NCI-NPI	PI	PI	PI
pon	PI-NCI	PI-NCI		PI
brenca	PI-NCI-NPI	PI-NCI-NPI		PI-NPI
bric/a						PI-NPI	PI-NPI	PI-NPI
gens			PI-NCI	PI-NCI	PI-NCI			PI-NCI-NPI
cap				NPI	NPI	NPI	NPI
pas	NPI	NPI	NPI	NPI	NPI	NPI	NPI	NegOp

of Appendix A, although for space reasons we will not be able to give full detail of the properties analysed.27

Firstly, the data reveal the existence of homophonous PI–NCI sets in both Aragonese and Benasquese for minimizers such as brenca, gota, mica/miaja and pon. As NCIs, these minimizers can be used as negative fragment answers (58), and can appear in the preverbal position of negative sentences (with or without a negative marker) (59). We here exemplify this behaviour with the minimizer gota in Aragonese and Benasquese. In all these contexts the scalar nature of minimizers is inferred from the fact that, by referring to a minimal scalar degree, they trigger the expression of a maximally emphatic proposition (Israel 2001, p. 3).

(58)	Q:	Pllou	u	qué?	A:	Gota.
		rain	or	what		drop
		‘It’s raining, isn’t it?’ ‘Not at all.’ (Saura 2017) (Benasquese)

(59)	Gota	(no’n)	churra.
	drop	not.cl	leak
	‘It doesn’t leak at all.’ (Benasquese; Saura 2000, footnote 10)

Note that the homophonous gota available in some of the Northern Central Catalan varieties (as well as mica and molla, used in some North-Western varieties) can occur neither as a negative fragment answer (60) nor in preverbal position in declarative negative sentences (61).

(60)	Q:	En	vols?	A:	*Gota.
		cl	want		drop
		‘Do you want some?’			‘No, not at all.’ (Catalan)

(61)	*Gota	(no)	m’interessa	això.
	Drop	not	me.interests	this
	‘This doesn’t interest me at all.’ (Catalan)

Crucially, the contrast between examples (58)–(59) and (60)–(61) proves the existence in Aragonese and Benasquese of an NCI set for scalar minimizers. As illustrated below, the scalar minimizer NCI set coexists in Aragonese and Benasquese simultaneously with a PI set. This PI use of scalar minimizers is also possible in all the other varieties studied here: all scalar minimizers in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties contribute a single negation reading when licensed by a preverbal negative marker (62), and can be licensed both long-distance (63) and in non-declarative non-negative contexts (64)–(65). Again, we exemplify these uses with gota in Aragonese.

(62)	No	nieva	gota.
	not	snow	drop
	‘It does not snow at all.’ (Aragonese; Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, p. 276)

(63)	No	han	confirmau	que tenesen	gota	d’interés	en	esto.
	not	have	confirmed	that have	drop	of.interest	in	this
	‘They have not confirmed they have a shred of interest in this.’ (Aragonese)

(64)	Queda	gota	vin	n’a	cuba?
	Remain	drop	wine	in.the barrel
	‘Is there any wine left in the barrel?’ (Aragonese; Estudio de Filología Aragonesa 2021, p. 151)

(65)	Si	en	ques	gota,	be.
	if	cl	want	drop	well
	‘If you want some, fine.’ (Benasquese; Saura 2017)

Regarding the licensing conditions of all trans-Pyrenenan Romance scalar PIs, grammaticality judgements regarding an alleged hierarchy from more to less restrictive PI licensing operators (that is anti-morphic ⊂ anti-additive ⊂ downward entailing ⊂ non-veridical) reveal that speakers firmly accept the use of scalar PIs in anti-veridical contexts. The licensing in interrogative and conditional sentences is accepted by the majority of speakers but not all of them. The reasons for this (non)-acceptability seem quite idiosyncratic.28 Conversely, speakers adamantly deny the licensing of PIs in non-veridical contexts that used to license PIs in standard varieties—mainly comparative sentences as well as free-relative clauses—but no longer do so (see Camus 2007).

All the scalar minimizers considered in this section contribute to a single negation reading when combined with non-scalar PIs under the licensing condition of a preverbal negative marker, as illustrated in (66) again with gota.

(66)	No	se	viyeba	gota	por	dengún	lau.
	not	cl	saw	drop	from	any	place
	‘You couldn’t see anything at all anywhere.’ (Aragonese; Satué 2001, p. 54)

To sum up, in this section we have argued that trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties display a set of scalar minimizers that require a model with ordered alternative values. This model predicts that in scale-reversing contexts (including negative contexts) inferences derived from the use of minimizers go from low to high quantitative values, because they are inherently emphatic lexical items. Herein lies the difference with those indefinites studied in Section 2 and Section 4.1, which are not inherently emphatic. Crucially for our study, the difference between minimizers and the indefinite pronouns presented in the previous section is that the latter are not inherently emphatic and, thus, do not entail the scalar norm pragmatically. Additionally, even if indefinites trigger entailments over a full set of alternative propositions, they do not need a quantitative scalar ordering of them. Relevant for our purposes is the fact that only in Aragonese and Benasquese are these items available as NCIs, since they can self-license a negative reading in fragment answers and in a left-peripheral position. In all trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties—Aragonese and Benasquese included—scalar minimizers show the distribution of PIs.

4.3. NPIs with Enriched Meaning

In this section we focus on a set of items that behave like NPIs, since they require an anti-morphic licensing operator, similarly to what we saw for pas in Central Catalan. In Aragonese and Benasquese this is the case for pas (and brenca, mica and its variants to a lesser extent). In Aranese Occitan and Pallarese and Ribagorçan Catalan this is the case for the NPI cap (and pas to a lesser extent).29 In Gascon and Languedocian Occitan bric/brica have an NPI version, although the NPI ges is also available. A salient characteristic of this set of items is that, contrary to their PI–NCI homophones and to scalar minimizers, these NPIs introduce additional conventional implicatures that restrict the inferable meanings that these items have. Consider the examples in (67), where the postverbal NPIs are licensed by different negative operators: in (67a–c), for Aragonese, Benasquese, Pallarese and Ribagorçan Catalan, and Aranese Gascon Occitan, the operator is the preverbal no(n), whereas in (67d–e), for Gascon and Languedocian Occitan), the licensor is the postverbal negative operator pas.30

(67)	a.	No	vendré	brenca/mica/pas. (Aragonese and Benasquese)
	b.	No	vindré	cap/pas. (Pallarese and Ribagorçan Catalan)
	c.	Non	vierè	cap/bric/pas. (Aranese Gascon Occitan)
		not	come.fut	NPI [+enriched meaning]
		‘I will not come.’
	d.	Non	vienerèi	pas	bric/ges. (Gascon Occitan)
		not	come.fut	not	NPI [+enriched meaning]
	e.	Vendrai		pas	brica/ges. (Languedocian Occitan)
		come.fut		not	NPI [+enriched meaning]
		‘I will not come at all.’

The minimizers in italics introduce a non-descriptive use of negation, according to which some contextual proposition must be accessible and some conventional implicatures must be inferred. In other words, these examples are associated with some contextually enriched meaning that is absent in the case of indefinite PIs/NCIs and in the case of scalar minimizers.

Of particular relevance to our research on the different uses of originally scalar minimizers is the fact that, as in French, the item pas no longer holds this enriched meaning in any of the Occitan varieties studied here (except for Aranese Gascon Occitan). Today, in Gascon Occitan pas is used as the expression of the logical negative operator, whereas non/ne remains as a marker of the scope of negation. Contemporary Languedocian Occitan (alongside Roussillonese Catalan) displays the last stage of Jespersen’s cycle: postverbal pas is used alone as the logical negative operator (see Oliviéri and Sauzet 2016, p. 346 for Languedocian; and Gómez 2011 for Roussillonese). By contrast, non was the negative operator in Old Occitan Romieu and Bianchi (2005, p. 245). See Schwegler (1988, p. 163), who shows that the use of ne as the sentence negative operator could still be found in Languedocian texts of the 16th century (68).

(68)	N′	anes	de	tous	grans	mots	ma	Princesse	eichanta.
	not	go	of	your	big	words	my	princess	scare
	‘Do not go frightening my princess with your big words.’ (Occitan, 16th century, Lafont 1970, p. 88)

The first occurrences of pas in Paoli and Bach’s (2020) corpus of Old Occitan are from the end of the 12th century, with the 15th century being the moment when the use of pas (with an enriched pragmatic meaning linked to previous discourse) begins to increase exponentially, particularly in rhetorical questions (Paoli and Bach 2020, pp. 119, 124; Paoli 2020, p. 1022). The combination of pas with PI scalar minimizers is already attested in Occitan during the period between the 13th and 15th centuries (Paoli and Bach 2020, p. 124; see also Jensen 1986, p. 309; Romieu and Bianchi 2005, p. 245). These data also support that pas was not used as a scalar minimizer, but as an item with an enriched meaning. According to Paoli (2020, pp. 1039, 1043), pas was used in negative rhetorical questions in Old Occitan to deny a counter-expectation (changing the initial negative question to a positive assertion). This use contributed to pas progressively being associated with ‘polarity reversing properties’, first at the speech-act level (referring back to discourse-old content) and, later on, at the propositional level. According to Paoli (2020, p. 1043), this process would have led to the use of pas as the sentential negator.

Oliviéri and Sauzet (2016, p. 346) assert that unmarked discontinuous negation emerged in Occitan varieties in the 17th century (see also Schwegler (1988, p. 308). At the same time, however, instances of pas as a negative operator can already be found in some 17th century Languedocian Occitan texts (69).31

(69)	Debe	pas	ieu	prendre	une	corde?
	Should	not	I	take	a	rope
	‘Shouldn’t I take a rope?’ (Old Occitan, 17th century; example from Pansier 1973, p. 262 [apud Schwegler 1988, p. 308])

In the 19th century the use of the postverbal marker becomes widespread as the unmarked strategy for negative declaratives in Languedocian Occitan. Note, though, that the switch to a single postverbal negation does not seem to have occurred uniformly in Languedocian Occitan, given that several instances of an unmarked discontinuous negation have been identified in Languedocian texts from the 19th century (Schwegler 1988, p. 308 and 19th century texts in BaTelÒc). Paoli and Bach (2020, p. 119, following Schwegler 1988, p. 163ff.) specify that the co-occurrence of pas with the preverbal negative marker was largely restricted to the written language in that variety in the 19th century.32

Overall, despite the difficulties involved in determining a clear chronology for the evolution of sentential negation in the varieties studied here, the data suggest that in Gascon and Languedocian Occitan the minimizer pas has undergone a further reanalysis process: not only does the literature on Old Gascon and Languedocian Occitan present diachronic evidence of its use as an NPI with an enriched pragmatic meaning, but we also have evidence of the use of pas as an anti-morphic operator capable of licensing other PIs.

5. Conclusions

In this article we have described the set of items available in Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance languages, namely Aragonese, Benasquese and Gascon and Languedocian Occitan, which behave like PIs, NPIs and NCIs.

With respect to the question of whether, besides gaire, there are other items that share the properties attributed to PIs, we have argued that in Catalan indefinite pronouns ningú, cap, res, gens, mai and enlloc actually constitute two homophonous but distinct PI–NCI sets. On the one hand, we have shown that the PI variants of such indefinites appear when they are used as fragment answers preceded by an overt negative scope marker, as well as when they occur licensed by a non-veridical operator, one possibility being an overt negative scope marker. On the other hand, the counterpart NCI set corresponds to the self-licensed negative indefinites that occur isolated as fragment answers, as well as in preverbal position in declarative negative sentences. We have shown that minimizers introduced by ni ‘not even’ behave like NCIs, while minimizers not preceded by ni behave like PIs. Moreover, pas has been shown to behave like an NPI, only licensed in the context of an overt negative marker.

Concerning the question of whether the distinction between PIs, NPIs and NCIs appears to be relevant at all in Catalan, we have argued—on the basis of data from Contemporary Catalan (as well as additional diachronic evidence)—that NPIs have emerged from PIs that are semantically restricted to the scope of anti-morphic operators, while NCIs have emerged from PIs by being syntactically restricted by a [neg] formal feature. We therefore conclude that the distinction between NPIs and NCIs is best conceived as referring to two different subclasses of PIs, the former semantically dependent on an anti-morphic operator, the latter syntactically constrained by an Agreement relationship.

As for which PIs are present in the other Romance varieties spoken in the Pyrenees, we have demonstrated the availability of synchronic homophonous PI–NCI sets of indefinite pronouns and specifiers. Of particular interest to our research are data from Languedocian Occitan showing that when indefinite pronouns combine in this variety with postverbal pas, the head of NegP, they are not NCIs but must instead be considered PIs, under the scope of an anti-morphic operator. Moreover, Contemporary Languedocian Occitan offers some evidence for the emergence of negative quantifiers that license a negative reading for the whole sentence in the absence of a preverbal negative marker or a [neg] feature.

As for the characterization of scalar minimizers in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties, we have shown that they refer to a minimal scalar degree and trigger the expression of a maximally emphatic proposition. Scalar minimizers have also been proved to appear in homophonous PI–NCI sets in Aragonese and Benasquese, but not in Catalan and Occitan varieties, where they behave like PIs. Interestingly, we have further shown that some of these PI scalar minimizers have homophonous items without degree, which have been proven to be NPIs whose meaning can be enriched depending on the context of utterance.

Concerning the diachrony of NPIs in trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties, it can be concluded that the change observed in all the varieties studied implies the transition from a broad semantic dependency to a narrow semantic dependency (i.e., items with an enriched pragmatic meaning are used in all trans-Pyrenean Romance varieties, exclusively licensed by anti-morphic operators). We have presented additional evidence to illustrate the different status of pas across these Romance varieties, not only as an NPI at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle that further constrains conventional implicatures, but as a negative operator that licenses the presence of PIs/NPIs/NCIs.

Beyond the languages studied here, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the distribution and meaning of PIs, NPIs and NCIs. In particular, the overview provided here of the polar items identified in Catalan and other trans-Pyrenean Romance languages sheds considerable light on the types of PIs available in natural languages and the likely tendencies in their diachronic evolution.