Positive and negative polarity: a matter of resumption

It has been recently argued (Szabolcsi 2004) that the distribution of positive polarity items can be accounted for in terms of negative polarity items-licensing. I present empirical evidence in favor of the strong relation between NPIs and PPIs on the basis of two types of polarity items in Romanian: n-words and the PPI oarecare. I argue that these dependent elements are sensitive to the same semantic property, namely antimorphy. This generalization provides strong support for Szabolcsi’s claim that positive polarity is not just a prohibition to appear in the scope of negation, but rather ‘halfway licensing‘ of polarity sensitive items.