ONLY AND POLARITY ITEMS IN DJIBOUTIAN SOMALI

In Djiboutian Somali, kalidi “only” is the licenser of the weak negative polarity item (NPI) wuli “ever.” Kalidi “only” changes the polarity of the sentence. The addition of kalidi “only” makes the otherwise felicitous NPI infelicitous despite the presence of negation, and otherwise felicitous positive polarity item (PPI) infelicitous even without the negative element. The contribution of kalidi “only” equals that of negation in that it flips over the polarity.