Vulgar Minimisers in English and Spanish ¹

Abstract In this paper, we investigated whether vulgar minimisers form a natural class in English and Spanish by evaluating (i) their similarities and differences with respect to non‐vulgar minimisers and (ii) whether vulgar minimisers are inherently negative in these languages. We proposed that vulgar minimisers in the two languages are lexically ambiguous between polarity‐sensitive items and quasi‐negative expressions containing a local negation as part of their structure. As polarity‐sensitive items, vulgar minimisers show similarities with non‐vulgar minimisers when it comes to compulsory co‐occurrence with the sentential negative marker, compulsory co‐occurrence with not / ni ‘not even’ in fragment answers and when preposed, and triggering of subject‐auxiliary inversion when preposed. By contrast, as quasi‐negative expressions containing a local negation as part of their structure vulgar minimisers are allowed to optionally co‐occur with the sentential negative marker and not be preceded by not / ni ‘not even’ when occurring as fragment answers or when preposed. We also argued that the internal negation in (quasi‐)negative vulgar minimisers can only take narrow scope, thus resulting in sentences with vulgar minimisers being diagnosed as non‐negative by sentential negation tests.