languages Article (Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages M.Teresa Espinal 1, * and Ares Llop 2, * 1 Department de Filologia Catalana, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain 2 Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0DG, UK * Correspondence: teresa.espinal@uab.cat (M.E.); aln2027@cam.ac.uk (A.L.) 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. Keywords: polarity items; negative polarity items; negative concord items; Catalan; Aragonese; Benasquese; Occitan   Citation: Espinal, M.Teresa, and Ares 1. Introduction Llop. 2022. (Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean The linguistics literature has often referred to a set of phenomena sometimes labelled Romance Languages. Languages 7: (negative) polarity (Ladusaw 1979; Giannakidou 1997 and others) and other times negative 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/ concord (Labov et al. 1968; Labov 1972 and others), without the difference between these languages7010030 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 Academic Editors: Denis Delfitto and Y, X is a semantically non-veridical licensor and Y is a licensee semantically sensitive to Maria Vender non-veridicality (Giannakidou 1997, 1998, 1999, and ff.).1 Received: 8 October 2021 Negative polarity is a formal relationship between two constituents X and Y, where X Accepted: 12 January 2022 c-commands Y, X is a semantically anti-veridical licensor and Y is a licensee semantically Published: 7 February 2022 sensitive to anti-veridicality. According to these definitions, negative polarity is, strictly Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral speaking, a subtype of polarity sensitivity. By contrast, negative concord is a formal with regard to jurisdictional claims in relationship between two constituents X and Y, where X c-commands Y, and both X and published maps and institutional affil- Y encode a syntactic formal feature [neg] that enters syntactic Agreement and composes iations. 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 Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. and negative concord, the present study aims to present an overview of the set of items Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. that behave like Polarity-Sensitive Items (PIs for short) in Catalan and other Romance This article is an open access article varieties spoken in the Pyrenees, including Languedoc Occitan, Gascon Occitan and its distributed under the terms and Aranese variety, Benasquese and Aragonese (Llop 2020). The existing research on the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// varieties of this area has provided important data not only on the linguistic continuum creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ embodied in these varieties (Bec 1968; Nagore 2001; Suïls 2011; Suïls et al. 2010) but also 4.0/). some inter-linguistic connections and intra-linguistic differences among them which would Languages 2022, 7, 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010030 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages Languages 2022, 7, 30 2 of 27 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 differ- ences 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. R0 : No gaire. much not much b. *Gaires estudiants no han aprovat. many students not have passed b0 . 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: 1. 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). Languages 2022, 7, 30 3 of 27 2. 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. 3. 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. Languages 2022, 7, 30 4 of 27 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 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.’ Languages 2022, 7, 30 5 of 27 (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 postver- bal 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. Languages 2022, 7, 30 6 of 27 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 syn- tactically 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 Languages 2022, 7, 30 7 of 27 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.’ Languages 2022, 7, 30 8 of 27 (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 (Condoravdi and Kiparsky 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]) Languages 2022, 7, 30 9 of 27 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 (