Inverse scope of Russian 'ne dolžen' as neg-raising

Abstract

The inverse scope of negated deontic necessity modals is a typologically robust phenomenon. In this paper I examine Russian necessity modal dolžen ‘must’ in its deontic reading and compare two accounts of its inverse scope: the positive polarity approach and the neg-raising approach. I argue for the following points: (a) neg-raising predicates exhibit typical properties of positive polarity items; (b) the scalar implicature approach to neg-raising derives those properties; (c) dolžen patterns with neg-raising predicates w.r.t. the relevant properties. I conclude that the neg-raising approach perfectly accounts for dolžen and is very close to accounting for English must. I also provide criticism of the competing positive polarity approach.