| Polarity sensitive items (PSIs) are expressions which can only occur in a positive environment, in the case of positive polarity items (PPIs), or a negative environment, in the case of negative polarity items (NPIs). In English the PPIs are expressions such as scades (of money) and the NPIs are expressions such as (sleep) a wink. As there is a pair of copular verbs in Thai-one PPI and one NPI, this thesis investigates the restricted properties of these polarity sensitive copular verbs. Since these polarity sensitive copular verbs in Thai do not carry semantic meaning of the type that the PSIs in English do, earlier studies which have been done on PSIs have not resulted in an adequate explanation. This thesis suggests that the explanation for the properties of polarity sensitivity of the copular verbs in Thai might involve aspectual facts. |
