Ne. . . que and Its Challenges

The goal of this paper is to offer a detailed description of sentences like (1), which I will label ‘minimal ne. . . que realizations’. It is a description in the sense that I make explicit the makeup of this structure: it contains hidden material, and I show what this material is (Section 2). It is also a description of the many theoretical problems posed by ne. . . que: the core problem arises when one compares minimal realizations such as (1) and total realizations (the ones in which all hidden material is pronounced), for it seems that the felicity conditions of the two are not the same; the solution to this paradox is to be found in the structural ambiguity of total realizations; and I show how one can single out the total realizations that minimal realizations are based upon (Section 3). Lastly, I show how to exploit this finding to investigate the semantic contribution (assertoric and non-assertoric) of ne. . . que; I also present what I think are the main challenges that a proper semantic analysis of the construction has to meet (Section 4).