This dissertation is about an adverbial which I have named “Contrarian” hardly. It is a memberof the family of approximative adverbs that includes: almost, barely, hardly, rarely, scarcely and nearly. “Contrarian” hardly is different from the approximative hardly in a variety of ways. First, it patterns very much like standard sentential negation and in fact, appears in many contexts to be paraphraseable by “no” or “not”. For example, This banquet space is hardly ideal seems to mean that This banquet space is not ideal. Alternatively, approximative hardly often has the interpretation “close to not”. For example, Lauren hardly answered any questions seems to mean that Lauren came close to not answering any questions. Despite their different meanings, I will argue that actually these lexical items are the same and that it is a unique confluence of grammatical properties which conspires such that the “Contrarian” hardly meaning arises. The dissertation begins with an extensive exposition of the empirical phenomena surrounding “Contrarian” hardly. Interestingly, “Contrarian” hardly has a different syntactic distribution in the clause and interacts with other syntactic items in ways which are different from approximative hardly. In order to account for this, I propose a unique Negation syntax based on den Dikken (2019). This syntactic approach treats morphological negation and semantic negation as distinct from each other, and allows Negation Phrases to take a stacked configuration. I show how this syntax can handle not only “Contrarian” hardly but the other negative approximatives. I also demonstrate how it can account for the Negative Concord involving negative approximatives which is attested in Appalachian and Southern American English. Ultimately, I defend the position that “Contrarian” hardly results when approximative hardly is merged into the Specifier position of NegP and is scoped over by an abstract negative operator which is adjoined at TP. The next part of the dissertation is about the semantics of these items. I first defend an Intensional (modal) approach to the approximative adverbs and argue that they combine with predicates and introduce a world argument w. I claim that their semantic specifications are only about the asserted content—traditionally called The Proximal component. This assertion pertains to the existence of a close possible world where the Truth value of the prejacent is the opposite to that in the evaluation world. I then show that what are often perceived of as modificational restrictions on the interactions of approximatives and predicates are in actuality failures in reasoning related to these modal projections. Next, I argue that the Polar component, the presuppositional-like content regarding the prejacent’s Truth value in the world of evaluation, can be derived via “Presuppositional Exhaustification” (Bassi, Del Pinal, and Sauerland 2021). In order to do this, I utilize the method for Structural Alternative generation outlined in Trinh (2019). Subsequently, I demonstrate the character of approximatives under negation, showing specifically, that the far from it inference that characterizes “Contrarian” hardly is actually possible when other approximatives are negated. With all of these pieces in place, I demonstrate how “Contrarian” hardly is derived semantically. Afterward, I illustrate the true character of the Polarity associated with “Contrarian” hardly by exploring its Polarity Item interactions. Lastly, I address matters related to the Pragmatics of “Contrarian” hardly and the approximatives. I argue that much like Conditionals, utterances with approximatives are used by Speakers to draw an Addressee’s attention to a Counterfactual proposal. However, in the case of the approximative, it is a Counterfactual proposal which can serve to make the world of the modal projection “close”. I then discuss the character that this takes in discourse before turning to “Contrarian” hardly. In that case, I show how “Contrarian” hardly is used to engage in Disputative discourse with Interlocutors. I demonstrate its features of counter-expectancy and bias, and show how it is used under conditions very similar to Biased Questions. The primary goal of the discussion is to explicate the Discourse conditions (Context) which must exist regarding a Speaker’s beliefs, the target proposition and the Common Ground, such that a “Contrarian” hardly utterance can be felicitous. The dissertation ends with some thoughts on future avenues of research.
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