[Ads-l] positive anymore

[Laurence Horn]

> On Feb 25, 2017, at 2:50 PM, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM> wrote:
> 
> https://books.google.com/books?id=Wmgy9ORrC1cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=komarr&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYq9b__qvSAhWFWCYKHfl6AcsQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=anymore&f=false
> 
> Lois McMaster Bujold _Komarr_ Riverdale NY: Baen Publishing Enterprises,1998 ISBN 0-671-87877-8
> page numbers are from the first hardback edition
> 
> page 12 "But she was abruptly too weary to try anymore.”

Not a “positive ‘anymore’”, since “too X to” (which can be unpacked as ‘so X as to not’) licenses negative polarity items more generally, including “any”, “ever”, 

too full to eat any dessert
too frightened to ever try that again
too tired/discouraged to lift so much as a finger to help

—these are all fine for me (as is the original example, and I’m not a positive “anymore” speaker).
Notice that if we replace “too weary” with the positive “energetic enough”, it becomes bad for non-pos anymore speakers:

#energetic/alert enough to try anymore
 
> 
> page 158 "I'm afraid these domes give me claustrophobia, anymore.”

This one, I agree, is degraded for speakers outside the pos-anymore dialect area, but I suspect the “afraid” and negative affect may help.  Compare:

#I’m glad to see the blue sky, which gives me hope anymore

Worse, I expect.

LH 

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