English verbs selecting Bare forms

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:27 PM -0400 4/5/01, Robert Levine wrote:
>Larry---right, I see how that works. What about examples like the
>following, though?
>
>(i) Anyone who would dare do that with the police parked out side
>     obviously enjoys living very dangerously.

This IS a downward-entailing and hence polarity-licensing environment.  Compare

Anyone who has ever done that
Anyone who would lift a finger to help you...

The restrictor of universals (see Ladusaw 1979) and the restrictor of
generics, including free choice "any" (a generic according to Lee &
Horn 1994, Horn 1999, 2000) and free choice indefinites--

{Every/A/Any} dog that has any self-respect would never make friends
with a cat.

--is an NPI licensing environment.   If you substitute SOME(ONE) for
ANY(ONE) in any of these contexts, "dare"--like other NPIs--becomes
impossible.

>
>This `dare' apparently doesn't require the polarity environment,

It does

>  but
>it also selects a bare-stem VP, not an infinitival. Is this just a
>variant of infinitival-seeking `dare'? If so, why is
>
>(ii) *Robin dares do that, but not me.
>
>bad?

No licenser.

>Clearly, this *isn't* quite the same thing as the `try/*tries' case
>Carl raised earlier (`If we try and do that, we'll be in trouble/*If
>Robin tries and do that, she'll be in trouble')...right?...
>
Right; "dare" is basically a polarity-restricted item; otherr stuff
is going on with the "try and" construction.

larry