Polarity items are linguistic expressions such as any, at all, some, which are acceptable in some linguistic environments but not others. Crucially, whether a polarity item is acceptable in a given environment is argued to depend on the inferences (in the reasoning sense) that this environment allows. We show that the inferential judgments reported for a given environment are modified in the presence of polarity items. Hence, there is a two-way influence between linguistic and reasoning abilities: the linguistic acceptability of polarity items is dependent on reasoning facts and, conversely, reasoning judgments can be altered by the mere addition of seemingly innocuous polarity items.
Keywords: Intuitions; Modularity; Monotonicity; Polarity; Reasoning.
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