The focus in this exposition will be on semantic and pragmatic theories. It should be noted that there also exist several syntactic approaches to NPI licensing, in which the focus of attention is not so much directed to the characteristics of licensing environments themselves, as to the structural relationship between NPI and licenser. The first theory advocated in the syntactic approach to polarity sensitivity is Klima's (1964), in which it is stated that indefinites are grammatical when they are in construction with an expression which has the grammatico-semantic feature to be referred to as Affect, where it remains unspecified what the characteristics of this feature are.

A much more recent approach is Progovac's (1988; 1992; 1994; see also Hoeksema's 1996 review), in which the licensing of NPIs is explained within the framework of the Binding Theory. The distribution of NPIs in this account resembles Principle A of the Binding Theory in that NPIs, like anaphors, must be bound by a licenser. This licenser can either be situated in INFL, in the case of a clause-mate negation, or else as a phonologically empty polarity operator in COMP.

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