I'm wondering whether I can use "either" or "too" in this sentence, or both?
There are things I can't give up either
There are things I can't give up too
Please explain why/why not.
Learn English – “There are things I can’t give up either/too”, which is correct
grammaticalitynegative-polarity-items
Best Answer
It's "too".
It's clear that the speaker B is responding to a remark made by somebody else, A. B said "things", not "them". This shows that B is not referring back to any things that A mentioned, but is giving B's own experience with a perhaps different bunch of things. So it's
1. A: There are [things I can't give up].
B: There are [things I can't give up], too.
There are your things, and there are my things, too. The word "either" would be needed only in a negative context, and there is no negative in a suitable position to make "either" needed. Sure, there's a "n't" in the noun phrase "things I can't give up", but it's not at the head of that phrase.
Compare that with:
2. A: There are things I can't give up. Like snacking, and junk food.
B: I can[not give them up], either.
Where B refers to their own inability to do the same action (namely giving up snacking and junk food).
You can't, and I can't, either. The difference here is that the negative (in "can't") negates the verb in the predicate.
Edit for clarity in the light of what other answers have said. The difference between my two examples is not the semantic difference that in the first the bunches of things might be different and in the second they're the same --- rather, it's the syntactic difference that the first contrasts two noun phrases and the second contrasts two predicates whose head verbs are negated. Some more examples based on those in Tim Pederick's answer:
3. A: There are some people I don't like.
B: There are some people I don't like, too.
4. A: I don't like my neighbours.
B: I don't like my neighbours, either.
Some people, some people. The noun phrases are not negative. Don't like, don't like. The predicates' head verbs are negated. Just to show that noun phrases can in some circumstances produce negative contexts that would demand "either":
5. There are no people I dislike so much that I'd say such a rude remark to their faces. There are no people I dislike so much that I'd post such a remark online about them, either.
No people, no people. Negative noun phrases.