The expression of negation / edited by Laurence R. Horn.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Horn, Laurence R.

Series:

Expression of cognitive categories ; 4.

The expression of cognitive categories ; 4

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Negatives.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Negation (Logic).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (349 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York, N.Y. : Mouton de Gruyter, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Negation is a sine qua non of every human language but is absent from otherwise complex systems of animal communication. In many ways, it is negation that makes us human, imbuing us with the capacity to deny, to contradict, to misrepresent, to lie, and to convey irony. The apparent simplicity of logical negation as a one-place operator that toggles truth and falsity belies the intricate complexity of the expression of negation in natural language. Not only do we find negative adverbs, verbs, copulas, quantifiers, and affixes, but the interaction of negation with other operators (including multiple iterations of negation itself) can be exceedingly complex to describe, extending (as first detailed by Otto Jespersen) to negative concord, negative incorporation, and the widespread occurrence of negative polarity items whose distribution is subject to principles of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters in this book survey the patterning of negative utterances in natural languages, spanning such foundational issues as how negative sentences are realized cross-linguistically and how that realization tends to change over time, how negation is acquired by children, how it is processed by adults, and how its expression changes over time. Specific chapters offer focused empirical studies of negative polarity, pleonastic negation, and negative/quantifier scope interaction, as well as detailed examinations of the form and function of sentential negation in modern Romance languages and Classical Japanese.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

Typology of negation

The Acquisition of Negation

On the diachrony of negation

Multiple negation in English and other languages

Quantifier-negation interaction in English: A corpus linguistic study of all...not constructions

Negative and positive polarity items: An investigation of the interplay of lexical meaning and global conditions on expression

Negation as a metaphor-inducing operator

Negation in Classical Japanese

Negation and polarity in the new millennium: A bibliography

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612673054

9781282673052

128267305X

9783110219302

3110219301

OCLC:

648711646