A Pragmatic Study of Negation in English

Abstract

This study is a qualitative analysis of the relation between pragmatics and negation in English. The aim of the first part of the study is to examine the view that meaning can originate from usage and negation can be analyzed within pragmatic point of view. And the second aim is to examine the relation between presuppositions and negation and how listeners can identify the target of negation. The first part of the study is a comparison between two types of negation: descriptive and metalinguistic negation. The study shows that descriptive negation is related to truth-functional meaning and its scope is narrow in contrast to metalinguistic negation in which meaning is not merely a matter of truth-functional but rather usage based. In addition, the scope of metalinguistic negation is wide and it scopes over the whole utterance beyond the scope of the negative operator. The second part of the study is to examine the relation between negation and presuppositions which are strictly within the pragmatic aspects. The study also analyzes two presupposition properties: cancellability and constancy under negation. The finding of the study is that presuppositions are not canceled without negation, aren’t normally targeted by negation, and are canceled when there is negation and additional material denying the presuppositional inference. For constancy under negation test, the study shows that it cannot be applied all the time to distinguish presuppositions from entailments.