Beyond negation: “Not” as evaluation and speech-act trigger in Mandarin Chinese negative markers

Abstract

Beyond canonical negation, Chinese negators do not alter the truth condition of the negated expression under certain conditions, a phenomenon traditionally referred to as redundant negation in Mandarin Chinese. The aim of the study is two-fold. While adopting and extending the notion of evaluative negation (EN) first proposed by Yoon (2011), I elaborate on the mechanism underlying the semantics and pragmatics of EN within the framework of evaluation and speech-act theory. Then I go further to explore the evaluative properties inherent in Chinese negative markers by analyzing the distribution and licensing conditions of EN. I propose that this logically vacuous negation is in fact semantically meaningful in that it has an evaluative force encoded by negators to presuppose the speaker's attitudes or psychological states as to the expressed proposition. Moreover, the presence of the so-called redundant negators has its pragmatic contribution. Together, the observations and analysis in this study will make effective contributions to a better understanding of the rationale and occurrences of EN cross-linguistically. Findings in this study also have implications for both L2-Chinese learners and instructors.