Metalinguistic Negation Research Articles

韩国语构式“-다 못해”的语义功能及其汉语对应表达初探

The Korean construction '-da motae' is an expression of negation. Previous studies on '-da motae' mainly divided it into '-da motae1', which expresses general negation, and '-da motae2', which expresses meta-linguistic negation. '-da motae' has been analyzed in detail from the perspective from syntactic and semantics, from a relatively new perspective, this paper analyzes the four aspects of the construction '-da motae': evidentiality, expectation, position evaluation and reference characteristics. The preliminary conclusions are as follows: First, in terms of evidentiality, '-da motae1' mainly plays the role of regulating evidentiality function, while '-da motae2' basically maintains the consistency of evidentiality. Second, in terms of expectation, '-da motae1' has prominent counter-expectation characteristics, with the expectation of deviating from the expected features, and the subject implements a specific behavior. '-da motae2' mainly indicates the further deepening of the preceding and following information in the same dimension, which has the characteristics of exceeding expectations as the previous information in the relative measurement standard. Third, in terms of position evaluation, '-da motae1' mainly has the characteristics of negative evaluation, '-da motae2' has the characteristics of neutral evaluation. Fourth, in terms of reference, the whole expression of '-da motae1' refers to specific reference, the generic reference attributes are expressed in the vertical dimension. The generic reference of '-da motae2' tends to be placed in the preceding clause, and the following sentence tends to specific reference, and the generic reference attributes are mainly in the horizontal dimension. In addition, the corresponding Chinese expressions of '-da motae' are also studied.

The Role of Metalinguistic Negation in Interpersonal Communication

Metalinguistic negation is a good tool in interpersonal communication, as it is perfect for formal register and could be used as a politeness strategy. It is used to object to a previous statement, but not its truth-conditional meaning, so it may be used in the communication when the speaker wants to avoid directly denying the previous utterance, which is viewed not as criticism, but as a challenge, which makes it rather polite. Drawing from theories of pragmatics, the article highlights the possible reasons for the speaker to choose this type of negation. Pragmatic functions, complexities and implications of MN are researched. In Business English people tend to use MN as a politeness strategy, it may be used as well to avoid being direct. The study shows the crucial role of metalinguistic negation in resolving conflicts, expressing modesty and suggesting alternatives. The aim of the research is to show the significance and pragmatic implications of metalinguistic negation, as well as its usage in formal contexts. In the article case studies and examples are provided, such as the usage of MN to soften criticism, indirectly disagree, avoid giving the direct answer, soften face-threatening situations, soften criticism, negotiate. MN allows the speaker to remain polite and maintain business-like environment, it may also be the way to avoid directness. Almost nothing has been done on such topic, so the study is quite exceptional, as well as it is topical. In the modern world delicacy and tolerance are most valued, so such linguistic phenomenon is helpful. The study may be interesting for scholars, who research communication strategies, pragmatics, negation, formal register and politeness.

Metalinguistic negation of proper names: Evidence from Russian

This paper examines metalinguistic negation of proper names on the data from the Russian National Corpus, including its pragmatic functions, its performance with regards to other cases of metalinguistic negation, and the opposition between explicit and implicit use of the metalinguistic predicate. The data showed that the speaker's most common aim is to reject a particular representation of the name owner in favor of another representation. Next, we discovered that metalinguistic negation is more natural in corrections of content ascribed to speaker than in reactions to a preceding interlocutor's comment. Finally, the metalinguistic predicate of naming can be expressed not only lexically, but also be part of the meaning of some syntactic constructions.

Pure Russellians are allowed not to believe

ABSTRACT According to Pure Russellianism, if David believes that Hesperus is a planet is true, (2) David believes that Phosphorus is a planet is also true. It is also usually thought, by friends and foes of Pure Russellianism alike, that on it, when (1) and (2) are true, (3) David does not believe that Phosphorus is a planet cannot but be false and because of this, many departed from Pure Russellianism. In this paper, I will show that by relying on the very explanation Pure Russellianism is usually combined with to account for sentences such as (1) and (2) and by acknowledging the well-attested linguistic phenomenon of metalinguistic negation, even if (1) and (2) are true, it is not the case that on Pure Russellianism (3) cannot but be false.

A Pragmatic Study of Negation in English

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.

Empty Names, Presupposition Failure, and Metalinguistic Negation

When it comes to empty names, we seem to have reached very little consensus. Still, we all seem to agree, first, that our semantics should assign truth to (one reading of) negative singular existence statements in which an empty name occurs and, second, that names are used in such statements. The purpose of this paper is to show that ruling out that the names are mentioned is harder than it has been thought. I will present a new metalinguistic account for negative singular existence statements in which an empty name occurs, and I will show that the account can deal both with the objections to the traditional metalinguistic account and with other objections that seem to target my new proposal.

Expressions in focus

It is commonly claimed that, when a constituent is the focus of an occurrence of a sentence, certain alternatives to that constituent are relevant to our understanding of the sentence. Normally these are alternatives to the denotation of the focused constituent. However, Krifka (2007) briefly discusses the notion of expression focus , where the alternatives are linguistic items. Yet an adequate account of expression focus has not been given within the literature. This is despite the fact that it holds the potential to provide analyses of several important metalinguistic phenomena, including metalinguistic negotiation, metalinguistic negation and embedded pejorative expressions. This paper provides an account of expression focus and shows the explanatory power it holds with respect to metalinguistic phenomena. EARLY ACCESS

Polarity, expression of degree and negation: the vernacular form <i>caraças</i>

This paper presents the vernacular form caraças which, in European Portuguese (EP) is associated to multiple contexts, differents from its use as a feminine common noun. The data I will present shows that caraças behaves as a polarity item, without referential interpretation. On the one hand, caraçasbehaves as a minimizer, a subtype of Negative Polarity Item (NPI), being associated to the lowest point of a scale of value. On the other hand, it also behaves as a Positive Polarity Item (PPI), expressing maximal degrees, therefore being a maximizer. The fact that caraças occurs simultaneously as a NPI and a PPI could indicate we are in the presence of a bipolar element, as described by van der Wouden (1997). Nevertheless, data suggests that there are two distinct items caraças, one of them being a NPI and the other a PPI.The form caraças is also associated to other contexts of use, namely as a metalinguistic negation marker and in evaluative constructions such as N-of-an-N constructions. We also find it functioning as an interjection in exclamative sentences.Although the feminine common noun caraça (augmentative of cara ‘face’) remains in the lexicon as synonym of mask, the polarity item caraças does not result from a process of grammaticalization of the common noun, as documented for other polarity items. In this paper I will put forth the idea that caraças, in its masculine singular form, appeared as an euphemistic variant of caralho ‘dick’, a highly offensive taboo term, used to designate the masculine sexual organ.

Uso enfático-discursivo de Lá e Cá no PE. Uma análise com base em dados ficcionais

Abstract – The study of deixis consists in a prolific field for the development of functional and pragmatic studies and, also, for the study of the relation between syntax and pragmatics. The observation of verbal activity allows us to understand that the value of an utterance may vary according to the context in which it is produced. Therefore, we can insert the investigations on the linguistic deixis as a process of reference of the language through which the users share contextual information within the group of studies dedicated on the interaction between interlocutors. The linguistic acts are the result of a set of textual and extratextual elements in which the linguistic choices play the main role for the success of the linguistic acts themselves. From the textual point of view, the pragmatic aspects are based on syntactic constructions delineated by the literature in this field (Martins 2012). Here we propose an analysis of the locatives La and Ca as elements denoting discursive deixis, that is, as pragmatic elements displaying a relation with the denotation of emphasis in European Portuguese (EP). The study of locatives in EP based on the data from I-Fala corpus (under construction) offers the possibility of confirming the analyses proposed in some recent works, namely Martins (2010, 2012). As argued in Martins (2010, 2012), Ca and La behave similarly when it comes to allowing users to achieve their own communicative goals, some of which being the expression of argumentation or metalinguistic negation. Thus, in view of these observations and considering the data collected from I-Fala, we will propose an analysis according to which La and Ca function as discursive markers, i.e. as emphatic-textual, interactional metalinguistic operators.

The (en)rich(ed) meaning of expletive negation

Abstract This contribution addresses the issue of one of the instances of non-standard negation, the so-called expletive negation (EN). Though it discusses data from a variety of languages, it mainly concentrates on Italian, proposing that the behavior of EN in comparative, exclamative and temporal clauses warrants an analysis of EN in terms of an operator of implicature denial. This approach derives the fact that EN is truth-conditionally irrelevant from the fact that the semantics of negation as a truth-value reversal operator is shifted, in the case of EN, to the layer of implicated meaning. The analysis has a number of interesting consequences for the notion of metalinguistic negation. It further derives many of the interpretive effects normally linked to the so-called evaluative analysis of EN, and is compatible with a new set of data showing that EN scopally interacts with other negative elements. Finally, the proposal advanced here has a number of non-trivial implications regarding the relation between morphosyntax and the systems of interpretation, potentially affecting the standard view of language within cognition.

To wish or not to wish: Modality and (metalinguistic) negation

This paper examines the interaction between negation and some expressions of bouletic modality. Whereas most other types of modals may scope below negation, expressions of bouletic modality in the form of hortative and optative markers never do. The distribution of high adverbials, as well as co-occurrence possibilities with a negative head, such as French ne, reveal that hortatives and optatives do not target the same position: they occupy two different heads within the left peripheral structure. However, it is argued that the syntax of the bouletic operator, which is analyzed as involving high left-peripheral positions, prevents the negative marker from syntactically and semantically scoping over it. This is shown to also correlate with access to metalinguistic negation interpretations. While with the adequate context, the bouletic operators examined here are compatible with metalinguistic negation, no wide scope interpretation above the bouletic modal content is accessible. This is exactly the contexts in which the negative head is syntactically banned. It is proposed that these observations constitute evidence for the fact that metalinguistic negation requires specific syntactic conditions, namely access to a high contrast-related position. Metalinguistic negation is obviously triggered by contextual input, but, at least in the cases examined here, is not blind to syntax.

A set of semantic and pragmatic criteria for descriptive vs. metalinguistic negation

This article is about metalinguistic negation and the types of criteria making a straightforward distinction between descriptive (DN) and metalinguistic negation (MN). First, I will distinguish three types of negation: one type of DN and two types of MN, where MN1 is upward metalinguistic negation and MN2 presuppositional metalinguistic negation. This distinction is based on two semantic criteria (entailment and scope of negation), and one discursive or pragmatic criterion (connectives). Then, the use of the connective criterion will imply that maisSN (Ger. sondern and Sp. sino) triggers DN, whereas maisPA (Ger. aber, Sp. pero) licenses MN1 and a causal connective like parce que ‘because’ or puisque ‘since’ generates MN2. The general philosophy of the analysis of negation is both monoguist (negation is semantically unambiguous, and its meaning is logical) and contextual (there is no reinterpretation of the negative clause when negation is metalinguistic). Finally, this article aims to lend theoretical support to the experimental work on negation reported in Blochowiak & Grisot (2018).

Metalinguistic negation from an informational perspective

This paper revisits the definition of metalinguistic negation (MLN) illustrated by e.g. They don’t have kids, they have children. A new definition is proposed that rests on two properties. The first is that MLN is a corrective speech-act. The second is that the sentence used to perform the speech-act has a paradoxical Information Structure: it is discourse-old material, along with the corrected a segment that is however treated as discourse-new by virtue of being focused and contrasted to the correcting segment. These properties are used to explain established features of MLN. MLN’s speech-act status accounts for the distinctive behaviour of relevant connectives. The paradoxical Information Structure distinguishes MLN from other uses of negation, relates it to other corrective constructions and metalinguistic phenomena (e.g. in conditionals and questions) and accounts for the alleged marked status of metalinguistic configurations. How MLN can be mapped by a cartographic approach is speculated upon.

The pragmatics of descriptive and metalinguistic negation: experimental data from French

The phenomenon of descriptive and metalinguistic negation has been debated for a long time from a theoretical perspective. On the one hand, there are defenders of the ambiguist approach to negation, in which the descriptive negation basically serves to deny an utterance’s propositional content, and that this takes place by default (Horn 1985; 1989; Burton-Roberts 1989), while the metalinguistic negation surfaces only when the descriptive negation cannot be applied, and targets the non-truth-conditional contents of the utterance (e.g. implicatures, its register, its morphology or its phonology). Only the former is truth-functional, and the latter is claimed to be non-truth-functional as it does not operate on propositions. On the other hand, there are proponents of the non-ambiguist approach, who maintain that both types of negation are truth-functional since, in the case of metalinguistic negation, the process of pragmatic enrichment guarantees that the full proposition on which negation can operate will be reached (Carston 1996; 2002; Noh 1998; 2000; Moeschler 2010; 2013; 2017). Regarding processing, the ambiguist account predicts that it will take more time to treat metalinguistic negation because it always occurs as the second of two steps; in contrast, the non-ambiguist account makes no such prediction, since the interpretation of negation is contextually driven and the right context will issue the correct interpretation from the start. This paper will be devoted to the presentation of two self-paced reading experiments and of one offline elicitation experiment we carried out on French descriptive and metalinguistic negation. Our findings provide evidence in favor of the non-ambiguist approach.

How speakers interpret the negative markersnoandno…pasin Catalan

AbstractThis paper reports the results of an experimental investigation designed to test the interpretation of the optional doubling of the negative markersnoandpasin Expletive Negation (EN) contexts and in preverbal Negative Concord Items (NCI) contexts in Catalan. We show that in EN contexts a negative interpretation ofnois preferred to an expletive one, with non-negative readings being less widespread than expected from what is described in traditional grammars. In NCI contexts the overt presence ofnobasically contributes to a single negation interpretation, thus confirming the status of Catalan as a Negative Concord language. We also show that, in the absence of discourse environments,pasin both EN and NCI contexts shows a variable interpretation, a characteristic of negative polarity items. Our results indicate thatpasdoes not increase the amount of negative interpretation ofnoin EN contexts, or of double negation in NCI contexts, but is an item dependent on the interpretation ofno. We conclude that the strengthening role of Catalanpas(at stage two of Jespersen’s cycle), while associated with the expression of metalinguistic negation, does not reverse the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Negacja jako operator dyskursywny

This paper is devoted to the discursive (metalinguistic) negation. Its functions (e.g. a rectification, emphasis, surprise), types (e.g. implicative, linguistic, prosodic) and properties (e.g. the ostensible inconsistency, pragmatic decoding, mention rather than use, no construction with the prefix ‘no’, no construction with negative pronouns) are discussed. Next, the possibility is considered that the discursive negation is only a special case of other types of negation, in particular contrastive or illocutionary negation. Then the question is raised whether in the case of the discursive negation we are dealing with a semantic or pragmatic phenomenon, as well as whether it is possible to include the discursive negation in the context of a conversational mechanism called ‘echoic use.’

Metarepresentation and echo in online automobile advertising

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the rhetorical import of echoing fashion in online automobile advertising within the framework of Relevance Theory. The study embraces the concepts of metarepresentation and echo and expands them beyond traditional relevance-theoretic limits (e.g., the analysis of irony, free indirect reporting or metalinguistic negation) to show how they can successfully explain that design-related passages of car advertising will achieve relevance via the addressee recognising the allusive nature of the ads, attributing them to some source and identifying the addresser's attitude towards them. Endorsing the view that advertising exemplifies covert communication, it is expected that linguistic metarepresentations will not be fully explicit but rather be left to the reader to infer.

A Reconsideration on the Pragmatic Functions and Aspects of Negative Expressions

전통적인 관점에서 부정문은 진리조건의 진리치를 반전시키는 것으로 간주되 어, 진리치가 ‘진’인 어떤 명제를 부정문으로 변환하면 진리치가 ‘거짓’으로 전환되고, 역으로 거짓인 어떤 명제를 부정하면 진리치가 진으로 변경되는 것으로 인지되어 왔다. 그러나 어떤 명제를 부정하면 단순히 이분법적으로 진리치를 반전하는 것이 아니라, 표현한 발화의 어떤 양상을 거부하는 많은 부정 표현들이 존재한다. 따라서 부정문은 어떤 명제의 진리치를 반전하는 전통적인 관점의 부정문인 서술적 부정과 선행된 발화의 태도, 상태, 정도 등과 같은 발화의 어떤 양상을 부정하는 상위 언어적 부정으로 일반적으로 구분한다. 본 연구는 서술적 부정과 상위 언어적 부정이 어떤 차이가 있는지 분석하여, 두 부정의 차이가 부정문의 분석에 어떻게 적용되는지 살펴본다. 이런 관점에서 특히 양인석의 ‘척 도눈금부정’ 가설의 이론적 문제점을 분석하여 척도와 등급을 매길 수 있는 의미 함축을 지닌 부정문에 대한 수정된 대안을 제시한The negative connective, not, is considered to be a pure reverser of truth-values in the classical aspects of negation, turning P to ∽P and ∽∽P to P. If a proposition P has the value T then ∽P has the value F; conversely if P is F, then ∽P is T. Lyons asserts that “The closest approximation to the negation connective in more or less ordinary English is ‘it is not the case that...’ which converts Anthony loved Cleopatra to It is not the case that Anthony loved Cleopatra” (143). However, there are lots of negative expressions which do not simply deny a proposition, but reject certain aspects of the utterance expressing a proposition. Some special attention is paid to the two types of negation: the ‘descriptive negation’ which negates the truth of a proposition and the ‘meta-linguistic negation’ which objects to the manner or degree of a previous utterance. This paper explores how a distinction between DN and MN could be made and how the difference could be applied for the analysis of negation. My special concern is with analyzing Yang’s Scale-Point Negation and then to suggest a revised solution to the negation of scalar and gradable implication.

否定의 모습: 상위언어적 부정은 실험상 어떻게 다른가?

否定의 모습: 상위언어적 부정은 실험상 어떻게 다른가?

Nature and Categorization of Metalinguistic Negation

Metalinguistic negation, as opposed to descriptive negation, has captured great attention from scholars in philosophy, semantics and pragmatics, etc. throughout the world after its initiation. Various aspects of it have been brought into heated discussions, including its nature, categorization, constraints, scope and focus of negation and pragmatic functions, and so on. However, as the basis of investigation, what is the nature of metalinguistic negation and how it should be categorized are still controversial and current solutions to these two questions seem to be biased. This paper attempts to provide an impartial and more plausible explanation for its nature from the perspective of “use” and “mention” and categorize it according to prototype theory. Based on the distinction between “use” and “mention” and prototype theory, it is proposed that metalinguistic negation is the negation of what is mentioned rather than used in a sentence, and that there is an interface between descriptive negation and metalinguistic negation; in other words, there is no clear-cut borderline between descriptive negation and metalinguistic negation and they are two poles of the same continuum.