Negative Sentences Research Articles

Tense and sentential negation

AbstractThe association between sentential negation and tense has solid foundations in the literature. It has even been argued that sentential negative markers consist of a Tense feature (De Clercq 2018,2020). This paper adduces the first results from a typological study and data from Bambara in support of this claim. In addition, the Bambara data also point to the morphological realisation of present or default tense, to a hierarchy for tense and to a position for sentential negation in that hierarchy.

Syntax of the Palestinian Arabic negation-associated exclusive construction

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of a Palestinian Arabic negation-associated exclusive construction featuring the contrastive focus marker illa ‘but’, with theoretical implications for the syntax of negation, negative polarity item licensing, and the categorical status of the root in sentential syntax. It analyzes illa-phrases as constituents licensed by a c-commanding sentential negation (Neg), and illa as a grammatical device encoding contrastiveness. A crucial source for the exclusive semantics of the construction comes from a silent bass ‘only’ immediately following illa that constitutes a syntactic ‘shield’ against Neg scope. Rather than taking an in-situ focus-interpretation approach (cf. Rooth 1985, 1992), we argue for two covert movements at the syntax-semantics interface: quantifier raising of illa-phrases to the designated specifier of polarity Phrase followed by Polarity-to-Focus-raising of Neg. This creates the right syntactic configuration for the truth conditional import of both operators and captures the ‘classical’ thought that focus-sensitive exclusive operators like only quantify over propositional alternatives.

Negation and Free Choice Inference in Child Mandarin.

In sentences with internal negation, Free Choice Inferences (FCIs) are canceled (Chierchia, 2013). The present study investigated the possibility that FCIs are negated, not canceled, by external negation. In previous research, both Mandarin-speaking children and adults were found to license FCIs in affirmative sentences with a modal verb and the disjunction word huozhe ‘or’ (Zhou et al., 2013). The present study contrasted internal versus external negation in sentences that contained all the ingredients needed to license FCIs. Four experiments were conducted using the Truth Value Judgment Task (Crain and Thornton, 1998). Experiment 1 tested Mandarin-speaking children and adults using sentences with internal negation, a modal verb and disjunction. As expected, children did not license FCIs; rather, they assigned a ‘neither’ interpretation to disjunction. Also as expected, adults analyzed disjunction as taking scope over internal negation, yielding a ‘not both’ interpretation (Jing et al., 2005). Experiment 1 provided the benchmarks for sentences with external negation in Experiments 2-4. Experiment 2 confirmed that English-speaking adults distinguish between internal and external negation in sentences with disjunction. In Experiment 3, external negation was conveyed by the focus adverb zhiyou ‘only’. External negation eliminated the between-group differences observed in Experiment 1. Both children and adults analyzed external negation as taking scope over disjunction. Experiment 4 tested the effect of external negation on the computation of FCIs. The test sentences only differed from Experiment 1 by using external negation, rather than internal negation. Again, children and adults interpreted the test sentences in the same way. Most importantly, in contrast to Experiment 1 (with internal negation), both groups analyzed external negation as negating, rather than canceling, FCIs. The findings support the distinction between internal and external negation.

Intonational effects on English scopally-ambiguous sentences

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much prior literature on the relationship between the fall-rise intonation and availability of inverse scope with quantifier-negation configurations. The present study has two objectives: (1) to examine whether the role of intonation in facilitating inverse scope is restricted to this configuration, or whether it extends to double-quantifier configurations as well; and (2) to examine whether fall-rise intonation fully disambiguates the sentence, or only facilitates inverse scope. These questions were investigated experimentally, via an auditory acceptability judgment task, in which native English speakers rated the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in contexts matching surface-scope vs. inverse-scope readings. The results provide evidence that fall-rise intonation facilitates the inverse-scope readings of English quantifier-negation configurations (supporting findings from prior literature), but not those of double-quantifier configurations.

Improvement of sentiment analysis via re-evaluation of objective words in SenticNet for hotel reviews

In order to extract the correct sentiment polarity from word of mouth (WOM), a wide-scale and well-organized sentiment lexicon is generally beneficial. SenticNet is one such lexicon. However, it consists of a high proportion of objective words, which are generally considered to be of little use for sentiment classification due to their ambiguity and lack of sentiments. In the literature, there is a dearth of models that focus on this issue. An objective word appearing more frequently in positive sentences than in negative sentences implies a strong relationship in a positive sentiment orientation, and conversely, an objective word appearing more frequently in negative sentences implies a strong relationship in a negative sentiment orientation. Thus, the ratio of an objective word appearing in positive and negative sentences provides the sentiment orientation. Based on this concept, this paper re-assigns the sentiment values to the objective words in SenticNet and builds a revised SenticNet. Three classification techniques, the J48 decision tree, support vector machine, and multilayer perceptron neural network are used for classification. According to the experiments, the proposed models which extract sentiment values from the revised SenticNet, significantly outperform those models which extract sentiment values from the original non-revised SenticNet.

Word Order in Job Interviews: The Malaysian Perspective

The present study was conducted to analyse the use of word order in job interviews. The data was collected from participants in an organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ten candidates of different races between the ages of 23 and 25 participated in the study. Radford’s syntactic theory of word order was employed to qualitatively analyse the data. It was found that positive sentences were predominantly used by the selected (n = 10; 47.4%) compared to the not selected (n = 10; 44.0%) and keep in view (KIV) (n = 23; 39.0%) job candidates. The findings further revealed that the types of word order used in utterances by the selected candidates were different compared to those who were not chosen for interviews. Selected candidates used more negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, whereas those who were not selected utilised adverbs of manner in negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, while the not selected candidates only used the position of adverbs. On the other hand, the KIV candidates used positive sentences, subordinate clauses and word order in questions in their utterances. The study can provide important contributions to knowledge on the use of English when developing employment course modules emphasising word order as an essential element in portraying good English language proficiency in job interviews.
 Keywords: Malaysia, fresh graduates, job interview, word order

RESEARCH OF THE ERRORS MADE BY ALBANIAN STUDENTS IN WRITING AND SPEAKING WHILE LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The objective of this research is to find out the pupils errors in speaking and writing English as their second language. This research used different searching methods such as: inductive method, deductive method modeling etc. The participants of this research were elementary school pupils of 8 th and 9 th grade of the elementary school “Gjergj Kastrioti Skenderbeu” in Poroj and high school students of “7 Marsi” and Gymnasium “Kirili Pejcinovic” both in Tetovo in the academic year 2018. A total of 100 students participated in this research. The main instrument of this research was writing and the second main was speaking. The data of this research were collected by giving students some questionnaires, to write informal letters, different tests on word formation and debates among pupils. The result of the research was as follow: Using wrong form of verbs, problems with tenses, wrong form of negative sentences, wrong use of singular and plural, omission of verb and lot of pronouncing problems. From the results was concluded that the main cause of errors made by pupils of all schools was the influence of native language and grammar differences between the two languages. Keywords: writing errors, pupils, research, verbs, tests etc.

The Dynamic Nature of Interlanguage Sentential Negation of Indonesian EFL Learners

This cross sectional study attempted to provide empirical study on interlanguage sentential negation of Indonesian EFL learners, particularly the dynamic nature viewed from the stages of development and the number of grammatical error types in each stage. The subjects were Indonesian EFL learners, consisting of four groups from different grades. The data were collected through translation test and analyzed using Lightbown & Spada's framework and error analysis framework. The result indicated that the development stages were not in line with Lightbown & Spada, instead they were represented in three stages of development. Its dynamicity was also depicted by the reduction of grammatical error types at each level. The conclusion was that the learners' interlanguage sentential negation was dynamic, developing closer and closer to the target language through three stages. It is suggested that educators not to give pressure to the learners to get things right at the first place. In addition, their instruction should match the learners' stage of development.

An informativity-based account of negation complexity.

In sentence comprehension, negative sentences tend to elicit more processing cost than affirmative sentences. A growing body of work has shown that pragmatic context is an important factor that contributes to negation comprehension cost. The nature of this pragmatic effect, however, is yet to be determined. In 4 behavioral experiments, the current study assesses 2 possible pragmatic accounts: the expectation-based and the informativity-based accounts. Our findings suggest that informativity, instead of contextual expectation, is more directly responsible for negation comprehension. Contextual expectation only modulates negation comprehension cost if it facilitates the appropriate type of question under discussion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

예능 프로그램 [77억의 사랑] 외국인 출연자의 담화분석을 통한 한국어 부정문 사용양상 연구

In this study, a researcher transcribed Korean negation sentences presented on four episodes of the [Love of 7.7 Billion] and analyzed the discourses of foreign panel members by focusing on Korean negation sentences. The aims of this study are to (1) analyze types and accuracy of Korean negation sentences in foreign panel members’ discourse and (2) present pedagogical implications for efficient Korean education on negation sentences. This study was launched as an attempt to analyze how correctly and variously foreign panel members in the program use Korean negation sentences in their discourse. Since discourse is closely related to the ordinary life of humans, discourses which appeared on the [Love of 7.7 Billion] would be suitable data to analyze since it is a discussion-based program. Therefore, discourse is useful from a pedagogical standpoint to look into the Korean language proficiency of them. Through discourse analysis, several implications were found. (1) foreign panels tended to use short negation sentences rather than long negation sentences; (2) panels’ use of Korean negation sentences was not various; (3) panels divided Korean negation sentences into often-used negation sentences and rarely-used negation sentences; (4) the use of negative polarity was not found that much.

A Fuzzy Logic Approach for Symbolic Representation of Affirmativeness in Formal Languages

Türkçe, Almanca, İngilizce gibi doğal dillerde bir tümce temelde özne ve yüklemden oluşur. Benzer şekilde biçimsel dillerde de bir tümce, yüklem ve argümandan oluşur. Yüklemler P, Q, R gibi büyük harflerle, argümanlar ise x, y, z gibi küçük harflerle gösterilir. Örneğin olumlu bir tümce P(x), olumsuz bir tümce ise –P(x) şeklinde ifade edilebilir. Ancak bazen bir tümcenin olumlu mu yoksa olumsuz mu olduğu net bir şekilde belli olmayabilir. Bu tür durumlarda mevcut sembolik gösterimde belirsizlikler ortaya çıkabilmektedir. Olumlu tümcelere matematiksel olarak 1, olumsuz tümcelere ise 0 değerinin verildiği varsayılırsa, olumluluk veya olumsuzluk durumu belirsiz olan tümceler ancak bu iki değer arasında bir değer alabilir. Diğer bir deyişle P(x) şeklinde gösterilebilen bir tümceyi P1(x), -P(x) şeklinde gösterilen bir tümceyi ise P0(x) şeklinde ifade etmek mümkündür; fakat olumluluğu kesin olmayan tümceler bu değerlerle gösterilemeyeceği için başka bir ifade şekline ihtiyaç vardır. Çünkü bu tümcelerdeki iş, oluş veya hareketin gerçekleşme oranı ne 0 ne de 1’dir; 0 ve 1 arasında bir değerdir. Bu çalışmada bu tür tümcelerin biçimsel dillerde nasıl ifade edilebileceğine dair bir öneride bulunmak ve bulanık küme kuramıyla olumluluğu derecelendirmek amaçlanmıştır. Bu amaç doğrultusunda önerilen yaklaşım birtakım örnek tümceler üzerinde uygulanmış ve söz konusu tümceler bulanık sembolik bir gösterimle ifade edilmiştir.

НЕМИС ЖАНА КЫРГЫЗ ТИЛДЕРИНДЕГИ ТАНУУ МААНИСИНДЕГИ СҮЙЛӨМДӨР

This article analyzes the construction of negation in sentences in German and Kyrgyz, language means, similarities and generalizations. There are insignificant difficulties in comparing unrelated languages, which creates a special problem of language universals. By noting the similarities and differences in languages, it is feasible to determine their relationship and link the history of the language with the history of the people. Negation is one of the linguistic categories that reflects the relationship between language and thinking, directly related to the person who is the subject of speech, and objective truth. The article is complemented with appropriate examples of negation categories in the compared languages

Analysis of semantic and syntactic negation in Oshiwambo and English

Negation in languages has been documented since the 1970s and 1980s. This paper attempts to explain the negation structures in semantic and syntactic structures of Oshiwambo and English languages. These two languages have two complete negation structures and how they function to achieve negation is far from being similar. The focus of the paper was on the analysis of the sentential negation and how negative particles are used in English and Oshiwambo, a Bantu language. It analyzes and compares the use of full negatives, affixes and quasi negative words to achieve negation in English and Oshiwambo language. The Oshiwambo and English texts/contents were purposely sampled and content analysis was performed accordingly. The analysis shows that Bantu languages share a common rule of negation which is the use of a preinitial prefix while the rules to changing negative imperative to interrogative or declarative are different between English and Oshiwambo.

The appearance of negative sentences used in Turkish scientific texts in line with textual acts

Son yıllarda dilbilimde olumsuzluk konusu üzerine pek çok çalışma yapılmıştır. Bugüne kadar yapılan olumsuzluk çalışmalarında, olumsuzluğun daha çok sözdizimsel ve anlamsal boyutu üzerine yoğunlaşılmıştır. Metinsel düzlemde işaretlenen olumsuzluğa ise yeterince değinilmemiştir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, dilbilim alanında Türkçe yazılmış bilimsel metinlerde kullanılan olumsuzluğun metinsel edimlere göre dağılımlarını incelemektir. Çalışmada, doküman inceleme yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Çalışmanın veri tabanı, dilbilim alanında Türk yazarlar tarafından yazılmış Türkçe bilimsel metinlerden oluşmaktadır. Çalışmada incelenen örneklem, 1998-2006 yıllarında yayımlanan Dilbilim Araştırmaları ve Dilbilim Kurultay Bildirileri’nden rastlantısal örnekleme yöntemiyle 20 bilimsel metin seçilmiştir. İncelemede sayısal değerler iki aşamalı bir sayım yapılarak saptanmıştır. Sayımın birinci aşamasında dilbilim alanında Türkçe yazılmış bilimsel metinlerdeki toplam sözce sayısı (2845) saptanmıştır. Bunun ardından ikinci olarak dilbilim alanında Türkçe yazılmış bilimsel metinlerde yer almakta olan olumsuz sözcelerin (210) sayısı saptanmıştır. Saptanan olumsuz sözceler Swales (1990)’in metinsel edim modeline göre düzenlenmiştir. Türkçe bilimsel metinlerde kullanılan olumsuz tümcelerin, en sık kullanıldığı metinsel edimler sırasıyla; Konu ile İlgili Genellemeler (80), Çıkarım ve Varsayım (52), Araştırma Eksikliği Belirtme (22), Beklenmeyen Sonuç (22), Alan Yazın Değerlendirmesi (14), Sorun Belirtme (9), Açıklama (4), Öneri (2), Sınırlılıklar (2), Yöntem (2), Veri Toplama İşlemleri (1)’dir. Çalışmada bilimsel metinlerde kullanılan olumsuz tümcelerin, çalışmanın inandırıcılığını, güvenirliğini, yeterliliğini gibi durumları etkilediği sonucuna varılmıştır.

Impact of passive and negative sentences in automatic generation of static UML diagram using NLP

In this research work, we propose a rule based approach for the automatic extraction of UML diagram from the unstructured format of software functional requirements. The existing work provides decent results for active sentences and positive sentences but the challenge in our work is to automatic extract class diagram elements from passive voice type sentences and negative sentences. Furthermore, there is scope to do more research in extraction process using multi-word terms. Thus, we have endeavored to automatic extract the class diagram elements by overcoming these challenges. The methodology uses the Stanford CoreNLP Tools along with Java for the practical implementation of formulated rules. Our approach has proved that without supplant the human being and their decision making, one could reduce the human effort while designing functional requirements. Several case studies were performed to compare class diagrams generated by our methodology to the ones created by experts. Our methodology outperforms the existing work and provides impressive Average completeness (0.82), Average correctness (0.92) and Average redundancy (0.15). Results show that class diagram elements extracted by our methodology are precise as well as accurate and hence, in practice, such class diagrams would be a good preliminary diagram to converge towards to precise and comprehensive class diagrams.

Testing theories of plural meanings

Plural morphology in English is associated with a multiplicity inference. For example, “Emily fed giraffes” is typically interpreted to mean that Emily fed multiple giraffes. It has long been observed that this inference disappears in downward-entailing linguistic environments, such as in the scope of negation. For example, “Emily didn't feed giraffes” does not merely suggest that she didn't feed multiple giraffes, but rather that she didn't feed any. There are three main approaches to explaining this puzzle: the first proposes that the plural is ambiguous, and invokes a preference for stronger meanings; the second derives multiplicity inferences as implicatures; and the third provides a homogeneity-based account. These different approaches can all account for the interpretation of the plural across upward- and downward-entailing environments. They differ, however, in what they predict for three further aspects of the plural: the status of positive and negative plural sentences in singular contexts, children's acquisition of plural meanings, and the relationship between plural meanings and scalar implicatures. In this paper, we report on three experiments investigating adults' and preschool-aged children's interpretation of plural morphology in English. The experiments reveal that participants distinguish positive and negative plural sentences presented in singular contexts, and that adults assign a different status to these positive and negative sentences. It is also observed that children, unlike adults, tend to accept underinformative positive plural sentences in singular contexts — in parallel with their behavior on standard scalar implicatures — while they are relatively more adult-like when it comes to negative plural sentences in the same contexts, showing a tendency to reject the negative sentences. We discuss how the findings of the three experiments are expected on a scalar implicature approach to multiplicity inferences, and the open challenges they pose for the ambiguity and homogeneity approaches.

Embedding speech-act propositions

Hanks (Propositional content, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015) develops a theory of propositions as speech-act types. Because speech acts play a role in the contents themselves, the view overturns Frege’s force/content distinction, and as such, faces the challenge of explaining how propositions embed under logical operators like negation. The attempt to solve this problem has lead Hanks and his recent commentators to adopt theoretically exotic resources, none of which, we argue, is ultimately successful. The problem is that although there are three different ways of negating the sentence “Mary’s card is an ace”, current speech-act theories of propositions can only accommodate two of them. We distinguish between (1) “It is false that Mary’s card is an ace” (sentence negation), (2) “Mary’s card is a non-ace” (predicate negation), and (3) “Mary’s card is not an ace” (content negation) and show that Hanks and his commentators cannot explain content negation. We call this Hanks’ Negation Problem. The problem is significant because content negation is the negation required for logic. Fortunately, we think there is a natural way for Hanks to accommodate content negation (and all the other logical operators) as successive acts of predication. The view solves Hanks’ Negation Problem with only resources internal to Hanks’ own view.

Amygdalostriatal coupling underpins positive but not negative coloring of ambiguous affect.

Humans routinely integrate affective information from multiple sources. For example, we rarely interpret an emotional facial expression devoid of context. In this paper, we describe the neural correlates of an affective computation that involves integrating multiple sources, by leveraging the ambiguity and subtle feature-based valence signals found in surprised faces. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants reported the valence of surprised faces modulated by positive or negative sentences. Amygdala activity corresponded to the valence value assigned to each contextually modulated face, with greater activity reflecting more negative ratings. Amygdala activity did not track the valence of the faces or sentences per se. Moreover, the amygdala was functionally coupled with the nucleus accumbens only during face trials preceded by positive contextual cues. These data suggest 1) valence-related amygdala activity reflects the integrated valence values rather than the valence values of each individual component, and 2) amygdalostriatal coupling underpins positive but not negative coloring of ambiguous affect.

On the structural and semantic peculiarities of interrogative sentences with negation in English and Chuvash languages

This article represents a comparative study of structural and semantic peculiarities of interrogative sentences with negation in modern languages. The solution of the problem of interrelation and mutual influence of the categories of interrogation and negation in non-cognate languages is of undeniable interest. The relevance of this work is defined by insufficient research on the topic of interrogation and negation in the sentences from comparative perspective, namely with Chuvash language. The goal consists in determining the meaning of negation in interrogative sentences and the impact of the means of negation in Chuvash language compared to English language. The language of English and Chuvash fiction literature served as the main factual material for this study. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that based on the example of sentences with negation, the authors demonstrate that the structural and semantic peculiarities of such sentences are not specific to the English language, but rather common to many languages, including Chuvash; there are nuances that depend on the history of development and structure of a particular language. The results acquired from comparative analysis of the structure and semantics of interrogative sentences with negation in non-cognate languages provide the necessary material for future elaboration of the problems of speech culture and literary translation.

The <i>why-how</i> alternation and a new test for sentential negation—on negated <i>how</i>-questions

It has been argued that negated how-questions are, in contrast to negated why-questions, ill-formed. Based on this generalization it was proposed that how is located in a structural position below negation. In this squib, I will show that negated how-questions exist and that they instantiate a case of sentential negation by using data from German and English. For this purpose, a new test for sentential negation that can be applied to questions is introduced. I will show that the reason why negated how-questions have been argued to be ill-formed is not necessarily syntactic, but pragmatic (or semantic) in nature. However, I will also show that negative contraction in English negated how-questions is blocked.