Scope Of Negation Research Articles

Negation in clause combining in Kazakh

This paper examines the function of negation in discourse units containing more than one clause in Kazakh. When clauses are combined through coordination or subordination, negation can be formally marked in all linked clauses to deny the proposition described in the given clauses. The verbal predicates are negated by the bound morpheme -MA. The non-verbal predicates are negated either with the negative particle emes, ‘not’, or with the existential negation žoq, ‘non-existent’. As for the distinction between these three negations, I argue that -MA is an internal negative expressing a weak denial, whereas emes and žoq are external negatives expressing a strong denial and absolute non-existence respectively, in terms of their pragmatic function in discourse. With regard to the scope of negation in clause combining, the coordinate and subordinate clauses have a narrow negative scope, whereas chain clauses tend to have a wide negative scope.

Scope of Negation, Gestures, and Prosody: The English Negative Quantifier as a Case in Point.

The present paper examines how English native speakers produce scopally ambiguous sentences and how they make use of gestures and prosody for disambiguation. As a case in point, the participants in the present study produced the English negative quantifiers. They appear in two different positions as (1) The election of no candidate was a surprise (a: 'for those elected, none of them was a surprise'; b: 'no candidate was elected, and that was a surprise') and (2) no candidate's election was a surprise (a: 'for those elected, none of them was a surprise'; b: # 'no candidate was elected, and that was a surprise.' We were able to investigate the gesture production and the prosodic patterns of the positional effects (i.e., a-interpretation is available at two different positions in 1 and 2) and the interpretation effects (i.e., two different interpretations are available in the same position in 1). We discovered that the participants tended to launch more head shakes in the (a) interpretation despites the different positions, but more head nod/beat in the (b) interpretation. While there is not a difference in prosody of no in (a) and (b) interpretation in (1), there are pitch and durational differences between (a) interpretations in (1) and (2). This study points out the abstract similarities across languages such as Catalan and Spanish (Prieto et al. in Lingua 131:136-150, 2013. 10.1016/j.lingua.2013.02.008; Tubau et al. in Linguist Rev 32(1):115-142, 2015. 10.1515/tlr-2014-0016) in the gestural movements, and the meaning is crucial for gesture patterns. We emphasize that gesture patterns disambiguate ambiguous interpretation when prosody cannot do so.

Negation handling for sentiment analysis task: approaches and performance analysis

Negation plays an essential role in sentiment analysis within natural language processing (NLP). Its integration involves two key aspects: identifying the scope of negation and incorporating this information into the sentiment model. Before delving into scope detection, the specific negation cue must be identified, with explicit and implicit negation cues being the two main types. Various methodologies, such as rule-based, machine learning, and hybrid approaches, address the negation scope detection challenge. Strategies for leveraging negation information in sentiment models encompass heuristic polarity modification, feature space augmentation, end-to-end approach, and hierarchical multi-task learning. Notably, there is a need for more studies addressing implicit negation cue detection, even within the state-of-the-art bidirectional encoder representation for transformers (BERT) approach. Some studies have employed reinforcement learning and hybrid techniques to address the implicit negation problem. Further exploration, particularly through a hybrid and multi-task learning approach, is warranted to make potential contributions to the nuanced challenges of handling negation in sentiment analysis, especially in complex sentence structures.

Augmenting a Spanish clinical dataset for transformer-based linking of negations and their out-of-scope references

Abstract A negated statement consists of three main components: the negation cue, the negation scope, and the negation reference. The negation cue is the indicator of negation, while the negation scope defines the extent of the negation. The negation reference, which may or may not be within the negation scope, is the part of the statement being negated. Although there has been considerable research on the negation cue and scope, little attention has been given to identifying negation references outside the scope, even though they make up almost half of all negations. In this study, our goal is to identify out-of-scope references (OSRs) to restore the meaning of truncated negated statements identified by negation detection systems. To achieve this, we augment the largest available Spanish clinical dataset by adding annotations for OSRs. Additionally, we fine-tune five robust BERT-based models using transfer learning to address negation detection, uncertainty detection, and OSR identification and linking with their respective negation scopes. Our best model achieves state-of-the-art performance in negation detection while also establishing a competitive baseline for OSR identification (Macro F1 = 0.56) and linking (Macro F1 = 0.86). We support these findings with relevant statistics from the newly annotated dataset and an extensive review of existing literature.

Gradable adjective interpretation under negation: The role of competition

Gradable adjectives have recently drawn a lot of attention in experimental semantics/pragmatics regarding the different interpretations they trigger depending on scale structure, polarity, extremeness, and presence of negation (e.g., Gotzner et al. 2018b; a; Leffel et al. 2019). The current study investigates the interpretation of relative and absolute gradable adjectives in the scope of negation (e.g., not large and not clean, respectively) capitalizing on the role of competition between alternative expressions in adjective interpretation. Our experimental results show that contextual competition between adjective expressions affects the interpretative asymmetry characteristic of positive and negative relative adjectives in the scope of negation (not large vs. not small; see Horn 1989). However, we do not find evidence that contextual competition affects the symmetric interpretation patterns of positive (not clean) and negative absolute adjectives (not dirty) under negation, or that potential relative-like interpretations of negated absolute adjectives hinge on the availability of overt contextual competition. The attested polarity asymmetry of negated relative adjectives is captured by Horn’s pragmatic theory. The apparent availability of relative-like interpretations of negated absolute adjectives are hypothesized to result from a reasoning akin to Horn’s division of pragmatic labor.

An Experimental Investigation into the Scope Assignment of Japanese and Chinese Quantifier-Negation Sentences

Quantifier-Negation sentences such as all teachers did not use Sandy’s car are known to allow an inverse scope interpretation in English. However, there is a lack of experimental evidence to determine whether this interpretation is allowed in equivalent sentences in Japanese and Chinese. To address this issue, this study conducted a sentence–picture matching truth value judgment experiment in both Japanese and Chinese. The data suggested that Japanese Quantifier-Negation sentences do allow inverse scope readings, which suggests that the subject may be interpreted within the scope of negation. In contrast, Chinese Quantifier-Negation sentences prohibit inverse scope readings, which is in accordance with the strong scope rigidity consistently observed in this language. This paper also discussed how to develop a valid experiment for investigating scope ambiguities.

Everything is not equal in adult and child Dutch

Abstract An investigation into the production of universal quantifiers with negation in the CHILDES database of Dutch shows several scopal properties that have not been discussed before. First, it shows a crucial distinction between child and adult Dutch. A universal quantifier with scope over negation has an isomorphic interpretation in adult Dutch, but an inverse scope interpretation in child Dutch. This raises the question why children do not adopt the surface scope interpretation. Second, it indicates a possible answer to the puzzle why languages often avoid a universal quantifier under the scope of negation. I will discuss the idea that the explanation may lie in the type of reading of a quantifier, collective/distributive and specific/non-specific. It might also explain why no language has a lexicalized negated universal pronoun *neverything.

Processing polarity sensitivity in L2 Spanish

Recent studies in the second language acquisition of negation have focused on polarity items and their licensing contexts. Although several studies show a correlation between higher degrees of second language (L2) proficiency and the acquisition of the target L2 structures, less attention has been given to the relation between the acquisition of polarity sensitivity and different types of lexical polarity items. This study addresses this gap in the literature by measuring the processing of polarity-sensitive items under the scope of negation in L2 Spanish. Our findings indicate that learners’ acquisition of polarity sensitivity differs across different types of lexical polarity items.

The expression of constituent negation in Udmurt: From scope-ambiguous to scope-transparent constructions

AbstractThe study claims that contemporary Udmurt has two main strategies for expressing a ‘constituent negation reading’. Standard Udmurt makes use of inverse-scope constructions involving sentential negation, i.e. a morphosyntactically negated predicate and a pragmatic focus in the scope of negation. The other strategy involves the negator ńe borrowed from Russian, which immediately precedes the negated constituent and combines with a predicate in the affirmative form. Ńe-constructions are analysed as instances of focus negation, with a FocP dominated by a right-branching NegP. The evolution of transparent-scope constructions and of a head-initial NegP are analysed as concomitants of the SOV-to-SVO change of Udmurt.

SentiNeg

Sentiment analysis is the process of identifying and categorizing opinions computationally to determine the attitude expressed in the spoken or written text as positive, negative, or neutral. Negation analysis is the task of analyzing the negative opinions by identifying the scope of negation within a sentence and applying linguistic or grammatical rules of the language. In this paper, the rules for identifying the scope of negation within a sentence and the rules applicable to different negation categories are defined. An algorithm by the name SentiNeg has been proposed for processing negations at the sentence level. SentiNeg algorithm filters non-opinionated sentences from the data to avoid unnecessary processing. For opiniated sentences, the algorithm applies different linguistic or grammatical rules of the language to identify negative opinions. SentiNeg algorithm takes opinionated sentences as input and provides a detailed aspect-based summary of negative opinions that are expressed on the entity under analysis.

The Scope of Negation and Dual Operators in Standard Arabic: The Theory of Functional Discourse Grammar and Negative Operators on Dual Constructions

Negation has been extensively dealt with in the domain of formal theories of linguistics and grammar. The general consensus usually converges towards the conclusion that it is a morpho-syntactic operation by which the truth value of an utterance is reversed. On the other hand, Functional theories, such as Functional Discourse Grammar (henceforth FDG), reveal that Negation could potentially carry more nuances up its sleeves. This paper investigates how FDG could potentially account for the phenomenon of the scope of Negation on Dual constructions in Standard Arabic. It also sheds light on how the interaction between the negative operator and the numeral operator (on an individual x) could be problematic to the uniformity of FDG as a theory. The research takes a qualitative approach analyzing examples constructed with the aim of putting the focus on the factors relevant to this enquiry. The findings unveil that the Scope of Negation in Standard Arabic can target just the Dual operator on an individual x. This behavior is noteworthy as Operators are usually off-limits when it comes to being exclusively under the scope of Negation. The main reason is that Negation itself is expressed with the operator (Neg). Therefore, a new amendment to FDG might be required to representationally account for this phenomenon.

Future and Negation

In this article, we take into consideration two semantics of the future tense: linearism, according to which future-tense sentences are interpreted on a single history, and universalism, according to which they are evaluated by universally quantifying on the plurality of future histories that radiate from the present instant. Specifically, we focus on a objection advanced against universalism: if universalism were correct semantics of will, negated future-tense sentences of natural language should have two readings, depending on the scope of negation with respect to the universal quantifier on histories. However, since natural language does not show this difference, one may conclude that there is no universal quantifier in the interpretation of these sentences. We show that this conclusion is premature. First, will has clear scope interactions with indefinite nouns phrases, contrary to what linearism predicts. Second, it is possible to extend the treatment of vague predicates as partial predicates to will: Since partial predicates have no scope interactions with negation, this can account for the scopelessness of will. The partiality of truth conditions is not restricted to will but also pertains to counterfactuals and generics and probably is part of a general tendency to maximize contraries.

Negation in English and Yala Languages

Negation is a denial, or a way of expressing a rejection of a positive proposition. It is a universal feature of human language in the sense that every language has a way of expressing a denial of fact, action, idea, or some such thing. Seeing that every language has a way of expressing negation, it was the aim of this work to examine the contrasts that exist in the ways in which negation is expressed in English and Yala languages. Yala is among the Idomoid group of languages. These languages are chosen due to their contact situation as well as the need that arises for comparative linguistics when languages come in contact. The study reveals that significant differences exist between the negation strategies of English and Yala languages; English is said to have more negation operators than Yala, thus displaying a fairly richer morpho-syntactic process in terms of negation. However, while the scope of negation commands certain phonological changes in Yala, it does not in English. It is also evident from the study that negation is marked with the use of cleft-like sentences in both languages. Moreover, in English, modal negation may have a wide or narrow scope, while in Yala, modal negation usually has a narrow scope. It was found from the study that to express non-modal negation, English and Yala use ‘not transport’; however, English marks non-modal negations through other means as well. Therefore, contrastive statements are made after establishing contrasts in different aspects of negation in both languages, and predictions of difficulty are made after each contrastive statement. The essence of the contrastive statement and predictions is to help teachers of Yala learners to place in the proper perspective the problems of the learners in relation to English negation.

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.

Unexpected Partitive Articles in Francoprovençal*

AbstractThis contribution seeks to add to our knowledge on ‘partitive articles’ (like the French element du in Je bois du vin, ‘I drink (some) wine’) in a highly endangered language spoken in France, Switzerland and Italy, namely Francoprovençal. Based on recent fieldwork data (2017) from the Aosta Valley and data from the ALAVAL atlas project, we will discuss outliers in a geographical and syntactic perspective, i.e. occurrences of ‘partitive articles’ where they should not appear. This either because the regions and their respective varieties do not feature them according to the existing literature or because syntactic regularities known from Standard French do not admit them (under the scope of negation and after quantifying expressions). We will try to propose some explanations for the existence of these unexpected elements, both internal and external, i.e. via language contact, and argue more generally in favour of a more systematic consideration of rare elements in fieldwork data, which should not too readily be “explained away”.

Minimizer negative polarity items in non-negative contexts

Minimizer strong NPIs such as ˋˋlift a finger'' are known to be more restricted in their occurrence than weak NPIs like ˋˋever''. Sedivy 1990 points to contexts with a ˋˋnegative side message'' in which ˋˋlift a finger'' can occur but ˋˋever'' cannot. The paper provides a short overview over the relevant contexts and proposes an extension of a representational theory of NPI licensing with the following components: First, an utterance content is introduced that enriches the primary truth-conditional content by conventional implicatures and generalized conversational implicatures. Second, ˋˋever''-type NPIs can be licensed by weak NPI licensors, but only in the primary truth-conditional meaning of an utterance. ˋˋLift-a-finger''-type NPIs can only be licensed in the scope of negation, but the licensing can be checked at the representation of the enriched meaning of an utterance.

Границы отрицания: теория и двойные отрицания

Research on the negative particles, studied in the context of pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics serves to a deeper comprehending of the specifics of speech issues. In particular, due to the concept of negation, which is one of the integral units of speech, and the criteria for its application are various in different languages, it is important to study the specifics, similarities, and differences of negation in different languages on the basis of the comparative method. In this article scope of negation and its theoretical as well as double negatives will be discussed by contrasting different languages.

Linguistic Data Model for Natural Languages and Artificial Intelligence. Part 6. The Еxternal Logic

Introduction. The article continues a series of publications on the linguistics of the relationship (hereafter R-linguistics) and is concerned with the semantic interpretation in terms of the linguistic model that is the initial stage to consider the logic of natural language (external logic).Methodology and sources. The results obtained in the previous parts of the series are used as research tools. In particular, the verbal categorization method is used to represent concepts and verbs. To develop the necessary mathematical representations in the field of logic and semantics of natural language, the previously formulated concept of the interpretation operator is used. The interpretation operator maps the sentences of the language into the model, taking into account the previously interpreted sentences.Results and discussion. The problems that arise during the operation of the natural language interpretation operator are analyzed using examples of text translation and utterance algebra. The source of problems is the dependence of the interpretation of sentences on the already accumulated results of interpretation. The features of the interpretation of negation and double negation in the language are analyzed. In particular, the negation of a sentence affects the interpretation of previous sentences, and double negation usually denotes a single negation with an indication of its scope. It is shown that even from the point of view of classical logic, linguistic negation is not unconditional, and the operation of concatenation is not commutative and associative. General rules of text interpretation in the form of step-by-step mapping of sentence elements into a linguistic model are formulated.Conlcusion. From the considered examples of the implementation of the interpretation operator, it follows that the negation of a sentence requires a change in the meaning of the operation of attributing sentences in the text. For this reason, the negative particle ”not” in the language is actually a label for changing the interpretation rule. The double negation rule in sentence logic does not hold, so sentences containing double negations are likely to contain information about the scope of the sentence negation in the text. Based on the analysis, the contours of the interpretation operator for the linguistic model are indicated.

‘Not’ in focus:

This paper investigates the interaction of focus and negation in the Bantu language Zulu (Nguni; S42). I discuss four strategies that are used to negate transitive sentences in Zulu. The default strategy, in which an object marker is added to the negated verb, expresses polarity focus by dislocating the object-marked object from the VP-focus domain. In the second strategy, no object marker occurs, and focus falls on the object or the VP. I show that in this strategy, negation typically associates with the focus and is not part of the presupposition, and I argue that this is responsible for a (hitherto unexplained) additional contrastive inference that speakers report with this negation strategy. The third strategy, a cleft, is used to remove the focused object from the scope of negation; as a result, negation can associate with the presupposition. In the fourth strategy, the object noun loses its augment and is interpreted as a negative polarity item (NPI). Based on a proposal by Lahiri (1998), I argue that in negated sentences with NPI-objects, focus is placed on an implicit cardinality predicate which is associated with the semantic representation of the indefinite NPI-object.

Recent advances in processing negation

AbstractNegation is a complex linguistic phenomenon present in all human languages. It can be seen as an operator that transforms an expression into another expression whose meaning is in some way opposed to the original expression. In this article, we survey previous work on negation with an emphasis on computational approaches. We start defining negation and two important concepts: scope and focus of negation. Then, we survey work in natural language processing that considers negation primarily as a means to improve the results in some task. We also provide information about corpora containing negation annotations in English and other languages, which usually include a combination of annotations of negation cues, scopes, foci, and negated events. We continue the survey with a description of automated approaches to process negation, ranging from early rule-based systems to systems built with traditional machine learning and neural networks. Finally, we conclude with some reflections on current progress and future directions.