Negation and negative dependencies /
"A universal property of natural language is that every language is able to express negation. However, languages may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation, varying with respect to not only the form of negative elements, but also their position. They also differ in...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford, United Kingdom :
Oxford University Press,
[2022]
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| Series: | Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ;
80. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "A universal property of natural language is that every language is able to express negation. However, languages may differ to quite a large extent as to how they express this negation, varying with respect to not only the form of negative elements, but also their position. They also differ in terms of the number of manifestations of negative morphemes: in some languages negation is realized by a single word or morpheme, in other languages by multiple morphemes, a phenomenon known as Negative Concord. Moreover, the syntax and semantics of negation are indissolubly connected to the phenomenon of negative and positive polarity. Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are items, like English 'ever', whose distribution is limited to a number of contexts, which in some sense all count as negative. Positive Polarity Items (PPIs) form the mirror image of NPIs. These are elements, such as English 'rather', that are banned from appearing in negative sentences. This book presents an overarching perspective on negation and negative dependencies, based on novel data from language variation, acquisition, and change, developing and exploring the hypothesis that, to the extent that they are applicable to the domain of negation, all known syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and lexical ways of encoding dependencies should also be attestable in the domain of negation, unless they are ruled out independently (e.g. on functional, formal, or learnability grounds). This hypothesis predicts a pluriform landscape of all kinds of negative dependencies and markers of negation, a prediction that the book will show is borne out"--Publisher's description. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (497 pages). |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 0192569678 9780192569677 9780191871450 0191871451 |