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Negation and Related

Phenomena
Definition
• Negation is marked by individual words (such as
not, no, never) or by affixes within a word (such as
·n 't, un·, non·).
▫ [a] He has signed the agreement  POSITIVE
CLAUSE
▫ [b] He hasn 't signed the agreement  NEGATIVE
CLAUSE
• The grammatical system in which positive and
negative contrast is called polarity:
• clause [a] has positive polarity, while [b] has
negative polarity.
Negative & Positive Clauses
Addition of not even
• After a negative clause we can add a constituent
introduced by not even, and it makes sense. This is
not possible with positive clauses :
• POSITIVE CLAUSE:
▫ [a] I have read your book, not even the introduction.
• NEGATIVE CLAUSE:
▫ [b] I haven 't read your book, not even the
introduction.
• The addition in [b] is interpreted as "I haven't even
read the introduction" .
Negative & Positive Clauses
The connective adjuncts so and neither or nor
• When we add a related clause of the same
polarity, the positive pair may be linked by so,
the negative pair by neither or nor:
• POSITIVE CLAUSE:
▫ I have read your book, and so have my students.
• NEGATIVE CLAUSE:
▫ I haven't read your book, and neither have my
students.
Negative & Positive Clauses
Confirmatory tags
• A common device for seeking confirmation of what one
says is to add a truncated interrogative clause known as a
tag. It generally consists of just an auxiliary verb +
personal pronoun subject, and its polarity is the reverse
of that of the clause to whichit is attached:
• POSITIVE CLAUSE + NEGATIVE TAG :
▫ [a] They have read my book, haven 't they?
• NEGATIVE CLAUSE + POSITIVE TAG :
▫ [b] They haven 't read my book, have they?
• In [a] the negative tag (haven 't they ?) attaches to the
positive clause, while in [b] the positive tag (have they ?)
attaches to the negative clause.
Subclausal Negation
• We have seen that the effect of a negative element is very
often to make the clause containing it negative. Negative
elements don't always have this effect, however. In the
cases where they don't, the negation is subclausal .
Affixal negation
• The most obvious case where negative elements don 't
make a clause negative is where the negative element is
an affix other than the n't that appears on auxiliary
verbs. Take negative prefixes as in dislike, inattentive,
non-negotiable, or unwilling, or suffixes such as ·less in
homeless. We can use the constructions shown in [2-4]
to show that these affixes don't make the whole clause
negative.
Subclausal Negation
Subclausal Negation
Clausal Negation
• Within clausal negation we make a further distinction
between verbal and non-verbal negation
Clausal Negation
Clausal Negation
Inflectional verb-form vs not
• We said that verbal negation is marked either by
negative inflection on the verb itself or by using the
separate word not to modify the verb. Inflectional
negation is admissible only in those constructions
where dummy do occurs (under the conditions
described above): that is, in clauses with a primary
verb-form and in imperative clauses, as illustrated
in [8] and [9] respectively. Elsewhere, neither do
nor negative inflection is permitted
Clausal Negation
Clausal Negation
Clausal Negation
Clausal Negation
Clausal Negation
Non Affirmative Items
Non Affirmative Items
Non Affirmative Items
Non Affirmative Items

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