Ирина Эланс

Автор который поможет с любыми образовательными и учебными заданиями

The analysis of negative form expressions in the texts of different styles

Introduction

Topicality. Over the last 15 years the study of negation has occupied a central position in formal linguistics. Negation has proven to be one of the core topics in syntactic and semantic theories. It is interesting for many reasons: it is present in every language in the world; it exhibits a range of variation with respect to the way it can be expressed or interpreted; it interacts with many other phenomena in natural language; and finally, due to its central position in the functional domain, it sheds light on various syntactic and semantic mechanisms and the way these different grammatical components are connected.

It would be difficult to deny the existence of recurrent topics and research areas in English linguistics and, even more, in the general linguistic panorama. They are generally fields of study that stand out for their complexity and universality. They normally show relevant implications for the entire grammatical system and they tend to be susceptible of analysis from multiple perspectives and approaches. Without doubt, one of these major linguistic areas is negation.

Many negative markers seem to share the same purpose – to negate; but there are subtle semantic differences among them. As each of them has its own unique features, it is important for writers to identify the specific meanings of these markers. Negative statements with a ‘not’ may have different implied meanings than those with a ‘no’, even if they can be used interchangeably sometimes. Moreover, ‘No’ is more emphatic than ‘not a’ or ‘not any’ when stating a negative idea. ‘Not’ and ‘Never’ do have some common features in usage, especially when ‘not’ is used as an adverb. For example, they must be placed in front of the main verb. However, ‘never’ does not require the dummy auxiliary ‘do’ in forming a sentence. [1]

Negative questions can be used for a variety of purposes. A negative question can be used to reconfirm a point or it can be used as an exclamation. A negative question can also soften the tone of a suggestion or ask for a confirmation of a negative belief. Negative questions can also be used as question tags. A question tag or tag question is usually appended to a statement. If the statement is positive, the tag is generally negative, and vice versa.

Whether to use affixal or non-affixal negation in English writing may not be too much of a concern, as many writers think that the two are more or less the same. However, if a writer ignores the difference between the two, he or she can produce not only stylistically awkward sentences, but even ungrammatical ones too. It is better to use a negative affix rather than a negative marker in front of an adjective.

Multiple negation is the use of two or sometimes several negative markers in a statement which often provokes disapproval, and is viewed by many speakers as somehow illogical: two negatives surely do not make a positive. This prescriptive view of language is the notion that linguistic rules should apply according to logic or mathematics which stems from eighteenth-century attempts by grammarians to make the English Language conform to a certain set of rules.

Multiple negatives were considered perfectly acceptable in most forms of Early and Middle English. Although modern Standard English speakers studiously avoid this, multiple negatives thrive in most non-standard dialects of English, often serving to intensify or enhance the negative impact of a statement.

The development of this topic has been studied by several scholars as O. Jespersen, B.A. Ilyish, L.R. Horn, O. Akhmanova, G. Tottie, T. Wouden have already referred to the linguistic and extralinguistic reasons and factors that justify the study of negative polarity as it is connected not only with Linguistics but with a wide range of disciplines. There is such a variety of scientific works of negation, mostly bearing on negation in English, and this number has certainly been increased in the last two decades with many contributions dealing with the syntactic and socio-pragmatics of English negation at both the micro and macro levels of language. However, there are still some areas of this field which deserve closer study.

Theme of our research work is “The analysis of negative form expressions in the texts of different styles”.

The aim of our diploma paper is to explain the problems that refer to the object of investigation and to analyze the usage of different ways of negative form expressions in the texts of different styles.

Object of investigation – negative form expressions as grammatical phenomena.

Subject of investigation – characteristic features of the use of negative form expressions in English language.

Objectives

to study theoretical aspects of negative form expressions;
to investigate and explain different forms of negative expressions;
to analyze main problems and difficulties with negative form expressions in the texts of different styles.

Hypothesis. We suppose that the knowledge of peculiarities of the usage of different forms of negative expressions in written language will help to understand and interpret the main idea of the negative utterance.

The basis of this research is the problems that students most often come across with - practical and theoretical value of expressing negation, the structure, form and its role in English Grammar.

Methods of investigation. In the course of our investigation we have used descriptive method and the method of comparative analysis.

Theoretical value of the work lies in the research of the formation and usage of negative form expressions in English Language, as it is done through negative affixes, negative statements and sentences with multiple negation. The functions and peculiarities of usage are different and widely used nowadays. It is very important to know which way of negation is appropriate in the definite text style.

Practical value lies in the fact that the present research work can be used by other students and teachers who are interested in such grammatical sentences for the following purposes:

- to improve their knowledge of the grammar structure of the English Language;

- to distinguish the types of negative form expressions;

- to get deeper knowledge about such phenomena in the English grammar as negative form expressions.

The thesis consists of introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography.

The scientific apparatus is presented in introduction. It includes topicality, problem, hypothesis, aim, objectives, object, subject and basis of investigation, theoretical and practical values.

Chapter One contains the theoretical basis and general notions of the work. In this chapter we tried to give a definition of negative form expressions, to present semantic, morphological, syntactical and functional features of negative form expressions, to analyze them and to give their classification.

Chapter Two illustrates the analysis of negative form expressions. In this chapter we tried to show the usage of negative form expressions in different text styles, such as fiction, science fiction and informal speech.

In conclusion, we have summed up the results of the work.

In bibliography we present the literary sources that we have used during our research.

1. Characteristic features of expressing negation in English language.

1.1 Negation as a linguistic phenomenon.

Negation is a linguistic, cognitive, and intellectual phenomenon. Ubiquitous

and richly diverse in its manifestations, it is fundamentally important to all human thought. Horn and Kato put it:

“Negative utterances are a core feature of every system of human communication and of no system of animal communication. Negation and its correlates – truth-values, false messages, contradiction, and irony – can thus be seen as defining characteristics of the human species.”[ 2 ]

Cognitively, according to cognitive linguistics, negation is elementary offline

thinking; it involves some comparison between a ‘real’ situation lacking some particular element and an ‘imaginal’ situation that does not lack it. The particular element in focus anchors and contextualizes the negative element (which, being constrained by grammar, frequently doesn’t provide enough information for a listener to determine what its focus is intended to be). There are many different conversational, according to story and discourse, and written, according to writing and reading, strategies for indicating and interpreting focus elements, and even more for modulating them.

Formally, according to logic and language, a functor called by logicians ‘Negation’ is the only significant monadic functor; its behavior is described by the most basic axiom of logic, the Law of, which asserts that No Proposition is both True and Not True. Pragmatically, according to pragmatics, negation provides, among many other concepts, the basic ‘cancellation test’ for presupposition, as well as the fundamental observations that underlie theories of politeness and ironic bonding.

In natural language, negation functions as an ‘operator’, along with quantifiers

and modals operators are more basic and have more properties than ordinary predicates or functors. In particular, operators have a ‘scope’; that is, there is always some other element – either assumed or verbally present in the discourse – to which a negative, modal, or quantifier refers. That linked element is said to be ‘the focus’ or to be ‘in the scope’ of the negative (or modal; quantifiers are said to ‘bind’ rather than ‘focus on’ another element).

Negation produces significant complexities and occasional ambiguities when it

interacts with other scope operators, because the scopes can get twisted about. Every boy didn’t leave is ambiguous, depending on the relative scopes of the negative didn’t and the quantifier every (rather like Every boy read some book, where two different quantifiers produce ambiguity). Negation combines in idiosyncratic ways with modals; e.g, in You may not go, and that’s final! the ‘deontic’ may not means “not possible” but in This may not be the place, the ‘epistemic’ may not means “possibly not”.

Every language develops its own idiomatic sets of negative elements, and its

own rules for using them. English negative phenomena are by far the best-studied; examples include syntactic constructions (This is it, isn’t it? Not any big ones, he didn’t), variation (so didn’t I; ain’t got none), morphology (-n’t, -free, un-), (morpho)phonology (do/don’t), intonations (‘Riight’), and lexemes sporting negation overt (never), incorporated (doubt, lack), calculated (few), entailed (prohibit), or presupposed (only).

Included also is a large, complex, and diverse system of Negative Polarity Items

(‘NPIs’ – like ever in He didn’t ever see it), which felicitously occur only in the scope of some negative element (He ever saw it). The details of what ‘scope’ actually is, and of how and which and why NPIs can occur within it, vary among specific negative and NPI elements. [ 3 ]

Negative polarity is a variety of ‘negative concord’ (e.g French Je ne regrette

rien, lit.‘I don’t regret nothing’; Yiddish Ix hob nit kin gelt, lit. ‘I don’t have no money’), but instead of negative concord , which uses negative elements in the focus of another negative, negative polarity uses other, non-negative elements, which can sometimes pick up ‘negativity by association’ and occur without overt negative (could care less < couldn’t care less). An interesting typological question is whether languages like English lacking significant negative concord develop more negative polarity phenomena to compensate.

‘Negative Polarity Items’ is a term applied to lexical items, fixed phrases, or syntactic construction types that demonstrate unusual behavior around negation. NPIs might be words or phrases that occur only in negative-polarity contexts (fathom, in weeks) or have an idiomatic sense in such contexts (not too bright, drink a drop); or they might have a lexical affordance that only functions in such contexts (need/dare (not) reply); or a specific syntactic rule might be sensitive to negation, like Subject-Verb Inversion with Adverb Fronting in Never/ Ever/ Frequently have I seen such a thing.

The grammatical occurrence of Negative Polarity Items in an utterance is prima facie evidence that it contains some sort of negation, and this allows Negative Polarity Items to function as ‘indicators’ for various types of semantic opposition and syntactic structure. This has turned out to be a sensitive tool in other research areas of linguistics, and linguists using Negative Polarity Items have discovered many covert negative phenomena; for instance, Negative Polarity Items can also occur in questions (Have you ever been there?), hypothetical clauses (Tell me if he ever arrives), and comparatives (He’s better than we ever expected).

Besides Negative Polarity Items, English also has ‘Positive-Polarity items’ (would rather, sorta), which don’t occur in negative-polarity contexts; ‘Possible-Polarity items’ (tell time), which can occur only within the scope of a Possible-type modal; and combinations, like the ‘Impossible-Polarity item’ fathom, which requires both negative scope and a modal. [ 3 ]

(Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In Fodor and Katz (eds) The structure of language. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall:246-323.)

1.1.1 Contrasting the Negative Markers

Negative markers ‘Not’ and ‘No’

Negative statements with a ‘not’ may have different implied meanings than those with a ‘no’, even if they can be used interchangeably sometimes. The following examples can tell the difference.

He is not a father. <---> He is no father.

We did not receive any message. <---> We received no message (at all).

When the two sentences in the first pair are contrasted, the first one means he is not a father, as he has no son or daughter. However, the second sentence has a meaning that he is a father of someone but he is not performing the role that a father does. In the second pair, the first sentence means we did not expect or receive any message but the second sentence shows we expected but did not receive any message.

Moreover, ‘No’ is more emphatic than ‘not a’ or ‘not any’ when stating a negative idea. For example,

There aren't any staff in the office. <---> There’re no staff in the office.

I don’t have any girlfriends. <---> I have no girlfriends (to speak of).

Negative markers ‘Not’ and ‘Never’

‘Not’ and ‘Never’ do have some common features in usage, especially when ‘not’ is used as an adverb. For example, they must be placed in front of the main verb. However, ‘never’ does not require the dummy auxiliary ‘do’ in forming a sentence.

I did not leave my brothers behind.<---> I never left my brothers behind.

‘Not’ and other ‘N-negators’

It is not usual for ‘not’ to be used together with a ‘N-negator’ in the same clause. ‘Not’, very often, pairs with non-assertive items.

I didn't eat anything. <---> I ate nothing.

When both the ‘not’ and ‘N-negator’ are used, the sentence will become a double-negation which does not carry the opposite meaning—it is grammatically wrong and a sign of disrespect.

I didn’t eat anything. ≠ I didn't eat nothing.

Negative markers ‘No’ and ‘None’

‘No’ and ‘None’ are the same in meaning. But ‘no’ is used right before a singular or plural noun, while ‘none’ is used before the preposition ‘of’ and a determiner or a pronoun.

No story is telling the truth. <---> None of the stories is telling the truth.

None of them is telling the truth.

Whenever two people or objects are referred to, ‘neither of’ should be used instead of ‘none of’.

My parents do not come from Hong Kong. <---> Neither of my parents comes from Hong Kong.

Negative markers ‘Neither’, ‘Nor’ and ‘Not either’

‘Neither’, ‘Nor’ and ‘Not either’ all mean ‘also not’. But their usages are not the same. For ‘neither’ and ‘nor’, an inverted word order comes after the negative marker. However, when ‘not either’ is used, the normal word order follows.

I won’t come to the party, neither will Jack.

I won’t come to the party, nor will Jack.

I won’t come to the party, Jack won’t either.

There is a difference between ‘neither’ and ‘nor’. ‘Nor’ can be used with ‘not’. However, it can never be replaced by ‘neither’. For instance,

I won’t come tomorrow, nor the next day. <---> I won’t come tomorrow, neither the next day.

Negative Markers in Question

Confirmation: Didn’t you know that the project would be postponed?

Exclamation: Isn’t this waterfall an ideal place to visit?

Hasn’t he finished his homework?

Tone-softener: Wouldn’t it be better if you could stay with us?

Confirmation of Negative belief: Don’t you think so?

Negative questions can also be used as question tags. A question tag or tag question is usually appended to a statement. If the statement is positive, the tag is generally negative, and vice versa.

He has called you, hasn’t he? <---> He hasn’t called you, has he?

The hearing finished yesterday, did it not? <---> The hearing did not finish

yesterday, did it?

It is unhealthy to smoke, is it not? <---> It is not healthy to smoke, is it?

The first pair of examples are informal expressions and therefore the shortened form ‘n’t’ is used. However, in formal English, the shortened form will be reconverted to their original forms like ‘did it not’ or ‘is she not’.

In English, the word ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ preceding the answer corresponds to the truth condition referred to regardless of whether the question is negatively or positively phrased. The same is true with the shortened form using an auxiliary finite verb only after the word ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. For example:

John has come back to school, hasn't he? Yes, he has. (He has come back to school.)

John hasn’t finished his homework, has he? No, he hasn’t. (He hasn’t finished his homework.)

Didn’t John come back to school today? Yes, he did. (He came back to school today.)

Didn’t John finish his homework? No, he didn’t. (He didn’t finish his homework.)

Negative Markers in Sentence-Initial Position

Negative markers can be put in the initial position of a sentence in formal writing to emphasize a negative point. But in this situation, subject inversion is required. Here are some examples of negative inversions. [ 5 ]

Not a penny would I pay for this awful dinner.

No longer is he the patient listener he used to be.

Never will I talk to him again.

Not until yesterday did I get to know about the story.

Under no circumstances will I get married.

Before an adverbial connective, the negative marker can still be placed at the beginning without the use of inversion. For example:

Not surprisingly, the public would know about this one day.

Multiple Negations and Double negation

In English, there are double negations and triple negations. In a sentence with double negation, there are two negative markers, which can be ‘not’ plus ‘not’, ‘not’ plus an ‘N-negator’, ‘not’ plus a negative affix, an ‘N-negator’ plus a negative affix and so on. The negatives should not be in the same clause however, in the case of two ‘nots’, and usually what we find in the same clause are “not’ or an ‘N-negator’ with a negative affix.

Putting two 'nots' together does not mean this will bring out the positive side, but other combinations of markers can do just that. Let’s look at the pairs of examples below.

1) I won’t force them not to tell him the truth. = I allow them to tell him the truth.

(≠ I force them to tell him the truth.)

2) I can’t do nothing and just stand there. = I have to do something rather than just standing there.

(≠ I can do something rather than just standing there.)

3) I wasn’t dissatisfied with the result. = I was satisfied, by the result.

(≠ I was satisfied by the result.)

As far as the tone is concerned, double negation can produce both understatements and overstatements, depending on the wording. Let’s have a look at the following sentences.

1) The movie wasn’t uninteresting.

2) I answered the question not in an unskillful way, I think.

The two examples above are understatements. Example #1 reveals that the movie was quite interesting, while in example #2, the writer thinks that he or she answered the question quite skillfully.

Double negation can also be used for emphatic purpose, for example:

1) I won’t find anywhere to go.

2) You will get nothing, if you tell anyone about this.

In making concession and rebuttal argument, double negation is also applicable. For example:

We do not deny our government is imperfect, but it has improved and is still improving. [ 5 ]

Concession Rebuttal

1) I can’t do nothing no more = I can do more.

2) No one never say nothing.(Gao, 1997) = Every one will say something sometimes.

What to Watch out for in Using Negation

Accomplished writers may find no problem in using negative statements in writing. But there are some subtle usages of negation that students may overlook.

Several problematic areas regarding the usage of negation will be discussed below.

Affixal and Non-Affixal Negation

It is better to use a negative affix rather than a negative marker in front of an adjective. For example:

This will lead to an undesirable result. <---> This will lead to a not desirable result.

Some a non-affixal negation can be ungrammatical, for example.

How uncomfortable the bed was. ≠ How not comfortable the bed was.

It is an invaluable and imperfect artwork. ≠ It is a not valuable and not perfect artwork.

You may undo the change by clicking that button. ≠You may not do the change by clicking that button.

I suffered a great discomfort. ≠I suffered a great not comfort.

In addition, there are some confusing cases where the meaning of the word with a negative prefix is not equivalent to the antonym of that word without the prefix.

I feel uneasy to speak in front of my father. <---> I feel not easy to speak in front of my father.

The ‘uneasy’ in the first sentence means ‘uncomfortable’; whereas the ‘not easy’ in the second sentence means ‘not difficult’.

Scope of Negation

Scope of negation concerns the governing power of the negative marker in a sentence. The negator may have a semantic influence on the phrases nearby and thus the location of the negator may affect the meaning of the sentence. Here are some examples:

1) Many people did not come to school today. ≠ Not many people came to school today.

2) She definitely didn’t speak to him. ≠ She didn’t definitely speak to him. [ 6 ]

The same negator ‘not’ is used in the examples. Nevertheless, the different locations of the ‘not’ can lead to different meanings. In the first pair, the focus of the first sentence is put on ‘did not come’; while the second sentence has its focus on ‘not many people’. This causes a difference in the implications of the two sentences. The first one means that there were many people absent today and the second means a few people came back today. The second pair shows a similar disjunction. The focus of the first sentence is ‘didn’t tell’ and the second one is ‘didn’t definitely’. Therefore, the implication of the first sentence becomes ‘It’s definite that she didn’t speak to him.’ And the implication of the second sentence is ‘It is not definite that she spoke to him.’

Even if the position of ‘not’ is fixed, the scope of negation can still influence more than one part and causes semantic ambiguity. Let’s discuss some examples cited by Swan. [ 7 ]

Arthur didn’t write to Sue yesterday.

The above three examples show that the negator ‘not’ can affect the action ‘write’, the object ‘Sue’ or the time ‘yesterday’. This, therefore, leads to three different implications.

Arthur didn’t write to Sue yesterday. (because he phoned her rather than wrote to her)

Arthur didn’t write to Sue yesterday. (because he wrote to Ann rather than Sue)

Arthur didn’t write to Sue yesterday. (because he wrote to Sue this morning)

As a result, when writing English essays, the writer should clarify what message is intended in the negation by elaborating on the point.

Negators and Assertive Items

Negators can pair with non-assertive items such as ‘anything’ and ‘anyone’, but in many circumstances, they cannot be used with assertive ones, like ‘something’ and someone’. [ 6 ]

I can’t find anything inside. <---> I can’t find something inside.

I didn’t go out with anyone this weekend. <---> I didn’t go out with someone this weekend.

I never give my girl friend anything <---> I always give my girl friend nothing.

There are some other assertive items – e.g. ‘quite’, ‘pretty’ and ‘rather’ – that cannot be used in a negative statement.

This writing is quite good. <---> This writing is not quite good.

The dinner was pretty nice. <---> The dinner was not pretty nice.

The test was rather difficult. <---> The test was not rather difficult.

1.1.2 Negative elements

Before defining negative elements properly, we will give examples of elements that count as negative elements. Based on syntactic, semantic and lexical differences, four kinds of negative elements can be distinguished. First, negative markers indicate negation and are generally used to express sentential negation. [33]

a. John walks

b. John does not walk English

Second, negative quantifiers are negative elements. Negative quantifiers are elements that do not only negate a clause or constituent but also bind a particular variable within that clause or constituent46.

a. John sees n-thing

b. John sees nothing

Third, there is a class of negative elements, which depending on their position within a syntactic configuration give or do not give rise to negation. Sometimes the interpretation of such a negative element is equivalent to the interpretation of a negative quantifier, sometimes it is similar to the interpretation of a non-negative existential quantifier.

a. ‘Nobody eats anything’

b. N-thing neg.is done by n-body

‘Nothing is done by anybody’

a. N-body has called

‘Nobody called’

b. Neg has called n-body

‘Nobody called’

Finally, some elements do not have a strict negative reading, but have a clear negative semantic connotation. Several verbs (fear, fail, doubt) and prepositions (without, unless) express ‘negative’ relationships. Note that their positive counterparts in combination with a negation can easily paraphrase the semantics of these elements.

a. Mary has killed John without knife

b. Few girls like John

Negative elements

Negative element	Properties	Examples
Negative markers	Yield (sentential) negation	Not (English)
Negative quantifiers	Quantifiers that always introduce a negation and that bind a variable within the domain of negation	Nothing (English)
N-words	Quantifiers that introduce negation in particular syntactic configurations
Semi-negatives	Verbs or prepositions that have a negative connotation and that can be paraphrased with a true negative sentence	Few (English)

In order to define these four classes of negative elements formally we need to define the common property that is shared by all these elements, but that does not apply to any non-negative element.

A natural attempt to define this property would be negation, i.e. the introduction of a negation in the semantics. However, this assumption faces two serious problems:

1) n-words do not always introduce a negation to the semantics;

2) semi-negatives do not introduce a negation to the semantics either; only their paraphrases do.

An explanation in terms of semi-negatives having an underlying negative lexical semantics (like without = not with) is not of any help either, since such an argument suffers from circularity: the only motivation to assume this underlying lexical semantics is to account for the fact that they are negative elements.

Another property, which is shared by all elements, is that these elements are able to license Affective Items. Affective Items are elements that may occur in particular contexts only. A subset of the set of Affective Items is referred to as Negative Polarity Items, since negation (among others) is able to license these elements, as is shown in the examples: [ 9 ]

a. John doesn't like any spinach English

b. John likes any spinach

a. Nobody ate any spinach English

b. Somebody ate any spinach

a. N-body eats any of the vegetables

‘Nobody eats any vegetables’

b. Somebody eats any of the vegetables

‘Somebody eats any vegetable’

a. Few people ate any spinach English

b. Many people ate any spinach

Although the class of Negative Polarity Items licensers is broader than the set of the negative elements, a subset of this class is identical to the set of negative elements. Hence if it is clear which property is responsible for Negative Polarity Items licensing, the property that constitutes negative elements can be defined in terms of this Negative Polarity Items -licensing property. Therefore, the study of Negative Polarity Items and their licensing conditions is fruitful in order to provide a working definition of negative elements. Note that this approach does not suffer from circularity: I will describe some general properties of Negative Polarity Items licenser, that therefore automatically also applies to negation. A subset of these properties should then apply only for negative elements, as Negative Polarity Items are always licensed under negation.

1.1.3 Negative Polarity Items and their licensing conditions

The study of Negative Polarity Items has been dominated by four research questions, formulated as follows: [10]

- The licenser question

-The licensee (marking) question

-The licensing (relation) question

-The status question

The licenser question is essential for the determination of what counts as a negative context, since it addresses the question what conditions a proper NPI-licenser needs to fulfill. The licensee question seeks an answer to the question why certain elements are only allowed to occur in particular contexts and what distinguishes them from polarity-insensitive elements. The licensee question will play a less important role in this subsection, but will be addressed in the further chapters. The licensing question addresses the question of the relation between licenser and its licensee and its answer consists of the conditions for such a relation to be allowed (generally answered in terms of c-command). Finally the status question addresses the status of sentences containing unlicensed Negative Polarity Items: are these sentences syntactically ill formed, or semantically or pragmatically infelicitous. My analysis of n-words presupposes a non-syntactic (i.e. semantic or pragmatic) account of unwell formed Negative Polarity Items expressions.

Negative Polarity Items can be licensed by negative contexts, and negative contexts are introduced by negative elements. However, it is not only negation that can license Negative Polarity Items.

Yes/no questions or conditionals are for example also capable of licensing Negative Polarity Items. Hence we need to determine which property it is that the negative contexts share, but those contexts also license Negative Polarity Items do not.

a. Do you like any wine?

b. If you want to have any wine, please tell me.

Several approaches have been formulated in order to account for Negative Polarity Items licensing.

Apart from semantic approaches that I will discuss in detail in this section, syntactic or pragmatic approaches to Negative Polarity Items licensing have been formulated too. Progovac, Neeleman & Van de Koot account for Negative Polarity Items licensing in terms that are similar to binding theory; Kadmon & Landman, Krifka and Van Rooij account for Negative Polarity Items licensing in pragmatic terms. However, as the primary interest is to seek the shared semantic properties of negative elements and Negative Polarity Items licensers, we will focus on the semantic approaches in this subsection. Roughly speaking, two main approaches have been formulated in the semantic literature in Negative Polarity Items licensing: the first approach, put forward by Ladusaw’s, Zwarts, Zwarts and Van der Wouden’s account for Negative Polarity Items licensing in terms of downward entailment relations. The second approach, proposed by Giannakidou, following Zwarts, argues that Negative Polarity Items licensing follows from the notion of non-veridicality. [11]

Ladusaw, following an idea by Fauconier, argues that the common property elements licensing Negative Polarity Items is downward entailment. A function is downward entailing (also known as monotone decreasing, or downward monotonic) if the following relation holds. [12]

This definition allows for reasoning from sets to subsets. [9]

Thus it can be proven that nothing or few people and not are downward entailing functions, contrary to something or many:

a. Nothing works - Nothing works well

Something works - Something works well

b. Few people sing - Few people sing loudly

Many people sing - Many people sing loudly

c. John doesn’t like girls - John doesn’t like Mary

John likes girls - John likes Mary

So far this seems to be a property that is shared by all four classes of negative elements. However, Van der Wouden shows that downward entailment cannot be the only property that underlies negation. First he argues that some Negative Polarity Items need stronger negative contexts than pure downward entailment thus advocating against downward entailment as a sufficient condition for Negative Polarity Items licensing.[9]

This does not have to have any consequences for the quest for the definition of negative contexts, since downward entailment can still be regarded as a sufficient condition for negative contexts. Stronger negative contexts require additional conditions, such as anti-additivity or anti-multiplicativity.

Second, contexts introduced by yes/no questions may license Negative Polarity Items. This does not form any problem either for a definition of negative contexts in terms of downward entailment, since these contexts are not downward entailing themselves. Giannakidou argues correctly that this is a serious problem for Van der Wouden’s theory of Negative Polarity Items licensing, as Van der Wouden tries to define all contexts that allow for Negative Polarity Items licensing in terms of monotonic properties of contexts. [11]

Third, and more importantly, he shows that some non-negative contexts are also downward entailing. I will discuss two examples: comparative clauses and the first argument of every.

a. Every car is ugly - Every Ford is ugly.

Every car that is owned by any man is ugly.

b. He runs faster than we thought he could.

He runs faster than I thought he could.

He runs faster than anyone thought he could.

Intuitively these contexts should not be regarded as negative contexts, given the classification. Although the comparative clauses may be rephrased by a

negation, which could be an argument in favour of classifying comparatives as

semi-negatives too, this is not the case for universal quantifiers.

He runs faster than we thought he could.

We did not think he could run (any) faster.

Hence we have to look for a property that introduces a subset of downward entailment contexts, thus excluding cases such as the ones mentioned above. I argue that this notion is Giannakidou’s notion of anti-veridicality. She derives antiveridicality from the notion of non-veridicality, which is an expansion of downward entailment. [11]

From these definitions it follows that negative markers and negative adverbs like ‘never’ are anti-veridical.

a. John didn’t come - ̚ come

b. John never came - ̚ come

From this it follows that negative arguments like nobody or nothing are nonveridical.

a. Nobody came to the party.

b. No man danced.

The preposition without is also an anti-veridical element. But even ‘every’ is non-veridical with respect to its restrictive clause.

He left without saying goodbye.

Every man who owns a BMW has no taste.

However, non-monotonic items also trigger these wideners. Exclusivity or uniqueness characterizes non-monotonic operators, such as only, exactly n, superlatives, ordinal numerals, the determiner the, generic NPs, and also if and only if clauses, hope, happy, glad and others.

The analysis of negative form expressions in the texts of different styles