Characteristic features of expressing negation in English language

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

 

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. [ 4 ]   Tottie

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

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.

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: