This book is the first cross-linguistic study of clausal negation based on an extensive and systematic language sample. Methodological issues, especially sampling, are discussed at length. Standard negation – the basic structural means languages have for negating declarative verbal main clauses – is typologized from a new perspective, paying attention to structural differences between affirmatives and negatives. In symmetric negation affirmative and negative structures show no differences except for the presence of the negative marker(s), whereas in asymmetric negation there are further structural differences, i.e. asymmetries. A distinction is made between constructional and paradigmatic asymmetry; in the former the addition of the negative marker(s) is accompanied by further structural differences in comparison to the corresponding affirmative, and in the latter the correspondences between the members of (verbal etc.) paradigms used in affirmatives and negatives are not one-to-one. Cross-cutting the constructional-paradigmatic distinction, asymmetric negation can be further divided into subtypes according to the nature of the asymmetry. Standard negation structures found in the 297 sample languages are exemplified and discussed in detail. The frequencies of the different types and some typological correlations are also examined. Functional motivations are proposed for the structural types – symmetric negatives are language-internally analogous to the linguistic structure of the affirmative and asymmetric negatives are language-externally analogous to different asymmetries between affirmation and negation on the functional level. Relevant diachronic issues are also discussed. The book is of interest to language typologists, descriptive linguists and to all linguists interested in negation.

In Historical Aspects of Standard Negation in Semitic Ambjörn Sjörs investigates the grammar of standard negation in a wide selection of Semitic languages. The bulk of the investigation consists of a detailed analysis of negative constructions and is based on a first-hand examination of the examples in context. The main issues that are investigated in the book relate to the historical change of the expression of verbal negation in Semitic and the reconstruction of the genealogical relationship of negative constructions. It shows how negation is constantly renewed from the reanalysis of emphatic negative constructions, and how structural asymmetries between negative constructions and the corresponding affirmative constructions arise from the linguistically conservative nature of negative vis-à-vis affirmative clauses.

Despite the advances of radio and television and increasing mobility and urbanization, spoken English is by no means becoming more like the written standard. English dialect grammar, however, is still a new and relatively undeveloped area of research, and most studies to date are either restricted regionally, or based on impressionistic statements. This book provides the first thorough empirical study of the field of non-standard negation across Great Britain.

The loss of Negative Concord (NC) has long been attributed to external factors. This study readdresses this issue and provides evidence of the failure of certain external factors to account for the observed decline and ultimate disappearance of NC in Standard English. A detailed study of negation in Late Middle and Early Modern English reveals that the process of the decline of NC was a case of a natural change, preceded by a period of variation manifested in the obtained S-curves for all the contexts studied. Variation existed not only on the level of the speech community as a whole but also within individual speakers (contra Lightfoot, 1991). A close study of n-indefinites in negative contexts and their ultimate replacement with Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in a number of grammatical environments shows that the decline of NC follows the same pattern across contexts in a form of parallel curvature, which indicates that the loss of NC is a natural process. However, this study reveals that the decline is not constant across time and thus the Constant Rate Hypothesis (Kroch, 1989) does not, in that respect, fully account for this change. Context behaviour suggests an alternative principle of linguistic change, the Context Constancy Principle. A Context Constancy Effect is obtained across all contexts indicating that the loss of NC is triggered by a change in a single underlying parameter setting. Accordingly, a theory-internal explanation is suggested. N-words underwent a lexical reanalysis whereby they acquired a new grammatical feature [+Neg] and were thus reinterpreted as negative quantifiers, rather than NPIs. This lexical reanalysis was triggered by the ambiguous status of n-words between [±Neg] and thus between single and double negative meanings. This change is treated as a case of parameter resetting as this lexical reanalysis affected a whole set of lexical items and can thus economically account for the different observed surface changes.

This collection of articles offers descriptions of the negation system in 16 languages. As not much is known about negation systems in non-European languages, the first aim of the volume is to provide data on various aspects on negation; for all articles these data were collected on the basis of the same questionnaire. Most work on this subject deals with syntactic aspects of negation; this volume attempts to include pragmatic and semantic issues as well, such as the expression of negative indefinites, interaction of negation and quantifiers, the scope of negation, and the choice of a particular form of negation in cases where there are several ways to express this. For a number of less-known languages descriptions offering a wealth of data are presented here, and in the articles about well-studied languages, new data and analyses of more complicated issues are provided.

Negation is at the core of human language; without negation there can be no denial, contradiction, irony, or lies. This book examines the form and function of negative sentences in a variety of languages and offers state-of-the-art surveys of the acquisition of negation by children, its processing by adults, its historical development, and its interaction with other operators and predicates within natural language sentences. Topics covered include the nature of negative polarity, the phenomenon of pleonastic or illogical negation, and the role of morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic.

Analytic philosophy is alive and in good health, as this collection of twenty, previously unpublished essays most ably demonstrates. The reader will find here assembled some of the finest writings of modern analytic philosophers at the top of their form. Matthews discusses Plato's attempt to deal with the problem of false belief about identities. Parson evaluates Russell's early theory of denoting phrases. Chisholm exhibits the utility of thirteen epistemic categories. Plantinga criticizes Chisholm's account of justification. Conee argues that solving the Gettier Problem is important, and Ginet proposes a solution to it. Lehrer criticizes an argument based on the simplicity of our belief in material objects and other minds. R. Feldman defends an account of having evidence. F. Feldman defends a propositional account of pleasure. Van Fraassen criticizes Garber's solution to the problem of old evidence. Castañeda investigates the nature of negation. McKay argues that de se analyses of belief do not account for belief de re. Richard argues that no Fregean semantics for belief attribution will succeed. Ryckman suggests that the Millian theory of names has little to do with the theory of belief is no threat to God's omniscience. Dunn investigates constraints imposed on non-classical modal logics by extensionality. Fitch argues that singular propositions perform important functions in modal logic. Jubien evaluates arguments for and against possible worlds. Ratzsch argues that there must be a deeper source of nomicality than ordinary subjunctives, and Stalnaker argues that there is room for determinancy of identity and indeterminacy in reference.

This book contains eleven carefully selected papers, all discussing negative constructions in English. The aim of this volume is to bring together empirical research into the development of English negation and analyses of syntactic variations in Present-day English negation. The first part "Aspects of Negation in the History of English" includes six contributions, that focus on the usages of the negative adverbs ne and not, the decline of negative concord, and the development of the auxiliary do in negation. Most of the themes discussed here are then linked to the second part "Aspects of Negation in Present-day English". Especially, the issue of negative concord is repeatedly explored by three of the five papers in this part, one related to British English dialects in general, another to Tyneside English, and the other to African American Vernacular English. This book uniquely highlights the importance of continuity from Old English to Present-day English, while, in its introduction, it provides a useful detailed survey of previous studies on English negation.