The natural history of negation phenomena

• Ioannis Veloudis ^[1]
  1. [1] Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

     Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

     Dimos Thessaloniki, Grecia

     
• Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 271, 2022
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the study of negation, a series of intriguing phenomena have emerged. These include the much-debated Negative Polarity Items, the controversial issue of neg-raising, the cross-linguistic synchronic reinforcement of a speaker’s negative assertions through emphatic mechanisms, the mysterious absence of *nall-like univerbations from the world’s languages, and, above all, the persistent diachronic renewal of negative particles cross-linguistically (the so-called “Jespersen’s cycle”). The present paper revisits these phenomena, addressing the following seminal questions: What is their raison d’être? Are they somehow interrelated? And, if they are, what is their common denominator? The paper answers these questions by presenting a comprehensive account that foregrounds the expressive speaker. It argues that the natural, untaught, instinctive notion of scalarity is the quintessence of the speaker’s expressivity with respect to these phenomena.