Negation in Modern Greek revisited: selecting between two speaker-based accounts

Abstract

Abstract This study holds that negation phenomena in a natural language involve much more than mere logical entailments in some individual’s epistemic model. The unique characteristics of negation, i.e., the persistent diachronic renewal of negative particles cross-linguistically, as well as the prevalent synchronic reinforcement of these particles through emphatic mechanisms, demand an analysis that casts the expressive speaker, not her epistemic model, in the leading role. Opting for a comprehensive account of negation in Modern Greek, the present analysis highlights this subjective involvement of the individual and suggests that it is the thinking and – more important – the feeling speaker that directs the distribution of Modern Greek negators.