{"title":"A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation","authors":"Yanwei Jin, Jean-Pierre Koenig","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2020-2053","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper provides a typological overview of expletive negation based on a survey of 722 languages, focusing in detail on a smaller sample of five languages. Expletive negation (EN) has been discussed extensively within Romance linguistics. This paper surveys its occurrence across languages of the world and offers a comprehensive list of EN-triggering contexts collected from French and Mandarin, comparing that list with EN triggers in Januubi, English, and Zarma-Sonrai. The paper proposes a language production and semantic account of the similarity of EN-triggering contexts found in these five languages. We propose that the meaning of EN triggers entails or strongly implies ¬p and that the activation of ¬p alongside p is what leads speakers to produce EN. Four semantic licensing conditions for EN triggers are identified and each EN-triggering context is semantically analyzed.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/lingty-2020-2053","citationCount":"12","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Linguistic Typology","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2053","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 12
Abstract
Abstract This paper provides a typological overview of expletive negation based on a survey of 722 languages, focusing in detail on a smaller sample of five languages. Expletive negation (EN) has been discussed extensively within Romance linguistics. This paper surveys its occurrence across languages of the world and offers a comprehensive list of EN-triggering contexts collected from French and Mandarin, comparing that list with EN triggers in Januubi, English, and Zarma-Sonrai. The paper proposes a language production and semantic account of the similarity of EN-triggering contexts found in these five languages. We propose that the meaning of EN triggers entails or strongly implies ¬p and that the activation of ¬p alongside p is what leads speakers to produce EN. Four semantic licensing conditions for EN triggers are identified and each EN-triggering context is semantically analyzed.
期刊介绍:
Linguistic Typology provides a forum for all work of relevance to the study of language typology and cross-linguistic variation. It welcomes work taking a typological perspective on all domains of the structure of spoken and signed languages, including historical change, language processing, and sociolinguistics. Diverse descriptive and theoretical frameworks are welcomed so long as they have a clear bearing on the study of cross-linguistic variation. We welcome cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of linguistic diversity, as well as work dealing with just one or a few languages, as long as it is typologically informed and typologically and theoretically relevant, and contains new empirical evidence.