{"title":"The function of extra negation","authors":"E. Fortuin","doi":"10.1075/fol.21047.for","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This paper provides insight into the phenomenon of extra negation, also known as non-compositional, expletive, or\n pleonastic negation. It provides a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch negative privative construction, which consists of\n zonder ‘without’ and niet ‘not’, in which one negation does not cancel the other. Two basic\n factors that trigger an extra negation are discussed, and an explanation of why these factors facilitate the use of an extra\n negation is offered. It is argued that the extra negation has a semantic-pragmatic function that is reminiscent of similar\n instances of extra negation in Dutch and other languages, specifically sentences consisting of a main clause and a subordinate\n clause containing a word which expresses implicit negation. It is shown that in complex hypotactic constructions, the extra\n negation is used to make explicit in the subordinate clause that the presupposition of non-occurrence is rejected.","PeriodicalId":44232,"journal":{"name":"Functions of Language","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Functions of Language","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.21047.for","RegionNum":3,"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: 0
Abstract
This paper provides insight into the phenomenon of extra negation, also known as non-compositional, expletive, or
pleonastic negation. It provides a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch negative privative construction, which consists of
zonder ‘without’ and niet ‘not’, in which one negation does not cancel the other. Two basic
factors that trigger an extra negation are discussed, and an explanation of why these factors facilitate the use of an extra
negation is offered. It is argued that the extra negation has a semantic-pragmatic function that is reminiscent of similar
instances of extra negation in Dutch and other languages, specifically sentences consisting of a main clause and a subordinate
clause containing a word which expresses implicit negation. It is shown that in complex hypotactic constructions, the extra
negation is used to make explicit in the subordinate clause that the presupposition of non-occurrence is rejected.
期刊介绍:
Functions of Language is an international journal of linguistics which explores the functionalist perspective on the organisation and use of natural language. It encourages the interplay of theory and description, and provides space for the detailed analysis, qualitative or quantitative, of linguistic data from a broad range of languages. Its scope is broad, covering such matters as prosodic phenomena in phonology, the clause in its communicative context, and regularities of pragmatics, conversation and discourse, as well as the interaction between the various levels of analysis. The overall purpose is to contribute to our understanding of how the use of languages in speech and writing has impacted, and continues to impact, upon the structure of those languages.