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Metalinguistically Negated Versus Descriptively Negated Adverbials: ERP and Other Evidence

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Book cover Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives

Part of the book series: Language, Cognition, and Mind ((LCAM,volume 1))

Abstract

This paper explores degree modifiers licensed exclusively by metalinguistic negation (MN), and compare them with those licensed by descriptive negation (DN) such as NPIs. It shows how MN-licensing is more marked than DN-licensing in prosody and then attempts to show how anomalies arising from misplacing MN-licensed adverbs in DN-requiring short form negation sentences elicit the approximate N400 but not the P600 in ERPs. This strongly suggests that such anomalies are meaning-related and tends to support the pragmatic ambiguity position by Horn rather than the contextualist or relevance-theoretic approach.

I am grateful to Larry Horn and Michael Israel for their comments on one of the earliest versions and the CIL19 presentation of this paper. I also would like to express my deep gratitude to Sung-Eun Lee, Sungryong Koh, Kiduk Yoon, Sunkyue Kim, Jong-Sup Jun, Hongoak Yoon, Nayoung Kwon, Mi Jung Sung, Hyeree Choo, and Young Hye Kwon for their technical contributions to the ERP experiments reported here and to Yoonjung Kang and Jeff Holliday for their contributions to the phonetic experiments here. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation under (Excellent Scholar) Grant No. 100-20090049 through Korean Government.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This occured via Jespersen’s cycle, changing to a real negative, as in jeo ne dis -> je ne dis pas (from a ‘step’ to an NPI-like n-word) -> je dis pas. In Modern Catalan, however, it changed to a very emphatic pas ‘at all’ and is even claimed to be metalinguistic (see Batllori 2016 this volume). But it is not clear if it passes all of Horn’s three diagnostics of MN. We can consider this in connection with the wh-word the hell expression claimed to be an NPI. A strongly emphatic negation is not necessarily an MN. In French, a newly developed NPI qui que ce soit became emphatic compared to ordinary n-words like personne and rien.

  2. 2.

    When sarcasm is expressed negatively, it is not interpreted affirmatively in reverse but is interpreted more strongly negatively. It may be the case that irony/sarcasm is inherently negative (see my chapter “Introduction” to this volume). Giora (2016 this volume) discusses negative sarcasm. It is analogous to a particular MN (26).

  3. 3.

    Some (old) native speakers don’t use the MN-licensed “a bit.” This kind of variation in MN intonation occurs in English and possibly in other languages where MN is licensed mainly by intonation or focus. The written form ambiguity between MN and DN depends on the target expression of the negative operator.

  4. 4.

    The syntactic form of external negation may favor MN both in Korean and English but external negation is not a sufficient condition for MN. An NPI in the complement clause is not happily licensed.

    1. (a)

      It is not the case that anyone came (ExtN).

    2. (b)

      amu-to o-n key ani-ya (ExtN) (K).

  5. 5.

    This may be regarded as a variant of external negation, as property negation.

  6. 6.

    Sojung Im brought this to my attention. The string bu yibande in (14) was not found in the Peking University corpus and the ungrammaticality of (14) was confirmed by several native speakers of Chinese.

  7. 7.

    See the degree expressions with a copula in a positive utterance, all unstressed:

    (a) Pothong-i-ya (K) (b) FuTSUU–desu (J)

    Common-COPULA-DEC Common-COPULA-DEC

    ‘That’s common (ordinary) (in degree/standard).’

  8. 8.

    The MN adverbial pothonguro and the negation in yeppu-n key ani - i - ya may be a rephrasing (pronouncing the two in the same phonological phrase), as Jiwon Yun (pc) indicates. However, stress (with lengthening on the first syllable PO-) typically accompanies an MN adverb, we keep the stress condition.

  9. 9.

    The ERP signals were down sampled to 30 Hz (and the ±200uv ones (30–40 out of 115–117) were eliminated.

  10. 10.

    Giora (2006 and 2016 this volume) takes the symmetry position between (descriptive) negation and affirmation.

  11. 11.

    A similar phenomenon in English has been indicated: an NPI cannot appear in MN, as in (a). Karttunen and Peters (1979: 46–47).

    a. *Chris didn’t manage to solve any of the problems—he managed to solve all of them. Horn (1989: 374).

  12. 12.

    “An utterance of a predicate in CT generates a polarity-reversed predicate meaning inversely; if ‘CT(p)’ is given, then contrastively (‘but’) ‘not q’ (q: a higher stronger predicate) is conveyed and if ‘CT(not-q)’ is given, then contrastively ‘p’ (a lower weaker predicate) is conveyed” (Lee 2000). Even without CT, conversational implicature arises either in an affirmative S or inversely in a negative S. Once MN is used by prosody, DN has no room to intervene.

  13. 13.

    Recanati (1993) is also a contextualist.

  14. 14.

    As in Kato/Kato-sama-no go-toochaku-ga okure-ta, the genetivised subject Kato-sama must agree with the substantial honorified verb go-toochaku but the non-honorific Kato violates the syntactic agreement. In Korean the the subject-verb agreement is clearer, as in Kato-sensayingnim-i tochak-ha-si-ess-ta ‘Kato-teacher arrived.’

  15. 15.

    When Noh presented an earlier version at Konkuk, a scholar was furious about this example and some others expressed agreement with him. The ten native speakers I consulted all agreed that it is nonsensical, saying “Nonsense”,“Contradictory”,“What do you mean?” “What do you want me to do about it?” and so on. Burton-Roberts (1989) aside, an ‘not’ (adverb) serves as DN by default and resists its use as MN in Korean.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Chungmin Lee

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  1. Département des Sciences du Langage, University of Caen Lower Normandy, Caen, France

    Pierre Larrivée

  2. #308 Bldg 150, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Chungmin Lee

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Lee, C. (2016). Metalinguistically Negated Versus Descriptively Negated Adverbials: ERP and Other Evidence. In: Larrivée, P., Lee, C. (eds) Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives. Language, Cognition, and Mind, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17464-8_10

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