ON THE SYNTACTIC REPRESENTATION AND MEANING IMPLICATIONS OF NEXAL AND SPECIAL NEGATION IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN
ON THE SYNTACTIC REPRESENTATION AND MEANING IMPLICATIONS OF NEXAL AND SPECIAL NEGATION IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN
Author(s): Andreea Codrina TănaseSubject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Foreign languages learning, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Lexis, Semantics, Language acquisition, Comparative Linguistics, Philology, Stylistics
Published by: Editura Arhipelag XXI
Keywords: nexal negation; special negation; flexibility; meaning entailment
Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of nexal and special negation in English and German. Following Jespersen (1917), Růžička (1999), and Hajicová (1974), the study explores how negation influences sentence interpretation, particularly through scope, verb type, and syntactic structure. The first section examines the implications of negation on meaning, emphasizing how different verb classes (e.g. factive, implicative) interact with negative contexts. The second part analyses syntactic representations, contrasting the fixed word order and do-support in English with the greater flexibility and scrambling phenomena in German. Additionally, the paper highlights the pragmatic effects of contracted versus full forms of negation in English. Finally, it applies Klima’s tests to distinguish between sentential and constituent negation
Journal: Journal of Romanian Literary Studies
- Issue Year: 2025
- Issue No: 41
- Page Range: 410-419
- Page Count: 10
- Language: English
