The effects of negation on discourse structure
Klingvall, Eva LU
and Heinat, Fredrik
LU
(2025)
In Journal of Pragmatics
235.
p.115-131
- Abstract
- In five sentence continuation studies we investigated how different forms of negation (negative quantifier, clausal negation, lexical negation) impact discourse structure in Swedish. We looked at what set of referents (the reference set for which some property holds, or the complement set, for which the property does not hold) speakers considered most noteworthy (speaker salient), and what form they used to refer to this set (reflecting its givenness status, i.e. hearer salience) in their sentence continuations. Most continuations targeted the complement set when the prompt included a negative quantifier. When negation was in the form of clausal negation, the reference set was targeted. Having a lexically negated verb in addition to the... (More)
- In five sentence continuation studies we investigated how different forms of negation (negative quantifier, clausal negation, lexical negation) impact discourse structure in Swedish. We looked at what set of referents (the reference set for which some property holds, or the complement set, for which the property does not hold) speakers considered most noteworthy (speaker salient), and what form they used to refer to this set (reflecting its givenness status, i.e. hearer salience) in their sentence continuations. Most continuations targeted the complement set when the prompt included a negative quantifier. When negation was in the form of clausal negation, the reference set was targeted. Having a lexically negated verb in addition to the negative quantifier as subject mattered only when speakers were not prompted to make one of the sets the sentence topic. In this case, reference set continuations were also common. The conclusion is that although the types of negation convey similar negative meanings, they give rise to differences in discourse structure, and crucially the lexical properties of the predicate can influence the strong tendency of negative quantifier to focus the complement set. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/743e25d2-30c9-41f9-b6c8-37826f79fadd
- author
- Klingvall, Eva
LU
and Heinat, Fredrik
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Complement set, Negative quantifiers, Clausal negation, Lexical negation, Connectives, Swedish
- in
- Journal of Pragmatics
- volume
- 235
- pages
- 17 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85211044068
- ISSN
- 0378-2166
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.008
- project
- Quantification in Swedish
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 743e25d2-30c9-41f9-b6c8-37826f79fadd
- date added to LUP
- 2024-12-06 11:19:15
- date last changed
- 2025-04-04 14:17:37
@article{743e25d2-30c9-41f9-b6c8-37826f79fadd,
abstract = {{In five sentence continuation studies we investigated how different forms of negation (negative quantifier, clausal negation, lexical negation) impact discourse structure in Swedish. We looked at what set of referents (the reference set for which some property holds, or the complement set, for which the property does not hold) speakers considered most noteworthy (speaker salient), and what form they used to refer to this set (reflecting its givenness status, i.e. hearer salience) in their sentence continuations. Most continuations targeted the complement set when the prompt included a negative quantifier. When negation was in the form of clausal negation, the reference set was targeted. Having a lexically negated verb in addition to the negative quantifier as subject mattered only when speakers were not prompted to make one of the sets the sentence topic. In this case, reference set continuations were also common. The conclusion is that although the types of negation convey similar negative meanings, they give rise to differences in discourse structure, and crucially the lexical properties of the predicate can influence the strong tendency of negative quantifier to focus the complement set.}},
author = {{Klingvall, Eva and Heinat, Fredrik}},
issn = {{0378-2166}},
keywords = {{Complement set; Negative quantifiers; Clausal negation; Lexical negation; Connectives; Swedish}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{115--131}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Journal of Pragmatics}},
title = {{The effects of negation on discourse structure}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.008}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.pragma.2024.11.008}},
volume = {{235}},
year = {{2025}},
}