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Negation in linguistics

Some representatives of different linguistic schools, for example, such as A.M. Peshkovsky [56], V.V. Vinogradov [49], F. Palmer emphasize it is the special position of the category of negation in comparison with other categories, such as time, appearance, mood and others. According to A.I.Smirnitsky [54], English has a special negative conjugation characteristic of most verbs.

In the works of A.I. Smirnitsky, denial is presented as if it affects the quality of judgment, since it conveys a qualitatively different thought, despite the fact that the function of denial is different in the composition of various types of communication [54, p. 260]. The essence of linguistic negation in linguistics is expressed in different ways.
In the works of A.I. Smirnitsky, denial is presented as if it affects the quality of judgment, since it conveys a qualitatively different thought, despite the fact that the function of denial is different in the composition of various types of communication [54, p. 260]. The essence of linguistic negation in linguistics is expressed in different ways.
Ginneken interprets negation as something, due to which various psychic (sensory) reactions of the speaker are generated, due to which feelings of resistance or prohibition are expressed; Delbrück explains denial as an explication of what is felt, as a contradiction between the expected (or in principle possible) and the actual, as a reflection of feelings of disappointment, contrast; and according to Jespersen, denial is a feeling of disgust.
So, based on this concept, negation is not a reflection of reality, but a manifestation of the human psyche, his psychological and emotional feelings. Negation is a communicative operation that rejects or corrects the addressee's opinion, in other words, denial is a speech action, the purpose of which is not to communicate new information, but to refute the addressee's opinion. From the point of view of theory, negation is the statement of non-existence.
In a negative judgment, negation can be focused either on its entire content or on the connection between the subject and the predicate; the word "no" expresses negation in language. We can consider certain judgments to be true or incorrect, but to do it at the same time would be unreasonable (the law of contradiction and the law of rejection of the third).
There is not a single positive statement associated with negation. For example, the phrase "these flowers do not smell" will be meaningful even if the flowers have no scent at all. In any circumstances, the correct value when negating a predicate is, first of all, a formal negative (contradictory) value, and all the rest, narrower, more specific meanings need to prove their legitimacy.
As a universal category of language with a complex and multifaceted semantics and all kinds of set of means of expression, negation receives a separate interpretation in connection with each new direction of linguistics. Negation is one of the original, indecomposable semantic category inherent in all languages ​​of the world, which cannot be defined using simpler semantic elements.
Negation is an element of the meaning of a sentence, indicating that the connection that is established between the components of the sentence, from the point of view of the speaker, is not in reality, or that the corresponding affirmative sentence is rejected by the speaker as erroneous. Most often, a negative statement occurs when the corresponding affirmative statement was made earlier or is included in the general presumption of the speakers.
Negation - is the expression of the idea that there is no connection established between the elements of the utterance in reality with the help of lexical, phraseological, syntactic and other language means. Negation can be either absolute (absolute negation) or refer to a statement and in this case be called syntactic or conjunctive. Connective negation can relate to a concept (lexical negation) or to a sentence (phrasal negation). Regardless of the form of negation, simple negation means that there is only one idea of ​​negation; a complex negation or negative word is called negation with the concept of time (never), person (nobody) or thing (nothing) is associated. Semi-negation (demi - negation) is a word that serves to weaken statements, such as hardly - hardly.
Consideration of the category of denial in a linguistic aspect can be determined by the correspondence between the two levels of presentation of the sentence representation - semantic and syntactic. Semantic representation is the representation of a sentence at the semantic level; it is an explicit representation of the meaning of a sentence, where all other sentences that are semantically equivalent to a given sentence have the same semantic connotation.
As for the syntactic representation, which is the representation of a sentence at the syntactic level. It is an indicator of the structure of the components, but the terminal nodes of this indicator are exclusively all the significant lexemes of the sentence. Lexemes are generalized and have only such morphological characteristics that are not syntactically determined.
A negative sentence is an expression of the speaker's unwillingness to recognize the validity of the connection between the subject and the predicate. Since a sentence is constituted by a connection between a subject and a predicate, the negation in meaning is invariably associated with a sentence. Therefore, what negation shows can be associated with a word in which it appears in the structure.
When using the terms of E.V. Paducheva, in the first case we are talking about semantically general negative sentences, and in the second - about semantically partial negative sentences [55].
A. M. Peshkovsky [56] divided the sentences into general and partial negative ones according to a formal criterion. However, no semantic opposition fits this division. And, on the contrary, the division of sentences into semantically general and partial negative ones does not meet specific reflection in their syntactic structure. In addition, at the syntactic level of a general or particular negative sentence, there may not be any formal indicators of negation at all. But at the same time, it cannot be concluded from this that there are no general rules comparing semantic sentences with their syntactic sentences. On the contrary, it is the clear understanding that neither the presence / absence, nor the place of a negative particle at the syntactic level directly reflect the presence / absence and the place of the seme of negation at the semantic level that make it possible to provide the simplest and generalized description of synonymous relations between negative sentences.
By tradition, as a linguistic category, negation is studied in a systematic way, with the help of a set of verb and other forms that are reflected in theoretical and grammatical studies (V.V. Vinogradov, I.V. Arnold), as well as practical manuals and textbooks on grammar [49].
The concept of the grammatical category of negation can be considered a negation, expressed by all possible grammatical means, when using forms of the past, present and future tenses, and most often the negative particle "not" is used, the need for which depends on whether it is represented in the predicative form of the verb or in other words and their forms. It is appropriate to analyze the following examples:
«Reason I cannot pass the first grade...»¹.
«When he couldn’t find any cats»².
«This was not on the ground, it was in a tree»³.
«I haven’t shot a gun in thirty years...»⁴.
In the above examples, with the predicative form of the verb, the particle "not" is placed after the auxiliary or service verb (the bundle "to be" or modal verb). It should be noted that the sentence always denies some statement (predication), called "scopus" (from the Latin language "goal, range"), in other words, the scope of action, which can be the whole sentence or some part of it.
The negation is used to reject a false statement and oppose it to a true one. However, affirmative or negative statements can both be true. Bakharev A.I. gives the following examples concerning this phenomenon: The moon is a satellite of the Earth (affirmative statement); It is not true that wood is metal (negative statement). These two statements are true.
In linguistics there is no consensus concerning the category of negation. This problem was developed in several directions. In the psychological and pragmatic concepts of negation this category is defined either as a pure product of the human psyche, or just as intralingual function - expression of a speaker's view about someone else's thoughts.
The negation is also interpreted as a special form of modality and predication. According to Bondarenko the negation understood as a subjective assessment or unreality of anything in some certain modal meanings which is connected with unjustified broad understanding of the category of modality where predication does not depend on negative or affirmative form of a statement [48].
Besides, we take into consideration the concept of negation as an expression of the lack of objective connection.
Linguistic dictionaries define the category of negation as an element of a sentence's meaning which indicates that the connection between the components of a sentence according to a speaker is not real.
Defining the negation as a category we can declare such unreal interrelation which actually have an absolute reality (chicken is not a bird) and such realities which no one would guess (iron is not stone) A.M. Peshkovskiy takes into consideration not the connection between parts of a sentence, but the concept connection, the reality/unreality of the connection between concepts and categories [56].
Negation is the lack of a certain kind of interrelation in the reality, but not merely objective interrelations that should be seen as the negation referent. Negation is not just the lack of objective interrelations, but also the objects themselves or their characteristics, which include objective interrelations.
Logical negation and linguistic negation with their means of expression are comparable within their sense, but do not always absolutely correspond with each other. Many linguists (E.I. Shendels, O.V. Trunova) note that the essence of the grammatical category of negation is logical negation. Shendels E.I. claims that the logical category of affirmation and negation is the main essence of the language category, but not entirely filled [58]. The language category of affirmation and negation also performs other functions and has relative independence and its own volume of meanings not adequate with the logical category. Using different means of negation in a sentence may have quite different goals than the expression of a negative statement. In other words, not every sentence with negation corresponds to a negative statement. It may correspond to a positive statement and serve as a mean of expression of not judgment, but prohibition, question and so on. Trunova O.V. observes the difference between logical and grammatical negation in the universality of the first one and its ability to be expressed by different linguistic means [57].
Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, the negation is considered as a concept, i.e. operational meaningful unit of thinking. According to N.N. Boldyrev the concept negation is the product of human consciousness, as in the real world there is no lack of existence or occurrence and only human being makes it exist proceeding from his own experience and understanding of situation, proceeding from his own system of values, beliefs and assessments. In the centre of the language negation there is a classification concept which has a relative nature and obtains definite content only in relation with other concepts or conceptual framework [47].
In linguistics negation is expressed in the morphological-syntactical and lexical levels of the language. In this case negation means that we add something into a sentence that negates or reverses the meaning of the sentence. In English there are the following ways of expressing negation: adding “not ” to the verb or using negative words no , never, none, no one, nobody, nothing, neither, nowhere ; negative adverbs hardly, scarcely, barely: I am barely surviving; She hardly sends any money to her mother ; negative verbs doesn’t, isn’t, wasn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t, won’t, can’t, don’t. Avoiding double negation one of these units is used at a time. In Standard English , each subject-predicate construction should only have one negative form. A double negative is a non-standard sentence construction that uses two negative forms. Double negatives are created by adding a negation to the verb and to the modifier of the noun or to the object of the verb: I won’t bake no cake, I can’t go nowhere tonight. Learning Standard English negation is important as the double negation is grammatically incorrect . Sometimes there are negative forms of derived nouns , such as nowhere, nothing , no one , in the senence which do not demand the usage of any other negation in Standard English.
We can make negative meanings using prefixes mis-, in- de-, dis, un- and suffixes , such as –less : He was very disrespectful to his brother. This new printer is useless ; its always breaking down.
We can also use the following words to make negative or negative-like statements: few, hardly, little, rarely, scarcely, seldom: There are rarely ducks in this pond. We seldom hear any noise at night.
Negation is more common in spoken than in written language, because negative forms can be used in face-to-face interactions to make what we say less direct: I’m not sure if this is the right desk. I’m looking for information on the train times to Liverpool. (less direct than Is this the right desk?)
There are cases when double negation is used in Standard English when two negatives result in a positive, or conversely, when only one negative may result in a positive. Moreover, there is considerable evidence in present –day speech when two negatives are used precisely for the purpose of intensifying the negative aspect in such examples, as “it is not unlikely”, “it is not inconceivable”, “it is not impossible”, “that is not unnatural”.
There are cases where we can use reporting verbs such as imagine, suppose and think in the end position, after the reported clause. In such cases, both clauses may have a negative verb: He is not a teacher, I don’t think (or I don’t think he’s a teacher.); I won’t be very late tonight, I shouldn’t imagine. (or I shouldn’t imagine I’ll be very late tonight).
Sometimes we use “not” in front position where a following reduced clause (a clause with something omitted but which is understood) also has a negative form: --Have you seen Leila?