Premium
Negation in Exclamatives
Author(s) -
Delfitto Denis,
Fiorin Gaetano
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/stul.12024
Subject(s) - negation , linguistics , rhetorical question , meaning (existential) , polarity (international relations) , computer science , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , chemistry , biochemistry , cell
Abstract The goal of this article is to provide a principled account of the semantic contribution of the so‐called “expletive” negation, as it occurs in negative exclamatives. This type of negation differs from canonical negation in that it does not contribute its canonical meaning as a propositional operator, occurs higher in the syntactic structure of the clause, does not license negative polarity items, and expresses a bias towards the opposite polarity. In this article, we show that these properties are also found in negative rhetorical questions. We propose that exclamatives, as well as rhetorical questions, denote sets of propositions structured into Boolean algebras, with the negation imposing an order of informativity upon such structures.