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Studies in Language: Online-First Articles

Asymmetry in temporal specification between affirmation and negation

Adverbials and tense-aspect neutralization

ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki
ORCID logo | University of Helsinki

One cross-linguistically recurrent asymmetry between affirmation and negation is the neutralization of tense-aspect distinctions in negatives. A functional explanation proposed for this is that in their typical discourse context negatives have less need for temporal specification than affirmatives and in some languages this discourse preference is reflected as fewer tense-aspect distinctions in grammar. To examine whether such a discourse preference exists, we compare the use of temporal adverbials in affirmatives and negatives in English, Finnish and Korean corpus data. The results provide qualified support for the hypothesized discourse preference: in English and Korean, affirmatives are likelier to have temporal adverbials than negatives, but Finnish shows no statistically significant difference. In English and Finnish, affirmatives are likelier than negatives to contain adjuncts indicating temporal position. Verb semantics is found to interact with temporal specifications. The study also uncovers further differences between affirmatives and negatives in the use of adverbials.

Keywords: negation, adverbial, temporal, typology, functional explanation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Negation
    • 2.2Adverbials
    • 2.3Hypothesis
  • 3.Material and method
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Adverbial types in affirmatives and negatives in the data
    • 4.2Temporal adjuncts in affirmatives and negatives
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 6 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.23036.mie
References

Data sources

ArkiSyn = ArkiSyn database of Finnish conversational discourse, Helsinki Korp version
2017 University of Turku, Department of Finnish and Finno-Ugric Languages. Retrieved from [URL]
BNC = Spoken British national corpus 2014
2017 The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS), Lancaster University & Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from [URL]
KCSC = Korean conversational speech corpus
2021 Beijing Magic Data Technology Co., Ltd. Retrieved from [URL]

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