Double-Negation and (Negative) Polarity Phenomena in the Romance Languages and Their Dialects
A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 January 2022) | Viewed by 16156
Special Issue Editors
Interests: systems of interpretation in language; syntax of Romance and Germanic languages, language and perception; cognitive foundations of language; language learning and language change; philosophy of mind
Interests: language learning and language teaching; communicative impairment and language pathologies; psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of multilingualism; language structure and language use
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
“Languages” is devoting a special article collection to the issue of negation and negation-related phenomena in natural language. We intend to explore areas of research that have been up to now relatively disregarded or that would benefit from a broader empirical or theoretical coverage.
More particularly, for this special issue we propose to concentrate on Romance, and to consider languages as well as dialectal varieties within this area, in order to (also) explore issues of micro-variation. Based on this empirical domain of research, we also propose to prioritize the following two relatively understudied topics concerning negation and negative dependencies in Romance, which in our view naturally lend themselves to different styles and methods of inquiry, including typological research, experimental research and theoretical approaches:
(i) double negation;
(ii) negative (and positive) polarity phenomena
The double negation phenomenon has both a structural and a pragmatic dimension (cf. for instance L. Horn’s classical contributions), which has been broadly investigated in English and other Germanic languages, but has received scarce attention in Romance languages. As for negative polarity phenomena, though there are semantically-oriented explanatory analyses (as in G. Chierchia’s work) and syntactically-oriented comparative approaches offering a broad empirical coverage (as in H. Zeijlstra’s work), we still miss a fine-grained typological coverage of polarity in the Romance domain, and the potential contribution that this kind of coverage could contribute to theory-forming within the studies on linguistic negation and negation phenomena.
For both topics, we intend to gather a number of contributions from well-established specialists and talented young researchers in order to get a better picture of the range of micro-variation involved and of its possible consequences for theoretical modelling. We are happy to acknowledge that Diego Pescarini (CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur), Cecilia Poletto (University of Padua) and Hedde Zeijlstra (Georg-August-University in Göttingen) have already accepted to be main contributors of this special issue.
We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to /Languages/ editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.
Tentative completion schedule:
- Abstract submission deadline: 15 May 2021
- Notification of abstract acceptance: 31 May 2021
- Full manuscript deadline: 30 September 2021
References
Chierchia, G. (2013). Logic in Grammar. Polarity, Free Choice and Intervention. Oxford Studies in Semantics and Pragmatics.
Horn, R. L. (2020). Negation. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Zeijlstra, H. (2020). Negation and Negative Phenomena. To appear in Oxford University Press.
Prof. Dr. Denis Delfitto
Dr. Maria Vender
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- sentential negation
- negative constituents
- negative-concord
- double-negation
- positive and negative polarity
- negative phenomena
- macro- and micro-variation
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