Expletive negation in Italian temporal clauses: an acceptability judgement and a self-paced reading study
-
Anna Teresa Porrini
,
Veronica D’Alesio
und
Matteo Greco
Abstract
This work aims to investigate the role of negation when it fails to reverse the polarity of a sentence, thus becoming “expletive”. An example is offered by the following Italian sentence: Chiara è rimasta in casa finché Marco non ha chiamato la pizzeria per la cena (literally ‘Chiara remained in the house until Marco did not call the pizzeria for dinner’, meaning ‘Chiara remained at home until Marco called the pizzeria for dinner’). Although negation occurs, the sentence remains affirmative, and the negative marker fails to trigger all the semantic and syntactic phenomena usually associated with it. Here we implement two experiments, an acceptability judgement task and a self-paced reading paradigm, to test how expletive negation is understood and processed. Our findings reveal a complex picture of expletive negation in Italian. Acceptability judgements suggest that it increases sentence naturalness. The self-paced reading data show no additional processing cost associated with expletive negation, unlike standard negation. By integrating offline and online measures, our study represents a crucial step towards a more comprehensive understanding of expletive negation in linguistic processing, which seems to diverge from the processing of standard negation.
Funding source: NextGenerationEU
Award Identifier / Grant number: P2022Y5CWX – PRIN PNRR 2022
-
Research funding: This work was supported by the European Union – Next Generation EU, Mission 4, Component C2 (M4C2), CUP I53D23006900001, Grant no. P2022Y5CWX – PRIN PNRR 2022, Project name: REAding CompreHension for inclusion (REACH): Analyzing and enhancing the comprehension of syntactic and semantic structures in children with linguistic fragilities.
References
Abels, Klaus. 2005. “Expletive negation” in Russian: A conspiracy theory. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 13(1). 5–74.Suche in Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511801686Suche in Google Scholar
Barr, Dale J., Roger Levy, Christoph Scheepers & Harry J. Tily. 2013. Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001.Suche in Google Scholar
Bartoli, Eleonora, Andrea Tettamanti, Paolo Farronato, Armanda Caporizzo, Andrea Moro, Roberto Gatti, Daniela Perani & Marco Tettamanti. 2013. The disembodiment effect of negation: Negating action-related sentences attenuates their interference on congruent upper limb movements. Journal of Neurophysiology 109(7). 1782–1792. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00894.2012.Suche in Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01.Suche in Google Scholar
Carpenter, Patricia & Marcel A. Just. 1975. Sentence comprehension: A psycholinguistic processing model of verification. Psychological Review 82(1). 45–73. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076248.Suche in Google Scholar
Carpenter, Patricia, Marcel A. Just, Timothy A. Keller, William F. Eddy & Keith R. Thulborn. 1999. Time course of fMRI-activation in language and spatial networks during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage 10(2). 216–224. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1999.0465.Suche in Google Scholar
Cépeda, Paola. 2017. Against expletive negation: The case of Spanish hasta-clauses. In Jessica Kantarovich, Tran Truong & Orest Xherija (eds.), Proceedings of the 52nd annual meeting of the Chicago linguistics society (2016), 101–115. Chicago: CLS.Suche in Google Scholar
Cépeda, Paola. 2018. Negation and time: Against expletive negation in temporal clauses. Sony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University PhD Dissertation.Suche in Google Scholar
Cépeda, Paola & Viviane Déprez. 2023. Detecting the meaning of French expletive negation ne in avant-clauses. In Frances Blanchette & Cynthia Lukyanenko (eds.), Perspectives on negation: Views from across the language sciences, 85–114. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110762068-004Suche in Google Scholar
Christensen, Rune H. B. 2023. Ordinal: Regression models for ordinal data, version 2023.12–4.1 [R package].Suche in Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & William G. Chase. 1972. On the process of comparing sentences against pictures. Cognitive Psychology 3. 472–517. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(72)90019-9.Suche in Google Scholar
Condoravdi, Cleo. 2002. Punctual until as a scalar NPI. In Sharon Inkelas & Kristin Hanson (eds.), The nature of the word, 63–654. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Dale, Rick & Nicholas D. Duran. 2011. The cognitive dynamics of negated sentence verification. Cognitive Science 35(5). 983–996. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01164.x.Suche in Google Scholar
Delfitto, Denis. 2013. Negation as a low scope-marker in German bevor-clauses. Lingue e Linguaggio 12(1). 73–88.Suche in Google Scholar
Delfitto, Denis. 2020. Expletive negation. In Viviane Déprez & M. Teresa Espinal (eds.), The Oxford handbook of negation, 255–268. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198830528.013.9Suche in Google Scholar
Delfitto, Denis, Melloni Chiara & Maria Vender. 2019. The en(rich)ed meaning of expletive negation. Evolutionary Linguistic Theory 1. 57–89. https://doi.org/10.1075/elt.00004.del.Suche in Google Scholar
Del Prete, Fabio. 2008. A non-uniform semantic analysis of the Italian temporal connectives prima and dopo. Natural Language Semantics 16(2). 157–203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-008-9030-6.Suche in Google Scholar
Espinal, M. Teresa. 1992. Expletive negation and logical absorption. The Linguistic Review 9(4). 333–358. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlir.1992.9.4.333.Suche in Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga. 1992. Syntax. In Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, Vol. 2, 207–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521264754.005Suche in Google Scholar
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2002. UNTIL, aspect, and negation: A novel argument for two untils. In Brendan Jackson (ed.), Proceedings of SALT XII, 84–103. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.10.3765/salt.v12i0.2872Suche in Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel. 2006. Anything negatives can do affirmatives can do just as well, except for some metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics 38(7). 981–1014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.12.006.Suche in Google Scholar
Greco, Matteo. 2019a. Is expletive negation a unitary phenomenon? Lingue e Linguaggio 1. 25–58.Suche in Google Scholar
Greco, Matteo. 2019b. On the syntax of surprise negation sentences: A case study on expletive negation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38. 775–825. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-019-09459-6.Suche in Google Scholar
Greco, Matteo. 2020. The syntax of surprise: Expletive negation and the left periphery. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Suche in Google Scholar
Greco, Matteo, Paolo Canal, Valentina Bambini & Andrea Moro. 2020. Modulating “surprise” with syntax: A case study on negative sentences. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 49. 415–434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09691-x.Suche in Google Scholar
Hasegawa, Mihoko, Patricia Carpenter & Marcel A. Just. 2002. An fMRI study of bilingual sentence comprehension and workload. NeuroImage 15(3). 647–660. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2001.1001.Suche in Google Scholar
Hasson, Uri & Sam Glucksberg. 2006. Does understanding negation entail affirmation? An examination of negated metaphors. Journal of Pragmatics 38(7). 1015–1032. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.12.005.Suche in Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252695.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A natural history of negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. (ed.). 2010. The expression of negation. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar
Jegerski, Jill. 2013. Self-paced reading. In Jill Jegerski & Bill VanPatten (eds.), Research methods in second language psycholinguistics, 20–49. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203123430Suche in Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages. Copenhagen: A. F. Høst.Suche in Google Scholar
Jin, Yanwei & Jean-Pierre Koenig. 2021. A cross-linguistic study of expletive negation. Linguistic Typology 25(1). 39–78. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2053.Suche in Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1974. Until. In Michael W. LaGaly, Robert Allen Fox & Anthony Bruck (eds.), Papers from the tenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 284–297. Chicago: CLS.Suche in Google Scholar
Kaup, Barbara. 2001. Negation and its impact on the accessibility of text information. Memory & Cognition 29(7). 960–967. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03195758.Suche in Google Scholar
Kaup, Barbara & Carolin Dudschig. 2020. Understanding negation: Issues in the processing of negation. In Viviane Déprez & M. Teresa Espinal (eds.), The Oxford handbook of negation, 635–655. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198830528.013.33Suche in Google Scholar
Kaup, Barbara, Jana Lüdtke & Rolf A. Zwaan. 2005. Effects of negation, truth value, and delay on picture recognition after reading affirmative and negative sentences. In Bruno G. Bara, Lawrence Barsalou & Monica Bucciarelli (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th annual conference of the cognitive science society, 1114–1119. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.Suche in Google Scholar
Kaup, Barbara, Jana Lüdtke & Rolf A. Zwaan. 2006. Processing negated sentences with contradictory predicates: Is a door that is not open mentally closed? Journal of Pragmatics 38. 1033–1050. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.012.Suche in Google Scholar
Kaup, Barbara, Jana Lüdtke & Rolf A. Zwaan. 2007. The experiential view of language comprehension: How is negation represented? In Franz Schmalhofer & Charles A. Perfetti (eds.), Higher level language processes in the brain: Inference and comprehension processes, 255–288. London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Suche in Google Scholar
Keating, G. D. & J. Jegerski. 2015. Experimental designs in sentence processing research: A methodological review and user’s guide. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 37(1). 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272263114000187.Suche in Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. 1997. Adverbial subordination: A typology and history of adverbial subordinators based on European languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110812428Suche in Google Scholar
Liuzza, Marco Tullio, Candidi Matteo & Salvatore Maria Aglioti. 2011. Do not resonate with actions: Sentence polarity modulates cortico-spinal excitability during action-related sentence reading. PLoS One 6(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016855.Suche in Google Scholar
Lüdtke, Jana, Claudia K. Friedrich, Mónica De Filippis & Barbara Kaup. 2008. Event-related potential correlates of negation in a sentence-picture-verification paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20(8). 1355–1370. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20093.Suche in Google Scholar
MacDonald, Maryellen C. & Marcel A. Just. 1989. Changes in activation levels with negation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 15(4). 633–642. https://doi.org/10.1037//0278-7393.15.4.633.Suche in Google Scholar
MacDonald, Jonathan E. & Barbara Ürögdi. 2011. Against stativizing negation, expletive negation and NPI-until. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 58(3). 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1556/aling.58.2011.3.1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26191855.Suche in Google Scholar
Makri, Maria-Margarita. 2013. Expletive negation beyond Romance: Clausal complementation and epistemic modality. York: University of York PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Martinet, André. 1960. Éléments de linguistique générale. Parigi: Armand Colin.Suche in Google Scholar
Martínez, Olguín J. 2023. Precedence clauses in the world’s languages: Negative markers need not be expletive. STUF: Language Typology and Universals 76(4). 587–634. https://doi.org/10.1515/stuf-2023-2018.Suche in Google Scholar
Martínez, Olguín J. 2024. Until’ constructions and expletive negation in Huasteca Nahuatl. Studies in Language 48(4). 753–780. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.22064.olg.Suche in Google Scholar
Miller, Jeff. 2023. Outlier exclusion procedures for reaction time analysis: The cures are generally worse than the disease. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 152(11). 3189–3217. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001450.Suche in Google Scholar
Papitto, Giorgio, Luisa Lugli, Anna M. Borghi, Antonello Pellicano & Ferdinand Binkofski. 2021. Embodied negation and levels of concreteness: A TMS study on German and Italian language processing. Brain Research 1767. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2021.147523.Suche in Google Scholar
Portner, Paul & Raffaella Zanuttini. 2000. The force of negation in wh exclamatives and interrogatives. In Laurence Horn & Yasuhiko Kato (eds.), Negation and polarity: Syntactic and semantic perspectives, 201–239. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198238744.003.0007Suche in Google Scholar
Ramat, Paolo. 2022. Expletive negation and related problems. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads 2(2). 1–38.Suche in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 2001. On the position “Int(errogative)” in the left periphery of the clause. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian syntax: Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 287–296. Amsterdam: Elsevier.10.1163/9780585473949_016Suche in Google Scholar
Scappini, Maria, Denis Delfitto, Carlo A. Marzi, Francesco Vespignani & Silvia Savazzi. 2015. On the non-incremental processing of negation: A pragmatically licensed sentence-picture verification study with Italian (dyslexic) adults. Cahiers de linguistique française 32. 45–58.Suche in Google Scholar
Tettamanti, Marco, Rosa Manenti, Pasquale A. Della Rosa, Andrea Falini, Daniela Perani, Stefano F. Cappa & Andrea Moro. 2008. Negation in the brain: Modulating action representation. NeuroImage 43(2). 358–367.10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.08.004Suche in Google Scholar
Trabasso, Tom, Rollins Howard & Edward Shaughnessy. 1971. Storage and verification stages in processing concepts. Cognitive Psychology 2(3). 239–289. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(71)90014-4.Suche in Google Scholar
Tubau, Susagna, Viviane Déprez, Joan Borràs-Comes & M. Teresa Espinal. 2018. How speakers interpret the negative markers no and no … pas in Catalan. Probus 30(1). 121–167. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2017-0008.Suche in Google Scholar
Wälchli, Bernhard. 2018. ‘As long as’, ‘until’ and ‘before’ clauses: Zooming in on linguistic diversity. Baltic Linguistics 9. 141–236. https://doi.org/10.32798/bl.372.Suche in Google Scholar
Wason, Peter C. 1965. The contexts of plausible denial. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 4(1). 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-5371(65)80060-3.Suche in Google Scholar
van der Wouden, Ton. 1994a. Negative contexts. Groningen: University of Groningen PhD Dissertation.Suche in Google Scholar
van der Wouden, Ton. 1994b. Polarity and illogical negation. In Makoto Kanazawa & Christopher J. Piñón (eds.), Dynamics, polarity, and quantification, 17–45. Stanford: CSLI.Suche in Google Scholar
van der Wurff, Wim. 1999. On expletive negation with adversative predicates in the history of English. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie & Wim van der Wurff (eds.), Negation in the history of English, 295–328. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110806052.295Suche in Google Scholar
Yoon, Suwon. 2008. Rhetorical comparatives: Polarity items, expletive negation, and subjunctive mood. Journal of Pragmatics 43(7). 2012–2033. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.12.010.Suche in Google Scholar
Yoon, Suwon. 2011. ‘Not’ in the mood: The syntax, semantics and pragmatics of evaluative negation. Chicago: University of Chicago PhD Dissertation.Suche in Google Scholar
Zehr, Jeremy & Florian Schwarz. 2018. PennController for internet based experiments (IBEX). https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MD832.Suche in Google Scholar
Zipf, George K. 1949. Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.Suche in Google Scholar
Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2024-0191).
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
