Unmarked Negation and Marked Negation
Shen Jiaxuan · 2025
This chapter examines two types of negation: unmarked negation, which affects truth conditions, and marked negation, which does not. These forms exhibit an asymmetry influenced by pragmatic factors. Certain numerals and degree modifiers in Chinese demonstrate this asymmetry; for instance, bù nuǎnhuo (“not warm”) implies “less than warm” (cold) rather than “more than warm” (hot). Marked negation occurs less frequently and often requires a positive clause for explanation, whereas unmarked negation can stand alone. Unmarked negation can appear in structures like “~p, dàn (but) q” and “~p, ér (but) q”, while marked negation only uses “~p, ér (but) q”, reflecting the principle that unmarked items have more morphological forms. The chapter introduces the Maxim of Quantity from Gricean pragmatics to explain the asymmetry, emphasizing that communication should provide neither too little nor too much information. Negation affects entailment, implicature, and presupposition, and interacts with sentence structure and the scope of negation. It concludes by exploring how negation influences the felicity conditions of sentences within the cooperative principles of communication.