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आभ्यंतर (Aabhyantar)
SCONLI-12
विशेषांक ISSN : 2348-7771
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8. A Cognitive-Pragmatic Approach to Negation: A
Study in Bangla
Atreyee Mukherjee : Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT
Kanpur
1.
Introduction
Negation is the key concept that creates the
difference between polarity of negative and positive constructions. In
languages negation is often manifested through lexical items or negative
markers. For instance, in English negation is manifested through lexical items
like no, never, not, etc.; or
through prefixes like un-, im-, etc. In Hindi, negation is manifested through
lexical items like, nahi, na, bina,
mana, etc. and through prefixes like an-, av,n-, etc. In Bangla, negation is
manifested through lexical items like na,
nei, noye, mana, etc. and
through prefixes like o-, be-,nir-, etc. Negation has primarily
been a topic of discussion within the purview of syntax and later within the
domain of semantics. Negation has also been discussed within the domains of
pragmatics. However, negation has sparingly been studied as an object of
cognitive linguistics.
The present paper attempts to investigate the
cognitive-pragmatic underpinnings of negation. It seeks to explore the nature
of negative polarity as a manifestation of conceptualisation and in turn as a
projection of embodied perception. Negation is viewed in this work as an
onto-epistemic category and its schematisation is the one of the areas explored
in this paper. Also, the work deals with the contextual dependence of the
negative polarity. The paper endeavours to probe into the nature of
schematisation and its interaction with the general cognitive ability of
figure-ground profiling.
2.
Theoretical Background
Negation has been observed differently from the perspectives
of syntax, semantics as well as pragmatics. Syntactic study involving negation
has been widely conducted throughout the world and has been thoroughly
conducted in for Bangla language. Narrowing down to negation in the Indo-Aryan
language Bangla, a lot of contribution has been made by Singh, U. N. (1976), Wen,
T. (1979), Prado, Z. N. del, and J. Gair (1994),Rahman, S. (2002),Ramchand, G.
C. (2001),Wurff, W. van der (1989), Ramchand, G. C. (2003),Sen, S. (1958),DNS
Bhatt (2003), who talk about the syntactic position of Bangla simple negation,
complex negation. Hannah Ruth Thompson (2012) states in her study that in
Bangla, negation never occurs in isolation. Negation as pointed out by Thompson
“rubs
shoulders with features like tense, syntactic hierarchy, the status of a verb
form, case issues and word order”. Negation word order in Bangla has been
discussed by Singh (1976), Wen (1979), Prado, Z. N. del, and J. Gair (1994),
Sen, S. (1958), etc. Rahman, S. (2002), Ramchand (2001, 2003), etc. have also
discussed patterns in verbal negation. Rahman works with the movement patterns
in verbal negation in Bangla, and Ramchand discusses negation with respect to
tense in Bangla. Apart from what is mentioned here, other studies on negation
have been extensively carried out from the syntactic perspective.
Negation has immense prospect not only as a
grammatical category but also as a semantic category. Negation and its semantic
analysis can be traced back to Frege. In his work ‘On sense and reference’,
Frege (1948) discusses negation and studies the semantic nature of negation. In
research following this genre of study, negation has been an important object
of the logical language of philosophy and semantics where negation has the role
of an operator which influences the truth value of propositions. Along these
lines, Russell (1905) reconsiders the nature of negation and is the first to
bring the notion of scope of negation. Strawson (1950, 1952) has also made
contributions to the semantic approach towards negation by contradicting
Russellian accounts of negation. Semanticists like Wilson (1975), Atlas (1977),
Gazdar (1979), Grice (1989) have, since then, followed Russell’s analysis of
negation which has led to a pragmatic perspective towards negation.
Negation, although has been discussed within the genre
of syntax and semantics, however; further research have led to a pragmatic
approach towards negation. Pragmatic approach deals with the contextual
influence on negation which has been further discussed by. Ducrot
(1972) discusses two functions of negation in natural language, namely
‘descriptive’ and ‘métalinguistique’, popularised as Descriptive Negation or DN
and Metalinguistic Negation or MN. DN is named by its virtue of describing
things are in the worlds and is considered a truth-functional operator. MN on
the other hand is that particular category of negation which targets language
itself and not the state of affairs. It is oriented towards the discourse and
focuses on expressions. Horn (1985, 1989), one of the first few pioneers
of a pragmatic approach towards negation, identified and gave concrete
realisations of how negation does not always fulfil the same function in
language. He discusses the pragmatic ambiguity that comes along with this
category. He focuses on many instances in language in which negation is
employed not for the description of state of affairs in the world, rather, used
as a special means for negating something at the level of LANGUAGE itself,
along the lines of Ducrot, Horn points out that the interpretation of
metalinguistic negation (MN) has a rhetorical effect which is why it is made
clear with the help of a rectification (1992, 2004). This is the Garden-Path
feature of the metalinguistic negation that demands a rectification. Geurts
(1998) and Recanati (2000) also promote MN as requiring a suitable
rectification clause, claiming that in the absence of any such rectification;
the negation can only be understood as descriptive. Carston (1999) however
takes a different stance. She accepts that the descriptive reading is the more
typical interpretation on the grounds that it ‘generally takes less effort to
access’—but she claims that this is certainly not a ‘default’. Carston (1999)
posits a ‘multi-layered pragmatic account’ of MN, in which the hearer many be
able to access the intended effect and metalinguistic interpretation of the MN
may be accessible from the beginning, even when all the features of MN intend
to suppress it. The garden-path effect, as considered by Carston (1999) is an
inevitable feature of MN which ensures the rhetorical effect of MN. Although
Carston deems it necessary, for Horn (1989), the rectification is optional
because along the lines of Bald (1971), he believes that the metalinguistic
understanding of negation may be explicit even in the absence of rectification,
through intonation.
Scope of negation has also been studied within the
pragmatic approach. Khemlani et al (2011) have provided mental models to
account for the pragmatic aspects involved with the scope of negation. They
argue that scope of negation often includes intentionality which is one of the
main arguments behind considering scope of negation as a pragmatic object of
research.
The research on negation as a linguistic category have
surpassed syntactic, semantic as well as pragmatic analysis however, a
cognitive-linguistic analysis of negation has been sparse. Of the few available
studies, the work by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
(2006) is by far the most prominent in the genre of cognitive linguistics. It
deals with cognitive, pragmatic as well as some psychological aspects of
negation and has been the motivation of this present work.
3.
Objectives of the Study
The main objective of this paper is to investigate
negation within a cognitive-pragmatic framework following the lines of Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
(2006). The aim of the present study can be further specified into the
following:
1.
To investigate the purport of embodied
perception underlying the schematisation of negation as an onto-epistemic linguistic
category.
2.
To delineate the role of presuppositional and
contextual knowledge interacting with negation.
3.
To explore the nature of conceptualisation
underlying negation and kinds of mapping manifestations of negation.
4.
The paper also seeks to explore the
schematisation of negation and further discuss the interplay between negation
and the cognitive ability of figure-ground profiling.
The
paper uses Bangla as an object language for providing examples of negative expressions.
4.
Discussion
Language as assumed by cognitivists is a manifestation
of conceptualisation and conceptualisation is a manifestation of embodied
perception. So, it could be inferred that language is a mapping of the
conceptualisation and the state of affairs which are phenomenological
onto-epistemic categories. One may view such conceptualisations as abstractions
of these categories. Negation, being a part of language is also one such
abstraction, only, negation is a change in the polarity whereby the notion of negativity (Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 2006) is understood.
Hence, in the light of cognitivist approach to linguistic entities, negation is
one of the very dominant categories which needs to be further explored within
the domain of cognitive linguistics.
Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
(2006) argues that negative conviction and negative judgement cannot exist
without activation and construction of specific mental spaces which include the
mappings of a positive input space to a negative output space which is encoded
in the output linguistic expression. In other words, the conceptualisation of
absence or negativity is only
possible in tandem with the conceptualisation of the positive state of affairs.
To elaborate one might consider the following examples from both Bangla:
1.
kaku.r matha.e cul
nei
uncle.GEN head.LOC hair.
exist.NEG
‘Uncle has no
hair.’
To determine this expression and comprehend the
meaning of it, one must first conceptualise that the person concerned could
have had hair on his head. After such a conceptualisation, a cognitive agent is
able to map the possible state of affairs with the current one which is ‘not
having hair’ in this case.
Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
(2006) suggests that such linguistic expressions with indicates absence or
negative state of affairs must be induced from the positive one and that if
such positive state of affairs is not present in the linguistic context, it
must be foregrounded either by a familiar frame or through context of the
conversation or even through individual experience. This brings us to the point
where negation as a cognitive-linguistic object of study entails a pragmatic
import too which is the discussed in the sub-section below.
4.1
Cognitive-Pragmatic
Underpinnings
Negation as a manifestation of conceptualisation of
onto-epistemic categories calls for a cognitive mapping of negative state of
affairs with the positive ones. Now, the state of affairs which are expressed
in language must have a positive counterpart atleast in conceptualisation for
it to be encoded and decoded as a negative linguistic expression because
intrinsically, for something to be conceptualised as being absent, it must be
conceptualised as being present in the first place. This stems from presupposed
state of affairs which are more often than not irrealis in nature, which
facilitate the use a negative linguistic expression. The contextual content of
negation thus maps onto the irrealis state of affairs that is presupposed by
cognitive agents to encode and decode negative linguistic expressions.
The next aspect of negation to be talked in this
section is the schematisation of negative structures prevalent in language.
Firstly, negation in terms of cognitive-linguistics must be a projection of
conceptualisation. Now, conceptualisation, being an abstraction of embodied
perception holds that embodied experience yields certain precepts which are
further abstracted to concepts in the conceptual space. Along such lines, the
conceptualisation of something not being present must first be perceived. And,
perception of absence of an object or a state by a child is only possible if the
child knows of its presence. Consider the following expression:
2.
alo nei
light
exist.NEG
‘No light.’
For a child to understand that this particular
expression is intended to mean that the place concerned in this context is dark
must have the conceptualisation of what it is for a place to be lit and what it
is for a place to be dark. This includes the child’s physiological ability to
see and also to differentiate between the presence of light and its absence.
Having discussed that a positive conceptualisation is
important for the construction and construal of negative expressions, it could
be said that not always the positive conceptualisation is foregrounded during
the meaning determination of the negative expression. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2006)
believes that familiarity and salience together act as triggers to activate the
positive conceptualisations of a scene. The reason behind arguing against such
a claim is two-fold:
a.
If the corresponding positive conceptualisation
must be fore-grounded for each and every negative expression, then the
processing time of negative expressions must be higher than that of the
corresponding positive ones. In various experiments the response-time for
negative expressions is higher than that of the positive counterparts. However,
Nieuwland and Kuperberg (2008) concluded that contextually felicitous negative
sentences do not have higher response-time than that of their positive
counterparts. It indicates that the fore-grounding hypothesis does not hold for
contextually felicitous negative sentences.
b.
Also, foregrounding the corresponding positive
element for each and every negative expression would mean increased cognitive
load which is uneconomical and cumbersome for cognitive agents.
For such reasons, to claim that a corresponding
positive conceptualisation is always foregrounded to determine the meaning of a
negative expression is far-fetched. Consider the following example:
3.
dᴐrɉa khola nei
door open
not
‘The door is
not open.’
The foregrounding hypothesis claims that every time a
cognitive agent is exposed to this utterance, the positive state of affairs is
fore-grounded. However, the expression dorja
khola nei inherently indicates to the state of affairs where the door is
closed. In case, the context demands for the conceptualisation of the positive
counterpart to be focused, the positive counterpart is then fore-grounded.
However, in contexts where there are no such demands, the conceptualisation
that is fore-grounded is that of a closed door and not an open one despite the
fact that the way of encoding the state of affairs is through a negative
structure. However, there are negative expressions which induce the
foregrounding of the corresponding state of affairs. Consider the following:
4.
ɉᴐl.ta
gᴐrom
nei ar, uʃno thakte pare
water.CLS hot exist.NEG anymore, warm be.INFV could
‘The water is
not hot anymore, could be warm though.’
In the meaning determination of such an expression, it
is mandatory for both the interlocutors to have the corresponding state of
affairs foregrounded in the conceptualisation. This is due to the gradability
of the state which is in question. In such cases, the gradual change in the
state of affairs is foregrounded which presupposes the initial state of affairs
which is primarily the positive one. This is indicative of the fact that
different kinds of negation are schematised differently which is discussed in
the next subsection.
4.2 Schematisation of Negation
Negation, as discussed in the above section, has
different manifestations in terms of foregrounding presuppositional knowledge
which indicates difference in schematisation of different types of negation.
The two basic types of schematisation that are to be discussed in this
particular work are termed here as direct mappings and indirect mappings.
4.2.1 Direct mappings
In case of direct mappings, the negative expressions
are mapped to the state of affairs without foregrounding the corresponding
positive state of affairs as indicated by example (3). The reason behind such
direct mappings is the plausibly the fact that expressions of this kind encode
positive state of affairs. For instance, sentence (3) means ‘the door is
closed’ which is a positive state of affair by itself. The utterance does not
need immediate foregrounding of any other positive state of affair to decode
and comprehend the negative expression.
4.2.2 Indirect Mappings
Indirect mappings are those which need the mediation
of a foregrounded positive state of affair to execute the process of meaning
determination. Sentence (4) is an example where the fact encoded in the
sentence must be mediated by the positive state of affairs to have made sense.
This is plausibly for the reason that the change in the state of affairs
encoded in the expression must be accounted for during the meaning
determination of the expression. The contextual information, becomes important
for the understanding the entire purport of the expression, which is why a
corresponding positive state of affairs is mandatory to be presupposed in such
expressions. Another salient example of such indirect mappings could be
observed in case of meta-linguistic negation which demands the presupposition
of the indicated positive state of affairs. In case of an absence of the
foregrounding of the positive state of affairs, such negative expressions
become hard to comprehend and often lead to miscommunication. Such
miscommunications are almost never observed in case of expressions which
involve direct mappings.
This leads us to the next section which is the
profiling of figure-ground due to which such direct and indirect mappings are
possible for different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
4.3
Negation
and Figure-Ground Profiling
Negation as mentioned earlier is a manifestation of
the conceptualisation; and conceptualisation is a projection of embodied
perception. Now, different nature of conceptual mappings which have been
discussed is manifested through negation and hence must be an integral part of
conceptualisation. The claim here is that the difference in mappings discussed
earlier is due to the way cognitive agents profile figure and ground. The
linguistic elements that are involved in an expression have been known to
interact to with the cognitive ability of figure-ground profiling whereby some
elements in the world as well as the linguistic expression is considered to be
the focus or highlight of the expression which is considered to be embedded in
the ground which is the rest of the state of affairs. Now, one may consider
sentence (3) where the figure of the state of affairs is the ‘closed door’ and
not the entire event whereby a previously open door was gradually closed. In
such a case, where the closed door is the figure, the negative expression is mapped
to conceptualisation of ‘CLOSED DOOR’. In case the event of the door being
closed was to be the figure of the context, the same mapping would not hold.
Note that in case of sentence (4), the figure of the sentence is ‘the water
that was hot which isn’t hot anymore and has turned lukewarm. In such a case,
where the event of ‘hot water turning warm to luke-warm and furthermore’ is the
figure of the expression as well as the state of affairs, the presupposed fact
that ‘the water was hot at some point’ becomes relevant and hence a mapping is
established between the positive state of affairs and the encoded negative
state of affairs. Such contextual and conceptual nature of negation interacting
with figure-ground profiling yields direct as well as indirect mappings of
expressions to their corresponding state of affairs.
5.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the paper explores the cognitive and
pragmatic aspects of negation and uses Bangla as an object language for
providing examples of negative expressions. It investigates the import of
embodied perception being accountable for the schematisation of negation as an
onto-epistemic linguistic category. It delineates the pragmatic import of
presuppositional and contextual knowledge interacting with negation. It
elaborates upon the nature of conceptualisation underlying negation and the
different kinds of mappings, namely direct and indirect, available for
different manifestations of negation. The paper also elaborates upon the
motivation of the different mappings and discusses the interplay between
negation and the cognitive ability of figure-ground profiling. This study could
further be substantiated by experimental findings of behavioural kind which
remains as an area of further exploration.
6.
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