Negation and approximation as configurational construals in SPACE

Summary, in English

This article is a window into conceptual space through antonyms, negated antonyms and antonyms modified by degree modifiers. It investigates native speakers’ understanding of negation in combination with BOUNDED antonymic adjectival meanings and also in relation to their interpretations of the approximating degree modifier, ‘almost’ in Swedish. The results of the investigation are compared with a similar study by Paradis and Willners (2006), which includes ‘not’ with UNBOUNDED SCALE meanings and in relation to ‘fairly’.

We propose that ‘not’ is a degree modifier and like all other degree modifiers it operates on the configurational construals in SPACE. In combination with BOUNDED antonyms ‘not’ operates on the boundary and bisects a spatial structure. The combinations of ‘not’ and BOUNDED meanings are interpreted as synonyms of their antonyms. ‘Almost closed’ differs significantly from ‘closed’ but is not significantly different from ‘not open’. In contrast, in combination with UNBOUNDED antonyms, ‘not’ modifies the UNBOUNDED SCALE structure and evokes a range on the scale in SPACE in the same way as ‘fairly’ does. While the results for the UNBOUNDED meanings are very robust across all test items, the BOUNDED meanings are much more volatile and adaptive to alternative scalar interpretations.

• Author: Carita Paradis; Caroline Willners
• Editor: Carita Paradis; Jean Hudson; Ulf Magnusson
• Department/s: English Studies; General Linguistics
• Publishing year: 2013
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: The Construal of Spatial Meaning Windows into Conceptual Space
• Full text: - 533 kB; Download statistics
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Topic: Languages and Literature
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 978-0-19-964163-5