THE PRAGMATICS OF NEGATION

Abstract

In this article the consideration is given to the phenomenon of negation. Studies of negation have been in the field of view of logicians, philosophers, linguists and psychologists for centuries. This pragmatic universal, which is reflected in languages, albeit by different means – a syntactic and a morphosyntactic phenomenon that is studied interdisciplinary. Through this the multifacetedness and multifunctionality of negation belongs to such language categories that are always in the field of view of scientific circles of humanitarian sphere of knowledge. Despite the fact that a thorough analysis of negation began within the framework of formal logic, however later this pragmatic universal has become one of the fundamentals in various scientific fields of knowledge. It (negation) is also one of the most basic human concepts (meanings) and its presence is one of the criteria that reveals human nature and its expression in the humanitarian sphere of knowledge. Still, the discussions concerning this issue are of great value for understanding the functions of negation, and the analyses carried out in the following pages clearly and mainly gain arguments from the asymmetry hypothesis to explain phenomena about negatives’ meanings. That, the ability to deny is natural, which means a natural phenomenon. We analyze its various forms in the corpus and discourse of English in an interlinguistic perspective.