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Construction(s) of intersubjectivity: Contrastive and metalinguistic negation in English and Finnish

July 2017

Conference: IPrA 2017
At: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Authors:

Olli Silvennoinen

Åbo Akademi University

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Construction(s) of intersubjectivity: contrastive and metalinguistic negation in English and

Finnish

IPrA 2017, Belfast

Olli O. Silvennoinen, olli.silvennoinen@helsinki.fi, @OlliSilv

University of Helsinki

Adversative vs. corrective coordination:

(1) a. Peter is intelligent butADV he doesn’t work.

b. Peter is not intelligent butCORR stupid.

(2) a. Pekka on älykäs mutta hän ei käy töissä.

Pekka be.3SG intelligent butADV 3SG NEG.3SG go.CNG work.INE

‘Pekka is intelligent but he doesn’t work.’

b. Pekka ei ole älykäs vaan tyhmä.

Pekka NEG.3SG be.CNG intelligent butCORR stupid

‘Pekka is not intelligent but stupid.’

Constructions in English:

(3) Expanded negative-first:

Cos I mean it's ... it's not the bikers ... it's the other vehicle that's on the road (BNC)

(4) [not X but Y]:

so that's what I'm saying not this Wednesday but next Wednesday I'll be going down

straight in the morning (BNC: KCJ, 1043)

(5) [not X, Y]:

But then she said you get erm ... you put it on and you get a brush and er not a brush, a

roller (BNC: KCL, 970)

(6) Expanded negative-second:

Yeah I fed him, I didn't starve him (BNC: KD1, 4489)

(7) [Y not X]:

It's only for birds, not for me (BNC: KBA, 148)

(8) [Y and not X]:

Well, just something to nibble on that’s savoury and not sweet (BNC: KD1, 1475)

Constructions in Finnish:

(9) Expanded negative-first:

mutta tuo ei oo korea

but that NEG.3SG be.CNG fair

tuo o enemmän niinku miehen näkönen

that be.3SG more PART man.GEN looking

‘But that one isn’t fair, that one looks more like a man’ (Conversation Analysis Archive:

SG435, 40_50, 03:02)

(10) [ei X vaan Y]:

se ei oo suinkaan sillon enää illalla

it NEG.3SG be.CNG at.all then anymore evening.ADE

vaan se on päivällä jo

vaan it be.3SG day.ADE already

‘It is not in the evening but during the day already’ (Conversation Analysis Archive:

SG435, 172_182, 04:51)

(11) [ei X kun Y]:

ei Soini ku Sola

NEG.3SG Soini kun Sola

‘not Soini but Sola’ (Conversation Analysis Archive: SG435, 162_172, 05:49)

(12) [Y eikä X]:

se oli mun ja Antin idea eikä sun

it be.PST.3SG my and Antti.GEN idea NEG.3SG.PART your

‘it was my and Antti’s idea, and not yours’ (Conversation Analysis Archive: SG396,

53:19)

Contrastive negation in English and Finnish:

English (n = 310)

Finnish (n = 70)

[not X but Y]

[ei X vaan Y]

[ei X kun Y]

[ei X mutta Y]

27%

11%

[not X, Y]

[ei X, Y]

Expanded negative-first

62%

Expanded negative-first

30%

[Y not X]

11%

[Y ei X]

[Y and not X]

[Y eikä X]

Expanded negative-second

Other

Interactional functions:

(13) British National Corpus: KCL, 970

Mary: […]But then she said you get erm ... you put it on and you

→ get a brush and er not a brush, a roller.

(14) British National Corpus: KBM, 182‒193

1 Chris: Good.

2 How the hell did Margaret get one of those?

3 Lynne: → Not an Uno she's got, it's the one up.

4 What, what's [the name of it? ]

5 Chris: [Yeah, she's got ] an Uno!

6 Lynne: → It isn't, it's

7 Chris: It is!

8 Robert: Tipo.

9 Chris: No!

10 → [It's not

11 Lynne: [Well

12 Chris: a Tipo, it's an Uno!

(15) Conversation Analysis Archive: Sg435, 152_162, 00:24

1 Matti: se on Pekka Pohjola (.)

‘it is Pekka Pohjola’

2 >eikä #ee oo# ku< Paavo.

NEG.PART NEG.3SG be.CNG kun Paavo

‘no, it isn’t, it’s Paavo’

3 =Paavo ] Pohjola #nii#

‘Paavo Pohjola, yeah’

(16) Arkisyn: Sapu117, 111‒112

1 Päivi: mä kuunteli vähän huonosti sen lohikeittojutun ni siis

olik se joku tommonen teijän

‘I listened the thing about the salmon soup a bit badly, so I mean, was yours

something like that’

2 siis ei alkuruoka-annos-määrä

so NEG.3SG appetizer-portion-amount

‘I mean, not the amount of an appetiser’

3 vaan joku vähä isompi satsi vai

vaan some slightly big.COMP batch or

‘but a slightly bigger portion, or?’

4 Waiter: joo se on semmone niiŋku ruokasa keitto mitä tos ulkona

mainostetaa

‘yeah, it’s like a filling soup that they’re advertising outside’

(17) Arkisyn: Sapu118, 230‒233

1 Päivi: siitä mikä se perheohjelma

it.ELA what that family.programme

‘of it, what [was] the family programme?’

2 → ei Sorrento ku

NEG Sorrento kun

‘not Sorrento but…’

3 Varpu: Serraano

‘Serrano’

4 Jatta: Serraano

‘Serrano’

(18) Conversation Analysis Archive: Sg396, 8:53

1 Akseli: mitä se siis mitä (.) oliks se oikeesti huono. (0.2)

vai.

‘what, he I mean what, was he really bad? or?’

2 Taavi: oli. (0.3) se ## Melis sano siin vaan että (.) et meiän

kanssa on raskasta työskennellä #ja mth mth ja että kun

kaikki pitää vääntää rautalangasta ja#

‘he was. he only said that it’s tough working with us and that he has to spell

everything out and’

3 Akseli: vaikka (0.3) siis toisin sanoen

although so other.INST words.INST

‘although, so in other words’

4 → ei puffannut vaan haukku.

NEG.3SG publicise.PTCP vaan criticise.PST

‘he didn’t publicise but criticised (us)’

5 Taavi: niin toisin sanoen.

‘yeah, in other words’

(19) Conversation Analysis Archives: SG435, 60_70, 06:41

1 Jussi: .hhh tää on Do[rothea V:::::iik.]

.hhh this be.3SG Dorothea Viik

‘.hhh this is Dorothea Viik’

2 Liisa: [(--) ketä nää on.]

who these be.3PL

‘(‒ ‒) who are these’

3 tää on se [raita. ]

this be.3SG that stripe

‘this is the stripe’

4 Jussi: → [ja siis] V- V-

and so

‘and I mean V- V-’

5 Päivi: nii.

yeah

‘yeah’

6 Jussi: → Viek. (.) siis ei Viik. (.) [Vik ] (.) v:aan:. Viek.

Viek so NEG Viik Vik vaan

Viek

‘Viek (.) I mean not Viik. (.) Vik (.) but Viek’

7 Päivi: [°joo°]

yeah

‘yeah’

8 Jussi: → .hh Viik.

.hh Viik

‘.hh Viik’

Abbreviations:

1, 2, 3

first, second, third person

ADE

adessive case

AFF

affirmative particle

CNG

connegative

COMP

comparative

ELA

elative case

GEN

genitive case

INE

inessive case

INST

instructive case

NEG

negative

PART

discourse particle

plural

PRT

partitive case

PST

past tense

PTCP

participle

question particle

REFL

reflexive pronoun

singular

Data sources:

Arkisyn: A morphosyntactically coded database of conversational Finnish. Database compiled at

the University of Turku, with material from the Conversation Analysis Archive at the University

of Helsinki and the Syntax Archives at the University of Turku. Department of Finnish and

Finno-Ugric Languages, University of Turku.

Audio BNC: the audio edition of the Spoken British National Corpus. Phonetics Laboratory,

University of Oxford. http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/AudioBNC

Conversation Analysis Archive. Database compiled at the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and

Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki.

References:

Anscombre, Jean-Claude & Oswald Ducrot. 1977. Deux mais en français? Lingua 43(1): 23–40.

Deppermann, Arnulf. 2014. ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’: Recipient Design by Using Negation to

Constrain an Action’s Interpretation. In Grammar and Dialogism: Sequential, Syntactic, and

Prosodic Patterns between Emergence and Sedimentation, edited by Susanne Günthner,

Wolfgang Imo, and Jörg Bücker, 15–51. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.

Gates Jr., Dave L., and Orin Dale Seright. 1967. Negative-Contrastive Constructions in Standard

Modern English. American Speech 42 (2): 136–141.

Givón, Talmy. 1978. “Negation in Language: Pragmatics, Function, Ontology.” In Syntax and

Semantics 9: Pragmatics, edited by Peter Cole, 69–112. New York: Academic Press.

Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hopper, P. (1987). Emergent Grammar. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the

Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 139–157)

Horn, Laurence R. 1985. Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity. Language 61 (1):

121–174.

Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Krawczak, Karolina. 2016. Objectivity, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity: Integrating Two

Cognitive-Functional Theories. Functions of Language 23 (2): 179–213.

Larrivée, Pierre. 2017. Metalinguistic negation and its discursive impact. Presentation given at The

Pragmatics of Negation - Aspects of Communication conference, Stockholm University, 31 May.

McCawley, James D. 1991. Contrastive Negation and Metalinguistic Negation. CLS 27 (2): 189–

206.

Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. Repair After Next Turn: The Last Structurally Provided Defense of

Intersubjectivity in Conversation. American Journal of Sociology 97 (5): 1295–1345.

Silvennoinen, Olli O. Forthcoming 2017. Not only apples but also oranges: Contrastive negation

and register. In Turo Hiltunen, Joseph McVeigh & Tanja Säily (eds.), Big and Rich Data in

English Corpus Linguistics: Methods and Explorations. (Studies in Variation, Contacts and

Change in English.) Helsinki: VARIENG.

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Academic Press.

ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.

Negation in language: Pragmatics, function, ontology

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This is an open-access publication that can be found here: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/19/silvennoinen/ This paper investigates the register variation of contrastive negation in English, a family of constructions that has so far not been explored in corpus-linguistic studies. Contrastive negation refers to expressions in which one element is negated and another one is presented as its alternative (e.g., not once but twice; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him). The study combines the methods of corpus linguistics and interactional linguistics to investigate expressions that are highly resistant to automatised queries, comparing conversation and newspaper discourse on the one hand (“apples and oranges”), and various sub-registers of newspaper discourse on the other (“apples and apples”). The results show that the expression of contrastive negation is highly differentiated by register: conversation is dominated by asyndetic clause combinations while in writing, various constructions are attested more evenly. Sub-registers of writing also display variation: argumentative texts have a particularly high number of negative-contrastive constructions while in sports reports their prevalence is much lower. The study shows that both apples-and-apples and apples-and-oranges comparisons shed light on construction choice: data needs to be not only big enough but also rich and thick enough for this to be possible in the analysis of highly polysemous items.

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