Verifying Negative Sentences

Abstract

In the long history of psycholinguistic research on verifying negative sentences, an often-reported finding is that participants take longer to correctly judge negative sentences true than false, while being faster to judge their positive counterparts true (e.g. Clark & Chase, Cogn Psychol 3(3):472−517, 1972; Carpenter & Just, Psychol Rev 82(1):45–73, 1975). While many linguists and psycholinguists have strongly advocated the idea that the costs and complexity of negation can be explained by appeal to context, context-based approaches have not been able to provide a satisfying account of this polarity*truth-value interaction. By contrast, the alternative theory of negation processing, which says that negation is processed by separately representing the positive, does provide a plausible account. Our proposals provide a means for reconciliation between the two views since we argue that negation is a strong cue to a positive context. Here we present our account of why and when negation is often apparently processed via the positive. We review many of the factors that are seen to be at play in sentence verification involving negation. We present evidence that participants’ adoption of the positive-first procedure in sentence-picture verification tasks is conditioned by context.

Negation processing in Chinese–English bilinguals: insights from the Stroop paradigm and an orientation task

“…We raise this question considering the contrasting results on bilinguals' processing of negation. Context (i.e., background information), reported a significant factor in negation processing(Nieuwland &Kuperberg, 2008;Wang, Sun, Tian, & Breheny, 2021), is more complex in Manning et al, (2018) compared withĆoso and Bogunović (2019). Even though the current study experimentally supports Manning et al (2018),Ćoso and Bogunović (2019) andWen and Schwartz (2014) in Expt.1 and Expt.2 respectively, we did not test the potential influence of complexity of background information.…”

Pragmatic felicity facilitates the production and comprehension of negation

“…These theories can explain why, in many tests of negation processing -including ours -there is an interaction between the polarity and truth value of a sentence. Other theories argue that under the right experimental and pragmatic conditions, the true state of affairs is represented and accessible to comprehenders immediately, suggesting that it is possible for negation to be processed fluently in a single step, especially in supportive contexts (as is also reflected in the contexts effects seen in our data, though we note that even in our most supportive contexts, negation was processed slower; Tian et al, 2010Tian et al, , 2016Papeo, Hochmann, & Battelli, 2016;Wang, Sun, Tian, & Breheny, 2021). Although this body of literature is highly complementary to the data we have presented here, our studies here are not designed to test between competing theories about the mechanism by which negation is represented.…”

Does negation influence the choice of sentence continuations? Evidence from a four-choice cloze task

“…Pragmatic theories stipulate that language processes use the information provided in the linguistic input to make inferences about the sentence content and the intended source of relevance (e.g., Breheny, 2019 ). When negative sentences are not presented in a supportive context, they become relevant in relation to the positive argument ( Tian et al, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2021 ). According to this explanation, negative sentences without contextual support are more likely to be processed in a two-step fashion ( Kaup et al, 2007 ): the positive argument is first computed and subsequently denied.…”

“…Pragmatic factors like relevance and informativity 3 can also modulate the processing cost associated with negation ( Albu et al, 2021 ; Nordmeyer & Frank, 2014 ; Tian et al, 2010 , 2016 ; Xiang et al, 2020 ). Processing difficulty can be reduced when negative sentences are used in a context in which they address a negative question under discussion (QUD) by means of grammatical structures like cleft sentences ( Tian et al, 2010 , 2016 ) or wh- questions ( Wang et al, 2021 ). In a visual world paradigm study ( Tian et al, 2016 ), when hearing Bill has not opened his brother’s window , participants look at both the negated (open window) and the actual state of affairs (closed window) for a rather long time (until hearing window), whereas when hearing It was Bill who hasn’t opened his brother’s window , they look significantly faster at the actual state of affairs (closed window).…”