Doubling of Negation

Abstract

Doubling of negation, where a declarative is initiated and finished with negation as shown in (1) below, consists of two different structures: clause-initial negation and clause-final negation, and these need not be related. (1) Inte har jag sett honom inte. (Fenno-Swedish) not has I seen him not ‘I have certainly not seen him’ (Bergroth 1928: 159) Clause-initial negation, which contributes with the negative semantics in the clause, can be divided into three subcategories according to Lindström (2009:168): (i) responsive negation, (ii) interrogative negation, and (iii) additive negation. Out of these three subtypes, the responsive negation, which is prosodically unstressed and primarily used in dialogues, is possible with clause-final negation yielding thus doubling of negation. Clause-final negation does not contribute with independent negative semantics and it is as such dependent on the presence of a negative element in the clause proper.