{"id":620,"date":"2019-01-30T12:53:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T12:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=620"},"modified":"2019-01-30T16:57:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:57:49","slug":"sense-and-polarity-or-why-meaning-can-drive-language-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2019\/01\/30\/sense-and-polarity-or-why-meaning-can-drive-language-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Sense and polarity, or why meaning can drive language change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generally a sentence can be negative or positive depending on what one actually wants to express. Thus if I\u2019m asked whether I think that John\u2019s new hobby \u2013 say climbing \u2013 is a good idea, I can say It\u2019s not a good idea<\/em>; conversely, if I do think it is a good idea, I can remove the negation not <\/em>to make the sentence positive and say It\u2019s a good idea<\/em>. Both sentences are perfectly acceptable in this context.<\/p>\n

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From such an example, we might therefore conclude that any sentence can be made positive by removing the relevant negative word \u2013 most often not<\/em> \u2013 from the sentence. But if that is the case, why is the non-negative response I like it one bit<\/em> not acceptable, odd when its negative counterpart I don\u2019t like it one bit<\/em> is perfectly acceptable and natural?<\/p>\n

This contrast has to do with the expression one bit<\/em>: notice that if it is removed, then both negative and positive responses are perfectly fine: I could respond I don\u2019t like it<\/em> or, if I do like it, I (do) like it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It seems that there is something special about the phrase one bit<\/em>: it wants to be in a negative sentence. But why? It turns out that this question is a very big puzzle, not only for English grammar but for the grammar of most (all?) languages. For instance in French, the expression bouger\/lever le petit doigt <\/em>`lift a finger\u2019 must appear in a negative sentence. Thus if I know that John wanted to help with your house move and I ask you how it went, you could say Il n\u2019a pas lev\u00e9 le petit doigt<\/em> `lit. He didn\u2019t lift the small finger\u2019 if he didn\u2019t help at all, but I could not say Il a lev\u00e9 le petit doigt<\/em> lit. ‘He lifted the small finger\u2019 even if he did help to some extent.<\/p>\n

Expressions like lever le petit doigt <\/em>`lift a finger\u2019, one bit, care\/give a damn, own a red cent<\/em> are said to be polarity sensitive: they only really make sense if used in negative sentences. But this in itself is not the most interesting property.<\/p>\n

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What is much more interesting is why they have this property. There is a lot of research on this question in theoretical linguistics. The proposals are quite technical but they all start from the observation that most expressions that need to be in a negative context to be acceptable are expressions of minimal degrees and measures. For instance, a finger or le petit doigt <\/em>`the small finger\u2019 is the smallest body part one can lift to do something, a drop (in the expression I didn\u2019t drink a drop of vodka yesterday<\/em>) is the smallest observable quantity of vodka, etc.<\/p>\n

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Regine Eckardt, who has worked on this topic, formulates the following intuition: ‘speakers know that in the context of drinking<\/em>, an event of drinking a drop<\/em> can never occur on its own \u2013 even though a lot of drops usually will be consumed after a drinking<\/em> of some larger quantity.\u2019 (Eckardt 2006, p. 158<\/a>). However the intuition goes, the occurrence of this expression in a negative sentence is acceptable because it denies the existence of events that consist of just drinking one drop.<\/p>\n

What this means is that if Mary drank a small glass of vodka yesterday, although it is technically true to say She drank a drop of vodka<\/em> (since the glass contains many drops) it would not be very informative, certainly not as informative as saying the equally true She drank a glass of vodka<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However imagine now that Mary didn\u2019t drink any alcohol at all yesterday. In this context, I would be telling the truth if I said either one of the following sentences: Mary didn\u2019t drink a glass of vodka <\/em>or Mary didn\u2019t drink a drop of vodka. <\/em>But now it is much more informative to say the latter. To see this consider the following: saying Mary didn\u2019t drink a glass of vodka <\/em>could describe a situation in which Mary didn\u2019t drink a glass of vodka yesterday but she still drank some vodka, maybe just a spoonful. If however I say Mary didn\u2019t drink a drop of vodka<\/em> then this can only describe a situation where Mary didn\u2019t drink a glass or even a little bit of vodka. In other words, saying Mary didn\u2019t drink a drop of vodka yesterday<\/em> is more informative than saying Mary didn\u2019t drink a glass of vodka yesterday <\/em>because the former sentence describes a very precise situation whereas the latter is a lot less specific as to what it describes (i.e. it could be uttered in a situation in which Mary drank a spoonful of vodka or maybe a cocktail that contains 2ml of vodka, etc)<\/p>\n

By using expressions of minimal degrees\/measures in negative environments, the sentences become a lot more informative. This, it seems, is part of the reason why languages like English have changed such that these words are now only usable in negative sentences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Generally a sentence can be negative or positive depending on what one actually wants to express. Thus if I\u2019m asked whether I think that John\u2019s new hobby \u2013 say climbing \u2013 is a good idea, I can say It\u2019s not a good idea; conversely, if I do think it is a good idea, I can remove the negation not to make the sentence positive and say It\u2019s a good idea. Both sentences are perfectly acceptable in this context. From such…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,30,31,80,7,83,20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[52],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-languages","category-french-languages","category-grammaticalisation","category-grammaticalization","category-historical-linguistics","category-languages","category-semantics","category-syntax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}