昨日の記事「#5670. なぜ英語には単数形と複数形の区別があるの？ --- Mond での質問と回答より」 ([2024-10-24-1]) で，否定 (negation) の話題を最後に出しました．言語において否定とは何か．これはきわめて大きな問題です．論理学や哲学からも迫ることができますが，ここでは言語学の観点に絞ります．
言語学の用語辞典に頼ることから始めましょう．まず Crystal (323--24) より引用します．
negation (n.) A process or construction in GRAMMATICAL and SEMANTIC analysis which typically expresses the contradiction of some or all of a sentence's meaning. In English grammar, it is expressed by the presence of the negative particle (neg, NEG) not or n't (the CONTRACTED negative); in LEXIS, there are several possible means, e.g. PREFIXES such as un-, non-, or words such as deny. Some LANGUAGES use more than one PARTICLE in a single CLAUSE to express negation (as in French ne . . . pas). The use of more than one negative form in the same clause (as in double negatives) is a characteristic of some English DIALECTS, e.g. I'm not unhappy (which is a STYLISTICALLY MARKED mode of assertion) and I've not done nothing (which is not acceptable in STANDARD English). . . .
A topic of particular interest has been the range of sentence STRUCTURE affected by the position of a negative particle, e.g. I think John isn't coming v. I don't think John is coming: such variations in the SCOPE of negation affect the logical structure as well as the semantic analysis of the sentence. The opposite 'pole' to negative is POSITIVE (or AFFIRMATIVE), and the system of contrasts made by a language in this area is often referred to as POLARITY. Negative polarity items are those words or phrases which can appear only in a negative environment in a sentence, e.g. any in I haven't got any books. (cf. *I've got any books).
次に Bussmann (323) を引用します．論理学における否定に対して言語学の否定を，次のように解説しています．
In contrast with logical negation, natural language negation functions not only as sentence negation, but also primarily as clausal or constituent negation: she did not pay (= negation of predication), No one paid anything (= negation of the subject NP), he paid nothing (= negation of the object NP). Here the scope (= semantic coverage) of negation is frequently polysemic or dependent on the placement of negation, on the sentence stress . . . as well as on the linguistic and/or extralinguistic context. Natural language negation may be realized in various ways: (a) lexically with adverbs and adverbial expressions (not, never, by no means), indefinite pronouns (nobody, nothing, none), coordinating conjunctions (neither . . . nor), sentence equivalents (no), or prepositions (without, besides); (b) morphologically with prefixes (in + exact, un + interested) or suffix (help + less); (c) intonationally with contrastive accent (in Jacob is not flying to New York tomorrow the negation can refer to Jacob, flying, New York, or tomorrow depending which elements are stressed); (d) idiomatically by expressions like For all I care, . . . . Formally, three types of negation are differentiated: (a) internal (= strong) negation, the basic type of natural language negation (e.g. The King of France is not bald); (b) external (= weak) negation, which corresponds to logical negation (e.g. It's not the case/it's not true that p); (c) contrastive (= local) negation, which can also be considered a pragmatic variant of strong negation to the degree that stress and the corresponding modifying clause are relevant to the scope of the negation (e.g. The King of France is not bald, but rather wears glasses. The linguistic description of negation has proven to be a difficult problem in all grammatical models owing to the complex interrelationship of syntactic, prosodic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects.
この2つの解説に基づいて，言語学における否定に関する論点・観点を箇条書き整理すると次のようになるでしょうか．
1. 否定の種類と範囲
・ 文否定 (sentence negation)
・ 節否定 (clausal negation)
・ 構成要素否定 (constituent negation)
2. 否定の実現様式
・ 語彙的 (lexically): 副詞，不定代名詞，接続詞，前置詞など
・ 形態的 (morphologically): 接頭辞，接尾辞
・ 音声的 (intonationally): 対照アクセント
・ 慣用的 (idiomatically): 特定の表現
3. 否定の形式的分類
・ 内的（強い）否定 (internal/strong negation)
・ 外的（弱い）否定 (external/weak negation)
・ 対照的（局所的）否定 (contrastive/local negation)
4. 否定の作用域 (scope)
・ 否定辞の位置による影響
・ 文強勢による影響
・ 言語的・非言語的文脈による影響
5. 2重否定 (double negative)
・ 方言や非標準英語での使用
・ 文体的に有標な肯定表現としての使用
6. 極性 (polarity)
・ 肯定 (positive/affirmative) vs. 否定 (negative)
・ 否定極性項目
7. 否定に関する統語的，韻律的，意味的，語用論的側面の複雑な相互関係
8. 自然言語の否定と論理学的否定の違い
この一覧は，否定の複雑さと多面性を示しています．案の定，抜き差しならない問題です．
・ Crystal, David, ed. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. 295--96.
・ Bussmann, Hadumod. Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Trans. and ed. Gregory Trauth and Kerstin Kazzizi. London: Routledge, 1996.
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