https://linguistlist.org/issues/36/2568/
2nd Workshop on Negation in Language and Beyond
Short Title: NegLaB II
Date: 01-Dec-2025 - 02-Dec-2025
Location: Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Contact: Silvia Schaefer
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://www.neglab.de/
Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; General
Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition
Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2025
NegLaB, the Collaborative Research Center 1629 “Negation in Language and
Beyond” at the Universities of Frankfurt, Tübingen and Göttingen invites
linguists and psychologists to submit papers to the 2nd NegLaB Workshop (
NegLaB II) to be held at the University of Frankfurt on the 1st and 2nd of
December 2025.
The NegLaB II Workshop aims to advance our understanding of how the expression
of negation is cross-linguistically associated with grammatical and non-
linguistic cognitive operations. We aim at determining whether the set of
operations observed in negative utterances is part of negation itself or,
rather, arises as an effect of the grammatical system and cognitive functions.
We welcome contributions on phenomena related to negation (in particular the
three issues outlined below) across all areas of linguistics (syntax,
semantics, pragmatics, phonology and morphology) as well as other domains (
language acquisition, psycholinguistics, historical linguistics and
multilingualism).
Description:
Negation is a fundamental property of human language that is tightly
intertwined with human cognitive capacity. Negation allows speakers and
hearers to reason about what is not the case, a unique property of human
language. Thus, negation not only expresses a clearly defined and well-
circumscribed grammatical function, it also interacts with various aspects of
grammar and cognition. Specifically, it has been shown that the acquisition
and processing of negation encompass linguistic as well as non-linguistic
cognitive procedures. Therefore, negation constitutes an ideal testing ground
to enable us to differentiate cognitive mechanisms that are grammatical in
nature from those that are shared with other cognitive domains, such as memory
, attention, decision making and cognitive control.
We invite talks concerning one of the following general domains.
A. Syntax-Semantics interface: How is negative semantics realized
morphosyntactically?
Negation’s semantics is often analyzed as a single propositional operator,
yet its morphosyntactic realization is strikingly diverse, often involving
multiple exponents. The semantics of negation would lead one to expect
negation to be expressed by a single morpheme positioned at the beginning of
the clause. The rich and variable morphosyntax would lead us to expect that
negation requires a number of conditions in the semantics. The question arises
as to how to resolve this tension between this rich morphosyntax and its more
straightforward semantics.
B. Interaction with other categories: How can we explain similarities and
interactions between negation and other grammatical categories?
Negation seems to stand out with respect to other operators, but the question
is still open as to whether this is to be attributed to negation itself or to
the properties of the other elements (like indefinites, modals, etc.).
In natural language, expressions of negation typically encode a symbiotic
association between negation and other operations on meaning such as negative
indefinites, focus or TAM markers. While a close study of these items may
reveal empirical motivation to separate their various meaning components, the
strong tendency of negation to be associated with other operators is a so far
unexplained observation across languages and phenomena.
C. Processing and Cognition: What are the general properties of processing and
acquisition of negation? Which nonverbal and cognitive procedures interact
with or resemble negation?
Another major problem is whether negated sentences are processed by mechanisms
specific to negation or by general cognitive processes. Neuro-linguistics
evidence suggests a two-step interpretation procedure: first the affirmative
proposition is processed, then its truth value is reversed, often via
inhibition. This is reflected in acquisition, since children produce negative
utterances relatively early, but all the aspects of negation take a rather
long time to be acquired. Downstream effects of this prolonged acquisition
process can be seen in adult processing as the comprehension of negative
sentences is more costly than for positive sentences. This is supposedly due
to the inhibition of the corresponding positive sentence that is necessary for
the interpretation of negative statements.
Abstract Submissions:
Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract
per author or two joint abstracts per author. Abstracts should be anonymous,
written in English and not exceed 2 A4 pages (Times New Roman, 12pt font,
single line spacing, 2.5 inches margins).
Please send your submission to [email protected] by 15th of October
2025. Notification will be provided on November 1st.
Every talk will be allotted 40 minutes in total (30 minutes talk + 10 minutes
discussion).