This paper provides insight into the phenomenon of extra negation, also known as non-compositional, expletive, or pleonastic negation. It provides a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch negative... Show moreThis paper provides insight into the phenomenon of extra negation, also known as non-compositional, expletive, or pleonastic negation. It provides a corpus-based analysis of the Dutch negative privative construction, which consists of zonder‘without’ and niet ‘not’, in which one negation does not cancel the other. Two basic factors that trigger an extra negation are discussed, and an explanation of why these factors facilitate the use of an extra negation is offered. It is argued that the extra negation has a semantic-pragmatic function that is reminiscent of similar instances of extra negation in Dutch and other languages, specifically sentences consisting of a main clause and a subordinate clause containing a word which expresses implicit negation. It is shown that in complex hypotactic constructions, the extra negation is used to make explicit in the subordinate clause that the presupposition of non-occurrence is rejected. Show less
Oratie uitgesproken door Prof.dr. Egbert L.J. Fortuin bij de aanvaarding van hoogleraar in de Russische taal en taalkunde aan de Universiteit van Leiden op 27 januari 2023
The paper investigates the semantics and grammatical features of the Russian particles znaj and sebe and also their combination znaj sebe, the study of which has until recently been rather... Show moreThe paper investigates the semantics and grammatical features of the Russian particles znaj and sebe and also their combination znaj sebe, the study of which has until recently been rather neglected and which often treated as synonymous. We show that they are in fact quasi-synonymous. What both particles (and their combination) have in common is the durative, imperfective nature of the verb that combines with them. However, there are also considerable semantic differences between these particles. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of corpus data, we show that these semantic differences are reflected in the question of whether the subject can be inanimate, the combinatory possibilities with pust’, and the possibility of combining the particle with a perfective verb. Show less
