About the workshop

Negation is a universal phenomenon found across languages, allowing speakers of natural languages to deny, contradict, or reverse the truth proposition. It manifests in varied ways cross-linguistically, and has been studied extensively in the linguistics literature. Despite its apparent simplicity, the phenomenon of negation continues to interest linguists and is discussed at the cross-section of several interfaces including syntax-semantics, syntax-discourse, syntax-processing, using the methodological tools from formal generative theory, typological analyses, experimental work, psycholinguistic tools and computational models. 

In the generative literature, negation is a well-known diagnostic to understand the clause structure revealing information about the tense, aspect and agreement projections. Other related phenomena like Negative polarity items, negative concord and double negation are topics of interesting studies that offer insights into scope and operator theory. Thus, the topic of negation holds much promise for students of linguistics as it does not merely mark contradiction but offers an understanding of the architecture of grammar.  Studying negations as a phenomenon provides researchers a window into the mechanisms of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, providing opportunities to understand how languages vary and change, and how cognitive processes help shape the interpretation of meaning.

The Winter School on Negation organised jointly between IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur aims to introduce graduate students of linguistics to relevant topics in negation like sentential negation and negative concord, work on Negative Polarity Items. 

We invite comprehensive talks on related topics including-

• Typological overview of patterns of negation and related phenomena.

• Cross-linguistic survey of syntactic locus of negation (NegP, negation head, or lexical items).

• The phenomena of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items—semantic and/or syntactic analyses.

• Scope in Negation and its computational resolution in processing.

• Language acquisition of negation (universal stages vs language-specific paths).