Minya Liu
(Humboldt University, Berlin)

will present her work on

A register approach to negation and polarity
in American and British English

Monday, June 27
4.15-5.45 pm
on zoom

Abstract:
Negative concord (NC) is considered ungrammatical in standard English but used in various English dialects, in contrast to negative polarity items (NPIs) which is present in the grammar of all English speakers. Our research question addresses whether and to what extent NC constructions are sensitive to registers, i.e., linguistic variations influenced by certain situational characteristics (Biber, 2009). We report on two rating studies conducted in the USA and UK, where we used social relation manipulations to create formal vs. informal situations. Results show that across both samples, NC was rated less appropriate than NPI, with a register effect in the AE data. In terms of interpretations, we did not find any register effect, but a difference in negativity between NC vs. NPI.

Link:
Meeting ID: 995 1639 6639
Password: SynSem