SemDial 2011: Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, pages 130–139. Los Angeles, California, 21–23 September 2011. Negation in dialogue Robin Cooper Jonathan Ginzburg Department of Philosophy, Linguistics Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cite´ and Theory of Science CLILLAC-ARP (EA 3967) University of Gothenburg 75004 Paris, France Box 200 [email protected] 405 30 Goteborg,¨ Sweden [email protected] Abstract 2 Basic desiderata In this section we specify desiderata any account of We consider the nature of negation in di- negation in dialogue needs to fulfill. The first one alogue as revealed by semantic phenomena is the most basic requirement, a sine qua non and is such as negative dialogue particles, psycholin- the basis for disagreement in dialogue. The others guistic experimentation, and dialogue corpora. concern the meaning of negative dialogue particles, We examine alternative accounts of negation that can be used in TTR (Type Theory with negative force, the presuppositions of negative polar Records), and conclude that an alternatives- questions, and finally psycholinguistic evidence. based account which relates to the psycholog- 1. Incompatibility between p and p ical notion of negation in simulation seman- ¬ tics is most appropriate. We show how this This requirement can be stated for any theory account relates to questions under discussion, of propositions, as in (1a); a version specific to dialogical relevance, and metalinguistic nega- situation theoretic or type theoretic conceptions tion. is given in (1b): (1) a. It is not the case that p and p are si- ¬ multaneously true. 1 Introduction b. s : T implies it’s not the case that s : 6 T ; s : T implies it’s not the case that Negation is one of the fundamental logical opera- ¬ s : T tors. It is also an essential component of any theory of questions and their answers in dialogue. Despite 2. The need for a semantic type NegProp its fundamental nature, a comprehensive, formal ac- The proper treatment of dialogue particles such count of the coherence of negative utterances in di- as English ‘No.’ requires the semantics to refer alogue is still very much an open question. In this to a subtype of the class of propositions that are paper we start by considering various fundamental negative. semantic desiderata an account of negation needs to fulfill. We then develop an account that attempts When its antecedent is positive, ‘No’ negates to satisfy these desiderata in the TTR (Type Theory the proposition in question, as in (2a). How- with Records) framework (Cooper, 2005a; Cooper, ever, when its antecedent is negative, ‘No’ ab- 2005b; Cooper, fthc; Ginzburg, 2012). Finally we sorbs one of the negations; this includes an- consider briefly the issue of the coherence of neg- tecedents whose negativity arises from a neg- 1 ative utterances in dialogue, sketching a treatment ative quantifier, as in (2d): that offers a unified account of “ordinary” and “met- 1Ginzburg and Sag (2000) claimed that the negative absorp- alinguistic” negation (Horn, 1989). tion property of ‘No’ is simply a preference; that there is po- 130 (2) a. A: Did Jo leave? B: No (= Jo did not when not occurring with morphological nega- leave.). tion is strengthened to become a negative in its b. A: Jo didn’t leave. B: No (= Jo did not own right, similar to bugger all, which does leave.). not, however, occur with morphological nega- c. A: Did Jo not leave? B: No (= Jo did tion in the relevant sense. not leave.). (5) a. *Jo didn’t do bugger all. (= Jo did d. A: Did no one help Bo? B: No (=No nothing) one helped Bo.) b. A: Jo did bugger all. ? ?? Given this, the meaning of ‘No’ requires a B: No/ Yes/Right (= Jo did nothing) specification as in (3): ‘No’ resolves to a neg- Admittedly, the reply No sounds odd in the ative proposition, which is a simple answer to 2 cases where there is no morphological negation MaxQUD. but in our judgement the reply Yes (as opposed to Right) sounds even worse and this would be (3) phon : no hard to account for on a purely morphological cat.head = adv[+ic] : syncat account. The danger with a purely morpholog- dgb-params.max-qud : PolQuestion ical account would be that one would end up cont : NegProp with a heterogeneous list of morphemes such c1 : SimpleAns(cont,max-qud) as not, squat and bugger all associated with varying effects on appropriate responses and One might perhaps be tempted to think that this miss the generalization that semantic negation phenomenon is morphological or syntactic and is playing an important role in the choice of re- that there is no need to introduce a type of nega- sponse. tive propositions into the semantic domain. The issue is a little complex and non-semantic in- 3. Constructive Negation and Negative Situa- formation certainly plays a role. Consider the tion Types examples in (4) (based on examples taken up It is widely recognized that positive Naked In- by one of the reviewers) finitive (NI) sentences describe an agent’s per- (4) a. A: Jo didn’t do squat. B: No (= Jo did ception of a situation/event, one which satisfies nothing) the descriptive conditions provided by the NI clause, as in (6a,b). More tricky is the need b. A: Jo did squat. B: ?No/??Yes/Right (= to capture the ‘constructive’ nature of negation Jo did nothing) in negative NI sentences such as (6c,d). These The construction (not). squat is behaving reports mean that s actually possesses infor- here like French (ne). pas. That is, squat mation which rules out the descriptive condi- tion (e.g. for (6c) Mary avoiding contact with tential for ambiguity. They developed an account thereof us- ing polyadic quantification. It seems to us though that the non- Bill), rather than simply lacking concrete evi- affirmative reading requires a distinct tune: a rise fall, whereas dence for this (e.g. Ralph shutting his eyes.). the affirmative reading is most naturally associated with a fall. As Cooper (1998) points out, Davidsonian ac- Moreover, we think that the double negation reading is possible counts (e.g. Higginbotham (1983)), are limited only for cataphoric ‘no’ as in (i); if the follow up sentence is to the far weaker (6f): omitted, a reading with a single negation ensues, regardless of intonation. (6) a. Ralph saw Mary serve Bill. (i) A: Did no one help Bo? B: No, someone did help him get b. Saw(R,s) s : Serve(m,b). up. ∧ c. Ralph saw Mary not serve Bill. 2We rely here on the notion of simple answerhood from Ginzburg and Sag (2000) which associates the set p, p as d. Ralph saw Mary not pay her bill. { ¬ } the simple answers of a polar question p?. e. Saw(R,s) s : Serve(m,b). ∧ ¬ 131 f. Saw(R,s) s : Serve(m, b) (10) no ∧ 6 phon : cat.head = adv[+ic] : syncat Cooper (1998) provides axioms on negative sit1 : Rec SOAs (infons) in situation semantics that at- dgb-params = : RecType spkr : Ind tempt to capture this, as in (7a,b). (7a) states " # that if a situation s supports the dual of σ, then cont = Want(spkr,sit1) : Prop ¬ s also supports positive information that pre- cludes σ being the case. (7b) tells us that if In fact, one could argue that this content should a situation s supports the dual of σ, then s also be strengthened to (11) or, given its non- supports information that defeasibly entails that defeasability, it could be viewed as a conven- σ is the case. tional implicature. (11) Want(spkr,sit1’), sit10 : T (7) a. s, σ[s : σ implies ¬ ∀ (Pos)ψ[s : ψ and ψ σ]] Regardless, the appeal to a negative situation ∃ ⇒ type seems called for, that is, s : T (s is a b. s, σ[s : σ implies ¬ ∀ witness for not T ) rather than s : T , s is not a (Pos)ψ[s : ψ and ψ > σ]] 6 ∃ witness for T . The appeal to negative situation types can also 4. p? = p? 6 ¬ be motivated dialogically. ‘No’ has an addi- In the classical formal semantics treatments for tional use which expresses a negative view to- questions the denotation of a positive polar in- wards an event or situation (the NegVol(ition) terrogative p? is identical to that of the corre- use). This is exemplified in (8): sponding negative polar p? (Hamblin, 1973; ¬ Karttunen, 1977; Groenendijk and Stokhof, (8) a. [A opens freezer to discover smashed 1997, for example). This is because the two in- beer bottle] A: (Oh) No! (‘I do not terrogatives have identical exhaustive answer- want this (the beer bottle smashing) to hood conditions. Indeed Groenendijk and happen’) Stokhof (1997), p. 1089 argue that this iden- b. [Little Billie approaches socket hold- tification is fundamental. There are a number ing nail] Parent: No Billie (‘I do not of reasons to avoid this identification. First, as want this (Billie putting the nail in the (12a) indicates, ‘Yes’ is infelicitous after a neg- socket) to happen’) ative polar question; Hoepelmann (1983) sug- gests that a question like (12b) is likely to be The need to distinguish the NegVol use from asked by a person recently introduced to the the use we discussed earlier is suggested inter odd/even distinction, whereas (12c) is appro- alia by (9). This demonstrates that there is po- priate in a context where, say, the opaque re- tential for misunderstanding between the two marks of a mathematician sow doubt on the ‘no’ ’s in a single context. B’s answer has two previously well-established belief that two is readings, the (implausible) one where B dis- even.