Cécile Meier

Since December 2024, there is a new manuscript on negation. [Antonymy and Adjectival Horn Scales] The paper explores three phenomena that suggest negation goes beyond its classical logical function: (i) the distinction between weak and strong negation, (ii) the non-cancellation of double negation, and (iii) the failure of the Square of Opposition to generalize to Adjectival Horn Scales. All these phenomena are related to the interaction of negation with gradation. Focusing on scalar adjectives, I adopt a theory of gradability (following Heim and von Stechow) where adjectives relate individuals to degrees, and a silent universal degree quantifier, the positive operator, POS, is involved. Strong negation (or contrary negation) is classical negation that takes narrow scope relative to this degree quantifier and is typically expressed via affixal negation. Weak negation (classical logical negation), in contrast, takes wide scope and typically corresponds to sentential negation. Negative strengthening results from degree quantifier movement and is thus a scope effect. Double negation does not cancel out due to the intervening degree quantifier. To align the Square of Opposition with Adjectival Horn scales, domain widening plays a role and it turns out that weak adjectives combine with an silent existential degree quantifier. It is argued that the degree quantifier is force variable, much like quantifiers in the nominal or modal domains. Attenuation and understatement observed with double negation is explained as an interplay of scope inversion and domain widening that also motivates the existential degree quantifier.

In December 2023, I presented my work on contrary negation in Bochum at the Colloquium on "Philosophy of Language, Logic, and Information." In Mai 2023, I gave a talk on "Contrary Negation" at the Special Workshop on the History of Negation in the honor of Larry Horn at SALT. [Slides]. A previous version of this talk was also presented in Mai 2022 at GGS in Stuttgart under the title "How many negations are there?". And there is a seminar script on Negation and Antonymy that I used in class [Script].

In March 2023, I gave a talk at the Workshop 'History of Negation' hosted online by Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal and Chiara Gianollo on "Deverbal Adjectives and Negatability Patterns" (in collaboration with Helmut Weiß). The main topic of the talk was to explain why the negative affix in "unaufhörlich" cannot be dropped and how "unaufhörlich" is related to "anfänglich". "Anfänglich" prohibits affixation with "un-". The explanation rests on the assumption that "aufhörlich" is an word-internal NPI and requires (word-internal) NPI licensing. And "anfänglich" is the corresponding PPI. This paper was presented in an earlier version in November 2022 in Budapest at FASL first. [Slides]

In March 2024, Carla Umbach and me hosted a workshop AG 9 at the DGfS on "The spectrum of kinds". Following this event at Universtiät Bochum, we moved on to Universtiät Köln to discuss the topics raised at the workshop more intensely. Check out the program of our workshop on the website [program]!

In September 2023, I presented a talk on "On Differences in Kind Readings". I related the frequencies of different classes of adjectival modifiers of two nouns in German: "Auto" 'car' and "Flugzeug" 'airplane' to the psychological notions of Conceptual Distinctiveness (how many obvious subcategories there are to a concept), object frequency in typical visual input, and recognition performance in picture matching tasks. And, I calculate the entropies for the distribution of adjectival modification of the two nouns in the (DWDS core corpus). High entropy of the modification distribution is a good predictor for high distinctiveness and high object frequency in visual data for the concept related to the noun modified (many, even overlapping subcategories are available for the concept representing "Auto" 'car', wooden cars, blue cars, big cars etc.). Low distinctiveness might be related to what is called 'well-establishedness of a kind' in linguistics. This hyposthesis is currently tested in a greater corpus.[Slides] [Entropy - R Markdown]

In May 2019, I was at SALT in Los Angeles and presented my poster on Swiss German definite articles. I relate the choice of the article to the temporal interpretation of the DP. Whereas in languages like English definite DPs are ambiguous between a time-dependent and a time independent reading, Swiss German distinguishes the reading by using the short or the long version of the definite article [Poster][Paper]. In the mean time, I am an associate member of the Network Definiteness across Domains where I also presented my work on definiteness at several occasions.

In January 2019, I gave a presentation in a mini-workshop on result clause constructions at Frankfurt University. The aim of the talk was to show where the differences between result clause constructions and resultatives are. I elaborated the view that resultatives may get a similar meaning as result clause constructions, an idea brought up by Monica-Mihaela Rizea and Manfred Sailer, who organized the workshop together. Jack Hoeksema was invited speaker. [Slides]