Background & Rationale. The processing of statements with constituent negation, where negative particles act as focus markers, suggests the activation of plausible alternatives, as shown by Capuano et al. (2021). This talk presents the results of a pilot study (Study1) that replicated Capuano’s method for German and identified polarity effects, and of a follow-up study (Study2) that aimed to distentangle the semanticpragmatic information encoded in the connectors and polarity encoded by the negator.
Method. While Study1 involved two conditions: negative-BUT and affirmative-AND (“Ich sehe keine Tasche, aber ich sehe ...” vs. “Ich sehe eine Tasche und ich sehe ...”), Study2 introduced an additional condition – negative-AND (“Ich sehe keine Tasche und ich sehe ...”). In both studies, native German speakers (N in PS: 108), with a mean age of 31 years (range: 19-72), completed sentences with a word they believed best suited the given context. Responses were analyzed by examining the proportion of co-hyponyms (i.e., plausible alternatives) relative to other semantic categories, and by assessing the semantic similarity between stimulus nouns and participants’ responses using scores from the de wiki semantic space.
Results & further expectations. Study1 revealed significant polarity effects (p<0.001), with participants more frequently selecting co-hyponyms in the negative condition compared to other semantic categories. Study2 is expected to explore the potential influence of the connectors “but” and “and” on this effect.
References. Capuano, F., Dudschig, C., Günther, F., & Kaup, B. (2021). Semantic similarity of alternatives fostered by conversational negation. Cognitive Science, 45(7).