A Grammaticalizational Approach To Transferred Negation

"Transferred Negation"was proposed initially by R. Quirk et at. In 1972 in A Grammar of Contemporary English, which refers to the transferrence of the negator"not"from the subordinate clause to the predicate of matrix clause. Ever since, many of the linguists and scholars home and abroad (Zhang Zhenbang, 1996; Horn, 1978; Xu Shengheng, 1983; Xiong Xueliang, 1988 etc.) offered their own definitions and made systematic and in-depth analysis of the special structure, and substantial achievements have been made. Yet most of the studies were carried out on the sentence structure itself, viewing it as a mere syntactic phenomenon or linguistic product, limited to its syntax and the mechanism, and no systematic explanation of the final realization of this marked sentence structure was given. In the light of grammaticalization, however, grammar is never static, excluded or self-sufficient, but rather, dynamic, developmental and closely related to extra-lingual factors. This thesis endeavors to tackle this issue from a fresh perspective, that is a grammaticalizational perspective, makes some systematic and in-depth research into the various aspects of this construction, respectively they are: the semantic feasibility, the pragmatic necessity, the pathway to the final realization of Transferred Negation. And comes to the conclusion that the construction– Transferred Negation is a result of pragmatic grammaticalization. Grammaticalization was first put forward by the French linguist Meillet in 1912. The resurrection of the study of grammaticalization in the 1970's shifted its focus from diachronic to synchronic study, and consequently broke the chronic separation of the two by the structuralists ever since Saussure. The combination of the diachrony and synchrony brought to an end many of the unsolved theoretical issues. Grammaticalization became the focus of study for more and more linguists.The study of grammaticalization has offered a new insight into linguistic research. By researching on the origin and fossilization of grammatical forms, the process grammar came into being, and the ways language acquired its grammar, we may get to understand the nature of grammar. All linguistic theories aim to discover the nature of grammar of human language. And the study of the grammaticalization of transferred negation would thus be helpful to deepen our understanding of the nature of grammar.This paper consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 offers the definition, background and the development of grammaticalization theory. Chapter 2 centers mainly on the unidirectionality hypothesis, some basic principles and the mechanism of grammaticalization: reanalysis and analogy. Chapter 3 introduces the researches made by the scholars home and abroad on transferred negation, mainly its syntactic characteristics and semantic feasibility. Chapter 4 is the core part of this paper and focuses mainly on the pragmatic motivation of transferred negation. It is held by this paper that transferred negation is closely interrelated with the principle of politeness, and the face theory in particular. The purpose of politeness as a pragmatic phenomenon is to maintain and improve the harmonious interrelationship between people and minimize the conflict and antagonism in language exchange, with taking care of the other's face as its core. The degree of politeness is decided by two rules: don't impose; give options. By enlarging the distance between the negator and the part that is negated, negative transferrence weakens the force of negation. At the same time, the forward transferrence of the negator"not", which is a part of the theme, would inevitably result in themetic splitting, thus weakens the proposition of the subordinate clause, and the conflict and antagonism caused by negation. In both cases, politeness is realized. Chapter 5, another core part of the paper, expounds mainly on the pathway for the grammaticalization of transferred negation. The grammaticalization of transferred negation is a process of conventionalization of pragmatic inferrence. On the basis of"short-circuited implicature", this paper comes up with the schema of the pathway for the grammaticalization of transferred negation. Chapter 6 provides some further proof for the grammaticalization of transferred negation. The last part is the conclusion. It draws the conclusion that TN construction is a result of pragmatic Grammaticalization.