A Contrastive Study On The Categories Of Double Negation In English And Chinese:from Pragmatic Perspective

Double negation(DN),a complicate and significant category of semantics,has attracted wide attention for decades in linguistic field.Previous studies are mainly conducted within semantic and syntax framework,which have dealt with the focus of negation,the types of structures,and the relationship with the corresponding affirmation.But so far,few scholars take the contextual factors into consideration.More importantly,pragmatic ambiguity of DN has not been specifically explored yet,which has influenced the research advance of double negation fundamentally.Based on the theory of cognitive pragmatics,this paper categorizes double negation in English and Chinese from the pragmatic perspective.According to the dependence of contexts in sentences,they can be classified into two categories: static and dynamic double negation;and then based on the degree of affirmation and differences of subjective quantity,they could be further divided into intensified,diminished and fuzzy affirmation.Finally,the manifestations of DN are respectively discussed in phonetic,morphological,syntactic and pragmatic.The similarities between pragmatic types of double negation in English and Chinese could be summarized into two aspects:(1)There are both dynamic and static double negation in English and Chinese,and dynamic double negation can be both intensified and diminished affirmation but static double negation can merely express one of them.(2)The meanings of DN are all restricted by the rules of language system in forms,which are manifested in four levels: phonetic,morphological,syntactic and pragmatic.The differences between pragmatic types of double negation in English and Chinese could be summarized into three aspects:(1)In English double negation generally tends to express diminished affirmation,while in Chinese it is inclined to express intensified affirmation.(2)there are numerous forms of“explicit marker+implicit structure”in English,e.g.“cannot help but do sth,too…not to”,while there exist completely diverse types by adjusting the order of negative components in Chinese,such as“wubu,buwu,meiyoubu,bushimei”(?????????????);(3)morphological markers are few in English,but plentiful in Chinese and frequently co-occur with DN.Additionally,Chinese negative adverbs are more abundant than that in English,for instance,“bushimeiyou(???(?)),wubu(??)”and“not without”are similar in meaning and structure,but the first one belongs to dynamic category,and the next two can only express diminished affirmation belonging to static category.This study is of both theoretical and practical significance.In theory,DN in two languages follows the cognitive principle of iconicity.People use different subjective markers simultaneously to enrich the connotation of DN.In practice,the investigation of the regularity of DN helps people to distinguish and choose appropriate language forms effectively,which promotes interpersonal communication.Besides,the recognition of DN could also be applied in improving the quality of Machine Translation through connecting different phrases with corresponding contexts.