This thematic section focuses on the methodology of cognitive linguistics. It explores ways of answering three types of research questions: those concerning the mental representations of linguistic categories, the linguistic representation of cognitive phenomena, and the connections between… read more
One cross-linguistically recurrent asymmetry between affirmation and negation is the neutralization of tense-aspect distinctions in negatives. A functional explanation proposed for this is that in their typical discourse context negatives have less need for temporal specification than… read more
This paper discusses constructional variation in the domain of contrastive negation in English, using data from the British National Corpus. Contrastive negation refers to constructs with two parts, one negative and the other affirmative, such that the affirmative offers an alternative to the… read more
This paper examines the register variation of negative conditionals in English. The main expression types for English negative conditionals are negative if-conditionals and unless-conditionals. These two constructions were studied in five registers of the Corpus of Contemporary American English… read more
