La portée de la négation. Un examen de quelques facteurs sémantiques et textuels pertinents à sa détermination dans des énoncés authentiques

Sammanfattning: In this work, which deals with the interpretation of negated sentences in French with respect to the scope of ne…pas, (Neg), interest is focussed on the semantic concept of scope referred to in statements such as: “The scope of a given negative is the constituent interpreted as being denied”. The aim of the study is to identify some of the factors enabling the addressee of a negated sentence to discern what part(s) of it the negative was intended to affect. Negated sentences in isolation tend to remain unspecified as to the scope of Neg, but not so sentences in context. The investigation reported here was therefore carried out on authentic texts. The scope of ne…pas was determined by means of a test of entailment. This test makes it possible to establish what positive inferences, if any, native speakers are prepared to make from a given sentence provided with its context. In the analysed material, two main factors turned out to be at work. First, context, as represented by an affirmative sentence, XZ, attached asyndetically to a partially identical negated sentence, Neg XY, proved sufficient to identify Y as the scope of Neg where Neg XY was used to contradict a previous statement XY. Context also designated Y as the scope of Neg when a fact, X, established by the preceding text, could be matched against the content expressed by Neg XY. Secondly, some linguistic items, particularly certain types of adverbials, were found to attract negation, independently of context, on account of their semantic structure. This study also includes a discussion of the interaction between contextual and semantic factors, as well as of problems connected with the testing of certain semantic predicates, and with the definition of the scope of negation.