36.2569, Reviews: Negation in English and other languages: Otto Jespersen; Brett Reynolds, Peter Evans; Olli O. Silvennoinen (2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2569. Sun Aug 31 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2569, Reviews: Negation in English and other languages: Otto Jespersen; Brett Reynolds, Peter Evans; Olli O. Silvennoinen (2025)

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Date: 31-Aug-2025
From: Anastasiia Petrenko [ap2315 at cam.ac.uk]
Subject: Typology: Otto Jespersen; Brett Reynolds, Peter Evans; Olli O. Silvennoinen (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1200

Title: Negation in English and other languages
Series Title: Classics in Linguistics
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/501

Author(s): Otto Jespersen; Brett Reynolds, Peter Evans; Olli O.
Silvennoinen

Reviewer: Anastasiia Petrenko

SUMMARY
This book, “Negation in English and Other Languages” (henceforth
“Negation”), written by Otto Jespersen and edited by Brett Reynolds
and Peter Evans with an introduction by Olli O. Silvennoinen, is a
newly second edition of Jespersen’s 1917 classic. This edition makes
this work more accessible, preserving its historical significance and
enhancing its usability and applicability for contemporary readers.
The editors’ contributions are significant. The new edition is
supplemented with a new introduction to familiarize the reader with
the context and limitations of the time when the book was written; the
method of transcription has been modernized and glosses added to the
examples extracted from languages other than English; the bibliography
has been made more accessible by adding links to internet resources,
as well as some new section titles; the abbreviations have been made
clearer; some main body paragraphs have been moved to footnotes; and
the citations have been verified by double-checking the page from
which the examples were taken. These editorial changes enhance the
book’s accessibility without refuting Jespersen’s original arguments.
Silvennoinen’s introductory essay provides readers with essential
context. It offers a concise biography of Jespersen, defining the
place of “Negation” within the broader framework of his “Modern
English Grammar” and outlining Jespersen’s contributions to the field
of linguistics. It further explains the most important terms used in
the book and notions touched upon by Jespersen, as well as mentioning
some problems with the work. This introduction performs valuable
functions: it helps novice readers orient themselves within the
historical context of Jespersen’s work, while also highlighting the
aspects of his analyses that remain relevant to current scholarship.
“Negation” spans over thirteen chapters, which can be grouped into
three main clusters: (i) diachronic and typological perspectives on
negation (Chapters 1-3), (ii) pragmatic and syntactic phenomena
(Chapters 4-10), and (iii) the peculiarities of English negation
(Chapters 11-13). Together, these chapters provide a broad perspective
on the concept of negation in a wide range of languages through
Jespersen’s detailed analysis and compelling examples.
Chapters 1-3: Diachronic tendencies and Jespersen’s Cycle
The opening chapters lay out the foundations of Jespersen’s approach.
The first chapter introduces the general tendencies of how negative
expressions are formed and develop, using the material from Latin,
German, English, French, Danish and other Scandinavian languages.
Jespersen identifies a recurrent diachronic pattern in which a
negative marker weakens over time and then is reinforced by an
additional word, which afterwards will go through the same stages as
the original word. This process, later termed “Jespersen’s Cycle”
(Dahl 2009: 88), has become one of the most widely cited concepts in
linguistics. Chapter 2, “Strengthening of Negatives”, builds up on
this framework, showing how phonetic and semantic reinforcement
processes contribute to the strengthening of negatives, and how
positive expressions can diachronically shift into negatives.
Jespersen starts with a classical example, illustrating how a phonetic
change conveying no additional meaning substituted “ne” with “non” in
Latin. He explains such an addition of a consonant as a way of making
the negative item to sound more impressive. Then, he elaborates on the
role of subjuncts, defined as a modifier of a modifier as in
“extremely hot weather” (Jespersen 2025: 13), and underlines that such
an exaggeration makes negation more productive. Furthermore,  using
the French material, he sheds some light on how some adverbs gain the
tendency to be used not only with a certain group of verbs but with
all the representatives of the semantic category (Jespersen 2025: 14).
This elaboration and justification of the tendencies with examples
allows the reader, especially university students and those new to the
topic of negation, to get the bigger picture both diachronically and
synchronically. Chapter 3, “Positive becomes Negative”, provides the
reader with case studies in French and Spanish, supplemented by a
contrastive analysis with Germanic and Norse languages. This chapter
demonstrates Jespersen’s comparative and historical reach, continuing
to drive research in the field of language change.
Chapter 4-10: Pragmatics, syntax and semantic peculiarities of
negation
The central chapters turn to more fine-grained aspects of negation.
Chapter 4, “Indirect and Incomplete Negation”, takes into account
various methods through which negation can be expressed directly and
indirectly. In terms of indirect negation, Jespersen explores
questions, imperatives, different collocations (like “you won’t catch
me doing it” and “excuse me doing”), ironic incredulity, ironic
“much”, the word “the devil”, hypothetical clauses, continuation with
“much less”, and incomplete negation (sentences with “hardly”). All
the cases are illustrated with extensive examples from older
literature (like Shakespeare), as well as more modern authors (like
Shaw). Again, all English examples are compared and contrasted in
detail with instances from other languages. Jespersen’s intuitions
here are often ahead of his time and resemble the principles that will
be known later as Gricean implicature (Grice 1975) and scalar
implicature (Horn 1989; McCawley 1995). Chapter 5 addresses the
distinction between special and nexal negation, grappling with
questions of scope that remain central in semantics today. Chapter 6,
“Negative Attraction”, sheds more light on the co-occurrence of
colloquial language practices and literary approaches to forming
negation. The question is addressed based on material from not only
English but also Spanish, Danish, and Latin. Chapter 7 offers a
typology of double negation – distinguishing languages where it yields
affirmation from those where it strengthens negation. Jespersen
remains sensitive to nuances of emphasis and emotional force, noting
that double negation sometimes intensifies rather than cancels the
negative meaning of the sentence. In Chapter 8, “The Meaning of
Negation”, Jespersen explores semantic and pragmatic extensions and
argues that negation does not always lead to the contrary meaning,
backing it up with the examples of numerals, adjectives, pronouns,
quantifiers and modal verbs. Chapter 9, “Weakened Negatives”, focuses
on cases in which negative forms do not negate but, in contrast,
confirm that the event will take place. He also brings up the topic of
politeness and how negative forms serve the role of sounding less rude
(like “not at all” in English).
In Chapter 10, negative connectives are analysed. Jespersen provides
the reader with a schema of all the different ways in which
connectives can be applied. Again, these chapters demonstrate
Jespersen’s attentiveness to semantics and discourse, drawing
extensively on literary examples.
Chapters 11-13: Negation in English
The final part of the book focuses in on English. Chapter 11, “English
Verbal Forms in n’t”, deals with the position of “not” in an English
sentence, both the full form and the contraction. He also pays
particular attention to the colloquial negation form “ain’t’” and
tracks its development in written sources – from being first a vulgar
form to then being used by educated speakers as well.
Chapter 12 is entirely dedicated to “but” and its negative force. A
distinguishing feature of this and the previous chapter is that they
contain only examples from English, without any contrastive comparison
from other languages.
Chapter 13, “Negative Prefixes”, however, sheds more light on
morphological forms of negation in different languages.
The book concludes with an appendix on negative lexical items and a
list of sources, as well as references, a name index and a language
index.
EVALUATION
In this well-written book, Otto Jespersen provides the reader with a
detailed analysis of how negation has developed and is used in English
and other languages. The book is well-structured: the reader is first
provided with the bigger picture of the concept of negation in general
and then is motivated to study deeply the material of English in the
concluding chapters. All the assumptions and claims of Otto Jespersen
are backed up by extended examples from written sources from the 10th
century to the 20th century, which allows the reader to analyse the
concept of negation synchronically and diachronically. The first
chapter and the last three chapters are especially valuable for novice
linguists who want to learn more about negation and English and take
their first steps towards the contrastive analysis of negation in
different European languages. The material covered in the book from
Chapter 2 to Chapter 10 could be particularly beneficial for graduate
students who have more experience in the semantics and syntax of
negation, as it provides them with contrastive analysis of negation in
different languages over a broad period of time.
The scholarly value of this volume lies not only in Jespersen’s
original insights but also in the broad scope of his research, which
later contributed to the development of a number of theories. First of
all, his assumptions and analyses of incomplete and indirect methods
of negation would be later shaped as Gricean implicature (Grice 1975)
and scalar implicature (Horn 1989; McCawley 1995). Secondly, his
comments on the different types of double negation have contributed to
the field of politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987). Last but not least,
his treatment of quantifiers and modals is directly relevant to the
current debates in dynamic semantics and Default Semantics (Jaszczolt
2005), for which the question of their context-dependence is central.
Overall, Jespersen’s book succeeds in shedding more light on the
notion of negation and recommends itself as an accessible, detailed
and reliable source for the intended reader. The new edition has also
enhanced its availability, as the editors checked the cited pages
mentioned in the source and reference lists and added hyperlinks to
online versions of references where possible.
However, some limitations are inevitable. Jespersen sometimes blurs
the line between semantic meaning, pragmatic inference and syntactic
features, relying heavily on the analysis from the perspective of
phonetics for some cases. Also, despite the editors’ clarifications,
the distribution of explanatory footnotes is uneven. While some
difficult terms are explained (e.g. footnote 2 on page 5), Chapters 4
and 5, full of terms differentiating various types of negation, do not
include enough footnotes; explanatory footnotes would be particular
beneficial for potential readers who are novice linguists, but the
footnotes presented focus mostly on typographical errors.
This edition makes clear several avenues for further research. First
of all, as it focuses on European languages only, it leaves a
typological gap and requires further exploration in the field of other
languages. Secondly, Jespersen relies mostly on literary examples,
which results in the need for further extended analysis of the corpus
material, including different oral and written genres. Thirdly,
Jespersen’s intuitions about inference and scalar implicature can be
re-examined within the frameworks of Gricean implicature, Horn’s
scales and Default Semantics.
In sum, Jespersen’s volume is an indispensable source for anyone who
is interested in the topic of negation. The new edition of the classic
work has met my expectations, giving me valuable insights that
enhanced my understanding of different ways of forming and applying
negation in different languages, both from a synchronic and diachronic
perspective. Whether for novice readers or experienced researchers,
this book significantly contributes to linguistics.
REFERENCES
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language
Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dahl, Osten. 2009. Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe.
Linguistics. 79-106. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1979.17.1-2.79   (21
August 2025)
Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. Syntax and Semantics 3:
Speech Acts. 41-58.
Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Jespersen, Otto. 2025. Negation in English and Other Languages.
Berlin: Language Science Press.
Jaszczolt, Kasia M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a
Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
McCawley, James D. 1995. Jespersen’s 1917 monograph on negation. Word.
29-39.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Anastasiia Petrenko is a PhD Candidate in Theoretical and Applied
Linguistics at the University of Cambridge where she writes a thesis
on the concept of time and temporal adverbs in different languages and
teaches semantics and pragmatics to undergraduate students.
Anastasiia’s research interests combine semantic and pragmatic
ambiguities, corpus studies, discourse analysis and cross-linguistic
variation.



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