37.1867, Confs: 3rd Workshop on Negation in Language and Beyond (Germany)

Fri May 22 11:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1867. Fri May 22 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1867, Confs: 3rd Workshop on Negation in Language and Beyond (Germany)

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Date: 21-May-2026
From: Silvia Schaefer [si.schaefer at em.uni-frankfurt.de]
Subject: 3rd Workshop on Negation in Language and Beyond

3rd Workshop on Negation in Language and Beyond
Short Title: NegLaB III

Date: 01-Dec-2026 - 02-Dec-2026
Location: Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; General
Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition
Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Submission Deadline: 15-Sep-2026

The Collaborative Research Center 1629 “Negation in Language and
Beyond” (NegLaB) at the Universities of Frankfurt, Tübingen and
Göttingen invites linguists and psychologists to submit papers to the
3rd NegLaB Workshop (NegLaB III) to be held at the University of
Frankfurt on the 1st and 2nd of December 2026.
The NegLaB III Workshop aims to advance our understanding of how the
expression of negation is cross-linguistically associated with
grammatical and non-linguistic cognitive operations and we welcome
contributions on phenomena related to negation (in particular the
three issues outlined below) across all areas of linguistics (syntax,
semantics, pragmatics, phonology and morphology) as well as other
domains (language acquisition, psycholinguistics, historical
linguistics and multilingualism).
Description:
Negation is a fundamental property of human language that is tightly
intertwined with human cognitive capacity. Negation allows speakers
and hearers to reason about what is not the case, a unique property of
human language. Thus, negation not only expresses a clearly defined
and well-circumscribed grammatical function, it also interacts with
various aspects of grammar and cognition. Specifically, it has been
shown that the acquisition and processing of negation encompass
linguistic as well as non-linguistic cognitive procedures. Therefore,
negation constitutes an ideal testing ground to enable us to
differentiate cognitive mechanisms that are grammatical in nature from
those that are shared with other cognitive domains, such as memory,
attention, decision making and cognitive control.
We invite talks concerning one of the following general domains:
A.       Syntax-Semantics interface: How is negative semantics
realized morphosyntactically?
Negation’s semantics is often analyzed as a single propositional
operator, yet its morphosyntactic realization is strikingly diverse,
often involving multiple exponents. The semantics of negation would
lead one to expect negation to be expressed by a single morpheme
positioned at the beginning of the clause. The rich and variable
morphosyntax would lead us to expect that negation requires a number
of conditions in the semantics.  The question arises as to how to
resolve this tension between this rich morphosyntax and its more
straightforward semantics.
B.      Interaction with other categories: How can we explain
similarities and interactions between negation and other grammatical
categories?
Negation seems to stand out with respect to other operators, but the
question is still open as to whether this is to be attributed to
negation itself or to the properties of the other elements (like
indefinites, modals, etc.).
In natural language, expressions of negation typically encode a
symbiotic association between negation and other operations on meaning
such as negative indefinites, focus or TAM markers. While a close
study of these items may reveal empirical motivation to separate their
various meaning components, the strong tendency of negation to be
associated with other operators is a so far unexplained observation
across languages and phenomena.
C.      Processing and Cognition: What are the general properties of
processing and acquisition of negation? Which nonverbal and cognitive
procedures interact with or resemble negation?
Another major problem is whether negated sentences are processed by
mechanisms specific to negation or by general cognitive processes.
Neuro-linguistics evidence suggests a two-step interpretation
procedure: first the affirmative proposition is processed, then its
truth value is reversed, often via inhibition. This is reflected in
acquisition, since children produce negative utterances relatively
early, but all the aspects of negation take a rather long time to be
acquired. Downstream effects of this prolonged acquisition process can
be seen in adult processing as the comprehension of negative sentences
is more costly than for positive sentences. This is supposedly due to
the inhibition of the corresponding positive sentence that is
necessary for the interpretation of negative statements.
Abstract Submissions:
Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint
abstract per author or two joint abstracts per author. Abstracts
should be anonymous, written in English and not exceed 2 A4 pages
(Times New Roman, 12pt font, single line spacing, 2.5 inches margins).
Please send your submission to neglab.crc1629 at gmail.com by 15th
September 2026. Notification will be provided on October 15th.
Every talk will be allotted 40 minutes in total (30 minutes talk + 10
minutes discussion).

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