AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO NEGATIONS: STUDIES IN CROATIAN AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE MODELS OF PROCESSING NEGATIONS

Abstract

Negations can be found in almost all world languages, and they are well described within linguistic theories. The underlying cognitive processing of negations has been researched from the psycholinguistics perspective. Most of the existing research used behavioural methodology and sentence-picture verification tasks in assessing negation processing. First investigations made during the 1970s, showed that affirmative sentences are remembered better, and processed faster and more accurately when compared to negations. The new line of research conducted at the beginning of the new century aimed to discover the cognitive processes underlying these differences. Different authors proposed several models to explain the differences. Still, new research has revealed additional differences in processing various negations which might not be explained by the extant models. Recent investigations in the Croatian language have added to these assumptions, as they have revealed differences in the processing of various negations which might depend on several linguistic cues, e.g., position in the sentence, type, and number of negative markers. As Croatian allows double negations and negative concord as regular grammatical forms, it seems important to continue the research in Croatian. Usage of relatively new methods borrowed from cognitive neuroscience might give insight into neurological mechanisms of negation processing, and possibly help widen the existing models. The present study aims to present the existing research on negation processing in Croatian and other languages, compare the existing models of negation processing, and to discuss the adequacy of experimental tasks used in research. Finally, it aims to propose guidelines for further research of negations in the Croatian language.