The grammatical and syntactical paradigm of the diachronic negation category

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the grammatical and syntactical category of negation in diachronic systems. Particular attention is paid to the problem of negation in linguistics, and to negation as a grammatical category and syntactical category on the morphological and syntactic level. The authors argue that, broadly speaking, negation can be expressed in natural languages through morphological and syntactic tools. Negation is expressed by means of a hierarchically organized system of heterogeneous linguistic units connected by similar semantic functions. Based on this theoretical assumption, it is explained that negation as a grammatical category and as a syntactical category can be realized on both morphological and syntactic levels. On the morphological level, negation suffixes and individual part-of-speech paradigms are taken into account, while, on the syntactic level, the entire negative sentence containing one or more negations is considered. The diachronic study of the category of negation at different levels helps to observe the development of specific parts of speech that can express negation and provides a basis for further research on negation in different discourses and communicative situations.