Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Gotzner N
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8502883 | biostudies-literature | 2021
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Gotzner Nicole N Mazzarella Diana D
Frontiers in psychology 20210927
Negated gradable adjectives often convey an interpretation that is stronger than their literal meaning, which is referred to as 'negative strengthening.' For example, a sentence like 'John is not kind' may give rise to the inference that <i>John is rather mean</i>. Crucially, negation is more likely to be pragmatically strengthened in the case of positive adjectives ('not kind' to mean <i>rather mean</i>) than negative adjectives ('not mean' to mean <i>rather kind</i>). A classical explanation o ...[more]