A Natural History of Negation

by Laurence R. Horn

This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.

Genres: Philosophy, Linguistics, History, Logic

684 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 1989

Reviews

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece. The most comprehensive, thorough, and intelligent summary on negation research. To negate is not only a logical operation restricted to deductive languages. To negate is a core set of structures and operations that also occur in natural language. Its meaning, interpretation, and use are problematic. Mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics of negation have been studied by Laurence Horn, the most prominent researcher on negation during the last decades. From classic Greek insights to recent pragmatic studies, this book has it. All the important topics are included and, more important, deeply understood.

[Jared Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a bad book. I could not have done my master thesis without it. No complaints!