By Lennart Fritzsche Comment Closed

We are happy to announce a talk by Lisa Hofmann (Stuttgart) in the Semantics Colloquium.

The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link. 

Date: December 11, 2025

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.

Title: Negativity without negation: Counterfactual propositions and at-issueness

Abstract: 
This work addresses the question of what are the levels of representations involved in representing the discourse-effect of negation, by investigating the anaphoric polarity-sensitivity of negativity-tags. Anaphoric negativity­-tags (neg-­tags) occur naturally after negative clausal antecedents, but not affirmative ones (1). These include: (2a) English neither­-tags, (2b) ‘not even’ tags (Klima 1964), and (2c) factive uses of elliptical ‘why not’ interrogatives (Hofmann 2022; Anand et al. 2021).

(1) I think that the defense lawyer’s closing statement {didn’t make / # made} an impact in this case.
(2) a. Yeah, and neither did the testimonies.
     b. Yeah, not even on the public perception.
     c. Yeah, and the jury foreperson explained why not.

The presentation investigates neg-­tag licensing, presenting evidence for a discourse-­level view of negativity. While prior accounts link neg­-tags to clausal negation (sentential negativity hypothesis, e.g., Klima 1964), I build on recent proposals that neg-­tags are sensitive to counterfactual propositional content in a discourse-­level representation (discourse negativity hypothesis, Krifka 2013; Hofmann 2023). In two experiments, I present evidence that an utterance is “negative” in discourse, when It introduces a propositional discourse referent that is false according to speaker intuitions, and (at least relatively) at-issue. The findings support a generalization on the level of discourse, that goes beyond clausal representations and allows for pragmatic enrichment.