A Statistical Study of the Usage of No-Negation and Not-Negation in Spoken Academic English

Abstract

AbstractThe objective of this research is to present a statistical study on negation in English. It will be focused on a particular type of negation, the so-called no-negation and not-negation, in a specific type of discourse: spoken academic English. My hypotheses will be based on other studies developed on the same topic: first, as an introduction to our main study, I will compare the frequency of usage of these types of negation between spoken and written discourse. My hypothesis is tat it will be higher in the former case. Secondly, we will observe if not-negation is more frequent than no-negation in this type of spoken discourse. I believe that this study may have some degree of significance, as I have not found any studies of this type of negation in spoken and written academic English. Hence, I expect it can provide an initial approach that may be useful for future studies