Sentential negation of abstract and concrete conceptual categories: a brain decoding multivariate pattern analysis study

We rarely use abstract and concrete concepts in isolation but rather embedded within a linguistic context. To examine the modulatory impact of the linguistic context on conceptual processing, we isolated the case of sentential negation polarity, in which an interaction occurs between the syntactic operator not and conceptual information in the negation's scope. Previous studies suggested that sentential negation of concrete action-related concepts modulates activation in the fronto-parieto-temporal action representation network. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined the influence of negation on a wider spectrum of meanings, by factorially manipulating sentence polarity (affirmative, negative) and fine-grained abstract (mental state, emotion, mathematics) and concrete (related to mouth, hand, leg actions) conceptual categories. We adopted a multivariate pattern analysis approach, and tested the accuracy of a machine learning classifier in discriminating brain activation patterns associated to the factorial manipulation. Searchlight analysis was used to localize the discriminating patterns. Overall, the neural processing of affirmative and negative sentences with either an abstract or concrete content could be accurately predicted by means of multivariate classification. We suggest that sentential negation polarity modulates brain activation in distributed representational semantic networks, through the functional mediation of syntactic and cognitive control systems

Negative Polarity Licensing at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Recent work on the syntax-semantics in- terface (see e.g. (Dalrymple et al., 1994)) uses a fragment of linear logic as a 'glue language' for assembling meanings compositionally. This paper presents a glue language account of how negative polarity items (e.g. ever, any) get licensed within the scope of negative or downward-entailing contexts (Ladusaw, 1979), e.g. Nobody ever left. This treatment of licensing operates precisely at the syntax-semantics interface, since it is car- ried out entirely within the interface glue language (linear logic). In addition to the' account of negative polarity licensing, we show in detail how linear-logic proof nets (Girard, 1987; Galllet, 1992) can be used for efficient meaning deduction within this 'glue language' framework