This study in cross-linguistic semantics explores the territory where logic, natural language and typology meet. While we can all understand the semantics of negation in its role of altering truth values, this ambitious book aims to take the reader much further. A unified analysis of the linguistic behavior of negation is hampered by the myriad variations in its syntax and semantics in languages around the world. This is true not just for the expression of negatives, but for their interpretation too.

De Swart deploys the framework of bi-directional Optimality Theory to develop a...