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This study aims at analysing the processing of linguistic negation expressed by the French marker «ne... pas». In reference to linguistic studies (Culioli, 1990; Fauconnier, 1983) and logical ones (Grize, 1990), negation is defined as an operation of disengagement ( « décrochement » ) from the domain on which it bears. Various scopes of negation are accounted for by considering the level on which this disengagement is achieved, within the operations which construct the utterance.
Two experiments have been conducted with adult subjects.
In experiment 1, a comparison of reading times showed a difference between a «polemic» negation at the enunciative (utterance) level bearing on the speaker's endorsement of the sentence, and a «descriptive» negation, bearing on its content. In addition, another distinction seems to hold between a negation which bears on an element, and a negation bearing on the relation among several elements.
Experiment 2 used a word recognition task. It supported the hypothesis that a «polemic» negation (at the enunciative level) triggers a disengagement from the current discourse space and the construction of a new space.
Furthermore, both experiments showed that variations in the scope of negation depend on contextual factors (such as repetition or contradiction with previously given information) , which are outside of the sentence.
