І. Zakharchuk, М. Shostak

Bukovyna State Finance Academy

Chernivtsi, Ukraine

NEGATION IN THE FINANCIAL NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE

The category of negation is a linguistic, cognitive, and intellectual phenomenon. Universal and diverse in its manifestation, it is fundamentally important to human cognition and communication. As Horn and Kato put it: “Negative utterances are a core feature of every system of human communication. Negation and its correlates – truth-values, false messages, contradiction, and irony – can thus be defining characteristics of the human species.” [3, 4].

Negation in newspaper discourse is usually presented by negative sentences and words with negative semantics. Forming negative sentences and negative interrogatives in English may seem complicated due to negative markers different positions in the sentence.

The topic of the present paper is important for verbalizing world view in terms of affirmation and negation. The financial newspaper discourse has become very popular among the various layers of the society, covert and overt negation plays a crucial role in the Reader’s understanding the information.

The objective of this paper is to give a systemic description of negative markers in the financial newspaper discourse and define the regularities and irregularities of negation expression that is necessary for generating and interpreting author’s discourse with negation.

The object of the research is negative parts of speech (no, not, never, nobody, nothing, neither, nor, nowhere) and negative sentences as the means of negation expression in the financial newspaper discourse.

The subject lies in semantic, functional, and pragmatic relationship of negation markers in the financial newspaper discourse.

First, let’s undertake a definitional analysis of the lexeme ‘negative’ with the help of encyclopedic dictionaries to get a relatively objective definition:

a) negative, adjective (American Encyclopedic Resource):

1. containing, expressing, or implying a denial or refusal; that says “no”: a negative reply; 2. opposite to something regarded as positive; 3. lacking in positive character or quality; 4. lacking evidence, affirmation, etc.; 5. having the effect of diminishing, depriving, or denying; 6. faultfinding, antagonistic, destructive, etc.: negative criticism, a negative political campaign [6].

b) negative, adjective (British Encyclopedic Resource) :

1. bad or harmful: The crisis had a negative effect on trade. The whole experience was definitely more positive than negative. 2. considering only the bad side of something/somebody; lacking enthusiasm or hope: Scientists have a fairly negative attitude to the theory. ‘He probably won't show up.’ ‘Don't be so negative.’ 3. expressing the answer ‘no’: His response was negative. They received a negative reply [7].

Second, a comparative analysis of the definitions reveals some common and differential features of their interpretation:

1. In both definitions the adjectival lexeme negative is used to express not positive or harmful characteristic or quality of something or somebody; negative side of something or somebody;

2. It used when we want to give the answer no to some question or affirmation;

3. The American Encyclopedic Resource interprets the adjectival lexeme negative in a broader sense; it also indicates its usage with the effect of something diminishing, depriving; faultfinding, antagonistic and destructive.

Third, we would like to define the frequency of the referred negative means in the Corpus of Contemporary American English [5].

Table 1. Negatives Frequency Usage

№	Negative means	Frequency	Example
1.	no	833269	Why is there no record of Sylvester's acceptance of the Donation?
2.	not	1784767	Despite long and careful research I have not been able to discover dependable evidence for what literature often calls the golden years.
3.	never	284446	These developments are never exclusively salutary.
4.	nobody	37133	Nobody knew that a Japanese man owned it.
5.	nothing	137262	There is nothing bad or wrong about these provisions.
6.	neither	32894	Is it any shock, then, that neither the Federal Reserve Bank of New York nor the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a partner in regulatory inadequacy, saw that the S. S. Citigroup was headed for the shoals?
7.	nor	39902	But I can not break through the hard outer shell, nor eavesdrop well, nor follow conversations when I do not know the subject, nor keep pace decoding the flow of everyday talk, movies, or television news.
8.	nowhere	11583	They came down the mountainside, a whole multitude of them, appearing from nowhere, and took up positions on the ground around the perimeter of the platform, a tight clicle of furry balis swaying slowly as li rocked by a nonexistent breeze or to the beat of an inaudible melody.

As we can see from the table, the most frequent means of negative expression, according to Corpus of Contemporary American English, are not, no and never [1, 2].

But the results of the quantitative analysis must be followed by the functional semantic analysis of the referred markers in “The 1” discourse.

1). Vaux + NOT (e.g. "We do not see debt restructuring as an option," EU economy commissioner Olli Rehn said.). In this sentence NOT is used with the auxiliary verb to express the negation of some idea.

2). Vaux + NOT (e.g. “Absent a restructuring, the debt won't decline until Greece frees up cash to pay it off.”). This sentence shows NOT usage with the auxiliary verb to express the negation of some action or process.

3). Verb + NOT (e.g. “But Belarus is looking not to the European Union or the International Monetary Fund but to a grouping of ex-Soviet republics led by Russia”.).This sentence is the example of combinability of the verb in Present Continuous Tense with NOT for clarification.

4). NO + one (e.g. “Brenda has been an outstanding team member for the Denver office and has played a major role in the ascent of this office,” said Dylan Frusciano, Regional Vice President, Southwest, for Business Wire. “I can think of no one more qualified to take the reigns”.). In this sentence NO is used together with one to single out one person from different ones and to stress the positive qualities of the first one.

5). NEVER + verb (e.g. "Wen, who won the hearts of many Chinese when he toured the south-western Sichuan province after an earthquake that killed 80,000 in 2008, said he would never forget the efforts of Japanese rescue teams there.”). In this sentence NEVER is followed by the verb and is used to negate the end of some action or process.

Having analyzed the means of negation in the articles, we offer your attention the articles with the biggest and the smallest number of negative words usage in the form of the table.

Table 2. The quantitative analysis of negative markers in “The 2”

№	The title of the article	Quantity of negative words
1.	Commodities troubles are a sign of the times.	49
2.	Greece worries markets on reform plan.	48
3.	Tech backer flies high in the windy city.	48
4.	SEC probes electronic platform failures.	47
5.	Sterling and euro interest rate paths diverge.	47
6.	Glencore drops below listing price as oil continues to waver.	24
7.	Ballmer rolls the dice.	24
8.	MBA blog.	23
9.	Dervis rules himself out of IMF race.	21
10.	TMX board rejects Canadian counterbid.	21

There are 49 negative markers used in newspaper discourse. The lexical grammatical negative paradigm registered in “The 3” is presented by no, not, never, nobody, nothing, neither, nor, nowhere. The most often used negative operator is not. We compared the Corpus of Contemporary American English data with those examples registered in the newspaper discourse. And they confirmed the hypothesis that the most frequent means of negative expression are not, no and never.

LITERATURE:

1. Захарчук І. О. Дистрибуція оператора NOT у реченні / І.О. Захарчук // Наукові записки. Серія «Філологічна». Матеріали міжнародної науково-практичної конференції 22-23 квітня 2010 року «Міжкультурна комунікація: мова – культура – особистість». – Острог: Видавництво Національного університету «Острозька академія». – Вип. 13. – 2010 – С. 243 – 250.

2. Михайленко В. В. Переклад дискурс-оператора / В.В. Михайленко // Вісник Сумського державного університету. – Суми, 2007. – Т.2, №1.– С. 124-128.

3. Collins Cobuild Dictionary [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://www.collinslanguage.com/

4. Corpus of Contemporary American English [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

5. Horn Laurence R. and Yasuhiko Kato. Introduction: Negation and Polarity at the Millennium / R.Laurence Horn, Kato Yasuhiko //Horn and Kato (eds) Studies in Negation and Polarity. – Oxford: OUP, 2000. – Рр. 1-19.

6. Oxford Dictionary [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://oxforddictionaries.com/

7. Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Startvik J. A Comprehensive Grammar S. Greenbaum, G.Leech, J.A. Startvik. – Edinburgh Gate, Harlow: Longman, 2000. – 1779 p.