SYNTHETIC AND ANALYTIC ADJECTIVE NEGATION IN ENGLISH SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL ARTICLES: A DIACHRONIC PERSPECTIVE

This paper addresses the development of synthetic and analytic adjective negation in a corpus of English scientific articles from the mid-17th century towards the end of the 20th century. Analytic patterns of adjective negation are found to become less frequent in the language of scientific articles, but more conventionalised in their textual contexts. Conversely, prefixed negated adjectives are identified as more frequent and more diverse with regard to their contexts.