TRANSFERRED NEGATION AND MODALITY

Although transferred negation is a minor topological problem in syntax. it is nevertheless a major problem in the pragmatics of spoken discourse. The concept of epistemic modality is used to bring within a single perspective the syntactic phenomenon of transferred negation and the pragmatic phenomena of involvement and politeness. The effect created by modalizing utterances using I think and related forms can be reinforced by transferring the negative item. It is shown that this is due to processes such as synthetization, incorporation and topicalization, which are direct reflections of more general tendencies which have been productive in the history of English.