Description versus rejection in the analysis of negation: Evidence from Romanian and English

•DN and MetNeg are two types of negative utterances with distinct mental structures.•DN is the 'description of a negative content'.•DN corresponds to the O>E drift, the maximization of contrariety.•MetNeg is 'the rejection of a representation' as a result of the activation of FAC.

Found at the interface between cognition, language and logic, this paper discusses the mental representation of negation in natural language. Following the framework provided by Relevance Theory, it suggests that different types of negation represent actualizations of either the descriptive or the metarepresentational use. An account of descriptive negation and metarepresentational negation is offered based on the logical, semantic and pragmatic relations between the negative utterance and its formal affirmative correspondent, on the one hand, and semantic affirmative correspondent, on the other. Metarepresentational negation is defined as the rejection of a formal affirmative correspondent, always an instance of a second-order interpretation while descriptive negation represents the assertion of a negative content in the form of a semantic affirmative correspondent, always an instance of a first-order interpretation. This investigation is supported by a large corpus analysis represented by authentic Romanian and English data.