Russian and Negative Prefixing: A Cognitive-Semantic Approach to the Negative Adjective Prefixing in Russian, Spanish, Persian, and English

Abstract

Negative prefixing has always been an important and intriguing morphological process, through which adjectives are formed in many different languages. However, there are limits to negative prefixing. In this study, we introduce the novel concept of Polarity Flexibility, through which the limitations for the negative prefixing are accounted for. Furthermore, we conducted an experiment to investigate whether the PF is an active cognitive process. The results of the experiment confirm our hypothesis and the fact that Polarity Flexibility does indeed influence the cognitive processing. In our study, we introduce the notion of the syntactic arrangement which influences the negative prefixing. Therefore, we compare Russian, Persian, Spanish and English in negative prefixing to show how much the cognitive processes are influenced by the syntactic formations. Russian as a representative of Slavic languages brings an important insight into the way syntax plays role in the semantic-cognitive context.