A contra-linguistic study of negation in Korean and English

Negation is frequently found in every language, and many logicians or linguists have been carrying out research on it. Their investigations are, however, mostly confined to the languages of Europe. Although some of them pay attention to non-European languages, we can hardly find research on negation in Korean. In this paper, we carry out contra-linguistic analysis of four aspects of negation in Korean and English. First, we compare the expressions of negative elements in Korean and English sentences. Second, we contrast the types of negation in Korean with those of English. Third, we draw a distinction between Korean and English in what decides the scope of negation. Finally, we contrast the answers to questions which contain negative elements.