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If the prefix or suffix is negative, such as 'dis-' or -'less', the word can be called an orphaned negative. [ 2 ] Unpaired words can be the result of one of the words falling out of popular usage, or can be created when only one word of a pair is borrowed from another language, in either case yielding an accidental gap , specifically a ...
Licensing contexts across languages include the scope of n-words (negative particles, negative quantifiers), the antecedent of conditionals, questions, the restrictor of universal quantifiers, non-affirmative verbs (doubt), adversative predicates (be surprised), negative conjunctions (without), comparatives and superlatives, too-phrases ...
For example, changing "one could have seen anything" to "no one could have seen anything" changes the meaning of the last word from "anything" to "nothing". In some cases, by way of irony, an affirmative statement may be intended to have the meaning of the corresponding negative, or vice versa. For examples see antiphrasis and sarcasm.
The Pollyanna principle (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant ones. [1] Research indicates that at the subconscious level, the mind tends to focus on the optimistic; while at the conscious level, it tends to focus on the negative.
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Negative words such as bad [9] and sick sometimes acquire ironic senses by antiphrasis [10] referring to traits that are impressive and admired, if not necessarily positive (that outfit is bad as hell; lyrics full of sick burns). Some contronyms result from differences in varieties of English.
If a word with a strong negative semantic prosody (e.g. onslaught) co-occurs with a positive word (e.g. hospitality) instead of an expected negative word (e.g. an onslaught of hospitality), a range of effects are possible as a result of such a collocational clash: [5] irony, expression of a subtle hidden meaning, often negative evaluation,
Positive anymore is the use of the adverb anymore in an affirmative context. [1] While any more (also spelled anymore) is typically a negative/interrogative polarity item used in negative, interrogative, or hypothetical contexts, speakers of some dialects of English use it in positive or affirmative contexts, [notes 1] with a meaning similar to nowadays or from now on.