Embodied Semantics 150 Years After Broca: Context-dependent Negation in Novelistic Storytelling

The present study capitalizes on recent advances in neurophysiology concerning the involvement of the sensory-motor system in language recognition and understanding during reading and listening so as to explain the various roles played by negation in novelistic descriptions since the medieval origins of the genre. Textual evidence from a famous medieval verse novel, Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette, demonstrates that negation does not simply complicate the processing of a given description. Indeed, negative descriptions can be completely understood only if fully integrated in a complex context which entails the conceptual representation of the negated state of affairs.