@inproceedings{findlay-haug-2025-negation,
title = "Negation in {U}niversal {D}ependencies",
author = "Findlay, Jamie Yates and
Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew",
editor = {Bouma, Gosse and
{\c{C}}{\"o}ltekin, {\c{C}}a{\u{g}}r{\i}},
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, SyntaxFest 2025)",
month = aug,
year = "2025",
address = "Ljubljana, Slovenia",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.udw-1.8/",
pages = "70--79",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-292-3",
abstract = "In this paper we study the representation of negation in UD treebanks. We show that the existing annotations are often inconsistent with the guidelines and that there are ill-motivated differences in annotation of constructions across and even within languages. Moreover, we argue that even if the annotation of the two negation-related features ($\texttt{Polarity=Neg}$ and $\texttt{PronType=Neg}$) were consistent, these two features would be inadequate for straightforwardly expressing the semantics of negation because they relate to the word level only and hence to form rather than meaning. We therefore propose to add two features, $\texttt{Negated=+}$ and $\texttt{DoubleNegated=+}$, which directly encode when a predicate is semantically under negation, and thereby allow a straightforward semantic interpretation of a UD parse in terms of negation."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="findlay-haug-2025-negation">
<titleInfo>
<title>Negation in Universal Dependencies</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jamie</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Yates</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Findlay</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Dag</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Trygve</namePart>
<namePart type="given">Truslew</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Haug</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2025-08</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, SyntaxFest 2025)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Gosse</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Bouma</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Çağrı</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Çöltekin</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Ljubljana, Slovenia</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-292-3</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>In this paper we study the representation of negation in UD treebanks. We show that the existing annotations are often inconsistent with the guidelines and that there are ill-motivated differences in annotation of constructions across and even within languages. Moreover, we argue that even if the annotation of the two negation-related features (Polarity=Neg and PronType=Neg) were consistent, these two features would be inadequate for straightforwardly expressing the semantics of negation because they relate to the word level only and hence to form rather than meaning. We therefore propose to add two features, Negated=+ and DoubleNegated=+, which directly encode when a predicate is semantically under negation, and thereby allow a straightforward semantic interpretation of a UD parse in terms of negation.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">findlay-haug-2025-negation</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2025.udw-1.8/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2025-08</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>70</start>
<end>79</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Negation in Universal Dependencies
%A Findlay, Jamie Yates
%A Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew
%Y Bouma, Gosse
%Y Çöltekin, Çağrı
%S Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, SyntaxFest 2025)
%D 2025
%8 August
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Ljubljana, Slovenia
%@ 979-8-89176-292-3
%F findlay-haug-2025-negation
%X In this paper we study the representation of negation in UD treebanks. We show that the existing annotations are often inconsistent with the guidelines and that there are ill-motivated differences in annotation of constructions across and even within languages. Moreover, we argue that even if the annotation of the two negation-related features (Polarity=Neg and PronType=Neg) were consistent, these two features would be inadequate for straightforwardly expressing the semantics of negation because they relate to the word level only and hence to form rather than meaning. We therefore propose to add two features, Negated=+ and DoubleNegated=+, which directly encode when a predicate is semantically under negation, and thereby allow a straightforward semantic interpretation of a UD parse in terms of negation.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.udw-1.8/
%P 70-79
Markdown (Informal)
[Negation in Universal Dependencies](https://aclanthology.org/2025.udw-1.8/) (Findlay & Haug, UDW-SyntaxFest 2025)
ACL
- Jamie Yates Findlay and Dag Trygve Truslew Haug. 2025. Negation in Universal Dependencies. In Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, SyntaxFest 2025), pages 70–79, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Association for Computational Linguistics.