Nothing but Negation: Young Researchers' Conference

Nothing but Negation: Young Researchers' Conference 2026 is a specialized forum giving early-career linguists a dedicated space to present and discuss original research on one of the most theoretically rich topics in language science: negation. The conference covers syntactic approaches to negative expressions, semantic scope and polarity, pragmatic effects of negation, the acquisition of negation in children and second-language learners, morphological negation across typologically diverse languages, and cognitive processing of negative sentences.

The conference is explicitly oriented toward graduate students, recent PhD recipients, and other early-career researchers who specialize in negation across any linguistic subfield. Its focused theme encourages deep comparative discussion across syntactic, semantic, and psycholinguistic perspectives that more general venues rarely facilitate. Senior researchers participate as discussants and mentors, making this an unusually supportive environment for young scholars to develop their ideas and receive substantive, expert feedback in a collegial setting.

negation in linguistics syntax of negation semantics of negation negation acquisition pragmatics morphological negation cognitive aspects of negation