THE CONTRASTIVITY OF NEGATION IN UKRAINIAN POETIC TEXTS

Abstract

The article examines negation as one of the key linguistic categories that shapes the logical and grammatical organization of an utterance and plays a significant role in the conceptualization of the world. The binary opposition affirmation – negation constitutes the foundation of human thinking and represents a universal means of understanding reality. In literary discourse, negation functions not only as a tool of logical opposition but also as an important device for artistic image-building, enhancing emotional tension, and structuring a poetic work. The use of negation enables the revelation of the lyrical persona’s inner experiences and highlights the semantic dominants of the text. Despite substantial scholarly achievements in this field, linguistic negation encompasses such a broad range of issues that several aspects remain insufficiently explored and require further interpretation. The aim of the study is to outline the role of negation as a means of constructing contrast and intensifying expressive imagery in contemporary Ukrainian poetic texts. Special attention is given to contrastive negation as a device that enhances figurative density, emotional expressivity, and structural organization. The research employs a comprehensive methodological approach that combines linguistic description, structural-semantic analysis, and transformational analysis. In language, negation together with its counterpart affirmation forms a universal binary opposition. Negation, as the marked component, is represented in more complex lexical and grammatical constructions and requires more intricate semantic interpretation. Although negative constructions are secondary to affirmative ones in terms of informativeness, they play an important – and sometimes decisive – role in cognitive processes. The study identifies functional differences between neutral and contrastive negation and reveals the mechanisms of their influence on the reader’s perception of a text. The novelty of the research lies in the holistic analysis of contrastive negation as a tool for constructing complex semantic structures and creating an aesthetic effect. The conclusions broaden the understanding of the linguistic category of negation, its cognitive and pragmatic nature, and open new perspectives for further studies in stylistics, cognitive poetics, and text linguistics.