The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean: Volume II: Patterns and Processes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics) 9780199602544, 0199602549

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The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume II: Patterns and Processes

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/2/2020, SPi

OXFORD STUDI ES IN DI AC HRONIC AND H I S T O R I CA L L I N G U I S T I CS   Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge   Cynthia L. Allen, Australian National University; Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, University of Manchester; Theresa Biberauer, University of Cambridge; Charlotte Galves, University of Campinas; Geoff Horrocks, University of Cambridge; Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University; Anthony Kroch, University of Pennsylvania; David Lightfoot, Georgetown University; Giuseppe Longobardi, University of York; George Walkden, University of Konstanz; David Willis, University of Cambridge       Negation and Nonveridicality in the History of Greek Katerina Chatzopoulou  Indefinites between Latin and Romance Chiara Gianollo  Verb Second in Medieval Romance Sam Wolfe  Referential Null Subjects in Early English Kristian A. Rusten  Word Order and Parameter Change in Romanian A Comparative Romance Perspective Alexandru Nicolae  Cycles in Language Change Edited by Miriam Bouzouita, Anne Breitbarth, Lieven Danckaert, and Elisabeth Witzenhausen  Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives André Zampaulo  Dative External Possessors in Early English Cynthia L. Allen  The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume II: Patterns and Processes Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis For a complete list of titles published and in preparation for the series, see pp. –.

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The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume II: Patterns and Processes

A N N E B R E I T B A R T H , C H R I S T O P H E R L UC A S , AND DAVID WILLIS

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford,  , United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in  Impression:  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press  Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number:  ISBN –––– Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,   Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Contents Series preface Preface List of tables List of figures List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations . Introduction . . . . . .

The changing expression of negation Standard negation and sentential negation Cycles of negation Indefinites in the scope of negation Mechanisms of change Overview

vii viii ix x xi       

Part I Jespersen’s cycle . Empirical generalizations . . . . . .

Incipient Jespersen’s cycle: An overview Lexical sources for Jespersen’s cycle Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts Stage II and the speed of Jespersen’s cycle The fate of the original negator after Jespersen’s cycle Conclusion

. Internal motivations and formal approaches . . . . .

The triggers of Jespersen’s cycle: Pull chains vs. push chains The rise of negative polarity adverbs Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not? The speed of Jespersen’s cycle Conclusion

. External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle . . . .

Previous accounts Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and North Africa: A reconstruction Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa Conclusion

                 

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Contents

Part II Quantifier cycles and indefinites . Empirical generalizations . Common developments . Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle and negative concord . Conclusion . Internal motivations and formal approaches . . . . .

Structural motivations Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord Interaction of the quantifier cycle and Jespersen’s cycle Conclusion

. External motivations for change in indefinite systems . . . .

Recipient-language agentivity and borrowing of indefinites Changes in the distribution of individual items due to imposition Morphological and distributional changes in convergence Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system . Conclusion . Conclusion . Jespersen’s cycle . Indefinites and the quantifier cycle . Conclusion References Index of languages Subject index

                      

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Series preface Modern diachronic linguistics has important contacts with other subdisciplines, notably first-language acquisition, learnability theory, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the traditional philological study of texts. It is now recognized in the wider field that diachronic linguistics can make a novel contribution to linguistic theory, to historical linguistics, and arguably to cognitive science more widely. This series provides a forum for work in both diachronic and historical linguistics, including work on change in grammar, sound, and meaning within and across languages; synchronic studies of languages in the past; and descriptive histories of one or more languages. It is intended to reflect and encourage the links between these subjects and fields such as those mentioned above. The goal of the series is to publish high-quality monographs and collections of papers in diachronic linguistics generally, that is, studies focusing on change in linguistic structure, and/or change in grammars, which are also intended to make a contribution to linguistic theory, by developing and adopting a current theoretical model, by raising wider questions concerning the nature of language change, or by developing theoretical connections with other areas of linguistics and cognitive science as listed above. There is no bias towards a particular language or language family, or towards a particular theoretical framework; work in all theoretical frameworks, and work based on the descriptive tradition of language typology, as well as quantitatively based work using theoretical ideas, also feature in the series. Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts University of Cambridge

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Preface This is the second of two volumes setting out the main findings of the project The development of negation in the languages of Europe. The first volume brought together a group of experts on the historical development of negation in various languages or language groups, and asked them to document in some detail the main lines of development attested historically. The specific languages under focus there were French, Italo-Romance, English, High German, Low German and Dutch, Brythonic Celtic, Greek, Slavonic, Arabic and Afro-Asiatic, and Mordvin. This second volume focuses not on the development of individual languages, but on generalizing across these developments, examining what common pathways are found, what processes and mechanisms give rise to these developments, and how negation as a whole can inform our understanding of linguistic change more generally. This volume and the project from which it arose would not have been possible without the generous funding of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant AR), awarded to David Willis. This support is hereby gratefully acknowledged. Anne Breitbarth furthermore gratefully acknowledges funding by the Flemish Funds for Scientific Research (FWO-Vlaanderen) through grants G and FWO/PDO/, and by the Special Research Funds of Ghent University through grant BOF/STA/. David Willis acknowledges funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the Research Leave Grant ‘Celtic negation in historical and crosslinguistic perspective’. Christopher Lucas acknowledges funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the Leadership Fellows grant ‘Arabic and contactinduced language change’ (AH/P/). We would also like to thank the considerable number of friends and colleagues whose help, input, and criticism have undoubtedly improved the content of these volumes. We would like to express in particular our thanks to Miriam Bouzouita, Claudia Crocco, Jacopo Garzonio, Elly van Gelderen, Liliane Haegeman, Agnes Jäger, Cecilia Poletto, Ioanna Sitaridou, Johan van der Auwera, Sten Vikner, George Walkden, and Sam Wolfe; to Ian Roberts and Adam Ledgeway for inviting us to include this volume as part of the series Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics, as well as to John Davey, under whose stewardship as linguistics editor at Oxford University Press this volume began, to Julia Steer, and to Vicki Sunter, for their patience and support over the past years, and for helping to bring the project to its conclusion.

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List of tables Table . Schematic representation of Jespersen’s cycle



Table . Possible semantic contribution of negation markers at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle



Table . Frequency of bridging contexts for incipient Jespersen’s cycle in Old English



Table . The four classes of negative marker and their properties



Table . Negative polarity uses of French NCIs



Table . Frequency of clauses where ‘anyone, no one’ is expressed using neb in Welsh texts, –



Table . Language ability in Wales, –



Table . Primary school pupils aged  and over, ability to speak Welsh



Table . The four classes of negative marker and their properties



Table . The stages of Jespersen’s cycle, exemplified for French



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List of figures Figure . Timechart of Jespersen’s cycle in selected languages of Europe and the Mediterranean



Figure . Distribution of stage II negation in present-day European varieties



Figure . Jespersen’s cycle in Switzerland and northern Italy



Figure . Haspelmath’s (: ) semantic map of indefinites



Figure . Diachronic development of the French personne-series indefinites



Figure . The quantifier cycle



Figure . The free-choice cycle



Figure . The quantifier cycle (revised)



Figure . Frequency of Welsh person-indefinites,  to the present day



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List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations Grammatical glosses  etc.

first-person singular etc.

, , etc.

third-person feminine singular, second-person masculine plural, etc.



accusative (case)



aorist



auxiliary



clitic



connegative (verb form)



complementizer



comparative



conditional



copula



dative



definite



demonstrative



dual (number)



equative



existential (marker, verb)



feminine



focus



formal



future



genitive (case)



habitual



imperative



impersonal



imperfect



indicative

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List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations



indefinite



infinitive or infinitive marker



irrealis



masculine



modal particle



neuter



negation, negative marker



nominative (case)



negative polarity adverb



negative polarity item



oblique case



optative



perfective



plural



pluperfect



possessive



predicate marker



perfect



progressive



present tense



past tense



particle



participle



question particle



reflexive



relative marker



subjunctive



singular



superlative



vocative

List of abbreviations AdvP

adverbial phrase

AgrP

agreement phrase

AMP

Accord Maximization Principle

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List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations AP

adjective phrase

C

complementizer

CEG

Cronfa Electroneg o Gymraeg

D

determiner

DP

determiner phrase

FE

Feature Economy

FocP

focus phrase

INFL

inflection

IP

inflectional phrase

L

first language

L

second language

l.

line

MS

Minimize Structure

N

noun

NCI

negative concord item

NegP

negation phrase

NP

noun phrase

NPA

negative polarity adverb

NPI

negative polarity item

Num(P)

number (phrase)

NV-NI

negative indefinite co-occurring with verbal negation

(N)V-NI

negative indefinite co-occurring with verbal negation under some circumstances

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

OP

operator

OV

object–verb

p.

page

PLD

primary linguistic data

PP

prepositional phrase

PPI

positive polarity item

Q

quantifier

QP

quantifier phrase

Restr(P)

restriction (phrase)

SOV

subject–object–verb

Spec

specifier

xiii

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List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations

SV

subject–verb

SVO

subject–verb–object

T(P)

tense (phrase)

u

uninterpretable

UG

Universal Grammar

V

verb second

v.

verse

V-NI

negative indefinite not co-occurring with verbal negation

VO

verb–object

VOS

verb–object–subject

vP

light verb phrase

VP

verb phrase

VS

verb–subject

VSO

verb–subject–object

XP

any phrase

YCOE

York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose

#

pragmatically infelicitous

*

(in discussion of syntax) ungrammatical (syntactically ill-formed) / (in discussion of reconstruction) reconstructed, unattested form

=

clitic boundary

-

morpheme boundary

¬

negative operator, not

∅

zero

+>

conversationally implicates

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1 Introduction . The changing expression of negation All languages have systematic means of expressing negation, that is, of reversing the truth value of propositions. Being one of the few truly universal grammatical categories in human language, it has naturally attracted the interest of large numbers of linguists and psycholinguists, logicians, and philosophers, making it ‘a resilient subject’ of research (Hansen and Visconti : ). A vast body of publications within linguistics alone deals with the typological variation in the expression of this category, building on the pioneering surveys of Dahl (), Payne (), Dryer (), and more recently Miestamo () and van der Auwera (). Typological and diachronic perspectives are combined by Devos, Kasombo Tshibanda, and van der Auwera (), Van Alsenoy and van der Auwera (), and Vossen and van der Auwera (). As synchronic variation in language can be taken as a reflection of diachronic stages, a considerable body of research has sought to trace the development of negation through comparison of synchronic variants, for instance Zanuttini (), Manzini and Savoia (), or Ngangoum (). The last twenty or so years have furthermore seen a growing body of general theoretical work on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of negation both from formalist and functionalist perspectives, though mostly synchronic in focus (e.g. Progovac , Haegeman , de Swart , Romoli , Larrivée and Lee ). The historical changes affecting the expression of negation, too, have attracted increasing attention, but have largely remained restricted to individual languages or language groups.¹ There have also been a few attempts to make formal proposals ¹ Such studies exist in particular for English (Jack a, b, Tottie , Haeberli and Haegeman , Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Tottie, and Van der Wurff , Ingham , , Van Kemenade , Iyeiri , , Mazzon , Wallage , ); German (Donhauser , , Abraham , Jäger ); Dutch (Stoett , Van der Horst and Van der Wal , De Meersman , De Haan and Weerman , Burridge , Postma , Postma and Bennis ); French (Schwegler , Rowlett , Catalani , Detges and Waltereit , Martineau and Mougeon , Schwenter , Hansen , , Larrivée ), Celtic (Willis , , ), and recently also Greek (Kiparsky and Condoravdi , Chatzopoulou , , Willmott ) and Bantu languages (Devos, Kasombo Tshibanda, and van der Auwera , Devos and van der Auwera ).

The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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

Introduction

aiming at both typological and historical coverage, often based on synchronic variation, and therefore focusing on a formal analysis of successive or parallel synchronic states rather than on diachronic processes (e.g. van Gelderen , b, , Zeijlstra , Lindstad ). The present work forms the second part of the two-volume publication The development of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume I (Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth ) provides an overview in ten detailed case studies of the diachronic developments affecting the expression of negation and indefinites in the scope of negation in the histories of individual languages or language groups. In addition to chapters on the better studied Germanic and Romance languages (French, Italo-Romance, English, High German, Low German and Dutch) and Greek, the volume features chapters on much less well studied developments in Celtic, Slavonic, Afro-Asiatic, and Mordvin languages. While Hansen and Visconti (: ) rightly stress the importance of expanding the empirical base of investigations in the area of negation to non-European languages, the present two-volume work starts from the position that the development of negation in the languages of Europe is still not well understood. The work that has been done to date has tended to focus on individual languages, and the major lines of change have not been analysed in depth from a comparative point of view. The intention of bringing together the contributions contained in volume I is therefore in large part to lay the empirical foundations for the synthesis and analysis offered in the present volume. Here we approach the patterns showcased in volume I in more general and theoretically oriented terms. Like volume I, the present volume is not typologically oriented in the sense of aiming at a balanced overview of the relevant processes in the world’s languages. Rather, it situates itself in the framework of ‘comparing diachronies’ (cf. Fleischer and Simon ), focusing on a specifically chosen subset of languages for which the diachronic trajectories can be established in considerable detail. Thus we compare the patterns of change in negation found repeatedly across different languages in Europe and around the Mediterranean, identifying common pathways and directions of change, and highlighting differences, with the aim of developing a cohesive theoretical account of these patterns. This account integrates perspectives from formal models of change grounded in language acquisition, from the study of grammaticalization, and from models of language contact. Indirectly, a further aim is to advance models of historical syntactic change, an area that has witnessed a remarkable revival of interest in the past twenty years. We seek to do this by providing a theoretically as well as empirically informed investigation of change in one particular area of grammar—negation—which has been subject to extensive transformation in the histories of many of the languages of Europe. The present study therefore forms part of a wider comparative discussion of analogous sets of changes (cf. van Gelderen ), aiming to further our understanding of syntactic

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Standard negation and sentential negation



change in general, by developing a detailed picture of the syntax of negation and the ways it changes in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Our investigations are informed by three principal questions: (i) (ii) (iii)

What mechanisms underlie the observed developments in the expression of sentential negation in the languages under study? What mechanisms underlie the observed developments in indefinites in the scope of negation in the languages under study? To what extent are the observed developments triggered by language contact, and how can we best model such contact-induced changes?

For both negative markers and indefinites in the scope of negation, the current volume therefore pairs empirical observations with formal analysis of internal and external factors driving the observed changes. In this opening chapter, we present the central concepts and associated terminology from the synchronic and typological literature on negation (section .), before introducing the main pathways of change in this domain that have been identified to date (sections . and .). We also introduce the approach to accounting for change that we adopt in the current volume, with concepts drawn from both formalist and contact-based approaches to change (section .). These concepts form the basis for the discussion and explanation in chapters – of the major patterns of change observed.

. Standard negation and sentential negation Before beginning the discussion of the patterns and processes behind the development of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, a number of terminological conventions need to be clarified. First and foremost, we need to establish what concept of ‘negation’ is central to the current study, before anything can be said about its development. We will focus primarily on developments affecting the expression of standard and sentential negation, that is, the grammaticalized expression of negation taking scope over a whole proposition. Our goal is to develop an account of the language-internal and language-external processes that lead to changes in the way standard negation is expressed, typically via the grammaticalization of new negative expressions. Constituent negation, that is negation scoping over smaller, non-sentential, constituents, will only be considered in so far as it contributes to the developments that are our main focus. In the current work, we use the term sentential negation to refer to the semantic concept of reversing the truth value of a proposition. With standard negation, we refer to the formal or morphosyntactic expression of sentential negation in a given language.

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

Introduction

The term standard negation was first coined by Payne (), who used it to denote ‘that type of negation that can apply to the most minimal and basic sentences’ (Payne : ), typically a main clause with a single predicate such as It is raining, (), in English, or Il pleut, (), in French. This notion is used widely in typological work as a standard for comparing the expression of negation in different languages and over time. This focus on the formal side of the expression of negation is motivated by the aim of establishing the main means of reversing the truth value of a proposition. This is typically the strategy found in ordinary main clauses. Based on these criteria, we can say that the standard negator in English is not or -n’t, as in (), and in French the standard negator is ne . . . pas, (), or, in colloquial French, pas alone, (), (but not, say, ne alone), reversing the truth value of their affirmative counterparts, () and (), respectively. () It is raining. () Il pleut.  rain.. ‘It is raining.’ () It isn’t/is not raining. () Il ne pleut   rain.. ‘It isn’t raining.’ () Il pleut  rain.. ‘It isn’t raining.’

pas. 

pas. 

A sentence can be semantically negative (i.e. constitute an instance of sentential negation) even if the standard expression of negation is absent. The English sentence in () is clearly negative. It contains the word either, a strong negative polarity item (NPI) (see section . for further details) that can only appear in negative clauses, licensed here by the standard negation marker ‑n’t. The acceptability of this item in a clause can be used as a test for whether that clause is negative. Thus, either is ungrammatical in () and () because these sentences are not negative, thereby violating the semantic requirements of either. Either must be replaced by its nonnegative counterpart too if these sentences are to be rendered grammatical. In (), however, use of either is grammatical, confirming that this sentence is negative; yet it does not contain a standard negation marker. The expression of negation here is instead a negative quantifier, none. () Mary didn’t drink her coffee either/*too. () Mary drank her coffee too/*either.

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

Standard negation and sentential negation () If Mary drank her coffee too/*either, we could leave. () None of the students drank their coffee either/*too.

Similar evidence is presented for German in ()–(), adapted from Richter and Radó (: ), where eine müde Mark ‘(not) a penny, (not) a red cent’ is a strong NPI like English either. It is licensed by the standard negation marker nicht in (), but not by affirmative expressions such as wenige Händler ‘few retailers’ or einige Händler ‘some retailers’ in (). However, as with either, a negative indefinite such as niemand ‘no one’ is capable of licensing it in (), confirming that this sentence is negative even though it lacks the standard negation marker nicht. ()

Maria hat nicht einmal eine müde Mark an ihrer Maria .  even .. tired Mark on .. Briefmarkensammlung verdient. stamp.collection earn. ‘Maria hasn’t earned a penny from her stamp collection.’

()

*Wenige / *Einige Händler verdienen heutzutage eine few.. some.. retailers earn.. nowadays .. müde Mark an einer Briefmarkensammlung. tired mark on .. stamp.collection Intended: ‘Few/Some retailers nowadays earn a penny from a stamp collection.’

()

Niemand verdient heutzutage eine müde no.one earn.. nowadays .. tired einer Briefmarkensammlung. .. stamp.collection ‘No one nowadays earns a penny from a stamp collection.’

Mark mark

an on

We thus observe a discrepancy between the simplicity of negation in propositional logic—as the simple one-place connective ¬ inverting the truth-value of a proposition—and the complexity of its form and function in natural language. Furthermore, the simplicity of the opposition between affirmative and negative in formal logic is often not paralleled in natural language (Horn : xiii). Other examples of this mismatch, where a single function, denial of the truth of a proposition, can correspond to various formal means, are given in ()–(). These sentences are both negative, but neither contains the standard-negation marker not. ()

Mary ate no pudding.

()

No one ate pudding.

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

Introduction

While standard negation refers to the typical formal means of negating basic sentences, sentential negation is thus the wider, semantic notion of negation in language. Various diagnostic tests have been devised to establish whether a sentence contains sentential negation. The classic tests of Klima () are the question-tag test, the either/too test (see ()–()), and the neither/so test. These all use the presence of strong NPIs, which can only occur in the context of sentential negation, to establish whether a given sentence is negative. The question-tag test is based on the fact that neutral, unbiased tag questions in English must appear in reverse polarity, that is, affirmative tags are strong NPIs. Thus, the presence of an affirmative tag did she? in () confirms that the main clause in this sentence is negative, while the presence of the negative tag in () confirms that the main clause in that sentence is affirmative. We have already seen the either/ too test in ()–(). The neither/so test, exemplified in () and (), is based on the fact that only neither offers a natural continuation of a negative sentence, while continuations with so require an affirmative context. ()

Mary didn’t eat pudding, did she?

()

Mary ate pudding, didn’t she?

()

Mary didn’t eat pudding, and *so/neither did I.

()

Mary ate pudding, and so/*neither did I.

While direct transfer of Klima’s tests beyond English has proved difficult, the presence of strong NPIs in a clause can usually be taken as an indication of the presence of sentential negation. Performative paraphrases offer another test for sentential negation (Payne : ). A clause containing sentential negation will be paraphrasable as I say (of X) that it is not true that Y. Sentence (), for instance, can be paraphrased as I say of Mary that it is not true that she ate pudding. An affirmative clause like Mary ate pudding cannot be paraphrased in the same way; rather, its paraphrase needs to be of the form I say of Mary that she ate pudding. These tests can also distinguish sentential negation from instances of affirmative sentences containing markers of negation with sub-sentential scope, such as ()–(). Here not acts as a constituent negator, negating only far and giving rise to an interpretation similar to near in ()–(). Similarly, ()–() can be seen to be affirmative sentences containing a negative morpheme, un-, with a scope that is also narrower than sentential: ()

John stopped running not far from here, didn’t he?

()

John stopped running not far from here, and so/*neither did Mary.

()

John stopped running near here, didn’t he?

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Standard negation and sentential negation ()

John stopped running near here, and so/*neither did Mary.

()

This fact is unsurprising, isn’t it/*is it?

()

This fact is unsurprising, and so/*neither is that one.



The sentence in () is also not a felicitous performative paraphrase of the base sentence in (), confirming that the latter lacks sentential negation. ()

I say of John that it is not true that he stopped running far from here.

Example () shows that negation with sub-sentential scope can sometimes be expressed using the same lexical means as sentential negation, in this case not/n’t. De Clercq (: ) observes that some languages exhibit total syncretism of this sort between markers of constituent and standard or sentential negation. The Czech prefix ne-, for instance, is used in sentential negation contexts where English would use not or ‑n’t as in (), as well as in places where English would use negative affixes such as un-, in-, dis- or non- to express constituent negation of varying degrees (e.g. contrary negation as with un- in unorganized vs. contradictory negation as with disin disorganized) as in (). šťastný. happy

()

Ja ne-jsem I -be.. ‘I am not happy.’

()

Ja jsem ne-šťastný. I be.. -happy ‘I am unhappy.’

(Czech)

(De Clercq : )

The distinction between, for instance, Parents are not responsible (for their children) and Parents are irresponsible is thus not made using morphological means in languages like Czech. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a semantic distinction between them in terms of the scope of negation. What is more, syncretisms such as these may play an important role in the historical development of negation systems. There is often an overlap in form between what De Clercq () refers to as focus negation and what she refers to as polarity negation (the equivalent of neutral sentential-scope negation), and there is a diachronic connection between them such that focus negators have often become polarity negators. In several cases, to be discussed in more detail in section .., new sentential negation markers have developed out of elements formerly expressing narrow focus of sentential negation, as well as constituent negation. A final complication associated with the syntactic and semantic manifestations of negation is the fact central to the present study that the formal expression of (semantic) negation may be subject to diachronic renewal. In cases where two negative

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

Introduction

markers co-occur in one negative sentence, or in cases where different negative markers are reserved for different grammatical contexts, the question can arise as to which marker is the genuine locus of semantic negation at a given time. Issues such as this can only be meaningfully discussed if sentential negation (the presence of a logical negation operator in interpretation) is distinguished from standard negation (the basic formal means of expressing sentential negation in a language), as we have chosen to do in the present work. The dependence of the morphosyntactic notion of standard negation on the semantic notion of sentential negation can be seen in Miestamo’s () definition of the former: A [standard negation] construction is a construction whose function is to modify a verbal declarative main clause expressing a proposition p in such a way that the modified clause expresses the proposition with the opposite truth value to p, that is ¬p, or the proposition used as the closest equivalent to ¬p in case the clause expressing ¬p cannot be formed in the language, and that is (one of ) the productive and general means the language has for performing this function. (Miestamo : )

Miestamo’s definition is restricted to ‘obligatory (fully grammaticalized)’ elements (Miestamo : ). With the notion of standard negation thus defined, we have a clear conceptual and terminological basis for analysing the changing expression of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Typologically speaking, the languages under consideration here by and large use what Miestamo (, ) calls ‘symmetric’ constructions to express sentential negation at all stages of their histories. That is, they add a negative marker to constructions that otherwise remain identical to the corresponding affirmative. In () for instance, illustrating the three major stages of Jespersen’s cycle (see section .) in the history of French, the expression of negation changes over time, from ne to ne . . . pas to pas, but always constitutes a simple addition to the affirmative, je dis ‘I say’. ()

jeo ne dis > je ne dis pas > je dis pas

In some languages, asymmetric constructions and paradigms can be observed. This is illustrated in () for Finnish, which uses a negative auxiliary to express standard negation. The negative in () does not simply involve the addition of a negative marker to the affirmative; as well as the addition of the negative auxiliary eivät, the verb itself changes from the finite form haukkuvat to the nonfinite, connegative form hauku. ()

Koira-t haukku-vat. dog- bark- ‘Dogs bark.’

() Koira-t ei-vät hauku. dog- - bark. ‘Dogs do not bark.’

(Finnish)

(Miestamo : )

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Standard negation and sentential negation



There is also a diachronic dimension to the typological distinction between symmetric and asymmetric expressions of negation. English, for instance, has evolved from a language with a (more) symmetric expression of negation in Old and Middle English to a language with an asymmetric expression of standard negation, which under Miestamo’s classification belongs to the A/Fin type—the lexical verb loses its finiteness in negative clauses, while a negated auxiliary takes over the expression of finiteness. The Old English state of affairs is shown in (), where the particle ne in front of the finite verb negates the clause. However, a form of syntactic asymmetry does exist in Old English (Van Kemenade , Wallage ), as in the other older Germanic languages (Eythórsson , , Ferraresi , Axel ), namely the clause-initial verb placement common in negative clauses, also illustrated in (). ()

Ne brohte we nan þing to þysum middanearde.  bring. we no thing to this. world. ‘We didn’t bring anything to this world.’ (YCOE, cocathhom,+ACHom_I, _...; Wallage : )

In Middle English, at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle (see chapter  for more detail on the stages of Jespersen’s cyle), expression of negation is bipartite, ne . . . noht, (). But both parts enclose the finite verb that would have the same form in an affirmative clause. After the loss of preverbal ne, not could negate a finite verb on its own between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries (Ingham : ), (). ()

. . . þe ne wilen noht here sinnes forleten   want.  their sin. renounce. ‘who do not want to renounce their sins’ (Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (second edition), CMTRINIT, .; Ingham : )

()

Seest thou not how oure Lady wepith? see..   how our Lady weep.. ‘Do you not see how our Lady weeps?’ (Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (second edition), CMAELR,.; Wallage : )

This changes with the development of not into a clitic, and the subsequent rise of do-support. In Modern English (), the negative particle follows a finite form of do if no other auxiliary verb is present in the clause, and increasingly forms a unit with it (e.g. Yaeger-Dror and Hall-Lew ). ()

I speak > I don’t / do not speak I have spoken > I haven’t / have not spoken

Similar changes between symmetric and asymmetric types are found in the FinnoUgric languages (Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth : –). Finnish and Sámi

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

Introduction

languages express negation asymmetrically (A/Fin), with finiteness being expressed on the lexical verb in affirmative clauses, but on a negative auxiliary in negated clauses. Estonian appears to be switching from asymmetric to symmetric, and currently exemplifies a transitional stage: the negative auxiliary has become invariant in form and no longer inflects for person and number, yet the lexical verb remains non-finite (connegative). If future Estonian replaces the nonfinite form of the lexical verb in negative clauses with a finite form, the language will have innovated symmetric negation.

. Cycles of negation A development that has repeatedly affected various languages, including many languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, is that in which an adverbial negative particle is joined by an element which reinforces and ultimately replaces it in its function of expressing sentential negation. Where such processes apply repeatedly, they can be viewed as cyclical in nature. Dahl (: ) popularized the term ‘Jespersen’s cycle’ for developments in the expression of sentential negation of this sort, based on the following early description of it in Jespersen’s () Negation in English and other languages (though it had previously been noted by Gardiner ; cf. van der Auwera : ): The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness the following curious fluctuation: the original negative adverb is first weakened, then found insufficient and therefore strengthened, generally through some additional word, and this in its turn may be felt as the negative proper and may then in course of time be subject to the same development as the original word. (Jespersen : )

In languages using particles to express sentential negation, two larger groups of cyclic renewals of negation systems, or classes of diachronic trajectories, can be identified (van Gelderen a, b, ; van der Auwera ). In what van Gelderen () calls the ‘Scandinavian-style cycle’, that is, Jespersen’s cycle, an indefinite phrase is reanalysed as a new negator. This is the type of renewal that is most common in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. In anther type of development, termed the ‘Chinese-style cycle’ or ‘Givón’s cycle’ (after Givón ) by van Gelderen (, ), a verbal head, or an adversative verb expressing a meaning, such as ‘refuse’, ‘deny’, ‘reject’, ‘avoid’, ‘fail’, or ‘lack’, is reanalysed as a negative head itself (typically an auxiliary).² This perspective can be captured in the overlapping grammaticalization clines seen in ().

² This latter trajectory partially overlaps with the one described by Croft (), under which a negative existential becomes the new standard expression of negation. As this development is attested only rarely in the languages under consideration in the current volume, it will not be considered in detail here.

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Cycles of negation ()



a. (negative argument >)3 negative adverb > negative particle > zero b. negative verb > auxiliary > negative > zero (adapted from van Gelderen : )

For any renewal of the expression of negation, one of the central questions is what drives it, and what the stages are by which it proceeds. For instance, the frequently cited passage from Jespersen () given above seems to suggest that it is the ‘weakening’ of the original expression that causes the establishment of the new expression. That is, from this kind of perspective, the renewal of the expression of negation is a pull chain (cf. also e.g. Detges and Waltereit , Schwenter ). How we should understand Jespersen’s ‘weakening’ is far from clear, but the term seems to be compatible with either loss of phonetic substance, loss of semantic force, or both. The idea that weakening of this sort is a trigger for Jespersen’s cycle is problematic under any of these interpretations. It has been repeatedly pointed out in the literature (e.g. Posner , Hansen : –) that weakening in the sense of loss of stress, vowel reduction and loss of segements, cannot be a sufficient trigger for replacement by a new expression, since this would fail to account for languages (such as Romagnol and Old French, for example) with highly phonetically reduced negative particles that either have not undergone or did not for several centuries undergo reinforcement or replacement. At the same time, phonetic weakening is clearly not a necessary condition for renewal either, given the existence of languages where reinforcers appear before the standard negator shows any sign of erosion (such as Old Italian non . . . mica, going back to reinforcing uses of micam in first-century  colloquial Latin; Hansen : –). Moreover, it seems doubtful that weakening can be meaningfully understood in semantic rather than phonetic terms. Even if there were some concrete sense in which a negator could weaken semantically, how would a language in which this occurred express negation until a new reinforcing expression grammaticalizes? It seems more likely that the original negator only begins to express something less than full negation (or different from it) once a new element has already become available ³ In some languages, the source of the negative adverb is not a negative argument, but already an adverb itself. Cape Verdean Creole, for instance, has a sentential negator ka deriving from Portuguese nunca ‘never’: (i)

el ka ta ba la he   go there ‘He doesn’t go there.’

(Cape Verdean Creole) (Posner : )

In some Niger-Congo languages, such as some Bantu languages, locative adverbs (besides locative pronouns and/or possessive adjectives) are sources of new negators (for an overview, see Devos and van der Auwera ). In Kanincin, for instance, one of the postverbal negative markers (Bantu LA), (a)p(a), has developed from a locative affix (‘there’) of class , via a minimizer use meaning roughly ‘a little’ (Devos, Kasombo Tshibanda, and van der Auwera ). Note the similarity with the minimizer/negator use of the Portuguese locative adverb lá ‘there’ in sei lá ‘I don’t know (at all), I have no idea’, lit. ‘I know there’. The source of the new negator may of course also be a non-negative argument, as in French pas. See chapters  and  for further discussion.

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

Introduction

to function as the primary means of expressing negation. This complex of questions will be discussed in more detail in chapter . In many cases, in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean and elsewhere, new elements of this sort seem originally to convey emphasis, and hence act as pragmatic reinforcers of the expression of negation. However, while most, if not all, languages have means of emphasizing the expression of negation, emphatic reinforcement is insufficient to trigger renewal by itself (Breitbarth , Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ). Furthermore, it has been shown for languages spoken outside of Europe and the Mediterranean that emphasis is not a necessary property of reinforcers of the expression of negation (van der Auwera , ). Horn () argues that renewal of the expression of negation is the result of an interplay between two opposing tendencies in language: (a) least effort (leading to weakening); and (b) information preservation (leading to strengthening). Horn additionally appeals to the pull of Jespersen’s (, ) Negative First Principle (as Horn :  calls it), (). ()

The Negative First Principle ‘the natural tendency, . . . for the sake of clearness, to place the negative first, or at any rate as soon as possible, very often immediately before the particular word to be negatived (generally the verb).’ (Jespersen : ) [the tendency] ‘to put the negative word or element as early as possible, so as to leave no doubt in the mind of the hearer as to the purport of what is said.’ (Jespersen : )

A number of typological approaches (e.g. Bartsch and Vennemann , Vennemann , Lehmann , or Bernini and Ramat ) have sought to correlate the position of the negation particle with the basic word order of a language, and thus to derive diachronic changes in the position of negation from changes in basic word order. Horn (: ), quoting typological literature (Dahl  and Payne ), observes that free ‘particle negation is overwhelmingly likely to precede the verb in SVO, VSO and VOS languages, and may do so in SOV languages as well.’ To take such observations to imply that typological causes lie at the heart of Jespersen’s cycle, that is, that a change in basic word order might be expected to cause a change in negation type (preverbal vs. postverbal) is more controversial. First of all, there is a great deal of disagreement as to which word order type correlates with which kind of negation. While Bartsch and Vennemann (: ) argue that a shift from OV to VO order is the reason for the development of postverbal negation in German (see also Vennemann  and Harris , a, b), Lehmann (: ) takes the opposite position, namely that postverbal negation arose in German to align with its OV order. Clearly, much depends on the general question of what the basic word order types actually are, and whether negation is taken to be a head or a modifier, patterning with V or with O. Ultimately,

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Indefinites in the scope of negation



neither a correlation of basic VO order (however defined) nor of basic OV order with postverbal negators seems to make valid predictions (Dryer b: ).⁴ In fact, as we have seen, preverbal placement of the negation particle seems to be universally preferred, even in OV languages (Dahl , Dryer , Horn , and Haspelmath : ff.). Furthermore, in practice, we do not observe innovations that can easily be attributed to typological causes. Many Romance languages retained preverbal markers of negation long after they switched from inherited (Latin) OV word order to basic VO. If typological pressure were a significant factor, we would expect the position of negation to change more quickly. Indeed, many of the world’s languages, regardless of their basic word order, fail to initiate the renewal of the expression of negation. In view of these problems, direct attribution of change in negative systems to typological causes looks to be untenable. In the present work, we take a multiple-causation approach, developing an account of Jespersen’s cycle that sees it as the result of an interplay of pragmatic, more narrowly syntactic, and language-external factors. Different constellations of factors result in slightly different cycles with different causes in different languages. These can only be accurately assessed by means of a more detailed crosslinguistic investigation of the chronology and circumstances of each instance of the cycle than has been attempted to date. In this vein, one of the aims of chapter  is to make a definitive, evidence-based statement of which instances of Jespersen’s cycle in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean can be connected by contact, and which must have been triggered internally.

. Indefinites in the scope of negation Negation is not only expressed by particles. In the languages under study here, it is often expressed also by quantifiers of different kinds, and there are always complex interactions between negation and quantificational expressions. In particular, just as the expression of standard sentential negation is subject to cyclic renewal, so too are indefinite pronouns in the scope of negation. This applies to indefinite pronouns with meanings like ‘anything’ or ‘nothing’ as well as indefinite adverbials with meanings like ‘ever’ or ‘never’. One common development is what Ladusaw () calls the ‘argument cycle’, whereby a ‘regular indefinite argument’ (‘one thing’) ⁴ Note that Dryer (b) shows that there is, on the other hand, a robust correlation between order of subject and verb and order of negator and verb, namely that negation is more often postverbal in subject– verb (SV) languages and almost always preverbal in verb–subject (VS) languages (a notable exception being spoken Welsh; see section .). Dryer makes no suggestion of a link between these findings and Jespersen’s cycle, and it seems unlikely that there is one, at least for the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, where the general trend among languages that undergo Jespersen’s cycle is for negation to shift from preverbal to postverbal position, but without any accompanying shift of VS to SV basic word order.

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

Introduction

becomes increasingly negative (‘anything’ > ‘nothing’). This development will be referred to in the present work as the quantifier cycle, in order to include nonargumental indefinites. In the course of the quantifier cycle, indefinites that were once free to appear in any syntactic environment come, over time, to be restricted to increasingly negative contexts. French personne ‘no one’ and rien ‘nothing’, for instance, developed from generic nouns (Latin persona ‘person’, rem ‘thing.’) that were originally contextually unrestricted. Via various intermediate stages they came to be restricted to negative clauses in the present-day language. Developments affecting indefinites in the scope of negation, and the ways these developments interact with changes in the expression of sentential negation, are the topic of Part II of the present volume. A great deal of terminology is associated with this topic, and it is not always used consistently. The aim of the current section is to set out the terms used in the present volume. Indefinites in the scope of negation can have different kinds of relationships with sentential negation. We can distinguish three main types: (i) negative quantifiers; (ii) NPIs; and (iii) a third type, whose behaviour combines properties of the other two. Laka (: –; ) originally proposed the term ‘n-word’ for this type, due to the fact that most of the indefinites with this behaviour begin with /n/ in Spanish (nadie ‘n.one’ = ‘anyone/no one’, nada ‘n.thing’, ningún ‘any/no’, nunca ‘(n) ever’ etc.), even though not all of them in fact contain a (historically) negative morpheme: nadie and nada, for instance, derive from (homines) nati ‘born men’ and (res) nata ‘born thing’ respectively (Laka : ). Due to the homonymy with the masked racial slur, however, it is preferable to follow Déprez and Espinal (forthcoming) in choosing the term negative concord item (NCI) instead. Consider first negative quantifiers. In contrast to the other two types, which, to varying degrees, require the presence of another negative marker, negative quantifiers are always sufficient on their own to render a clause negative (according to the tests for sentential negation introduced in section .). The German negative quantifier niemand ‘no one’ in () is a case in point, as are negative indefinites in other non-negative-concord languages like Classical Latin nemo ‘no one’ or standard English nothing. The behaviour of the latter is illustrated in ()–(). ()

Mary is scared of nothing.

()

Nothing scares Mary.

()

What scares Mary? Nothing.

()

Have you seen nothing?

[Must have negative interpretation]

()

If you see nothing, alert the authorities.

[Must have negative interpretation]

()

I did not see nothing.

[Must have logical double negative interpretation]

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Indefinites in the scope of negation ()



It is not true that I saw nothing. [Must have logical double negative interpretation]

Examples ()–() show that nothing suffices as the sole expression of negation in both full clauses and fragment answers. Examples ()–() show that, even in contexts which license the presence of NPIs and NCIs, such as interrogatives, conditionals, and negative clauses (see below for further details), nothing must always contribute its own logical negation to interpretation. If there is another element which expresses sentential negation, either in the same clause (), or a higher clause (), the result is necessarily what we call here (logical) double negation. This term is understood as in propositional logic, where two negatives equal a positive: ¬ ¬ p $ p.⁵ An interpretation with a single logical negation as in ()–() is not available in () or (). The negative quantifiers nothing, niemand, and nemo all contain a morphological marker of negation (at least from an etymological point of view). This makes it plausible that they are inherently semantically negative, as proposed by de Swart and Sag (). However, containing an overt negative morpheme is not a necessary feature of negative quantifiers (cf. Swedish/Norwegian ingen ‘nobody’), or indeed a sufficient one, if we accept the arguments put forward by Penka () and Jäger () against treating the morphologically negative indefinite elements of High German as negative quantifiers. The second type, NPIs, are evidently not semantically negative themselves. Rather, they are restricted to occurring in non-assertive (also known as affective) contexts; more precisely, they need to occur inside the scope of a licensing operator of the right type within a sufficiently local distance (Klima ). English anything, for instance, is grammatical in negative, interrogative, conditional, or comparative clauses, but ungrammatical in affirmative declarative clauses, ()–().⁶ ()

Mary is not scared of anything.

()

Is Mary scared of anything?

()

If Mary were scared of anything, I would be surprised.

()

Mary is more scared of dragons than anything else.

()

*Mary is scared of anything.

The licensing of NPIs is not clause-bound; the licensing operator may also be contained in a higher clause, ()–().

⁵ To be sure, truth-conditional equivalence to an affirmative sentence is not necessarily (or usually) the same as pragmatic equivalence, cf. Horn (: –). ⁶ Note that () is grammatical under a free-choice interpretation of anything, ‘Mary is scared of an arbitrarily chosen thing’. This is, however, a different use of anything. See chapter  for further discussion.

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

Introduction

()

I did not claim [that Mary was scared of anything].

()

If it were true [that Mary was scared of anything], I would be surprised.

The vagueness of the expression ‘licensing operator of the right type’ has to do with the fact that not all NPIs share the same licensing conditions. Many NPI-licensing contexts can be defined as downward entailing (monotone decreasing) (Fauconnier  and Ladusaw ), though some require different non-veridical operators (Zwarts , , , Giannakidou , ). A context is downward entailing if it has the property of reversing the entailment relations of expressions in its scope. For instance, the affirmative clause Mary ate slowly entails that Mary ate, while the negated clause Mary didn’t eat entails that Mary didn’t eat slowly. Non-veridicality is a broader concept. It includes most downward-entailing contexts, but also some other contexts where entailment relations are not reversed. Rather, the presence of a non-veridical operator entails that the truth of the proposition modified by it is not asserted (it is either left open or denied). The epistemic modal may, in (), is non-veridical: example () does not assert that Mary is eating cakes (merely that this is a possibility); however, it does entail ‘Mary may be eating’; hence, it is not downward entailing. ()

Mary may be eating cakes.

A subset of non-veridical operators are anti-veridical; that is, they entail that the modified proposition is false. Chief among these are sentential negation and without (Giannakidou : ). The fact that many NPIs are licensed in comparative clauses, as in (), which are not obviously non-veridical (Giannakidou : –), but are downward entailing (von Stechow : ), suggests that both concepts are necessary to capture the distribution of (different types of) NPIs. Importantly, not all NPIs are licensed in all downward-entailing or non-veridical contexts. Some NPIs can only occur in the scope of negation. Such elements are called strong NPIs; all others are called weak NPIs (Zwarts ). A case in point is English one bit, which is illicit in affirmative declarative contexts as well as in all NPI contexts apart from clausemate sentential negation. ()

Mary didn’t like him one bit.

()

*Did Mary like him one bit?

()

*If Mary liked him one bit, I would be surprised.

()

*Mary liked him one bit.

Based on semantic criteria, Van der Wouden () and Zwarts () propose the more fine-grained hierarchy of NPI contexts in (), splitting up strong NPI contexts into anti-additive and antimorphic ones.

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Indefinites in the scope of negation ()

context: example licenser: example NPI:



anti⊆ anti⊆ downward- ⊆ nonmorphic additive entailing veridical not no one at most three hardly one bit lift a finger any ever

Anti-additive contexts are downward entailing and additionally satisfy the first Law of de Morgan (¬(p ∨ q) $ (¬p) ∧ (¬q)). A context is antimorphic if it is anti-additive and additionally satisfies the second Law of de Morgan (¬(p ∧ q) $ (¬p) ∨ (¬q)) (Zwarts ). Despite these differences, one property that unites NPI indefinites of all kinds is that they are unable to express negation on their own under any circumstances. That is, they must always be licensed by some element: either an overt expression of sentential negation in negative sentences, or by some other downward-entailing or non-veridical operator in non-negative sentences. Diachronically, NPIs may become increasingly restricted in their distribution to stronger (i.e. more negative) contexts (see chapter  for further discussion). Besides NPIs, there are also positive polarity items (PPIs). These are, in a sense, the inverse of strong NPIs, being elements that cannot occur in the scope of negation. An example is English something, which is grammatical in an affirmative clause, (), but ungrammatical (with unmarked intonation) in a negative clause, ().⁷ In interrogative, conditional and especially comparative contexts ()–(), something is grammatical, but favours a specific-indefinite interpretation (see chapter  for more on specificity). ()

Mary is scared of something.

()

*Mary is not scared of something.

()

Is Mary scared of something?

()

If Mary were scared of something, I would be surprised.

()

Mary is more scared of dragons than something else.

Finally, let us return to NCIs (negative concord items). These also interact with sentential negation in specific ways. Elements in this (rather heterogeneous) class are an intermediate category between NPIs and negative quantifiers. Their defining feature is that they embody the following paradox. On the one hand, they resemble NPIs, in that co-occurrence with an element expressing sentential negation leads to

⁷ That is to say, something is ungrammatical if the associated existential quantifier is outscoped by negation, in the present case under the interpretation that there is no thing that Mary is scared of. There is a version of () that is grammatical, namely one with contrastive intonation on thing. This gives rise to an interpretation where the existential is interpreted above the scope of negation, that is ‘there is  thing that Mary is not scared of ’.

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

Introduction

only one logical negation in interpretation. In some languages the resemblance goes further, in that NCIs may also be licensed in some or all weak NPI-contexts with a non-negative interpretation. To illustrate, in Spanish, indefinites such as nada ‘nothing/anything’ and nadie ‘no one/anyone’ are licensed in a varying range of (non-negative) NPI-contexts, as in ()–(), taken from Herburger (: ). ()

Pedro compró el terreno sin contar-se-lo a nadie. Pedro buy..  land without tell.-- to n.body ‘Pedro bought the land without telling anybody.’

()

En lugar de intentar nada ahora, es mejor esperar a in place of try. n.thing now be.. better wait. to más tarde. more late ‘Instead of trying anything now, it is better to wait until later.’

()

Antes de hacer nada, debes lavar-le las manos. before of do. n.thing must.. wash.. . hands ‘Before doing anything, you should wash his hands.’

()

Dudo que vayan doubt..  go... ‘I doubt they’ll find anything.’

a to

encontrar find.

nada. n.thing

Moreover, like NPIs, NCIs must co-occur with an expression of sentential negation in negative finite main clauses,⁸ as illustrated for the Spanish NCI nadie ‘n.one’ in (). The paradox, given this NPI-like behaviour, is that, unlike NPIs, NCIs can be used to express negation in isolation, () (cf. Laka , Herburger ). Moreover, like negative quantifiers, NCIs can (perhaps with qualifications; see Surányi ) be modified by ‘almost’ (e.g. Dahl , Van der Wouden and Zwarts ). () No vi a nadie.  see..  n.one ‘I didn’t see anyone.’ ()

A: A quién viste?  who see.. ‘Who did you see?’ B: A nadie.  n.one ‘No one.’

(Herburger : )

⁸ This statement will be qualified in a moment when we turn to the distinction between strict and nonstrict negative concord.

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Indefinites in the scope of negation



In the present volume, we follow Giannakidou’s () definition of such items: ()

An expression α is an n-word iff: a. α can be used in structures containing sentential negation or another α-expression yielding a reading equivalent to one logical negation; and b. α can provide a negative fragment answer. (Giannakidou : )

This definition is not used by everyone. Some authors, like de Swart () or Hansen (), subsume what are called negative quantifiers here under the term ‘n-word’, together with items fitting the definition in (). Others, like Penka (), call elements ‘negative indefinites’ that we would here separate into negative quantifiers and NCIs. While NCIs do not necessarily form a natural class, being licensed in different contexts in different languages, they are unified by a trait which justifies keeping them terminologically distinct from the class of negative quantifiers. Contrary to negative quantifiers, NCIs are able to co-occur with other expressions of negation —not only the sentential negator, but also other NCIs—without leading to double negation. This phenomenon is called negative concord.⁹ This phenomenon exists independently of the renewal of the standard expression of negation, but has often been connected to it (e.g. Ladusaw ), because it involves the multiple formal expression of negation within a clause without implying an interpretation as multiple logical negation (with two logical negations cancelling each other out), much like at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle. Here we adopt the spirit of Giannakidou’s () informal definition of negative concord in (). Note, however, that in the present volume the term negative concord is used to refer only to the phenomenon of apparent multiple formal expression of negation involving indefinites, and not also to the co-occurrence of sentential negative markers at certain stages of Jespersen’s cycle, which might be understood to be subsumed by Giannakidou’s informal definition in (). ()

Negative concord Generally, we talk about ‘negative concord’ in situations where negation is interpreted just once although it seems to be expressed more than once in the clause. (Giannakidou : )

This definition uses the concept of ‘expressing’ negation in a way first formulated by Ladusaw (), who argues for a detachment of the formal (morphological) expression of negation from the semantic interpretation of negation. According to Ladusaw, the actual logical or semantic property of a clause being negated may be abstract, and the presence of this abstract property is merely indicated by one or more morphological elements that are not semantically negative themselves. This ⁹ This concept has traditionally often (e.g. by Jespersen : –) been called ‘double negation’, a term which will be reserved here for logical double negation.

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

Introduction

view avoids the complications arising from earlier approaches to negative concord involving several negative quantifiers undergoing a process of factorization and absorption (Haegeman and Zanuttini ), and treats indefinites in the scope of negation not as (semantically) negative quantifiers, but simply as (existential) indefinites with licensing restrictions similar to NPIs.¹⁰ In some languages, such as Romanian in (), an NCI has to co-occur with the sentential negator regardless of its position in the clause. In such cases, Giannakidou (, ) speaks of strict negative concord. In other languages, such as Portuguese in (), an NCI replaces the sentential negator when appearing pre-verbally. Giannakidou calls structures of this sort non-strict negative concord. This terminological distinction will be adopted in the present volume. ()

()

Romanian Niciun student nu a no student  . ‘No student read any book.’ Portuguese a. Não veio  come.. ‘No one came.’

citit nicio carte. read. no book (after Haspelmath : )

ninguém. nobody

b. Ninguém (*não) viu nada. nobody  see.. nothing ‘No one saw anything.’

(* ‘No one didn’t come’)

(* ‘No one saw nothing’)

Note that the non-strict distribution renders the formal analysis of NCIs in such languages particularly complex, as the apparent ambiguity of these items between NPIs and negative quantifiers is not only split by context (finite negative clause vs. fragment answer), but also depends on the syntactic position of indefinite and standard negation marker. The preverbal items in non-strict negative-concord languages behave like negative quantifiers, appearing to contribute semantic negation by themselves, while postverbal NCIs behave like NPIs. Following Den Besten (), the co-occurrence of an NCI with the marker of sentential negation we call here negative doubling; the co-occurrence of more than one NCI we call negative spread.¹¹ A negative-concord language can have

¹⁰ Cf. Giannakidou () for discussion of different approaches to analysing negative concord and the properties of NCIs, and for a proposal of a third option besides taking NCIs to be universal quantifiers undergoing factorization and absorption (Haegeman and Zanuttini ), or taking them to be existential indefinites (Ladusaw ), namely as allowing both an existential and a universal construal. ¹¹ Note that Giannakidou () uses the term negative spread to refer solely to a configuration in which NCIs co-occur with each other, to the exclusion of the standard negation marker. We do not adopt this narrower definition here.

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Mechanisms of change



one or both types of negative concord. Negative-concord systems, too, are subject to diachronic change, a topic which will be taken up in the second part of this volume.

. Mechanisms of change This section provides an overview of the theoretical assumptions and analytical frameworks adopted in the present volume to account for the attested developments in the expression of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. We begin with the mechanisms underlying internally motivated change (section ..), before sketching a framework for understanding contact-induced change in section .. that builds on the ideas laid out in the previous section. .. Internally motivated change A fundamental principle of diachronic linguistics is the Uniformitarian Principle (originally borrowed from geology by Whitney  []): ‘the linguistic processes taking place around us are the same as those that have operated to produce the historical record’ (Labov : ) and ‘no linguistic state of affairs (structures, inventory, process, etc.) can have been the case only in the past’ (Lass : ). In the present volume, this principle is adopted alongside a generative framework, which holds that human languages are the output of underlying mental representations in individual speakers of the grammars that generate those languages. Combining the Uniformitarian Principle with a generative perspective entails that historical variation within one language is to be considered a special case of crosslinguistic variation, that is, variation between two languages: two different historical stages of a single language, just like two different contemporary languages, or contemporary dialects of one language, will have been generated by two different underlying grammars. According to Chomsky (: ), three factors affect ‘the growth of language in the individual’, that is, the individual mental representation of grammars and their properties (see also Chomsky : ): genetic predisposition (Universal Grammar; UG); the triggering experience during (first) language acquisition (the primary linguistic data; PLD); and so-called ‘third factors’, such as ‘principles of structural architecture’, and ‘principles of efficient computation’ (Chomsky : ), also known as economy principles. UG restricts variation between languages, and also, assuming the Uniformitarian Principle, between distinct historical stages of a single language. Under generative assumptions—more specifically, the Borer–Chomsky conjecture ()—linguistic variation is assumed to be located in the properties of lexical items, in particular, in the properties of functional heads.¹²

¹² Borer’s (: ) original formulation of this idea was that ‘the availability of variation [is restricted] to the possibilities which are offered by one single component: the inflectional component’.

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 ()

Introduction The Borer–Chomsky Conjecture All parameters of variation are attributable to differences in the features of particular items (e.g. the functional heads) in the lexicon. (Baker : )

Closed-class grammatical categories are hierarchically ordered and project syntactic structure through their features. Minimally, the functional categories at the clausal level are little v (causation/transitivity), I/T (inflection/tense), and C (complementizer), plus D (determiner) at the nominal level. These are often thought of more as structural domains within which more fine-grained functional categories are expressed—for instance, tense, aspect, mood, and modality within the I/T domain, or topic, focus, or illocutionary force within the C domain. Under cartographic approaches (e.g. Rizzi , Cinque ), each of these more finegrained categories heads its own projection, and functional projections are hierarchically ordered according to a (strict) universal hierarchy or sequence of functional heads. Negation, too, is a functional category, though the great variation in the positions in which it is expressed across languages makes it difficult to locate within a supposedly rigid hierarchy. More minimalist approaches derive the hierarchy from, for example, scope requirements (e.g. Nilsen ). Whichever of these variations on the same theme is adopted, from a historical perspective it is the interpretability and/or availability of the features of functional heads that is subject to diachronic variation and change, with consequent effects on patterns of agreement or movement.¹³ Before specifying how this works, we must first consider the other two factors identified by Chomsky (): the triggering experience during language acquisition, and economy principles. The role of (first) language acquisition (i.e. the second factor) in language change has long been recognized (e.g. Paul : ), and in most recent generative accounts of syntactic change, language acquisition also takes a central position (Lightfoot , , Fodor , , Fodor and Ferreira , Yang , Roberts ). From a generative perspective, however, language acquisition as the locus of change is at first sight somewhat surprising. This is because, on generative assumptions, each individual speaker–hearer has their own mental representation of the grammar of the language(s) that they speak, the output being only a reflection of the underlying representation. UG is assumed because children are able to acquire a target grammar from rather deficient input (the poverty of stimulus argument for UG, or ‘Plato’s problem’), or even create a new grammar from extremely deficient input, as in the case of creolization. The surprising fact, then, given this assumed innate predisposition for this feat, is that children should ever fail

¹³ These operations are triggered by the need of uninterpretable features to be matched with an interpretable feature and subsequently eliminated before the derivation reaches the interfaces (the principle of Full Interpretation; Chomsky ).

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Mechanisms of change



to acquire the grammar generating the input they receive and instead introduce changes into their representation of it.¹⁴ The answer to this problem is that transmission of language between generations is discontinuous, and speakers have to establish the rules of the language to be acquired from scratch, on the basis of the PLD they are presented with. The PLD the acquirer is exposed to is naturally only an indirect reflection of the individual grammars that underlie it. This discontinuity, together with the poverty of the stimulus, is the breeding ground for language change.¹⁵ According to Andersen (), the rules of a language have to be abduced during first-language (L) acquisition, given the nondeterministic nature of the input.¹⁶ If the language acquirer’s hypotheses regarding the rules underlying the PLD diverge from the rules actually underlying it, the acquirer has postulated a new underlying grammar. Divergent hypotheses of this sort can come about when, for instance, surface forms become ambiguous regarding their underlying structure through phonological erosion. Postulating a new analysis of the underlying structure in such a situation is called reanalysis. Of course, from the point of view of the individual acquirer, given the assumed mechanism of L acquisition, this is really just analysis.¹⁷ Clearly, given the set of assumptions regarding language acquisition and knowledge of language outlined above, reanalysis as such happens in individuals. This creates a second problem for accounting for language change from a generative point of view: how can a new reanalysis, which inevitably occurs in isolated individuals, spread to entire populations? Niyogi and Berwick (, ) propose a mathematical model of the spread of syntactic changes in a population. Assuming an idealized grammar with binary parameters and a particular learning algorithm, they show that, if two grammars differ in exactly one parameter setting, the result ¹⁴ Indeed several authors (Longobardi , Keenan ) have therefore entertained a so-called ‘Inertia Principle’, according to which syntactic change only occurs as a result of grammar-external forces. See chapter  for further discussion. ¹⁵ The assumption that L-acquisition is therefore the locus of linguistic innovation has not escaped criticism, however, especially from outside the generative framework (e.g. Traugott and Dasher , Diessel ). Two key objections are that (i) input-divergent production, which is found during the acquisition process, rarely survives into adulthood; and (ii) full parallelism between such innovations in the speech of young children and attested diachronic change is rarely observed. Cournane (, ), bringing to bear experimental work on L-acquisition, counters such criticisms by underlining the importance of peer-to-peer language acquisition throughout childhood and into the teenage years for the innovation and in particular the spread of input-divergent linguistic patterns, pointing out that teenagers typically lead linguistic innovations. ¹⁶ See Deutscher () for a critique of the use of the term abduction. ¹⁷ To be sure, not all changes in the output of speakers need to signal a change in the underlying grammar; adult speakers may accommodate to or adopt new patterns without this affecting their mental representation of the grammar. However, according to acquisitionist accounts of syntactic change, such patterns only become rules generating similar output in future generations of speakers once children deduce an underlying mental representation from such modified data that differs from the mental representation of the speakers who produced the modified output. See section .. for further discussion of this point.

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

Introduction

is a quadratic (nonlinear) dynamical system. If the probabilities for the two competing grammars are different, that is, if speakers are more likely to produce sentences generated by one of the two grammars, the spread of the setting with the higher probability will automatically have a logistic (S-shaped) growth. In response to the question of how a new grammar can become more probable, Yang () proposes a learning algorithm for individual acquirers, which evaluates the fitness of a grammar when presented with input containing conservative and innovative variants. In principle, the learner will acquire two grammars when presented with variational input, but continually update the probabilistic weights assigned to each grammar throughout the acquisition process. Each sentence in the input that unambiguously requires one of the grammars to be parsed will reward the successful grammar and punish the unsuccessful one. This learning process, when repeated over several generations, can advance a change towards the innovative grammar. See Heycock and Wallenberg () for a concrete example, namely the loss of verb movement to T in Faroese. Reanalysis during acquisition often leads to the renewal of functional material (such as the expression of sentential negation) by means of a formerly lexical element (such as a noun meaning ‘step’ or ‘crumb’), or a less grammatical element (such as a negative indefinite). The name given to developments of this sort is grammaticalization. Meillet (: ) speaks in this connection of the ‘passage d’un mot autonome au rôle d’élément grammatical’.¹⁸ In this volume, the term grammaticalization is used in this pretheoretical sense (though in chapter  a formal analysis will be provided along the lines proposed by Roberts and Roussou  and van Gelderen , ). That is, we do not adopt the view that grammaticalization is a distinct process of language change with unique properties (e.g. Lehmann , Hopper and Traugott  [], Heine ), usually cited as involving change of syntactic category, reduction in phonetic substance, and semantic bleaching. Regarding the latter, von Fintel () points out that ‘semantic bleaching’ is not an accurate characterization of the meaning changes affecting elements undergoing grammaticalization. Rather, he argues that while there is a difference between lexical and functional meanings (the latter being necessarily ‘permutation-invariant’, that is, having no reference ‘to particular entities, properties, or situations in the world’; von Fintel : ), functional items are clearly not meaningless. This conception of the process underlies formal approaches to grammaticalization, where functional meanings are encoded higher in the syntactic structure than lexical meanings, specifically in functional heads (see section .. for further discussion). Neither the semantic changes that inevitably accompany grammaticalization, nor the loss of phonetic substance that often accompanies it are integral to the process;

¹⁸ ‘the development of an independent word into a grammatical element’ (transl. the authors).

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

rather, they are epiphenomenal (cf. Newmeyer ), the result of deeper factors including the conventionalization of pragmatic inferences, the hierarchical organization of functional categories in syntax (Roberts and Roussou , Kiparsky ), and the way formal features interact in structure building. While the first of Chomsky’s (, ) three factors of language design (UG) restricts possible variation, and the second (acquisition on the basis of PLD) can create variation within the limits set by UG in the ways described above, it is in particular the so-called third-factor principles that are increasingly recognized as having an important influence on the interaction between the first and second factors with respect to language change. Already Clark and Roberts (: ) argue that acquirers favour simple representations and ‘follow a least effort strategy in that they try to assign the simplest possible parse to the input string’. Roberts and Roussou () argue extensively that simpler structural representations are less marked, and therefore preferred, in the interpretation of the PLD by language acquirers. This leads to the loss of movement and the reanalysis of phrases (with internal structure) as heads (without such structure) (see also van Gelderen’s b Late Merge and Head Preference Principles). Unless robustly triggered (Fodor , ), movement is lost in reanalysis because it requires an element to be merged twice, and therefore be equipped with two sets of features, those necessitating its merger in the base position, and those necessitating its merger in the target position. Following Longobardi (: ), Roberts and Roussou define simplicity as in (). ()

A structural representation R for a substring of input text S is simpler than an alternative representation R0 iff R contains fewer formal feature syncretisms than R0 . (Roberts and Roussou : )

In the current volume, use will be made in particular of two economy principles: Feature Economy () (van Gelderen b, , ) and Minimize Structure () (Cardinaletti and Starke ). Feature Economy postulates that, all else being equal, uninterpretable features are preferred over interpretable ones. By coupling the interpretability of features with the internal complexity of the syntactic object bearing them,¹⁹ van Gelderen partially encodes Minimize Structure—the preference for using the smallest structures possible—within Feature Economy. However, Minimize Structure does not limit internal structural complexity to the interpretability of formal features. Rather, functional features are understood as layers of functional structure, which are unnecessary (and even ungrammatical) in all positions where this information is recoverable by other means.

¹⁹ Note that this view is not universally shared, as there is evidence for functional heads with interpretable formal features, for example negative heads in non-strict negative-concord languages (see chapters  and ).

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 ()

Introduction Feature Economy Minimize interpretable features in the derivation, e.g: Adjunct Specifier Head affix semantic > [iF] > [uF] > [uF] (van Gelderen : )

()

Economy of Representations: Minimize Structure Only if the smaller structure is independently ruled out is the bigger alternative possible. (Cardinaletti and Starke : )

Economy principles alone cannot account for all the developments affecting negation in the languages under consideration. In chapter , we will see the repeated gradual negativization of indefinites and the eventual rise of NCIs out of NPIs. The question is how this is commensurate with the principles just discussed. As mentioned above, one of the principal arguments that has been advanced in favour of UG is the fact that children are able to acquire a target grammar from deficient input. Studies in language acquisition have shown that child learners will postulate new uninterpretable features in cases that look like agreement.²⁰ It will be argued that this not only affects uninterpretable phi- and case features as in (), but also uninterpretable negation features. Because of the Accord Maximization Principle (AMP), indefinites can be attributed a [uNEG] feature in language acquisition to establish negative concord relations. ()

Accord Maximization Principle (AMP) Among a set of convergent derivations S that result from numerations that are identical except for uninterpretable phi- and case-features, such that the members of S satisfy other relevant constraints, those members of S where the greatest number of Accord relations are established block all other derivations in S. (Schütze : –)

This seems to runs counter to Feature Economy (), but, crucially, third-factor principles such as economy principles work in addition to the first and second factors: UG and the mechanisms of language acquisition. As in the case of Minimize Structure (), a more economical representation will only result when a less economical one is superfluous. Uninterpretable features being the glue holding syntactic derivations together, they will only be eliminated in case of robust evidence. General principles of language acquisition—the second factor—determine how the evidence in the PLD is interpreted.

²⁰ In adult L acquisition, on the other hand, uninterpretable features seem to be a particular challenge to acquire and tend to be eliminated (Hawkins and Hattori , Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou , Walkden and Breitbarth ).

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Mechanisms of change



.. Externally motivated change Despite a considerable literature in the field of contact linguistics since the pioneering work of Haugen (), Weinreich (), and others, the bulk of this literature remains largely descriptive. What theoretical work there has been has mainly centred on attempts to set limits on the changes that language contact can cause (e.g. Moravcsik , Curnow , and many others), rather than on the cognitive mechanisms which must ultimately underlie these changes. It is these that are our primary concern here. This section will sketch the approach to contact-induced change that will inform the discussion in the following chapters. The focus in this approach is on the individual bilingual speakers who initiate change (following Van Coetsem , ; see also Lucas , ), and the cognitive processes which lead them to produce externally influenced PLD for children acquiring their native languages. The absence of this kind of approach in the much of the previous language-contact literature (with the partial exception of Van Coetsem’s work and work in this tradition) is perhaps due to the theoretical orientation of the majority of those who have worked on the topic, which tends to be sociolinguistic and usage-based in outlook. A prominent example of this is one of the most widely cited and influential works on language contact, Thomason and Kaufman (). Thomason and Kaufman’s well-known borrowing scale is predicated on the sociolinguistic notion of ‘intensity of contact’ (see also Labov : ). There is no doubt that insights from the sociolinguistics of language contact are essential for an understanding of the social conditions that are necessary for contact-induced change to occur in the first place. However, within the broadly acquisitionist approach to syntactic change adopted in the present volume, where the ultimate object of study is changing mental grammars rather than shifting patterns of usage, a community-level sociolinguistic approach is insufficient and potentially misleading. The potential for confusion that comes with a purely sociolinguistic approach has been pointed out by Winford (), who has worked to popularize the more cognitively-oriented approach of Van Coetsem (, ). As Winford makes clear, the advantage of Van Coetsem’s approach is that it makes a principled, cognitive distinction between borrowing on the one hand and imposition (referred to variously in the literature as ‘interference’, ‘substrate influence’, ‘transfer’, etc.) on the other. This is done on the basis of the psycholinguistic dominance relations of the bilingual speakers who are the agents of any contact-induced change. That is, where bilingual speakers are dominant (psycho- not sociolinguistically speaking) in the source language for a given change, any alterations to their performance of the recipient language on the model of the source language are said to have occurred under ‘source-language agentivity’ or, equivalently, to have been ‘imposed’. On the other hand, where the bilingual agents of change are dominant in the recipient language, features from the source language that they introduce into the recipient language are said to have been transferred under ‘recipient-language agentivity’, or

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

Introduction

‘borrowed’. The catch-all term for all types of contact-induced change that Van Coetsem uses (and which is adopted here) is ‘transfer’. The position taken here is that a focus on cognitive dominance is crucial to understanding the psychological mechanisms through which individual speakers initiate contact-induced change. The intuitive point, which is argued for in more detail by Lucas (, ), is that syntactic transfer initiated by native speakers of the recipient language is the result of an inherent psychological tendency to minimize the processing effort associated with the use of two (or more) distinct languages, while transfer by non-native learners of the recipient language is a symptom of the impoverished acquisition abilities of adults relative to children, leading to a partial reliance on their native grammars for communication in the second language (L). On a view which sees syntactic change as change in grammars (cf. section ..), and knowledge of an L as a fundamentally different cognitive object to a nativelanguage grammar (cf. Bley-Vroman , , Meisel ), non-target-like recipient language structures produced by L learners clearly do not, in themselves, constitute change (cf. Hale ). However, if this source-language-influenced output forms a significant proportion of the PLD for children acquiring the recipient language as a native language, those children are liable to acquire grammars of the recipient language which incorporate the source-language features found in their PLD. At this point we can say that a change due to imposition (under sourcelanguage agentivity) has occurred. It is worth noting that suggestions along these lines have been made by Roberts (: –, –) and, apparently independently, by Bowern (: ), although neither of these authors explicitly discuss the distinction between borrowing and imposition. Roberts distinguishes two types of contact-induced change in PLD: ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’. Roberts’ indirect contact is equivalent to our sourcelanguage agentivity: the interlanguage of L acquirers of a given recipient language will typically be markedly different from the performance of native speakers of that recipient language (including features transferred from the source language, these speakers’ own native language) and this interlanguage forms (part of) the PLD for children acquiring the recipient language natively. Bowern (: ) refers to this process as ‘the solidification of adults’ L practices in the speech of children’. Roberts’ direct contact, on the other hand, involves tokens from separate languages being combined into a single set of PLD for a child acquiring a single grammar (see also Aboh  for a similar perspective). Whether this constitutes a significant mechanism of change is doubtful however, given the now widely acknowledged fact that children in a bilingual environment achieve early and successful differentiation of the languages to which they are exposed (Meisel , ). This type of contactinduced change in PLD would therefore appear to be relevant only to contact between closely related dialects and not for mutually unintelligible languages. Roberts makes no reference to borrowing in our terms.

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Overview



Bowern () also makes no explicit reference to transfer under recipient-language agentivity, but she does suggest that what she calls ‘grammar leakage’ might be a possible mechanism of contact-induced change. This she describes as ‘the shift to closely related grammars under influence from exposure in adulthood’ (: ). This, then, seems to be a form of L attrition, effective at the level of grammatical competence, with the restriction that it only occurs in the case of contact with closely related grammars. L attrition does indeed seem to be the major source of perturbation in PLD under recipient-language agentivity (see Lucas , ). However, our understanding of this process differs from Bowern’s grammar leakage in two ways. First, there is no reason why attrition should only be possible under contact with ‘closely related grammars’ (which is a concept in need of further clarification, in any case). Second, as Bowern notes, the notion of change in adult competence—grammar in its steady state—goes against standard generative thinking. But whether or not we believe this is possible, if we assume that L attrition is possible at least at the level of performance, then once again we can account for changes initiated in this way in terms of source-language-influenced perturbation to PLD—this time produced by native speakers of the recipient language—leading to children acquiring grammars of the recipient language that incorporate this source-language influence.

. Overview The current volume is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the cyclic renewal of negative markers, and the second turning to the often similarly cyclic developments affecting indefinite pronouns and adverbs in the scope of negation. Both parts have the same internal structure. After an overview of the empirical domain, internal factors affecting the observed developments are discussed before they are given a formal analysis. Finally, external causes for the developments are explored. The frequent mutual influence of the processes affecting negative particles and those affecting indefinites is anticipated in the first part, but fully addressed only in the second part. In more detail, then, the volume is structured as follows. Part I deals with Jespersen’s cycle. Chapter  provides a number of empirical generalizations concerning both the inception and the later stages of Jespersen’s cycle in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. In chapter , the internal motivations and mechanisms behind the cyclic renewal of the expression of sentential negation are discussed and a formal account is given, while chapter  addresses the role of language contact in the diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle across languages. The structure of Part II, addressing the developments affecting indefinites in the scope of negation, is parallel to that of Part I. After discussing the empirical generalizations—the quantifier cycle and the free-choice cycle—in chapter , chapter  addresses the internal motivations behind these developments and proposes a formal account. External causes of some of the observed developments are discussed in chapter . Chapter  concludes the volume and summarizes the results.

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Part I Jespersen’s cycle

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2 Empirical generalizations The essential feature of Jespersen’s cycle is the rise of a new expression of (standard) sentential negation, which ultimately replaces the original one. This chapter provides an overview of the kinds of elements that are attested as sources of new negation markers in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, the stages they need to pass through to undergo this development, and the possible further paths that the original markers of negation may take thereafter. The majority of this chapter deals with incipient Jespersen’s cycle—that is, the emergence of items that have the potential to form the basis of a successful Jespersen cycle, and the question of what factors influence whether or not this potential is realized. A temptation to be resisted in historical linguistics is to interpret endpoints of changes as targets that languages aim for (see Lass : ch.  for criticism of this point). Various studies (e.g. Schwegler , Geurts , Kiparsky and Condoravdi ) cite examples of Jespersen’s cycle going to completion or near completion as evidence of a general need on the part of speakers to renew the expression of negation, and seek to identify particular factors that trigger and drive forward this development. The problem with such post-hoc reasoning is that it excludes relevant data from languages in which the change has not gone to completion. In this chapter and chapter , we broaden the empirical base by also looking at languages in which there are linguistic elements that seem to fulfil at least some criteria of successful new negative markers, but which nevertheless never reach the next expected step in the development. As will become clear, while there are certain paths that incipient new negators seem to tread over and over again, it is also clear that these developments may stop at any point without completing the cycle. The chapter is structured as follows. After an overview of incipient Jespersen’s cycle in section ., section . provides a typology of the major lexical sources for new negators in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. In section . we then develop a classification of the bridging contexts that elements need to pass through on their way to becoming new negative markers, and set out the conditions that need to be fulfilled for them to advance to the next stage. The focus of section . is the comparative speed of the cycle in different languages, a point that has largely been ignored in the literature to date. Even closely related languages, The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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

Empirical generalizations

or those that have been in close contact with one another over many centuries, often differ greatly in the speed at which they progress through the cycle, if they progress through it at all. Here again, the teleological view of Jespersen’s cycle has acted as a barrier to using such differences to enhance our understanding of the factors driving, slowing down, or preventing change in the expression of negation. Section . then turns to another relatively under-researched issue: the fate of the original negative markers that are replaced by the new elements as a result of Jespersen’s cycle. Here too, we may observe certain common paths that these former negation particles take once a language has entered Jespersen’s cycle. Section . concludes the chapter.

. Incipient Jespersen’s cycle: An overview As amply discussed in the literature, and already described by Jespersen (), English underwent Jespersen’s cycle as schematically depicted in Table .. T . Schematic representation of Jespersen’s cycle

English

stage I

stage II

stage III

stage I´

ic ne secge (Old English)

I ne seye not (Middle English)

I say not (Early Modern English)

I don’t say (Present-day English)

The new negator, not, which arises in Middle English, is the result of a grammaticalization process by which an original negative indefinite (pro)noun nōwiht/nāwiht > noht ‘nothing, no creature’ is reanalysed first as an adverb meaning something like ‘(not) at all’ and ultimately as the negator still used today, though with a changed syntax after the rise of do-support (on which more below). Noteworthy in this connection is that not was not the only item serving to reinforce the expression of negation in Old English. Alongside it there were nānra þinga, nāteshwōn ‘not at all’ and nā ‘never, not at all’ (on the syntax of nā, see Van Kemenade , Rissanen , Wallage , ).¹ Comparing diachronies of negation across languages, we see that this is not an isolated development. All languages seem to have ways of emphasizing the polarity of negation along the lines of English (not) at all or one bit. However, this is normally a stable situation, and the transition to stage II, and hence the initiation of Jespersen’s cycle, is rare. As pointed out by Lenz (: ), the availability of these means of emphasis should be seen as an entirely different phenomenon from the bipartite expression of negation seen in stage II of Jespersen’s cycle. Only under certain ¹ A secondary renewal with never has occurred in some varieties of English; see Lucas and Willis ().

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Incipient Jespersen’s cycle: An overview



conditions, and only for certain kinds of elements, is grammaticalization into a pragmatically unmarked (i.e. non-emphatic) standard negation marker possible.² What these elements are, and the contexts in which they can be reanalysed as unmarked negators, is addressed in sections . and .. In the literature on Jespersen’s cycle, different authors have proposed models of the cycle involving either three stages as in Table ., or up to five (e.g. Rowlett : , Van Kemenade : , Roberts and Roussou : –, Jäger : , van der Auwera : , : –, Willis : , Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth : ). A division into three stages corresponds to the surface constructions (e.g. I: ne; II: ne . . . pas; III: pas), without taking into account the varying optionality or availability of more than one construction at a given stage, which may be better modelled with intermediate stages (e.g. IIa: ne ( . . . pas); IIb: ne . . . pas; IIc/IIIa: (ne . . . ) pas; IIIb: pas). The formal expression of negation as single or bipartite furthermore does not yet say anything about the semantic contribution of the markers at stage II, which may justify a further subdivision, as shown in Table .. T . Possible semantic contribution of negation markers at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle

Middle French

stage IIa

stage IIb

stage IIc

ne = logical negation

ne + pas = logical negation

ne = (optional) remnant

pas = (optional) reinforcer

pas = logical negation

In the remainder of this chapter and the rest of this volume, we simplify to three stages, and speak of ‘stage II’ only when there is some sort of formally bipartite expression of standard sentential negation, that is, IIb in Table .. What is labelled stage IIa in Table . will here be treated as a substage of stage I: incipient Jespersen’s cycle, not full-scale Jespersen’s cycle (see below for more details). This is, again, because emphatic reinforcement is to be considered distinct from the bipartite expression of standard sentential negation. Emphatic reinforcers typically start out as nominal or pronominal elements that can appear only in argument position. The next stage in their development, once they have overcome a number of lexical, semantic, pragmatic and syntactic restrictions ² On the other hand, we should recall here the point made by van der Auwera (, ), that there are attested cases of negative renewal that, arguably at least, do not start from elements which have an originally emphatic function. Lucas (a) gives the example of the development in Ethiopian Semitic of a new negator from an ‘and’-conjunction, while Devos, Kasombo Tshibanda, and van der Auwera () discuss new negators in the Bantu language Kanincin deriving from items with locative and possessive function. Devos et al. do note, however, that, the postverbal marker derived from the class  marker kuwith a possessive agreement affix was grammaticalized via a use as emphatic focalizer (‘at all’). So it may be that an emphatic stage is close to universal in incipient Jespersen’s cycle.

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

Empirical generalizations

(for which, see section .), is reanalysis as negative polarity adverbs (NPAs) (i.e. non-arguments with an NPI distribution), reinforcing negation in more general contexts. It then takes a second reanalysis for these elements to become new markers of standard sentential negation, and we therefore reserve the term negative marker for elements of this third type.³ These three types of element can be exemplified with the Present-day English items (i) a penny, an emphatic nominal reinforcer with lexical occurrence restrictions (oknot pay a penny, *not like someone a penny, *not help a penny); (ii) one bit, an NPA with consequently greater, though not total, freedom of occurrence (oknot like someone one bit, oknot help one bit, ?not see the point of something one bit); and (iii) not, a full-blown sentential negator (which in Middle English could co-occur with the original preverbal negator ne; cf. Table .). To repeat, therefore, both developments—from emphatic nominal reinforcer to NPA, and from NPA to negator—need to be completed before we can say that an item has initiated a fullscale Jespersen’s cycle, that is, has reached stage II. We contrast full-scale Jespersen’s cycle with incipient Jespersen’s cycle, a term we use to describe the situation of items that fall into the first two types of category; that is, even those cases where the grammaticalization of these elements has not yet progressed beyond the initial (pro)nominal emphasizer stage. This is because such cases evidently have the potential to go further along the path of grammaticalization towards becoming new markers of sentential negation, even if they never in fact do so. Since these stages are prerequisites for further change, and since it is from the pool of these items that new markers of sentential negation are typically selected, these types need to be investigated if we are to reach a better understanding of how, and why, Jespersen’s cycle occurs.

. Lexical sources for Jespersen’s cycle The possible lexical sources of new markers of sentential negation are limited (cf. for instance van der Auwera ). In the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean under consideration in the current volume, the most common sources are: A. (nominal) minimizers B. generalizers and indefinite (pro)nouns

³ Note, however, that reanalysis as a negator does not necessarily represent a straightforward endpoint for the item concerned. A common process, documented, among others, by Hansen () for Old and Middle French, Wallage () for Middle English, and Blaxter and Willis () for Middle Norwegian, is for the new item to be initially specialized for the negation of discourse-old propositions (for pragmatic restrictions on newly emerging negators, cf. also Schwenter , ). This raises the possibility that discourse activation of the proposition being negated rather than emphasis (an explicit commitment on the part of the speaker to the high informative strength of their proposition, licensing inferences to all informationally weaker options on a scale) may be a relevant property at some point in the development of some or all incipient negators. For further discussion of this issue, see Blaxter and Willis (: –).

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Lexical sources for Jespersen’s cycle



C. (negative) quantifiers D. clause-final repeated negators We consider these in turn. .. Minimizers In conjunction with sentential negation, minimizers express the assertion that the proposition does not hold even to the smallest possible degree. Due to this pragmatic strengthening effect, which will be discussed in more detail in chapter , they can serve to emphatically reinforce the expression of sentential negation, albeit typically with the kind of lexical restrictions noted above. Minimizers that only pragmatically reinforce the expression of negation can be freely created in most languages through the use of nominal elements denoting small quantities, as in (a), especially if the elements in question offer a natural fit with the semantic field of the predicate. Even elements not necessarily denoting small quantities can be coerced into a minimizer interpretation in certain contexts, for example as the complement of the English construction couldn’t give a, as in (b), in which position a wide range of elements (both taboo and non-taboo) are possible. An example of a minimizer that has progressed to the NPA stage is jot in (c), which derives from the Greek letter name iota and thus also evidences expansion from its natural semantic field of predicates connected with writing. () a. I didn’t drink a drop. b. Normally I couldn’t give a dingo’s kidneys about football . . . (https://twitter.com/LeeRedders/status/ accessed  April ) c. My pulse has not quickened a jot today with what we’ve seen. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/--/catherine-mcgregor-cricket-paydispute/ accessed  April ) Uncontroversial examples of minimizers that have gone on to participate in fullscale Jespersen’s cycle in Europe are restricted to Romance languages, as in () (but see Willis a:  on the etymology of Breton ket). () French pas ‘step’, point ‘point’ Occitan pas ‘step’ (Schwegler : –, Granda ) Northern Catalan pas ‘step’ (Espinal : , Batllori ) Northern Italian and Swiss Romansh varieties: Piedmontese pa ‘step’, Modenese brisa ‘crumb’, Engadine Romansh brich(a) (< ‘crumb’, cf. Italian bricia ‘crumb’); Central Romansh betg(a) perhaps < Latin bāca(m) ‘berry’ or a variant of brich(a); Sursilvan Romansh buc(a) perhaps < Latin bucca(m) ‘mouth(ful)’ or a variant of betg(a)) (Planta, Meicher, and Pult : ii. –, Avery , Krefeld , Liver : –, Detges )

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Empirical generalizations

In the Germanic languages, such minimizers are attested more rarely. In Otfrid’s Old High German Gospel Book, drof ‘drop’ is used, (), perhaps under Old French influence, as suggested by Lockwood (: ), Wheelock LaBrum (: ) and Jäger (: –), while Middle High German and Middle Dutch experimented with minimizers such as bone ‘bean’ or twint ‘wink’. But none of these seems ever to have made the transition from emphasizer to pragmatically unmarked negator. Example () also illustrates the fact that, in the older stages of the Germanic languages, where there is a transitive verb with both a logical object and a minimizer, the minimizer quantifies over the object and takes it as a partitive complement in the genitive case (see section .. for further discussion). In Romance languages, such as Italian, (), a minimizer takes a prepositional complement expressing the same partitive relation (Garzonio and Poletto : –). () drof ni zuívolo thu thés (Old High German) drop  doubt..  this. ‘Do not doubt it at all.’ (lit. ‘Do not doubt a drop of it.’) (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch I ,, c. ) () Non capiscono un tubo di economia. (Italian)  understand.. a pipe of economics ‘They understand nothing of economics.’ (Garzonio and Poletto : ) Reinforcers that have successfully made the transition to the NPA-stage are typically bare nouns, lacking overt determiners (unlike the still-nominal tubo in ()). This observation has been discussed in the literature for Romance languages in particular (Déprez , , Roberts and Roussou , Postma , Martins ), but clearly holds for Germanic and Brythonic Celtic languages as well. As Déprez () and Roberts and Roussou () observe for historical French, the reanalysis of pas and other minimizers as NPAs and then negators coincides with the loss of bare singular mass and plural nouns and the grammaticalization of overt indefinite determiners un(e) and des and generic les. Similarly, the West Germanic languages only began to develop obligatory overt indefinite determiners after the eleventh century (Leiss , Paul ), which coincides conspicuously with the rise of NPAs, and soon after full-scale stage II of Jespersen’s cycle. It therefore seems that the rise of overt indefinite determiners left the incipient negators as the only determinerless elements, therefore dissimilating them more quickly from nominal elements, and presumably facilitating their reanalysis as non-nominal. .. Generalizers and indefinite (pro)nouns The addition of a generalizer to a negative sentence results in an assertion that the proposition expressed by the sentence does not hold in any possible world. The Old

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

Saxon (Old Low German; c. – ) examples in () show a straightforward emphatic use of generalizers meaning ‘in this world’ and ‘in this life’. () That ni scal an is liua gio lides anbitan   . to . life. ever cider. enjoy. uuines an is uueroldi. wine. at . world. ‘Never in his life will he drink hard cider or wine in this world.’ (Heliand –) Although such prepositional phrases are already adverbial in nature, there appear to be no attested examples of prepositional-phrase generalizers grammaticalizing as sentential negators. Instead, it is nominal generalizers originally used as reinforcers that typically give rise to new negators. A nominal generalizer that has fed into Jesperen’s cycle in various languages is the indefinite noun ‘thing’, (). () Welsh ddim (‘not’ < ‘at all’ < Middle Welsh dim ‘thing’) (Willis )4 Arabic šayʔ > š(ī) (‘(some)thing’ > ‘anything’ > ‘at all’, in some varieties > ‘not’) (Lucas , Diem ) Upper German dialects: it/et (‘not’ < Old High German wiht ‘thing > anything’) (Jäger : ) Strikingly, nominal generalizers reinforcing the expression of sentential negation seem first to become indefinite pronouns before they go on to be reanalysed as NPAs and later sentential negators. We will return to this intermediate step and its formal analysis in chapters  and . The relevant property of the indefinite noun ‘a thing’, or indefinite pronouns ‘something’ or ‘anything’ derived from it, is that they can be interpreted either as minimizers () or as generalizers () (Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth : ): () Mary didn’t eat anything at all (not even a crumb). [i.e. not even the smallest thing] () Mary didn’t notice anything at all (anything you could conceive of her noticing). [i.e. for any arbitrarily chosen thing she might have noticed, Mary didn’t notice it] While some languages do not mark the difference between the indefinite noun and the indefinite pronoun derived from it morphologically—Old High German uuiht could mean both ‘thing’ and ‘anything’, as could Classical Arabic šayʔ—overt marking of the difference seems to be common, crosslinguistically. Alongside Old High

⁴ The change from dim /dɪm/ to ddim /ðɪm/ is the result of fossilization of a morphosyntactically conditioned alternation (soft mutation), ddim being the form used immediately after the subject of a finite verb in the very common VS–ddim order.

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Empirical generalizations

German uuiht, there was also iouuiht ‘anything’, with a generalizing/focalizing prefix io- ‘ever’. As will be discussed in detail in chapters  and , the (former) indefinite noun forms the restriction of the indefinite pronoun, while prefixes such as some-, any-, quelque, io-, etc., or no- in English, and their equivalents in other languages, express the fact that the element in question is a quantifier. Negative morphemes too can be incorporated with the same effect in this position. Because they potentially express universal quantification, indefinites formed with a negation particle are natural generalizers too. It is therefore not surprising that these also commonly develop non-argument, adverbial uses as reinforced expressions of negation, before potentially grammaticalizing as pragmatically unmarked negators. This is the source of the new negators of most West Germanic languages, including, as in for example German nicht < niouuiht < ni-io-uuiht ‘nothing’ (lit. ‘-ever-thing’). Note also the incipient grammaticalization from Early New High German onwards of nichts ‘nothing’ as a reinforced expression of negation, as exemplified in () (from Bayer : ).⁵ () Da wird nichts there become.. nothing ‘There will/must be no lying.’

gelogen. lie.

(German)

Old Norse ekki ‘not’ < eitt-gi ‘nothing’, lit. ‘one.-ever’ (Holthausen : , Jóhannesson : , De Vries –: ) also belongs in this group, while Italo-Romance indefinites nen, nent, niente, gnente ‘nothing’ < Latin nec entem ‘ thing’ are used in a similar adverbial fashion in Old Italian (Garzonio and Poletto ) and in different modern dialects for a reinforced expression of negation (Zanuttini , Poletto a, b), (). ()

Old Italian a. Questo cotale uomo sie certo che non t’ ama niente. this such man be. sure    love.. nothing ‘May this man be sure he does not love you at all.’ (Z. Becivienni) b. E non dormono niente. and  sleep.. nothing ‘And they don’t sleep at all.’ (Bono Giamboni, Vizi e Virtudi, ) c. Per ciò non si rallegrò niente. for    rejoiced.. nothing ‘For this, (s)he did not rejoice at all.’ (Giovanni Villani, Nuova Chronica, –) (examples from Garzonio and Poletto : )

⁵ Nichts derives from the genitive case of the original negative indefinite nicht ‘nothing’, and presumably came to be used as the basic means of expressing ‘nothing’ to avoid homophony with nicht, which had developed from meaning ‘nothing’ to ‘not’. This differentiation aided the use of nicht in its new function as a sentential negator with transitive verbs, where ambiguity with an indefinite would lead to an unintended interpretation; see chapter .

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

Like nominal minimizers, the (negative) indefinite pronoun or generalizer can be used to quantify over partitive NPs, opening up a path to reanalysis as sentential negator in transitive contexts. In (a), for instance, the indefinite pronoun wiht ‘anything’ is the direct object of the verb wizzan ‘know’, while thes mannes ‘of this man’ is a partitive genitive complement to wiht, thus ‘anything about this man’. In (b), however, ‘anything of a husband’ is a much less plausible translation of wiht gománnes, because one either has a husband, or not, but not part of a husband. Rather, it seems that goman is the direct object of haben ‘have’, and wiht acts as an indefinite quantifier or determiner, ‘any/no husband’. This path is discussed further in section ... () Old High German a. lóugnit es álles, quad ni wésti wiht deny.. . all. say..  know.. anything thes mánnes. . man. ‘He (Peter) denied everything; he said he didn’t know anything about this man / didn’t know this man at all.’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch IV ,) b. Ih ni háben, quad siu, in wár wiht   have.. say..  in truth thing gommánnes sár husband. at.all ‘In truth, she said, I do not have any husband at all / *(any)thing of a husband.’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch II ,) Finally, negative temporal indefinites can become non-temporal incipient negators, such as never in a range of vernacular British English varieties (Cheshire, Edwards, and Whittle : , Lucas and Willis ): () a. You sure you never nicked it? b. The other chaps never got the job.

(Cheshire : ) (Tyneside English) (Beal and Corrigan : )

This type of reinforcement, and possibly renewal, of negation is relatively common crosslinguistically. Old English already had reinforcing nō or nā ‘never, not at all’ < ne + ō, ā ‘always, ever’ < Proto-Germanic *aiwa ‘time.’ (Horn , Van Kemenade ). Similarly, the negative marker ka ‘not’ in Portuguesebased creoles such as Cape Verdean Creole (Naro : –, Teyssier : –) probably derives from Portuguese nunca ‘never’. Teyssier (: ) demonstrates that nunca is used as a single negator in representations of Portuguese-speaking Africans in the sixteenth century, and further suggests that spoken vernacular Portuguese around  had generalized nunca as a nontemporal marker of sentential negation. More disputed is the origin of Old Norse eigi ‘not’. According to the traditional view (Holthausen , Jóhannesson ,

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

Empirical generalizations

De Vries –, Burridge : ), it is derived from [ne] aiw-gi ‘[] always-ever; never’.⁶ .. (Negative) quantifiers While incipient negators developing from originally nominal elements such as minimizers, generalizers and indefinites can be used as quantifiers, as seen in examples () or (), original quantifying expressions can also feed into Jespersen’s cycle. Batllori (), for instance, discusses Catalan poc ‘not (at all)’ < Latin paucu ‘little’, which developed into what Batllori calls a negative emphatic polarity particle from a quantitative adverb. Both uses coexist in Modern Catalan, (), demonstrating the layered nature of the development. () Modern Catalan a. Negative emphatic polarity particle Poc he vist en Joan  . see.  Jon ‘I haven’t seen John this afternoon.’ b. Quantitative adverb He vist poc en Joan . see. little  John ‘I haven’t seen John much this week.’

aquesta .

aquesta .

tarda. afternoon

setmana. week (Batllori : )

Garzonio and Poletto () also count reinforcement by negative indefinites, especially adverbially used forms of niente ‘nothing’, discussed in section .. in relation to (), as cases of negative quantifiers feeding into Jespersen’s cycle. .. Clause-final repeated negators A final source of new negation markers is the repetition at the end of a clause of a negator that is already established in an earlier position. This is a rather heterogeneous source of reinforcement of sentential negation, and it is not clear to what extent it actually feeds the renewal of the expression of sentential negation. In Brazilian Portuguese, não is both the sentential negation particle (‘not’) and the anaphoric negator (‘no’), and can be used clause-finally in order to deny a discourse-active presupposition (Schwenter ), (a). Even single clause-final não is possible, at least in northern varieties (Schwegler , Fonseca , Schwenter , Cavalcante ), (b).⁷ ⁶ The Old Norse negative enclitic reinforcer -a (not -at < ainata ‘one.’) has also been claimed to derive from *aiwa ‘always’ (Holthausen , Jóhannesson , Grønvik : §.). The latter etymology, however, is debated. According to de Vries (), -a derives from Proto-Germanic *ain ‘one’, hence giving it the same etymology as -at. Recently, Lander () has argued that -a derives from Proto-Norse -ā < Northwest Germanic *nā < Proto-Germanic *nē, a doublet of *nehw (< PIE ne-kwe, cf. Latin ne-que, Gothic nih) with loss of -h and compensatory lengthening of ē. ⁷ Note, however, that Biberauer and Cyrino () argue that when clause-final não occurs singly, it should be analysed as a repetition of the anaphoric negator ‘no’, and not a polarity marker as when it cooccurs with earlier sentential negation.

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Lexical sources for Jespersen’s cycle () Brazilian Portuguese a. Ele não comprou   buy.. comprou a casa buy..  house ‘He did not buy the house.’

a casa  house não. 

(não) / 



Ele 

b. A: Ah, você não vai no teatro (não)? ah   go.. in. theatre  ‘Ah, aren’t you going to the theatre (after all)?’ (= I expected you to go to the theatre) B: Vou não. Já vi a peça. go..  already see..  play ‘No (I’m not going). I have already seen that play.’ (Biberauer and Cyrino ) Even though it is already also found on its own, Brazilian Portuguese clause-final não seems to retain a mainly emphatic or otherwise pragmatically marked function. Matters are different in Afrikaans, where the clause-final use of nie (nie) is unmarked (Oosthuizen ).⁸ () Hy kom nie in he comes  in ‘He isn’t coming in.’

(nie). (Afrikaans)  (adapted from Biberauer and Cyrino : )

The origin of Afrikaans nie is debated, with some viewing it as a contact-induced development, and others pointing to continuity with original Dutch dialects (Blancquaert , Pauwels ). Indeed, clause-final repetition of the sentential negation particle (niet) is found in several southern Dutch dialects.⁹ After Blancquaert (: –) first mentioned the phenomenon in Flemish dialects, Pauwels (: –) describes a very similar system to that of Afrikaans for the dialect of Aarschot (Flemish Brabant). Neuckermans () shows that what she ⁸ Synchronically it is not clear that nie functions as a negative reinforcer of the sentential negator nie, and its emergence should perhaps therefore not be considered an instance of Jespersen’s cycle. While nie has been argued to be a scope marker by, for example, Molnárfi (), Biberauer () has argued it to be a high (force-related) polarity marker, as it can also occur in weak negative polarity contexts, as also noted by Oosthuizen (): (i) Jy joef my nouliks daarvan  must . hardly thereof ‘You hardly have to convince me of that.’

te oortuig nie. (Afrikaans) to convince nie (Oosthuizen , cited after Bell : )

⁹ It may, however, not be a repetition, but rather a reanalysis from originally emphatic negative quantifiers in Dutch (cf. also Zeijlstra ), which consist of a negative indefinite (e.g. niemand ‘no one’) followed by niet (van der Auwera ). Such an analysis could also account for the pattern of negative concord noted by Biberauer and Zeijlstra (a) in what they call Afrikaans B: (ii)

Hulle is [nêrens nie] gelukkig  be n.where  happy ‘They aren’t happy anywhere.’

nie. 

(Biberauer and Zeijlstra a: )

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

Empirical generalizations

calls ‘proper sentence-final negation’, (), is rather infrequently attested in the corpora that she analyses.¹⁰ () Southern Dutch dialects a. want het gaat per stuk, het gaat niet for  go.. per piece  go..  per kilo niet per kilo  ‘because it [the price] is per piece; it’s not per kilo’ (Nieuwmoer, province of Antwerp) (Neuckermans : ) b. Hij wil geen soep niet meer eten niet.  want.. no soup  more eat.  ‘He doesn’t want to eat any more soup.’ (Hasselt, province of Limburg) (Neuckermans : ) According to Pauwels (: –), the clause-final niet is not emphatic.¹¹ In several northern Italian varieties, single postverbal (though not in all cases sentence-final) no can be found. This, according to Parry (), derives from the emphatic repetition of a preverbal negative marker at the end of the sentence. According to Zanuttini (), such markers are no longer emphatic in all varieties, but express low, non-presuppositional negation in, for example, Milanese and Pavese (Gallo-Romance dialects spoken in Lombardy in northern Italy). Because of their stress-bearing property, and interaction with other pre- and postverbal negators (), Poletto (a, ) concludes, on the contrary, that these markers must instead be very high in the structure, expressing focus negation.¹² () Venetian a. No la=go  =. ‘I did not eat it!’

miga 

magnada eat.

b. No=l me piaze = . please.. ‘I do not like it at all!’

NO! neg

gninte 

NO! 

(Poletto : )

Summarizing, then, there are indications that a negator repeated sentence-finally, whether as part of an emphatic indefinite or to mark emphasis and/or focus, may give rise to a new non-presuppositional expression of standard negation, via an intermediate presuppositional stage. ¹⁰ Neuckermans makes a distinction (following Vanacker , Pauwels ) between proper clause-final negation (eigenlijke zinsfinale negatie) and cases of clause-final niet together with ook ‘also’, toch ‘indeed’, waarschijnlijk ‘probably’ or feitelijk ‘in fact’ (oneigenlijke zinsfinale negatie). ¹¹ See also van der Auwera and Neuckermans (: ) and van der Auwera (: ). ¹² The numbers of the negators in the glosses correspond to Zanuttini’s () classification.

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



. Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts A necessary precondition for entering full-scale Jespersen’s cycle is that incipient negators successfully pass through several stages. In order to better understand the mechanisms by which Jespersen’s cycle occurs, this section considers items that have not passed through (all of) these stages, and have therefore not successfully grammaticalized as markers of sentential negation, despite demonstrating the potential to do so. As noted in section ., there are three main ways in which such potential may manifest itself (Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ): (i)

the item may conventionalize as a reinforcer in contexts that respect its etymology; (ii) the item may conventionalize as a reinforcer both in contexts that respect its etymology and some that do not; (iii) the item may appear freely as an adverbial reinforcer, having undergone reanalysis from noun to adverb if it is etymologically nominal. The first step is the one most frequently attested. The reinforcer is conventionalized, but restricted to occurring as the object of particular verbs, often verbs connected to its original meaning, as in English a drop (I didn’t drink/waste/spill a drop; but *I didn’t eat/remember/know a drop); Russian ni slova ‘not a word.’ (ni slova ne govorit’/skazat’ ‘not to say a word’, ni slova ne ponimat’/ponjat’ ‘not to understand a word’; but not *ni slova ne pit’/vypit’ ‘not to drink a word’, or *ni slova ne gotovit’/ prigotovit’ ‘not to cook a word’). Such conventionalized minimizers are extremely numerous crosslinguistically. Even within this first step, in the scope of negation many, perhaps all, languages extend the distribution of minimizers to semantically relevant contexts even where this violates the argument structure of the predicate. English a word, and German kein Wort, Russian ni slova ‘not a word’, for example, can occur with the verb ‘answer’ in the scope of negation: () She didn’t answer a word. () Sie hat kein Wort  . no word ‘She didn’t answer a word.’

(English) (German)

geantwortet. answer.

() Ona ne otvetila   answer... ‘She didn’t answer a word.’

ni not.even

slova. word.

(Russian)

While the context of answering is clearly relevant to items invoking a minimal unit of speech, outside of negation verbs of answering are intransitive and these minimzers are not possible direct objects:

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

Empirical generalizations

() *She answered a word.

(English)

() *Sie hat ein Wort  .  word (‘She answered a word.’) () *Ona otvetila she answer... (‘She answered a word.’)

geantwortet. answer.

slovo. word.

(German)

(Russian)

Instead, some adjunct phrase must be used, such as in a word. This suggests that negation can introduce a focused degree argument, independent of any semantic bleaching that may take place. Notice that this does not, in and of itself, lead to change in the syntactic properties of the item ‘word’ or to a change in its meaning. However, it may prepare the way for such a change.¹³ For a minimizer or indefinite to undergo the second step and generalize to other transitive verbs, some semantic bleaching has to occur. Syntactically, however, the continued restriction to transitive verbs points to such minimizers still being nominal arguments or pseudoarguments, and not yet adverbs. Such items may furthermore maintain their original animacy specification. Inanimate items like Arabic zəfta ‘(drop of) tar’ (Caubet : ), or English (diddly) squat, shit/jack/jack shit (Postal : ), may at this stage still only express ‘anything’ but not ‘anyone’, while animate items like Arabic kalb ‘dog’, German kein Schwein ‘no pig’, or English a (living) soul can only express ‘anyone’ at this stage, but not ‘anything’. The final step, in which the transitivity restriction is lost, requires a syntactic reanalysis, as a result of which a nominal element is reanalysed as an adverb, that is, as an adjunct rather than an argument. Examples are English a/one jot (The problem didn’t detain us a jot; She didn’t repent a jot) or a/one whit,¹⁴ or Russian nifiga ‘not a fig’, nixrena ‘not a horseradish’.¹⁵ In some cases, such original minimizers can also be reanalysed as quantifiers or determiners, as has happened for instance in English with a jot (of ), a scrap (of ). Also all Russian minimizers like nifiga and nixrena have developed into quantifiers ‘no, any’, besides their use as minimizers or negation reinforcers. ¹³ It is also possible for minimizers with restrictions of this sort to be created directly with no previous lexical history. For instance, Russian ni bel’mesa is a minimizer that occurs only as the object of verbs of knowing or understanding. While it follows the pattern of other etymologically nominal minimizers, appearing to be composed of ni ‘not even’ plus a genitive noun, there is no corresponding noun *bel’mes with referential uses, the item ultimately being a loan from Tatar bеlmäs ‘I don’t know’. ¹⁴ Whit in this use is now rather archaic, but belonged in this category while it was used productively: I didn’t change the recipe a whit; That didn’t slow us down a whit (see also the OED entry for whit). ¹⁵ Technically, the Russian items are negative concord adverbs (NCAs) rather than NPAs, since Russian is a negative-concord language and these adverbs are marked with the negative morpheme ni- ‘not even’. For simplicity, we will continue to use the term NPA, but with the proviso that this should be understood relative to the rest of the negation system of the language under discussion.

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



Generalizers are naturally much less restricted than minimizers in terms of the contexts in which they can occur, and thus presumably face fewer or no barriers to passing through the first stage discussed above in relation to minimizers. The crucial step in the grammaticalization of new negative markers from generalizers is not semantic but syntactic, namely the reanalysis of a nominal argument as an adverbial reinforcer (an NPA). This is exemplified here for the development of Welsh ddim. In (), Middle Welsh (–) dim is used as an indefinite argument ‘anything’ of a transitive verb. In (), it is used to express the degree to which the verb tygyaw ‘avail’ holds. Such degree uses are restricted to verbs of certain semantic classes, as will be discussed in more detail in section ... Adverbial uses of dim, where there is no longer any selectional relationship at all with the negated verb, arose from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards, () (Willis , a). () Ac ny mynnwys ef dim. (Middle Welsh) and  want..  anything ‘And he didn’t want anything.’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .–) (Willis a: ) () ac ny thygyawd ydunt dym . . . and  avail.. to. anything ‘and it didn’t help them at all . . . ’ (Brenhinedd y Saesson .–) (Willis a: ) () blwydyn a hanher y mac y vam ef, a gwedy year and half  raise..  mother  and after hynny nys mac dim.  .. raise.. anything ‘for a year and a half his mother raises him, and after that she doesn’t [have to] raise him.’ (Llyfr Blegywryd .–) (Willis : ) NPAs, whether deriving from minimizers or generalizers, are emphatic because they narrow the denotation of the negated predicate, thereby increasing the informativity of the negative utterance in which they appear: the proposition expressed by a negative sentence containing an NPA entails the proposition expressed by an equivalent sentence without the NPA (cf. Israel , ). Like any NPI, NPAs activate a set of alternative domains of quantification and trigger obligatory exhaustification of these alternatives, such that any alternatives that are not entailed by the assertion are eliminated (Chierchia ). Therefore, in a downward-entailing context, only the most restrictive alternative survives. As we show in the following, this property makes them suitable to express narrow-focus and constituent negation. NPAs are often able to express negation that does not have sentential scope, but scopes only over part of the sentence, creating a focus set containing the negated constituent(s) on the one hand and comparable, non-negated alternatives on the

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

Empirical generalizations

other. In ()–(), for instance, the adverbial reinforcer (Old Saxon niet, Old English noht, respectively) negates only a subsentential constituent: () illorum non solum animae. Sed caro quoque: . . . thuo niet ekir iro selon neuen ok . . . then  only . soul. but also ‘then not only their soul, but also . . . ’ (Glossen zu den Homilien Gregors des Großen , –) () Erat autem in uilla non longe posita quidam adulescens mutus . . . Ða wæs in sumum tune noht feorr sum ging there be.. in some... hamlet.  far some young ðearfa . . . pauper ‘There was in some hamlet not far (away) a certain young pauper . . . ’ (YCOE, cobede, Bede_:...) (Willis : ) Furthermore, even where negation has sentential scope, such elements may mark narrow contrastive focus on an individual element within the negation. This is illustrated for Old English in (). () ne dorste he nawuht hrædlice ut of ðære ceastre  dare..  nothing quickly out of .. city. faran up on ða muntas go. up on . mountain.. ‘He didn’t dare go at all quickly out of the city up to the mountains.’ (YCOE, cocura, CP:...) (Willis : ) A further step of reanalysis is then required for an NPA to become a neutral expression of sentential negation. How this happens is a question that we take up in chapter . Here we first consider the most important bridging contexts that permit the reanalysis of nominal elements as NPAs. As noted above, languages typically have at their disposal a wide range of adverbial expressions emphasizing the force of negation, rendering the reanalysis of a nominal expression as an NPA seemingly unnecessary at first sight. Expressions similar to English for the life of me, to save my life or for toffee/nuts/shit/crap/beans, and so on can be found in apparently all languages. Interestingly, however, such expressions never seem to feed into full-scale or even incipient Jespersen’s cycle.¹⁶ We therefore

¹⁶ Such adverbial expressions may contribute to the formation of new series of indefinites, however, as seen, for instance, in the Breton ebet indefinites deriving from en bet ‘in this world’. We return to this case in section ...

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



focus here on typical nominal sources of new negative markers, as these have the greatest potential to go on to enter full-scale Jespersen’s cycle. Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis () propose a set of bridging contexts, which we summarize here, in which the relevant elements can be interpreted as structurally ambiguous between nominal negation emphasizers and adverbial reinforcers of negation, thus facilitating their reanalysis as NPAs. It appears that the availability of such ambiguous contexts is necessary to initiate incipient Jespersen’s cycle in a given language. Not all of the environments discussed below are found in all languages at this stage, and their relative importance is unclear, but all can plausibly be hypothesized in a number of different language histories. The most common bridging contexts can be subdivided into two larger groups: (i) contexts with acquisitionally ambiguous argument structure (optionally transitive verbs, verbs with optional degree/extent arguments, and modal verbs); and (ii) nominal reinforcers used as adnominal or partitive quantifiers. .. Acquisitionally ambiguous argument structures ... Optional transitivity Verbs like English eat, drink, read, or write may be used either transitively or intransitively (with an implied or generic patient). Despite possible semantic differences between the two uses (as found with see, hear, lose), the two may in many cases still be equivalent pragmatically. In case the object of these verbs is a minimizer (e.g. (not) a jot) or a negative quantifier (e.g. nothing), the structure may be interpreted as consisting of the intransitive version of the verb, with an implied or generic patient, opening the path for the expressed patient to be reanalysed as a marker of sentential negation. This can be observed in the grammaticalization of dim as a negative marker in Middle Welsh via a variety of pseudo-argumental uses of optionally transitive verbs such as barnu ‘judge’, bwyta ‘eat’, clybot ‘hear’, gwadu ‘deny’, gwybot ‘know’, and talu ‘pay’ (Willis ). In (), for instance, dim can be interpreted either as the direct object of gwybot ‘know’ or as a minimizing adverb ‘at all’. ()

. . . am na wybuant dim y wrthaw . . . for  know.. nothing from about. ‘[This story is better and finer, for it is not found among poets or jesters, who have all given up on it,] for they knew nothing about it.’ (or ‘for they didn’t know about it at all.’) (Ystorya de Carolo Magno .–) (Willis : )

On the other hand, Willis (), looking at a corpus of Old English texts just before the emergence of adverbial not, finds examples of this kind of ambiguity with the verbs singan ‘sing’, gesēon ‘see’, and cweðan ‘say’, amounting to .% ( out of ) instances of nāwiht in the corpus. Thus, while this ambiguity arises very readily crosslinguistically, its frequency on its own is unlikely to be sufficient to trigger reanalysis.

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

Empirical generalizations

... Optional pseudoarguments or pseudoarguments In addition to optionally transitive verbs, many languages have verbs denoting predicates allowing an optional argument indicating the extent or degree to which the predicate holds. It can be difficult (presumably for the acquirer as well as the linguist) to establish whether this optional element is the direct object of the verb, an adverbial complement (a degree argument), or an adverbial adjunct. In Old Saxon, for instance, the element that later becomes the new Middle Low German negator, namely (io)uuiht/niouuiht ‘anything/nothing’, is found with verbal predicates such as uuerd ‘(be) worthy, suitable’, belgan ‘anger’, derien ‘harm’, and fargumon ‘neglect’, which have all thematic argument positions already occupied (Breitbarth a), (). In these cases, (io)uuiht ‘anything’ and niouuiht ‘nothing’ are ambiguous between an optional extent argument or an adverbial negation strengthener. Strikingly similar cases are found in Old English with verbs of harming such as hearmian ‘harm’, sceþþan ‘harm, scathe’, and derian ‘harm’, the last of which is exemplified in (); and in Gothic, exemplified for skaþjan ‘harm, damage’ in (). Note the similar structures found across cognate verbs (Old Saxon derien, Old English derian; and Old English sceþþan, Gothic skaþjan) in these languages. () Ne he ik thi geth ni deriu neouuiht quad and.not  . also  harm.. nothing say..  ‘I will also not harm you at all, he said.’ (Heliand (M) ) () & se deofol ne mihte naht derian and ... devil  can.. nothing harm. þam menn ... man. ‘and the devil could do the man no harm.’ (YCOE, coaelhom, +AHom_:.) (Willis : ) () sa unhulþa [ . . . ] urrann af imma, ni ... devil come.out.. of .  waihtai gaskaþjands imma. . thing. damaging ‘the devil [ . . . ] came out of him, and hurt him not.’ (Gothic Bible, Luke :) Verbs of succeeding and profiting are a very common context for optional arguments expressing the degree of success, indifference, and related notions, in negative clauses. In Old English, prior to the grammaticalization of not, we find this frequently with framian ‘avail, succeed’, illustrated in (), and related verbs from the same root. () þæt eal his hogu and gleawscipe naht framað . . .  all his care and wisdom nothing avail.. ‘all that care and wisdom of his will be of no help’ (cobenrul, BenR:...) (Willis : )

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



Lockwood (: ) cites () as an early example of nicht as a strengthening negative adverb (rather than a pronoun) in Old High German; however, it falls into exactly the same category as the Old English example in () (see also Jäger : – for discussion): () ni zawêta imo es niawiht.  succeed.. .  nothing ‘He did not succeed in it at all.’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch , .) (Lockwood : , Jäger : ) We also find such configurations in items that did not subsequently feed into Jespersen’s cycle. For example, in the Early Modern English of the King James Bible, we find the doublet in (), showing the optionality of the extent argument nothing in the context of profit.¹⁷ () a. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing. b. Riches profit not in the day of wrath.

(Proverbs : ) (Proverbs : )

This suggests both that the creation of such structures is cyclic (in that English recreated the configuration using nothing once not had grammaticalized as a marker of sentential negation); and that the existence of these structures, while creating a source of acquisitional ambiguity, is not sufficient on its own to trigger full-scale reanalysis. Another group of predicates crosslinguistically often permitting an optional extent argument, besides verbs of succeeding, are verbs of caring or indifference, such as English care or mind. Hoeksema () notes that Dutch impersonal expressions with kunnen ‘be able’ can take two optional non-subject arguments, one indicating the experiencer (me in ()), the other indicating the extent to which something matters (niets, niet veel, weinig, geen bal in ()):¹⁸ () Dat kan me niets/ niet veel/ weinig/ geen bal . can.. . nothing not much little no ball schelen. differ. ‘It makes no / not much / little difference to me.’ (adapted from Hoeksema : )

¹⁷ The genuine availability and optionality of nothing as an extent argument in this context in the English of this period is confirmed by the fact that no parallel element (e.g. məʔuma ‘anything’, cf. chapter ) appears in the Hebrew original of either verse. Moreover, this also suggests that the quantifying force of this element in this context was already felt to be weak at this time, though nothing has of course not (yet) made the leap to functioning as a sentential negator in English. ¹⁸ As modal verbs inherit the argument structure of the lexical verbs they select, the relevant expression of caring or indifference is actually kunnen schelen (lit. ‘be able to differ/lack’), not just kunnen.

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

Empirical generalizations

The optionality of the degree phrase is evident from the fact that either the negator niet ‘not’ (a non-argument) or the indefinite pronoun niets ‘nothing’ (a degree argument) are licit in this context: () Dat kan me . can.. . ‘I don’t care about that.’

niet(s) /nothing

schelen. (Dutch) differ. (Hoeksema : )

Verbs of caring or indifference behave analogously in German, as Bayer’s (: ) examples (derived from online comments), ()–(), demonstrate. In both examples, the sentential negator nicht ‘not’ would also be possible. () obwohl mich das nichts stört although . . nothing disturb.. ‘although I am not at all disturbed by that’

(German)

() In meiner Branche gibt es allerdings etliche in ... field give.. . however certain. Händler, die das nichts kümmert. dealer.  . nothing bother.. ‘In my field, there are, however, quite a few dealers who are not bothered by that in the least.’ The interchangeability of the two items in such contexts may open the way for nichts/ niets to be reanalysed as a marker of sentential negation. In Dutch, this reanalysis appears to have occurred historically, producing a sentential negator niks, which may have subsequently died out. Zeijlstra (: ) claims that its use is now felt to be archaic, but it was common as emphatic negation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bayer (), on the other hand, argues that nichts/niets are used as emphatic negators in colloquial varieties of Present-day German as well as Dutch. Just like verbs of succeeding, verbs of caring or indifference are also used disproportionately in the negative, and in some cases are actually NPIs. The fact that these verbs are used frequently or only in negative contexts means that the proportion of instances of ‘nothing’ that are found with these verbs is higher than would otherwise be expected. This frequency improves the prospects for reanalysis (cf. Hoeksema : ). One hypothesis is that prior to the onset of full-scale stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, a noun or noun phrase that will later become an NPA comes to be used regularly as the optional argument of such verbs, indicating a low or zero degree of success. Gothic (as attested in the fourth-century Bible translation), for instance, is an example of the initial stage in this process. The noun waihts ‘thing’ (. waiht) and the pronoun waiht ‘anything’ are both used as weak NPI pronouns in negative clauses with the sentential negator ni (= not . . . anything). They regularly co-occur

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



with verbs of potentially ambiguous argument structure of the ‘profit’/‘succeed’ class, expressing total lack of profit/success (), cf. also verbs of harming, (). () ahma ist saei liban taujiþ, þata leik ni spirit be..  life. do.. .. flesh.  boteiþ waiht profit.. thing. ‘It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’ (Gothic Bible, John :) However, there are no indications that waiht(s) had spread to contexts where it is unambiguously a non-argument of the verb in the attested Gothic texts. In Welsh, on the other hand, there are indications that this class of verbs actually formed the crucial bridging context for the grammaticalization of the new negator ddim from the indefinite pronoun dim ‘anything’. In earlier Middle Welsh, it occurs regularly with these verbs, before becoming an NPA in later Middle Welsh. This is illustrated in the following with examples of two verbs from this class (Willis : ), namely talu ‘pay, help’ and tykyaw ‘succeed (impersonal)’: () Ny thalwys idaw hynny dim . . .  pay.. to.  anything ‘And this didn’t help him . . . ’ (Ystorya de Carolo Magno .) (Willis : ) () Ac am na thygyei dim udunt . . . and since . avail.. anything to. ‘And since it didn’t help them / since nothing helped them . . . ’ (Ystoryaeu Seint Greal ) (Willis : ) These verbs formed a group that was semantically but not syntactically coherent in Middle Welsh, with the extent argument being an object for some but not for others. For instance, in (), dim was probably originally a subject, but the structure could be interpreted as having a null expletive and an optional degree phrase. The degree argument could form the basis for reanalysis of the indefinite pronoun as an adverb. Similarly in Arabic, numerous examples can be found already in the Quran, where šayʔ occurs not only with profit verbs, as in (), where, like Middle Welsh dim, it is potentially analysable as an NPA ‘at all’, but also in more solidly monotransitive contexts, such as (), where it seems highly likely to be adverbial. () ʔinna ẓ-ẓanna lā yuġnī  -conjecture.  avail.. mina l-ḥ aqqi šayʔan against -truth. (any)thing../at.all ‘Conjecture does not avail against the truth at all.’

(Quran :)

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

Empirical generalizations

() lā yaḍurru-kum kaydu-hum  harm..- cunning.- ‘Their cunning will not harm you at all.’

šayʔan at.all.. (Quran :)

It therefore appears that šayʔ underwent a lexical split into two (homophonous) items, an indefinite pronoun ‘anything’, and the NPA in (), quite likely due to reanalysis of the former as the latter in contexts such as (). This split would have happened already, in an earlier, pre-Islamic stage of the language. However, as we have seen for other languages above, incipient Jespersen’s cycle tendencies of this kind are clearly not in and of themselves predictive of a future entry into full-scale Jespersen’s cycle. Many present-day Arabic dialects (of the eastern and northern Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula, among others) have retained this sentence-final NPA without reanalysing it as a negator (as has happened in many other dialects; see section . for further details). ... Modals In some languages, modal verbs with potentially ambiguous argument structure—taking a nominal or an infinitival complement—may also provide the basis for reanalysis of a nominal reinforcer as adverbial. The Middle Welsh semantically modal verbs gallael ‘be able, can’ and dylyu ‘have a right to, have an obligation to, should’ could be used either transitively with a nominal direct object, illustrated in (), or with non-finite verb phrase as is still possible in Present-day Welsh. () A manac ditheu y mi pa furyf y gallwyf and show..  to  what way  can... hynny. . ‘And show me how I can [do] this.’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .–) (Willis : ) As in other languages, the infinitival complement of these verbs could undergo ellipsis, giving rise to structure like (). ()

. . . minheu a allaf dy rydhau ditheu o ’r   can..  release.  from  geireu hynny. Sef ual y gallaf . . . word. .  like  can.. ‘I can release you from those words. This is how I can . . . ’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .–) (Willis : )

In a sentence like (), then, acquirers are faced with two possible analyses for the word dim. Under the historically conservative analysis, dim is the direct object of the verb allei ‘could’. The alternative, historically innovative analysis would be to posit ellipsis. In this case, dim cannot be the direct object, but must be an adverb instead. Over time, this could lead to a reanalysis of dim as an NPA.

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts ()



. . . yr yttoed yn gyn vlinet ac na allei dim.  be..  so tired. as . can.. anything ‘ . . . he was so tired that he could [do] nothing.’ (Ystoryaeu Seint Greal ) (Willis : )

In the particular context of Middle Welsh, the fact that both premodals lost their ability to take nominal direct objects may have favoured the reanalysis of dim as an NPA. .. Adnominal quantifiers Languages frequently develop new quantifiers (‘some’, ‘any’, ‘no’, ‘few’) from earlier nouns or pronouns. English a lot of N, a bunch of N illustrate the former type, Welsh dim bwyd ‘any, no food’ < dim ‘anything’ + bwyd ‘(of) food’ the second type.¹⁹ Quantifiers sometimes turn into negative adverbs with the potential to become sentential negators. There are several pathways along which this could happen. Two aspects need to be considered: the potential for nouns or pronouns to develop into new quantifiers in the first place; and the various ways in which these quantifiers can be reanalysed as negative adverbs. ... Adnominal quantifier > pronoun > negative adverb Quantifiers have the property of nearly always allowing null nominal complements. In English, for instance, one can felicitously use quantifiers such as some or any without a noun to quantify, as in Some (people) like it hot or I don’t want any (food). In such cases, where a quantifier has an empty complement, reanalysis of the quantifier as a pronoun becomes possible if these cease to be analysed as elliptical structures. From there, further reanalysis of the pronoun as an NPA is possible in negative or non-assertive negative polarity contexts along the same pathways that were discussed in section ... This can be witnessed with any in certain varieties of English, via contexts such as those in () and (). () It is a good tune—you can’t improve it any. (Mark Twain, The innocents abroad iv., ) (OED s.v. any) () He’s not worked any sin’ June. She can’t sit up any. (traditional Lincolnshire English) (Cole : ; OED s.v. any) Similarly, we find parallel cases with the adnominal quantifier none, both in negativeconcord varieties of English, (), and in non-negative concord varieties, ().

¹⁹ Ultimately Welsh dim ‘any(thing)’ is derived from a noun that probably originally meant ‘thing’. If the reanalysis was ‘anything (of) food’ > ‘any food’ then we are indeed dealing with the pronominal type. It is possible that it was directly from the noun ‘(a) thing (of) food’ > ‘any food’, in which case we would be dealing with the nominal type; cf. also Modern Welsh peth bwyd ‘some food’, where peth is homophonous with and historically derived from the generic noun peth ‘thing’; for further discussion, see chapter .

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

Empirical generalizations

() I had never cared what the hell people thought, and jail hadn’t changed that none. (Billie Holiday and William Dufty, Lady sings the blues xviii. , ) (OED s.v. none) () We . . . lay still all Night; I say still, for we slept none! (Daniel Defoe, The life of Robinson Crusoe , ) (OED s.v. none) These plausibly derive from a reanalyis followed by the extension I didn’t eat none > I didn’t sleep none. From here there is the potential for further reanalysis as a sentential negator; however, in the cases attested, any and none still seem to have retained a degree reading (‘to no degree’) and this final development has thus not been attested in any English variety to date. Schwegler (: –) seems to reconstruct this as the history of Catalan cap < Latin caput ‘head’. This is given in (), where the left of the equation indicates form at each stage of the development, while the right of the equation indicates meaning. () a. I don’t have a  of cattle b. I don’t have a  [of cattle] c. I don’t have a 

= ‘I don’t have a  of cattle’ > = ‘I don’t have  cattle ( )’ > = ‘I don’t have   ’ (Schwegler : )

Schwegler suggests that somewhere in this line of development, cap developed a use as an as an adverbial reinforcer, illustrated in (). If the immediate source was (c), then this illustrates the pathway just discussed. () No ho sé cap, no é cap veritat.   know.. /at all  be.. /at all true ‘I don’t know (at all); it is not true (at all).’ (Schwegler : ) Since this development is reconstructed rather than based on textual documentation, we cannot be sure that this is in fact what happened. A development along the lines outlined in section ... seems at least as likely. ... Verb [quantifier + noun] > [verb + adverb] noun Another possible pathway is one in which a quantifying noun or pronoun taking a partitive complement is first reanalysed as an adnominal quantifier and from there as a marker of sentential negation, its original nominal complement being reanalysed as an argument (typically the direct object) of the verb. To use English lexicalization, the development would involve the reanalysis of a noun, for example, ‘drop’, or pronoun ‘any’, first as a quantifier with a partitive complement, as in ‘drop (of) NP’, with ‘the NP’ then becoming the directly selected object of the verb itself, and ‘drop’ becoming an NPA with the potential later to turn into a marker of sentential negation:²⁰ ²⁰ Davies (: –) suggests this grammaticalization path for Arabic: quantifier ši > negative enclitic -š, as, apparently, does Wilmsen (: ; but see Lucas : ). For difficulties with this proposal, see Lucas (: ) and Diem (: ).

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



() [verb [noun + noun]] > [verb [quantifier + noun]] > [[verb + adverb] [noun]] While the first of these reanalyses is a normal part of the creation of new quantifiers and can occur in the absence of negation, it is the second that has the potential to provide the input to Jespersen’s cycle. A number of instances of this development can be observed in the following. In Bulgarian, gram, etymologically the unit of mass ‘gram’ used as a minimizer, has come to be used as a generic reinforcer of negation. It is used as an NPA in contexts unconnected to its etymology, and, in (), in contexts where a partitive object is not plausible: () Ne săžaljavam  sympathize.. ‘I don’t sympathize at all.’

gram. at.all

() Ne go običam  . like.. ‘I don’t like him at all.’

gram at.all

toja. ..

The item seems first to have grammaticalized as a quantifier, extending semantically to complements that lack mass (i.e. cannot be expressed literally in terms of grams): () Ne viždam gram  see.. any ‘I can’t see any light.’

svetlina. light

() Toj ne znae gram   know.. any ‘He doesn’t know any languages.’

ezici. language.

From there, we suggest that gram is reanalysed as an adverb, with its former complement being treated as a direct object. That is, it does not proceed via a stage as a pronoun. While a pronominal use is available, it is relatively marginal in comparison to the two types just discussed, and seems unlikely to be the origin of the adverbial use in () and (). In Russian, there seems to be a similar development with ni kapel’ki ‘not even a drop’. This has developed into a quantifier, used in () with a complement that does not denote a liquid; and further into an NPA in () and (). () Ja ne bral s nix ni   take.. from . no ‘I didn’t take any (a drop of) money from them.’ () On ni kape’lki ne somnevaetsja.  not.even drop.  doubt.. ‘He doesn’t doubt [it] at all (a drop).’

kapel’ki drop.

deneg. money.

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

Empirical generalizations

() Golova ot žary ne rabotaet ni head. from heat.  work.. not.even ‘My head won’t work a drop, a bit because of the heat.’

kapel’ki. drop.

Again, the historical pathway seems to be quantificational noun > quantifier > adverb. Old High German drof ‘drop’, illustrated in (), repeated in (), looks rather similar, and seems to be between () and (). Structurally, drof is used as a quantifier with a genitive complement thés ‘it.’ here. However, the literal interpretation ‘drop of it’ is odd, as one cannot doubt a drop. Instead, if ‘drop’ is used as an NPA in (), the more plausible interpretation ‘doubt it at all’ becomes more likely. () drof ni zuívolo thu thés drop  doubt..  this. ‘Do not doubt it at all.’ (lit. ‘Do not doubt a drop of it.’) (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch I ,) In Romance, relevant cases are Old French point ‘point’ and mie ‘crumb’ (Schwegler : ), dialectal French pas ‘step’, cap ‘head’ and ges ‘people’ (Schwegler : , citing data from the Atlas linguistique de la France from the Languedoc, Massif Central, and Gascony), and Old Florentine (Old Italian) punto ‘point’ (Garzonio , Garzonio and Poletto : ). () illustrates this for Old Florentine punto di N, a minimizer that is also involved in the (incipient) grammaticalization of new sentential negators in varieties of Italian. The noun behaving like an adnominal quantifier originally took a partitive complement, as shown by the use of the preposition ‘of ’ di in the fourteenth-century example in (). ()

. . . non ebbono se non poco pane né punto di vino.  have.. but  little bread and.  of wine ‘ . . . they had only a little of bread and no wine.’ (G. Villani, Nuova Cronica .) (Garzonio : )

Subsequently, di was dropped entirely, as might be expected as the result of increased frequency during grammaticalization (cf. US English a couple of times > a couple times). This opens up the possibility that punto could be reanalysed as an NPA (Garzonio : ), rather than as a quantifier modifying the noun vino:²¹ () il quale . . . non schifò punto il colpo . . .  which  dodge..   blow ‘ . . . who . . . did not dodge the blow (at all) . . . ’ (G. Boccaccio, Esposizioni, (i).) (Garzonio : ) ²¹ Formally, Garzonio (: ) treats the reanalysis as the loss of raising of punto and its base-generation in a higher position associated with adverbs. We leave the precise formal details until section ...

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



Further examples of an adnominal quantifier grammaticalizing from a minimizer and then potentially developing further to NPA-status are Gothic waihts ‘thing’ and Old Saxon and Old High German wiht ‘(any)thing’ (Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ). These combine with a partitive complement in the genitive, as seen in the Old Saxon and Gothic examples in () and () respectively.²² () So thia uuardos thes uuiht ni afsuobun. so . guard. . anything  notice.. ‘In this way, the guards did not notice any(thing) of it.’ (Heliand –) () Aþþan bidja du guda ei ni waiht ubilis taujaiþ. but pray.. to God.   thing evil. do.. ‘Now I pray to God that you may do no evil.’ (lit. ‘not a thing of evil’) (Gothic Bible,  Corinthians :) For grammaticalization as an adnominal quantifier, and possibly even (emphatic) sentential negator, to be plausible for Gothic, Old High German, or Old Saxon, it is necessary to determine empirically whether (i) the original partitive/genitive complement of waiht and wiht is more likely to be a direct (thematic) argument of the verb than waiht or wiht itself; and (ii) whether direct objects that would otherwise be marked accusative or dative are marked as partitive or genitive in negative clauses, as is commonly the case in many Slavonic, Finnic, and Baltic languages (see Miestamo  for a survey). On the second question, it seems likely that Gothic may indeed have had optional genitive of negation (Delbrück , Grimm , Dal : ).²³ If so, then the genitive case of the nominalized adjective ubils ‘evil’, ubilis, in examples such as () might have been interpreted as being due to genitive of negation, rather than because ubils is the genitive complement of the noun waiht. That is, the sentence would have been ambiguous between the literal ‘nothing of evil’ and the reanalysed ‘no evil’, with a genitive of negation (ubilis) that has an adnominal quantifier (waiht).²⁴ This would ²² Gothic waihts (feminine noun) almost exclusively occurs in negative clauses. Neuter waiht ‘(any) thing’ only occurs in negative clauses, but not with nominal complements. ²³ Streitberg (: , §) observes that the partitive genitive is particularly characteristic in negative clauses, and Dal (: ) remarks that Gothic often uses (partitive) genitive on arguments in negative clauses, ‘auch bei Verben, die in positiven Aussagen nicht mit Gen. verbunden werden können’ (‘even with verbs which in affirmative statements cannot be used with the genitive’; transl. the authors). The following examples demonstrate the use of dative with the verb bileiþan ‘leave’ in an affirmative clause, and of genitive when the verb is negated: (i) jabai ƕis broþar gedauþnai jah bileiþai qenai if someone. brother die... and leave... wife. jah barne ni biliþai . . . and children.  leave... ‘if a man’s brother dies, and he leaves a wife, but no children’ (Gothic Bible, Mark :) ²⁴ In the Gothic Bible itself, such an analysis may not yet be warranted, as accusative ubil co-occurs twice with taujan, once with negation.

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

Empirical generalizations

allow the source of the genitive case on the complement of waiht or wiht to be reanalysed as being due to negation, with waiht or wiht therefore an adjunct or adnominal quantifier. The situation is similar in Old Saxon, where the use of (io)uuiht ‘(any)thing’ with a genitive complement is rather common. In (), uuiht is clearly the direct object of giseggean ‘say’. Its complement, despite the discontinuous syntax, which may be a consequence of the alliterative verse, is is, the genitive of hit ‘it’. () thoh he is ni mahti but  .  would. ‘but he would not say anything about it’

giseggean say.

uuiht anything (Heliand )

In other cases, however, uuiht does not appear to be the thematic argument of the verb, while its genitive attribute could well be. In (), ‘(any)thing of livestock’ is not a particularly plausible translation; rather, the example seems to mean something like ‘no livestock whatsoever’, with uuiht interpreted as a negative adnominal quantifier to the genitive noun, strengthening the expression of negation. () unk nis hier scattas uuiht te meti us.. .be.. here livestock. anything to food. gimarcot provide. ‘no livestock is provided to us here (for us) to eat’ (Genesis –) These examples show more or less advanced cases of grammaticalization of an adnominal quantifier from a minimizer taking a partitive or genitive complement. Some, such as ()–(), ()–(), (), and (), already illustrate the rise of an NPA, and suggest that this is a rather common pathway. ... Degree modifiers of adjectives Finally, reanalysis of negative degree modifiers of adjectives is a possible source of emphatic negative adverbs and then potentially new negators. Negative indefinite ‘nothing’ can, in various languages, be used as a degree modifier of gradable adjectives. This is possible in one case in Present-day English, namely with like: () I’ve seen the mayor, and he looks (absolutely) nothing like that. (adapted from Bayer : ) Spanish nada can be used in the same way, but with a wider range of adjectival and adverbial predicates: () a. No es nada fácil.  be.. nothing easy ‘It’s not at all easy; it’s in no way easy.’

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Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts



b. No me siento nada bien.  me. feel.. nothing well ‘I don’t feel at all well.’ In languages where this use of ‘nothing’ is widespread, it may form the basis for a reanalysis of the negative indefinite as a negative adverb. Old English showed this potential. Willis () shows that sentences like (), repeated here as (), where nāwiht ‘nothing’ immediately precedes a gradable adjective or adverb and seems to modify it, are common in Old English. The constituency in () is thus [AP nawuht hrædlice]. However, such examples could easily be reinterpreted with ‘nothing’ modifying the verb and thus being a sentence-level negative adverb. () ne dorste he nawuht hrædlice ut of ðære ceastre  dare..  nothing quickly out of .. city. faran up on ða muntas go. up on . mountain.. ‘He didn’t dare go at all quickly out of the city up to the mountains.’ (cocura, CP:...) (Willis : ) As with adnominal quantifiers (section ...), the reanalysis in this case would proceed as in (). () [verb [quantifier + adjective/adverb]] > [verb NPA [adjective/adverb]] .. Summary In this section we have identified a number of possible pathways along which adverbial reinforcers of negation may develop. We have shown that development of such adverbs is a frequent occurrence, partly because there are so many possible sources of acquisitional ambiguity that could lead to reanalysis creating them. These adverbs have the potential to feed into Jespersen’s cycle, but, in most cases, they do not: the creation of new adverbial reinforcers of negation is the end of the process. These processes thus create a pool of items for Jespersen’s cycle to use, but only in a few cases do items make the final transition to the status of unmarked new negator (for which, see chapter ). The relative importance of the various bridging contexts that we have postulated above is not entirely clear. Ideally, quantitative studies of languages, both those that went on to proceed along Jespersen’s cycle and those that did not, would be carried out to determine the relative frequency with which each of these contexts occurs; whether these frequencies vary considerably from language to language and item to item; and whether any such variation can be shown to correlate with progress (or lack of it) through Jespersen’s cycle. Willis () attempts this for Old English, for which the relative frequencies are given in Table .. This shows that the various bridging contexts associated with argument structure ambiguities account for some

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

Empirical generalizations

T . Frequency of bridging contexts for incipient Jespersen’s cycle in Old English (as a percentage of all tokens of the item nāwiht ‘nothing’ in a corpus of prose texts; adapted from Willis : ) context

no.

%

    

. . . . .



.

other (unambiguous) argument uses



.

degree (narrow-focus) modification of adjective or adverb (section ...) constituent negation of adverb, quantifier, or adjective

 

. .

 

. .



.

direct object of optionally transitive verb (section ...) extent argument of verb of succeeding (section ...) extent argument of verb of harming (section ...) extent argument of verb of caring (section ...) direct object of modal (section ...) total bridging contexts with argument structure ambiguities

adverbial reinforcer of sentential negation other total

.% of all occurrences of the negative indefinite nāwiht that went on to become the sentential negator not, while degree modification of adjectives and adverbs accounts for .% of tokens. As noted at the beginning of section ., NPAs, like nāwiht, are well-suited to express narrow-focus negation, which makes them also available in contexts of constituent negation. Narrow-focus and constituent-negation contexts amount to .% of uses of nāwiht. Collectively, this means that close to half (.%) of the uses of nāwiht provide some basis for reanalysis as a basic expression of sentential negation. We return to this issue in chapter . Summarizing our discussion of the contexts in which formerly nominal or pronominal reinforcers may become NPAs and eventually new expressions of negation, three key factors can be identified: .

Reinforcers can exploit ambiguities in argument structure, or enter the system in the guise of arguments taking genitive or prepositional complements, which over time are interpreted as the actual argument of the verb. . Reinforcers successfully making the transition to the NPA stage are typically bare nouns, lacking overt determiners. This facilitates their reanalysis as adverbs. This observation will play an important role in the formal analysis presented in chapter . . NPAs are typically emphatic. Not being clitics on finite verbs as the original preverbal negators typically were, they are available in a greater range of contexts.

These observations will be used in chapter  to develop a formal analysis accounting for the transition from this NPA stage to an unmarked negator, that is to full-scale stage II, as discussed in section ..

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Stage II and the speed of Jespersen’s cycle



. Stage II and the speed of Jespersen’s cycle Although the expression of negation passes through comparable stages in all the languages that have undergone Jespersen’s cycle, the time they spend at a given stage varies sharply from language to language. As a consequence, the speed at which languages progress through and eventually complete Jespersen’s cycle is subject to much variation. For example, although emphatic reinforcers are found in French from the eleventh century (Buridant ), French grammaticalizes them as actual postverbal negators only in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. After that, pas established itself as the most common postverbal negator (Catalani ), but was still accompanied by the original preverbal element ne. The language subsequently remains at stage II. The preverbal marker begins to be dropped in speech only from the nineteenth century onwards (Martineau and Mougeon ) and is still not entirely obsolete even in speech. That is, French remains at stage II for some  years. In comparison, most West Germanic languages pass through stage II much more rapidly. English and High German made the transition from stage I to stage III within the space of about – years, and an independent stage II with bipartite negation is barely attested. In Middle English, bipartite negation is more frequent than either preverbal or postverbal negation only between  and  (Wallage : ). In High German, bipartite negation is never more frequent than either preverbal or postverbal negation (for literary sources, Jäger : ), its highest frequency being between  and  (Walkden : ).²⁵ Low German and Dutch, on the other hand, remain at stage II for much longer (Breitbarth b). Middle Low German dialects already have bipartite negation when textual attestation resumes around , and make the transition to single postverbal negation around . Middle Dutch finally gives up the preverbal marker only around  (Burridge : ), southern Dutch only in the nineteenth century (Beheydt ), and some Dutch (Flemish) varieties maintain it even to this day (Haegeman , Haegeman and Zanuttini , , Neuckermans , Breitbarth and Haegeman , , ). Although French is by no means the only Romance language to have undergone Jespersen’s cycle, those which have not are clearly in the majority. Spanish, European Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian and most of the Italo-Romance varieties seem to maintain a stable stage I without showing signs of entering incipient stage II, even though they have a number of emphatic reinforcers. On the other hand, many (but not all) of the Romance varieties of northern Italy, Switzerland, and southern France have progressed to stage II or III, often rather rapidly and apparently several ²⁵ More recent results from Schüler (, ) largely confirm this finding, even for chancery texts, but also point to some geographical variation, with Ripuarian (northwestern Central German) remaining at stage II for a significantly longer period (see section .. for more discussion).

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

Empirical generalizations

centuries after French entered full-scale stage II (cf. Schwegler , Posner , Parry , , and see section .. for more detail). In Celtic, both Welsh and Breton have undergone Jespersen’s cycle, while Cornish and the Goidelic languages have stayed at stage I. In Welsh, ddim appears in adverbial positions in addition to purely nominal positions from the late thirteenth century (Willis : ). However, it does not begin to lose its emphatic character until the seventeenth or even eighteenth century (Willis : –). There is no stable stage II: there is no time at which the bipartite construction is the single most common type of negation in informal texts. The shift from stage I to stage III appears to have proceeded rapidly between  and  in speech, although formal written Welsh retains stage I. While Old Breton is solidly stage I, when written attestation of the language in connected texts resumes around , the transition to stage II is almost complete. As in French, omission of the preverbal negator is now common in fast speech, yielding a stage III pattern alongside stage II. This is difficult to date, but probably dates back no further than the nineteenth century. Thus, like Dutch and Low German but unlike the rest of the West Germanic languages, Jespersen’s cycle in Breton is slow, and stage II is rather stable. Slavonic and Baltic languages all remain at stage I. While emphatic reinforcers have developed frequently and easily, no language has generalized any of them as an ordinary sentential negator. Outside of Europe, there is a similarly varied picture among Arabic varieties (for full details see Lucas a, ; see also section ..). Stage II negation (mā . . . -š(i)) is widespread, but by no means ubiquitous, being restricted to the dialects of northern North Africa and the southwestern Levant as well as part of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Elsewhere (Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, most of the Levant, Central Asia, southern North Africa) there is only stage I (preverbal mā only) with some incipient use of ši as an NPA. Where stage II constructions are found, there is in general considerable stability, with stage III constructions being the exception rather than the norm. They are robustly attested only for the dialects of Palestine and surrounding areas, as well as parts of southern Egypt. Lucas (), Lucas and Lash (), and, independently, Diem () date the beginnings of stage II negation in non-Penisular Arabic to around the eleventh century. Many stage II Arabic varieties have therefore resisted any putative pressure to progress to stage III for close to a millennium. Figure . gives a schematic and non-exhaustive overview of the differing periods that languages have spent at each stage of Jespersen’s cycle.²⁶ What becomes evident even from this schematic overview is that there is a diffusion pattern through geographically contiguous areas. This observation forms the focus of chapter . ²⁶ The early Scandinavian developments are complex, and are idealized somewhat in Figure . for Norwegian. For fuller discussion, see section ...

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

Stage II and the speed of Jespersen’s cycle stages of JC Norw. English Welsh HGer. LGer. Du–N Du–S French Coptic Arabic

III>I´

I / II I I I I

I>III´ II

III´>I´´ I>I/II

I/II

II/III II

III II/III

III´´ III > I´ I/II

I´ I/II>III

III

II/III

III II (III)

III II/III II II

II

I I I/II/III I 3 4 5

I´´>III´´´ III

I/II

III

(extinct) 6

7

8

9

10

I/II(>III) 11 12 13 14 century

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Key I = stage I II = stage II III = stage III I´ (III´) = new stage-I-type (stage-III´-type) construction different from earlier one

I/II/III = parallel attestation of several stages > = ongoing transition between stages (III) = stage III in some (non-standard or regional) varieties

F . Timechart of Jespersen’s cycle in selected languages of Europe and the Mediterranean

In summary, then, once a language enters stage II, that is, once standard negation is jointly expressed by two markers (cf. discussion of terminology in section .), it may start losing the original negative marker quickly, transferring the whole force of negation to the new element, as happened in English. Some languages never even seem to develop a stable bipartite stage (II) at all, but display variation between stages I, II, and III during a brief transitional stage. Middle High German and Middle Welsh are cases in point. Middle Norwegian manifested variation between stages I and III during its equivalent transitional stage. Alternatively, a language may prolong the stage in which both markers together standardly express negation. French, Dutch, and especially Arabic, are languages that maintained the original negative marker in conjunction with the new marker for several centuries before starting to lose it. Among the languages under consideration in the present volume, very few have returned to to a preverbal single expression of negation after completing Jespersen’s cycle.²⁷ The early Scandinavian languages, for example, went through three rounds of renewal of the expression of negation (Eythórsson , ; Blaxter and Willis ), without returning to preverbal negation in main clauses. On the other hand, with the rise of do-support and a specialized class of negative auxiliaries (Zwicky and Pullum ), English not/-n’t could be argued to have become preverbal again, with English thus coming full circle and returning to stage I. ²⁷ Note that, in Greek, the negative markers appear preverbally at all stages of Jespersen’s cycle (Kiparsky and Condoravdi , Willmott ).

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

Empirical generalizations

. The fate of the original negator after Jespersen’s cycle Once newly grammaticalized negators acquire the ability to express non-emphatic negation, and become (part of) the new expression of standard negation, the question arises as to what happens to the original negator. There are several possibilities. It may: (i)

(ii) (iii)

simply be lost, in which case the language enters stage III of Jespersen’s cycle, and can potentially re-embark on a new cycle, if the necessary conditions are met (section .); remain in the language and continue to play a role in the expression of negation, in which case it takes on the role of emphasizer (section ..); remain in the language, but cease to express negation, in which case it assumes a new function (section ..).

.. Markedness reversal An independent (though rather uncommon) development affecting the former preverbal negator is a markedness reversal (Waugh ), which may account for the apparently extended period of stage II in some cases. In this development, the element is reanalysed as a new marker of emphatic negation or polarity focus, strengthening the postverbal negator. This is what seems to have happened in conversational Swiss French (FonsecaGreber : –), in some Flemish dialects (Breitbarth and Haegeman , ), and also in Occitan varieties (Camproux ). The low frequency of the obsolescent preverbal marker may have facilitated reanalysis in these cases, since only a minority of negative sentences are expected to be emphatic. Such a development may lead to a temporary stabilization of what formally looks like stage I or stage II, due to the functional differentiation or specialization of the two elements. Fonseca-Greber argues that the stabilization in the frequency of ne in spoken Swiss French at around .% of possible contexts in the conversational speech of educated middle-class Swiss French speakers is due to two factors. Besides ‘micro-shifts’ into a more formal register, typically occurring when speakers are discussing institutional or legal topics, ne is used in bipartite negation as a marker of emphatic negation. Fonseca-Greber shows how the use of ne in her corpus of conversational Swiss French correlates with features such as: the use of other markers of emphasis, for instance, lexical items such as strictement ‘strictly’, franchement ‘frankly’, or absolument ‘absolutely’; repetition; slower speech rate; pitch prominence; contrast; or combinations of these. Likewise, besides the expletive contexts mentioned in section .., in the Occitan dialect of Gévaudan, noun < Latin non is frequently used in emphatic contexts in the spoken language (Camproux : –), apparently only in a stage I construction without the standard stage III negator pas, to judge from Camproux’s examples. Examples in the context of a forceful contradiction are given in (). Note in (b) the

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The fate of the original negator after Jespersen’s cycle



contrast between the initial emphatic negation with preverbal noun versus the following non-emphatic negation with the standard postverbal negator pas. () Gévaudanais Occitan a. A: Saren en retard! be.. in delay ‘We’ll be late!’ B: Noun saret!  be.. ‘No, you won’t!’ b. A: Anaras a la fieiro de Mende croumpa un chabal. go.. to  market in Mende buy.  horse ‘You’ll go to the market in Mende to buy a horse.’ B: Noun farai: ai pas tems!  do.. have..  time ‘No, I won’t: I don’t have time!’ (Camproux : –) In Flemish dialects and regional colloquial speech, too, the former preverbal negator has assumed a new function, which Breitbarth and Haegeman () identify as polarity emphasis, illustrated in (). () [Oa=t nie en regent] moe=j de blommen woater geven. if/when=   rain.. must=  flowers water give. ‘If/when it DOESN’T rain, you have to water the plants.’ (Haegeman : ) This has, for instance, the consequence of cancelling the reminder reading of weer ‘again’, in (), only allowing its literal meaning. In (), it makes possible the use of single en to reverse the truth value of a preceding statement in short corrective replies with vicarious doen ‘do’. In some dialects, therefore, the response in () has a negative interpretation, while in others it has an affirmative interpretation. ()

Waarom en ee=j da nu were nie gedoan? why  =  now again  do. (i) Repeated action: ‘Why did you fail to do this / not do this for a second time?’ (ii) *Request for reminder: ‘Remind me of the reason why you failed to / did not do that.’ (Breitbarth and Haegeman : )

() A: Hij slaapt (niet).  sleep..  ‘He is(n’t) sleeping.’ B: Hij/’t en doet. /  do.. ‘No, he is not.’ / ‘Yes, he !’

(adapted from Barbiers et al. : )

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

Empirical generalizations

From here, a further reallocation seems to have occurred, with the consequence that the particle no longer participates in the expression of negation. This further development is addressed in section ... .. Leaving Jespersen’s cycle In some languages, the old preverbal marker of negation remains in the language, but undergoes a separate further development, as it were leaving Jespersen’s cycle and the expression of sentential negation. In some cases, a single use of the former preverbal marker appears to develop separately from the use in bipartite stage II constructions, perhaps as a result of a lexical split. It is unclear, however, to what extent such a split contributed to maintaining stage II in the languages where this occurred. Wallage (), for instance, argues for such a split for Middle English ne, although, according to him, independent ne actually expresses negation on its own. Breitbarth (a, b) shows that the original preverbal negator came to be used in dependent subjunctive verb-second clauses with exceptive interpretation in Middle High German, (a), and, in particular, in Middle Low German, (b), and Middle Dutch, (c). () a. Den lîp wil ich verliesen, si en-werde mîn wîp.  life   lose.  -become. my wife ‘I will die unless she becomes my wife.’ (Lockwood : ) b. Vnde dar moste numment yn, he ne gheue V mark vp dat minste. and there may no.one in   give. five mark on  least ‘And no one may join unless he gives at least five marks.’ (Stralsund ) c. Maer dat en mach niet siin het en waer een sempel wonde. but   can  be.   be.  simple wound ‘But that cannot be unless it were to be a simple wound.’ (Burridge : ) In this use, single ne/en does not express sentential negation, as it cannot license NPIs (Breitbarth : , a), and cannot co-occur with a clause-mate standard negation marker (Breitbarth a, Witzenhausen : ). Wallmeyer (: ) observes for Middle Low German that ne, together with the subjunctive on the verb, appears to function as a marker of subordination, while Witzenhausen () argues that Middle Low German ne/en becomes a marker of a higher negation expressing domain subtraction from the domain of a universal quantifier. In French, Occitan, and several Flemish dialects, the former preverbal negation particles also develop non-negative uses. This functional differentiation of the preverbal and postverbal markers may account for the relative stability of stage II. For French, it has long been recognized that preverbal ne is unable to negate a clause on its own and is therefore no longer inherently negative (Clarke ). Tesnière () acknowledges that French ne does not itself express sentential negation, but only indicates the presence of negative polarity. According to Tesnière (: –), the

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The fate of the original negator after Jespersen’s cycle



function of ne is to ‘switch off ’ (décroche) the affirmative concept, and it is only the postverbal marker that ‘switches on’ (raccroche) the negative concept. French ne occurs alone in non-negative polarity contexts, such as ‘before’ clauses in (), the standard of comparison in (), or ‘unless’ clauses in (). () Des mesures sont nécessaires avant que la tempête . measure. be.. necessary. before  . storm ne frappe pleinement l’ industrie canadienne.  hit... fully  industry Canadian. ‘Measures are necessary before the storm fully hits Canadian industry.’ (marketwired.com, accessed  April ) () Le temps est pire qu’ il ne l’ était hier.  weather be.. worse than    be.. yesterday ‘The weather is better than it was yesterday.’ () à moins que je to least   ‘unless I am mistaken’

ne 

me 

trompe mistake...

Similar expletive uses are found in Gévaudanais Occitan (Camproux ), for instance in comparative clauses, as in (). As noted above, the standard expression of sentential negation is pas in this dialect; noun is the old preverbal negator (< Latin non). ()

Gévaudanais Occitan a. Es pus fort que noun creset. be.. more strong than  believe.. ‘He is stronger than you would believe.’ b. Fouguet mai facille que noun pensabion. be.. more easy than  think.. ‘It was easier than we thought.’ (Camproux : )

In some Flemish dialects, too, the inherited preverbal negator en can be used in weak negative polarity contexts such as conditionals (a), comparatives (b), ‘before’ clauses (c), and in the context of restrictive adverbs like maar/just ‘only’ (d) (Neuckermans , Breitbarth , Breitbarth and Haegeman , ). ()

Southern Dutch dialects a. en aa ’t slecht weer en is and if  bad weather  be.. ‘and if the weather is bad’ (Ghent dialect) (Leemans : ) b. Marjo heeft nu meer koeien dan ze vroeger en Marjo have.. now more cow. than  before  had. have.. ‘Marjo has more cows now than she used to have.’ (Overijse dialect) (Barbiers et al. )

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

Empirical generalizations c. Je moet niet komen voordat ik geschreven en heb.  should  come. before  write.  . ‘You should not come before I have written.’ (Kortrijk dialect) (Barbiers et al. : (b)) d. We en hebben wijder maar tot aan veertien jaar naar ‘t   have..  only until to fourteen year to  schole geweest. school be. ‘We only went to school until we were fourteen years old.’ (Brugge dialect) (Neuckermans : )

Such examples can be taken to indicate that the original negation particle in these languages has ceased to express negation and developed a new function. In light of examples ()–(), this may be the function of indicating the presence of negative polarity. However, considering the following examples, an exaptation (Lass ) reallocating the item to some other function may be more likely in this case. In (), which cannot be construed as a negative polarity context (whether weak or strong), en seems to express only that the situation referred to is unexpected given the context or background of the utterance. For this reason, Breitbarth and Haegeman (, ) argue that en has turned into a discourse marker with a purely procedural function. ()

. . . ik kom eenen tegen met buikgriep, k’ en en der van.  come one against with stomach.bug   have there of ‘I meet someone with a stomach bug; I pick it up.’ (Liliane Haegeman p.c.; female speaker from Heist,  March )

This further development can be seen even more clearly in cases where en precedes a non-finite verb, as in (), instead of the expected finite verb. () (about a volunteer firefighter who drunkenly fell into cow dung) Met zijn beste kleren aan . . . Ge had  een keer with his best clothes on  have.  one time moeten en zien! must.  see. ‘With his best clothes on . . . you should have seen THAT one!’ (speaker (born in ) from Pittem (West Flanders), dialect recording Ghent University from //; https://www.dialectloket.be/geluid/stemmen-uit-het-verleden/) The unexpectedness is clear from the contrastive intonation on dien ‘that one’. While the unexpectedness interpretation also obtains in negative clauses (Breitbarth and Haegeman , ), it is the non-negative, non-NPI contexts that show how far the reanalysis of Flemish en has progressed.

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Conclusion



Summing up, one can say that an original negator has left Jespersen’s cycle when it ceases to be the standard (neutral) negator and is reanalysed as a marker of a grammatical category different from negation, be it affective polarity, polarity focus, an exceptive complementizer, or a discourse marker.

. Conclusion We have seen in the current chapter that emphasizers of the expression of sentential negation have to pass through a number of stages before they may be considered incipient negators. At first, they are used as reinforcers only in contexts that correspond to their (original) lexical meaning. For instance, a minimizer like crumb would be restricted to verbs of eating or handling food. In a second step, such items may extend their use as a reinforcer to contexts that are not related to their original lexical meaning. However, in so far as the emerging reinforcer is a noun or pronoun, it initially remains confined to syntactic positions reserved for nominal elements, that is, argument positions. In a final step, the originally argumental reinforcers are reanalysed as (negative polarity) adverbs. This occurs in one of several bridging contexts in which (pro)nominal reinforcers are ambiguous between arguments and adjuncts. These contexts share the property of providing optional argument positions. While the transition from the first to the second stage of this process involves a purely semantic change—the generalization of meaning without a change in the syntactic distribution—the transition from the second to the third additionally requires a syntactic change. This is the stage that we have proposed to call incipient Jespersen’s cycle. At this stage, the elements retain their original function as emphatic reinforcers of negation. A language can be said to have entered full-scale Jespersen’s cycle once a reinforcing NPA ceases to be emphatic and becomes part of (one means of expressing) the standard expression of sentential negation. Crucially, we observe that the progression of elements through the stages leading to full-scale Jespersen’s cycle is by no means automatic, but seems to be liable to stop at any point, or never go anywhere at all. Many minimizers remain apparently frozen at intermediate stages of grammaticalization. In this process, there are a number of obstacles to successful reanalysis as a negator, which the element in question has to overcome. It can therefore not be predicted that a reinforcer even of the appropriate type will inevitably turn into a new negation marker. While it may be true that more languages than those listed in the World Atlas of Language Structures (Dryer a) have multiple negative morphemes or markers if also incipient or former markers are counted, as suggested for instance by van Gelderen (: ), not all languages of this kind can be considered to be undergoing Jespersen’s cycle. Not all are in the process of developing fully functional new markers of standard sentential negation. In the final sections of this chapter we noted that the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean pass through Jespersen’s cycle at rather different speeds, if they start a

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

Empirical generalizations

renewal of the expression of negation at all. While further developments such as markedness reversal or reanalysis may affect the former preverbal negator and lead to the apparent prolongation of stage II, it also became clear from juxtaposing the speeds of the different languages that geographic contiguity seems to correlate at least with the onset, and possibly also the duration, of stage II. We now turn to consider in chapter  the language-internal motivations for the renewal of the standard expression of sentential negation, and propose a formal analysis of the changes affecting the elements involved. In chapter , we offer a contact-based account of the geographic diffusion patterns observed in section ..

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3 Internal motivations and formal approaches The essential feature of Jespersen’s cycle is the rise of a new postverbal negator, which ultimately replaces the original preverbal one. In chapter , we saw how the establishment of a new negator regularly starts with the same ingredients in the same contexts, and that similar bridging contexts allow original emphasizers to become generalized NPAs expressing narrow-focus negation (sections . and .), before becoming part of the neutral, standard expression of negation. After a more or less extended period of coexistence of the old and new markers (depending on the language), the older marker typically disappears. In the current chapter, our focus turns to the language-internal motivations for the processes observed, in particular, the change from NPA to negator. We will explore the interplay between functional and formal factors in explaining change. Functionalist approaches (e.g. Detges and Waltereit ) usually suggest that new negative markers arise via a communicative strategy according to which speakers strive to be more interesting or relevant, and that the loss of the former negator is a consequence of iconicity or economy, in the sense that the expression of a single grammatical function by more than one formal expression is redundant. Formal approaches, on the other hand, emphasize the role of underlying structural reanalyses, that is, the postulation of a different, computationally more economical, underlying structure for the same surface form in the absence of sufficient evidence to the contrary (Roberts and Roussou , van Gelderen ). We will see that both play a role in accounting for the grammaticalization of new markers of negation in Jespersen’s cycle. Further developments leading to (apparent) preservation of original negative markers, which were discussed in chapter , have not received much attention in the literature to date. As will become apparent, different empirical situations require different theoretical approaches. In the current chapter, we return to the lexical sources of new negative markers and the essential bridging contexts, and look at the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties facilitating the initiation of Jespersen’s cycle in a given language. We will consider: (i) what motivates the actuation of a new postverbal marker or negative The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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Internal motivations and formal approaches

quantifier (section .); (ii) what obstacles need to be overcome in order to complete this process (sections . and .); and (iii) what processes lie behind the loss or exaptation of the original negation markers after such a development (section .). Related questions, namely, (iv) what factors can keep a given situation stable; and (v) what determines the speed of Jespersen’s cycle in different languages, are discussed in the present chapter only where they can be argued to be internally motivated. External factors affecting the diffusion and speed of Jespersen’s cycle will be discussed in chapter .

. The triggers of Jespersen’s cycle: Pull chains vs. push chains There are two basic positions in the literature on Jespersen’s cycle regarding the trigger and direction of the change that leads to the reinforcement of the expression of negation. According to the first, some sort of ‘weakening’ of the original negative particle is the trigger for the establishment of the new expression of negation; according to the second, a newly established reinforcer pushes the old negator out of use. One can thus speak of pull-chain and push-chain scenarios respectively. The first view is reflected in Jespersen’s original statement quoted in section .. According to this view, the renewal of the expression of negation is seen as a pull chain: the weakening of the original marker (apparently inevitably) triggers the introduction of a strengthener. However, the sense in which an expression of negation can be weakened needs to be made precise. Van Gelderen (: ), for instance, concerning the rise of the new negator in Old English, says simply ‘once ne weakens phonologically, another negation is introduced’. Not all proponents of pull-chain approaches agree that the phonological weakening of the original negator is at the heart of the change. Posner observes that extremely phonologically weakened preverbal markers can be rather resilient: The insubstantiality of ne in French cannot in itself account for its elision, for in many South Central Italian dialects the preverbal marker is equally as slight, without showing any signs of disappearing or of requiring supplementation. (Posner : )

Instead, she proposes that the reinforcement of ne occurs in certain Romance varieties in order to avoid homophony with the adverbial pronoun ene < Latin inde (French en) and because of ne becoming ‘swallowed up’ in the preverbal cluster of argument clitics (Posner : ; cf. also Parry ). That is, phonological weakening alone is not sufficient, but may, under certain conditions, such as homophony, lead to the innovation of a new marker. This is in essence a functional explanation.¹

¹ Whether the avoidance of homophony is a sufficient explanation is a different question; certainly the homophony of French pas ‘’ with pas ‘step’ has not yet led to its renewal, or the replacement of the latter by a different lexical item. Even within the domain of negation, the new negative marker in West

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

On van Gelderen’s () approach, the renewal of the expression of negation is caused not so much by phonological weakening but rather by a change in the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the lexical items involved. Van Gelderen identifies an economy principle that she terms Feature Economy as the driving force behind many cyclic changes in language, including Jespersen’s cycle. According to Feature Economy, uninterpretable formal features are more economical for a syntactic derivation than interpretable ones. This is because the principle links the interpretability of formal features to the internal complexity of elements able to bear them: it postulates a connection between syntactic heads and uninterpretable features. Phrases, being internally complex, are structurally less economical than heads, which is why they are reanalysed as heads in case of ambiguity, or lack of evidence for their internal complexity. Furthermore, the principle prescribes an upwards change through the clausal hierarchy: the original lexical material is introduced low in the structure (e.g. in an argument position), and the grammaticalized element with the formal features is merged higher, in the specifier or head of a functional projection. Ultimately, structurally lighter heads, and with them uninterpretable features, disappear, making space in their former position to accommodate the reanalysis of a new phrasal element as a head. Van Gelderen assumes that negation on negative quantifiers such as ‘never’ may be semantic, but it may be represented as a formal feature too, taking part in agreement relations in syntax. Feature Economy postulates the diachronic development in () for negative elements. ()

Feature Economy Minimize the semantic and interpretable features in the derivation, for example: Adjunct/argument Specifier (of NegP) Head (of NegP) affix semantic > [iNeg] > [uNeg] >— (van Gelderen : )

Given this framework, the trigger for Jespersen’s cycle is the preference to interpret syntactic material as a head wherever possible. According to (), the shift from phrasal (specifier) to head status automatically results in a shift in the status of the negative feature from interpretable to uninterpretable. As an uninterpretable feature, the negative feature needs some (new) phrasal expression to license it. Because of this constant pressure to maximize the economy of a derivation, it is then expected that any phonological weakening will trigger the reanalysis of a semantic feature as an

Germanic languages (German nicht or Dutch niet), and the negative indefinite from which it derived (‘nothing’) coexisted for many centuries after the former was established as the standard sentential negator. In many German and southern Dutch dialects, they continue to be homophonous, while the indefinite form has been replaced by the former genitive of the pronoun (nicht-s, niet-s) in the standard languages.

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Internal motivations and formal approaches

interpretable formal feature. This, in turn, will ultimately be subject to Feature Economy, coming to bear an uninterpretable negation feature, thereby setting off a further cycle of renewal of the expression of negation. Feature Economy further implies that any bipartite stage should be transitional, as, at such a stage, one of the elements is the bearer of an uninterpretable negation feature, and is thus destined eventually to disappear. From a functionalist perspective, too, a bipartite stage will be considered transitional, as the presence of two negation markers is seen as redundant, and is expected to end in the eventual loss of the preverbal marker. Some authors have expressed doubts about weakening of the original marker— whether phonological, semantic, pragmatic, and/or structural—being the trigger for the establishment of the new marker, as proposed under the pull-chain approach. Rather than weakening creating a need for strengthening, it could just as well be the emergence of a new element taking on the function of expressing negation that causes the demise of the original element. As Burridge puts it: With something as crucial as a negator, it is just as feasible to see the reduction in terms of the effect rather than the cause; that is, the negative particle is weakened because the function of negation is taken over by these reinforcing elements. (Burridge : )

Under such a push-chain scenario, it is the grammaticalization of a secondary negator from a previously and independently grammaticalized reinforcer that weakens the original marker and eventually pushes it out of use once the new element comes to express neutral sentential negation. Detges and Waltereit (), for instance, argue that, in Old French, the first development was the establishment of a free lexical minimizer—a crosslinguistically widely available strategy (see section ..)—as a grammaticalized emphasizer. Later, this emphatic function is lost due to a semantic reanalysis of the emphasizer as an expression of sentential negation, at first in conjunction with the original marker. They argue that ‘[g]eneralized ellipsis of ne . . . could not occur before pas had turned into a non-emphatic obligatory element’ (Detges and Waltereit : ). Once this change is complete, the two markers are assumed to work together in expressing the single negation of the clause: ‘what so far has been a complex construction, consisting of two constituents, now turns into a single (albeit formally discontinuous) functional unit’ (Detges and Waltereit : ). The original marker is consequently removed because the expression of one function, formally, by two elements violates a functional principle of ‘constructional iconicity’ (Detges and Waltereit : ). Similarly, Frisch (: ), discussing the development of negation in English, argues that, in Middle English, ‘the old sentential negator ne is lost only after the new negator not is well established as sentential negator and component of NegP. The simultaneous availability of both ne and not as negators creates an unstable functional doublet, and ne is lost as a result’.

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There are also proposals combining the pull-chain and push-chain approaches. Wallage (, ), for instance, considers the rise of the new negator and the demise of the original one in the history of English to be two separate developments. The rise of the new negator resembles a pull chain: a variant of ne emerges that needs to be licensed by another element. Reminiscent of van Gelderen’s Feature Economy, this emergence of a variant with an unvalued feature can be considered a weakening that triggers the need for reinforcement. At the same time, a variant of ne not requiring licensing and therefore capable of occurring on its own continues to exist. The loss of the preverbal marker on the other hand appears to follow a push chain: ‘the loss of ne is contingent upon, and follows the introduction of not’ (Wallage : ). In the following, we argue that an account combining elements of a pull-chain and a push-chain scenario is most satisfactory. We will propose that, while the weakening of the original marker—in a sense to be made more precise below—is a necessary precondition for the establishment of a new negation marker (as in a pull-chain scenario), it is not a sufficient one. In order to enter Jespersen’s cycle proper, a suitable element that will eventually displace the old marker needs to become available. Section . addresses the rise of such elements; section . develops a formal typology of negative markers that allows us to define the weakness required for such a suitable reinforcing element to be grammaticalized as a new standard negator. Finally, in section ., we look at internal factors that may affect the speed with which different languages proceed through Jespersen’s cycle.

. The rise of negative polarity adverbs We saw in the previous chapter that reanalyses on two levels are required for Jespersen’s cycle to be set in motion. On the one hand, there needs to be a semantic change, whereby an originally nominal minimizer or generalizer (or some other similar element) is reinterpreted as a semantically unrestricted reinforcer of sentential negation; on the other hand, there needs to be a syntactic reanalysis exploiting a structural ambiguity between nominal and adverbial reinforcers, which leads to the establishment of an NPA. The first change, the rise of a general reinforcer, seems to be entirely unaffected by the weakness or strength of a sentential negator, however defined, as this reanalysis can occur in any language without triggering a renewal of the expression of negation. The second reanalysis, however, seems to be at the start of every instance of Jespersen’s cycle. This second reanalysis presupposes the first. The NPA stage is often very stable: languages maintain numerous adverbs of this type. Examples include English one bit; German kein Stück; French point; Catalan cap (Schwegler : –); Russian ni kapel’ki ‘not at all (not a drop)’, nifiga ‘not at all (not a fig)’, etc.; Bulgarian xiç ‘at all, nothing’, gram ‘at all’; Polish ani trochę ‘at all (not even a crumb)’. Few such items in fact go on to participate in Jespersen’s cycle

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Internal motivations and formal approaches

proper. In order to establish whether there is any change in the status of the original negative marker at this stage, it is necessary to look at its distribution with respect to other expressions of negation—not only the NPA, but also, for instance, indefinites in the scope of negation. As will be discussed in more detail in chapter , these distributions can be indicative of a change in the item’s morphosyntactic features. The establishment of an NPA lies at the root of any renewal of the expression of sentential negation in Jespersen’s cycle. Where a formerly nominal element such as a minimizer or generalizer is involved, this process is aided by its scalar properties, as will be seen in section ... As will be argued in .., however, certain changes in the internal syntax of such elements are required in order first to turn them into indefinite quantifiers. Reinforcers that start out as adverbs may be reanalysed as NPAs directly. In section .., changes in external syntax involved in the rise of an NPA will be discussed. .. Semantic changes In chapter , we saw how the same lexical classes of emphatic reinforcers of negation feed into Jespersen’s cycle repeatedly across different languages. The classic functionalist approach to the triggering of Jespersen’s cycle rests on the intuition that speakers always try achieve social success by presenting what they are saying as maximally interesting. They enhance the newsworthiness of what they are saying by using new and unexpected ways of expressing it, resulting in a ‘constant and universal psycholinguistic proclivity for negative emphasizers’ (Schwegler : ). The empirical generalizations established in chapter  imply a less deterministic approach to incipient Jespersen’s cycle: while languages have a universal tendency to reinforce the expression of negation with expressions that have certain pragmatic properties, the mere presence of such reinforcing expressions in a language does not on its own mean that the current expression of negation is in danger of being replaced. Neither does the existence of this universal tendency on its own allow us to say anything about the motivation for the replacement, whether it is the weakening of the old negator that causes the grammaticalization of the new one, or whether the grammaticalization of the new marker is the reason for the loss of the old one. A common property of new emphatic reinforcers of negation is that they denote an extreme point on a pragmatic scale, namely the least specific of individuals, things, or places, etc. (Fauconnier , Horn , Chierchia , Eckardt ). These properties of their lexical semantics make both minimizers and generalizers especially informative in negative polarity contexts, which are scale-reversing contexts (Klima , Baker , Horn , Ladusaw : ch. , von Fintel ). Israel () adds that, in addition to a low q(uantitative)-value, the emphatic nature of a minimizer lies in it having a high i(nformative)-value.² By denoting an extreme ² Other approaches take informativity to be contextual, not lexical (e.g. Krifka ).

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point on a pragmatic scale, they conversationally implicate less extreme alternatives (I didn’t drink a drop of coffee +> I didn’t drink a thimble of coffee +> I didn’t drink a cup of coffee +> I didn’t drink a pot of coffee +> I didn’t drink a barrel of coffee, etc.); that is, they give rise to a scalar implicature (Horn ), and by focusing on the most extreme alternative, they help to emphasize the expression of negation (Israel , , Eckardt , ). In such a context, the non-specific use of a generic noun (that is, not with reference to a specific man, thing, or place, for instance) gives rise to a universal scalar implicature (Haspelmath : ), namely that the given situation does not hold for any (more specific) individuals, things, or places, in any possible world—in short, at all (Horn ). Minimizers perform a similar function to generalizers under negation, as, denoting the lowest point on a pragmatic scale, they denote the least likely case out of a set of alternatives.³ If the situation cannot be said to be true even to the smallest possible extent, it is understood not to hold at all by scalar implicature, hence the strengthening or emphasizing effect of minimizers under negation. Since an implicature of this kind would not arise in a positive context, a non-specific use of a generic noun or a minimizer in such a context would not be very informative: I drank a drop of coffee is not more informative than I drank a cup of coffee. Quantifiers, such as Catalan poc ‘not’ < ‘little’ (see section ..), exploit the same conversational—again scalar—implicature (cf. I can hardly say this in public +> I just cannot say this). .. Internal syntactic changes: the importance of something nice In section ., we saw how structural acquisitional ambiguity with adverbs in certain bridging contexts facilitates the syntactic reanalysis of nominal and pronominal reinforcers as NPAs. This ambiguity allows for the structural reanalysis of a former argument as an adverbial reinforcer of negation. As will be argued in section .. below, this syntactic reanalysis is the basis for a final step, namely, the reinterpretation of an NPA as the neutral expression of negation itself. As we saw briefly in section .., the absence of an indefinite determiner on nouns in argument positions in a language is potentially a requirement for it to tolerate the reanalysis of a reinforcer as an adverb. A number of proposals in the literature converge on assuming some form of N-to-D incorporation in the formation of ³ Note that minimizers are in the first place lexical, rather than grammatical, expressions. Items normally function as minimizers in a particular semantic context, and are not necessarily inherently specified as minimizers. For instance, one could coin a new minimizer an apple pie in a context such as I don’t care (a common context for minimizers, see section ...), leaving other uses of an apple pie unaffected. The phenomenon is thus a form of coercion. It is thus reasonable to suppose that all languages are able to create elements that function as minimizers and generalizers on the fly. As arguments or pseudo-arguments of a negated verb, these emphasize the polarity of negation. On-the-fly minimizers may become conventionalized, and may remain stable in this role.

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Internal motivations and formal approaches

indefinites from generic nouns and minimizers. Déprez (, ) argues that nominal minimizers become indefinite pronouns eligible for quantificational interpretation as a consequence of incorporation of N ‘into an empty numeral meaning something like zero’ (Déprez : ), or into D: ()

[DP/NumP D/Num+N [NP tN ]]

(Déprez , )

Postma () extends this observation to bare singular nouns in general. He observes that bare singulars act as NPIs in a number of languages that have articles, such as seventeenth-century French, (), and fourteenth-century Middle Dutch, (). ()

Seventeenth-century French a. Il n’ étoit fils de bonne mere, qui . . .   be.. son of good. mother who ‘He would be no son of Our Lady, who . . . ’ (La Fontaine, Fables I:, cited from Postma ) b. Femme n’ étoit qui n’ y courût . . . woman  be.. who  there run... ‘There was no woman who ran there.’ (La Fontaine, Contes II, . Les cordeliers de Catalogne, cited from Postma )

()

Fourteenth-century Middle Dutch a. Hi es dul die vos betrouwet.  be.. stupid who fox trust.. ‘He who trusts a fox is stupid.’ (Penninc/Vostaert, De jeeste van Walewein en het schaakbord, l., cited from Postma ) b. Nummermeer en wort Griec so coene . . . nevermore  become.. Greek so valiant ‘Never again will any Greek be so valiant . . . ’ (Jacob van Maerlant, Die Istory van Troyen, cited from Postma )

Combining this idea with Longobardi’s () proposal to treat bare singulars as arising through N-to-D movement, Postma () argues that one of the factors licensing N-to-D movement (besides being generic or vocative) is negative polarity. He supports this claim by citing the fact that, in present-day European Portuguese, N-movement around an indefinite determiner, for instance, alguma coisa ‘some thing’ > coisa alguma ‘nothing/anything’ creates NPIs (cf. also Martins ). Déprez argues that such incorporation was innovated in the history of French with the incipient negators point and pas, and also with the emerging indefinites personne ‘person > anyone/no one’ and rien ‘thing > anything/nothing’, because the null indefinite determiners of Old French were lost and D came to be obligatorily filled. According to Déprez, determinerless nouns in negative contexts survived as bare forms because they could be reanalysed as being incorporated into D/Num when bare noun phrases

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

were lost. In all other contexts, determiners became obligatory. Such DPs with null determiners were interpreted as non-referential, for instance as negative quantifiers. She identifies the ‘semantic bleaching’ part of the grammaticalization with the reinterpretation of the ‘generic’ descriptive content of the noun (‘thing’, ‘person’, etc.) as the restriction on the quantifier (Déprez : ). We adopt the basic idea behind this analysis, but propose a modification. The main empirical problem with Déprez’s approach is that it predicts that a (semantically) negative quantifier is created directly from an indefinite noun when it incorporates into the ‘zero’ Num head. As seen in chapter , new negative markers have to overcome a number of hurdles before they actually come to express sentential negation. In the early stages, when a nominal minimizer is still ambiguous between an argument and an adverbial reinforcer, it does not semantically express negation; rather, it merely reinforces it pragmatically. Rather than starting out as denoting ‘zero’, a nominal minimizer typically starts out denoting a low point on a pragmatic scale.⁴ Given this problem, a different approach to the internal structure of indefinites is needed. Leu () proposes an analysis in which there is no ‘zero’ Num head. He assumes instead that, synchronically, indefinite pronouns are functional elements taking an empty noun complement. This proposal is similar to that of Larson and Marušič (), who argue against Abney’s () and Kishimoto’s () accounts of the structure of indefinite pronouns as involving productive N-to-D raising, (), and propose that indefinites are DPs with a (complex) D head containing the indefinite and an empty NP complement, (). ()

[DP [D some thingi] [AP nice] [N ti ]]

()

[DP [D something] [N ø] [AP nice]]

However, unlike Larson and Marušič, Leu argues that the indefinite is actually spread over two functional heads, a head F hosting the determiner-like part (e.g. some) and a head IPR-R (for indefinite pronoun-restrictor) hosting the nominal-like part (e.g. thing). The principal argument in favour of the original analysis of indefinites as being the result of productive N-to-D movement (Abney , Kishimoto ) was the unexpected postverbal placement of adjectives, something nice rather than *nice something. Leu accounts for this by postulating a secondary predicate in the form of a partitive complement to the empty N head, shown for the Swiss German and French phrase in () using de-P in ().⁵ ⁴ We return to this point in chapter  in relation to the development of indefinites in the scope of negation. ⁵ A similar proposal, building on Leu’s, is made by Bayer and Brandner (), who also assume that the indefinite is ‘spread’ over two heads. However, unlike in Leu’s proposal, it is not spread over two functional heads, but rather over (functional) D and (lexical) N. Compared to Leu’s, this has a number of disadvantages that will be discussed in chapter .

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 ()

Internal motivations and formal approaches Swiss German French

()

öpis something quelque some

schön-s nice- chose de thing of

beau nice

(Leu : )

DP

Fsome IPR-R some quelque thing öpchose -is

de-P

N0 Pred0

adj de -s

nice beau schön-

N0

Revising () to reflect current theoretical assumptions yields the tree in (). We rename the F head Q here, to reflect the fact that it contains information about the distribution of the indefinite quantifier, for instance, whether it is restricted to NPI contexts. In the case of Leu’s examples in (), the indefinite is a not an NPI (see chapter  for more on this). Unlike in Postma’s account, where N-to-D movement creates NPIs, on this approach such movement creates indefinite pronouns, though not necessarily NPIs, and is not productive. The highest functional projection, DP/QP, embeds a restrictor phrase whose head is the indefinite pronoun. This separation of the Q head from the RestrP reflects the observation (Jäger ) that the meaning of indefinites is independent of their licensing conditions: anything is the NPI variant of something, but both are used to express the ontological series ‘thing’ (Haspelmath : ).

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The rise of negative polarity adverbs ()



DP/QP

0 Qsome

some Restr0 quelque öpthing chose -is

RestrP

NP

N0

PredP

Pred0

NP

AdjP

N

de -s Adj0

N0

nice beau schönLeu’s proposal has a number of advantages for analysing the diachronic process of creating (NPI) indefinites, to which we return in chapter . Particularly relevant for the current chapter, it also allows us to account for the emergence of incipient negators from generic nouns or minimizers. First of all, Leu’s proposal is entirely compatible with that of Déprez. According to Déprez, the original noun loses its referential properties and becomes the restriction of a quantifier. Leu’s proposal explicitly offers a restrictor head, which is the position of the indefinite pronoun. Déprez’s proposal (involving N-to-D/Num movement) can therefore be interpreted within Leu’s structure as the innovation of N-to-Restr movement for those bare nouns that survived the introduction of compulsory determiners, as illustrated in (). Leu’s F head (Q for us) is the place where the null indefinite determiner, for instance in Old French (Déprez ), or in Old High German, is located.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

()

DP/QP

0 Qany/no

RestrP

Restr0

dimi uuihti pasi

NP

N0

ti

This has a number of advantages. First, it does not imply that newly grammaticalized indefinites immediately have to be strong NPIs or semantically negative quantifiers. Second, in the case of (negative) indefinite pronouns that become incipient negative markers, it makes available a head position Q, which may be occupied by an overt determiner-like element, such as a in a jot, or a (former) focus particle like io ‘ever > any’ in Old High German/Old Saxon (n)io-uuiht ‘() ever thing’, later ‘not’. Finally, the proposal provides a position for partitive complements, through a secondary predicate, which provides a way of accounting for the grammaticalization of new negators from adnominal quantifiers (see section ..).⁶ In the Old Florentine example in (), for instance, punto appears adjacent to its attribute, di vino, and is therefore interpreted as an adnominal quantifier (‘and [they had] no wine’). The relevant structure of the phrase containing punto is given in (). ()

. . . non ebbono se non poco pane né punto di vino.  have.. but  little bread and.  of wine ‘ . . . they had only a little of bread and no wine.’ (G. Villani, Nuova Cronica .) (Garzonio : )

⁶ Déprez (: ), too, mentions de-phrases as characteristic of French indefinites, referring to Kayne (: –). However, she restricts the discussion to adjectival modification (quelque chose/rien de beau), and adopts Kayne’s DP-internal relative clause analysis of de-modification.

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The rise of negative polarity adverbs ()



DP/QP

0 Qany/no

RestrP

Restr0

punto

NP

N0

PredP

Pred0

di

NP

N0

vino As with Déprez’s approach, the loss of movement (from N to Restr) is interpreted as an instance of ‘upward reanalysis’ (Roberts and Roussou ); the noun is thereby reanalysed as a new indefinite pronoun or adverb. In NPI contexts, where only non-specific Restr would lead to a coherent or relevant interpretation of a generic noun or minimizer, upward reanalysis of a generic noun or minimizer from N to Restr can take place, creating an NPI indefinite. That is, we can capture the semantic and syntactic reanalysis of an originally nominal reinforcer as an incipient negator in terms of it first becoming essentially an indefinite pronoun, which derives its polarity sensitivity from the scalar properties of the original minimizer/generalizer. As an indefinite pronoun, it can still function as an argument of a verb. In bridging contexts such as with verbs having flexible argument structure, as discussed in section .., a change in the external syntax of such indefinite reinforcers is possible by reinterpreting indefinite degree arguments as adverbial reinforcers adjoined to VP. We discuss this in the next subsection. .. External syntactic changes As we have seen, free reinforcement of the expression of negation by means of nominal or adverbial elements is possible in all languages, exploiting the scalar properties of the elements involved. In some cases, given the right bridging contexts, these elements can generalize as NPAs; in the case of etymologically nominal reinforcers, this involves a reanalysis of the internal syntax as an NPI indefinite. Even once an element has overcome initial restrictions, such as those discussed in

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

section .., and turned into an NPA that can reinforce the expression of negation independently of the semantic class of the verb, there are still further restrictions that may prevent the item from proceeding beyond the NPA stage and entering into direct competition with the standard expression of negation. These restrictions also hold for elements that begin life as adverbial elements, such as never or prepositional phrases (in my life, at all, for toffee), which, being adverbs already, skip the developments discussed in sections .. and ... These restrictions, again, are both of a semantic–pragmatic and a syntactic nature. Languages that have successfully made the transition to a new standard expression of negation can give us clues as to what motivates this further step. On the semantic– pragmatic side, the actual grammaticalization of new expressions of standard negation requires the loss or conventionalization of the original scalar implicature. On the syntactic side, structural ambiguity is the main requirement for successful reanalysis. In section .., we discussed empirical observations from various languages showing that optionally transitive verbs, or verbs with an optional extent argument, could form bridging contexts for the grammaticalization of NPAs from nominal reinforcers, as their structure can have two parses: one with a degree argument inside VP and another with an adverb adjoined to VP. Under the analysis in section .., this reanalysis looks like (), with the argumental analysis in (a) and the adverbial analysis in (b):⁷ () a.

VP

V

DP/QP

Q0any/no

b.

VP

DP/QP

0 Qany/no

RestrP

Restr0

VP

NP

N0

... V ...

RestrP

Restr0

NP

N0

This reanalysis is associated with changes of word order in some cases. For instance, in Early Modern Welsh, it led to a shift from verb–PP-complement–NPA order to verb–NPA–PP-complement order (Willis : –). ⁷ Example () illustrates this for an OV language, but the same applies for VO languages, with reanalysis from (i) to (ii), where the NPA is right-adjoined to VP: (i) [VP V [DP/QP Q . . . ]] (ii) [VP [VP V ]] [DP/QP Q . . . ]] V–NPA order could also be derived by V-to-T movement.

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The rise of negative polarity adverbs



The position at the (left) edge of the VP, where low adverbs (Jackendoff ) and focus particles⁸ are located, marks the focus domain of the clause in many languages (Platzack , Holmberg , Diesing ). Based on the position of postverbal subjects in Romance and Bantu languages, of wh-elements, and of NPIs, this position has furthermore been associated with the syntactic encoding of focus in several languages (Ndayiragije , Jayaseelan , Belletti ). In terms of the analysis proposed above, we can capture this by postulating that the NPA acquires a formal focus feature when it reaches the stage shown in ()b. ()

vP/VP

QPNPA[FOC]

vP/VP

…V… This is the initial stage for reinforcers that were always adverbial: elements like ‘never’, ‘in my life’, or Catalan poc ‘hardly’ are adjoined to vP/VP to begin with, modifying the event variable. Because of its scalar properties, the new NPA, whether initially derived from an indefinite, or always adverbial, is restricted to the scope of negation; that is, it must be positioned below the position of the negation operator. In (), this is represented by a negative operator OP¬ adjoined to vP/VP.⁹ ()

vP/VP

OP¬[NEG]

vP/VP

QPNPA[FOC]

vP/VP

…V…

⁸ As examples of focus particles in this position, consider, for instance, the negative and affirmative emphatic polarity particles below finite verbs in Catalan discussed by Batllori and Hernanz (): (i)

No 

l’he pas vist en Joan. =. not.at.all see.  John

‘I haven’t seen John at all.’ (Diccionari català-valencià-balear, s.v. pas) (Batllori and Hernanz : ) (ii) La soprano s’ha ben enfadat.  soprano =. really get.angry. ‘The soprano has really got angry.’ ⁹ This analysis will be refined in section ..

(Batllori and Hernanz : )

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

Due to its scalar semantics, the NPA furthermore has a high surprisal value under negation.¹⁰ This means that it will be interpreted as expressing narrow or new-information focus (Kiss ). This can explain why, in the process of their grammaticalization, new negators are often initially used to express narrow-focus negation, as discussed in section .. It is not a coincidence that such uses are particularly found in cases where there is no finite verb, as in (). ()

thuo niet ekir iro selon neuen ok . . . (Old Saxon) then  only . soul. but also ‘then not only their soul, but also . . . ’ (Glossen zu den Homilien Gregors des Großen , –) (Breitbarth : )

In many of the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean that have undergone Jespersen’s cycle, the original preverbal negator is a clitic on the finite verb. The new NPAs, on the other hand, are not restricted in this fashion, and may be used in positions or contexts in which the original preverbal negator could not occur. This is not restricted to verbless contexts as in (). In Old High German, the new NPA drof ‘(not) a drop’ could appear in clause-initial focus position, as in (), a position that is normally reserved in the language for phrasal elements and which cannot host clitics. () drof ni forahtet ir iu (Old High German) drop/  fear.. . . ‘Do not be afraid at all.’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch III , ) (Jäger : ) This distributional freedom may constitute an advantage for NPAs as they enter into competition with the original expression of standard negation, because being available in more contexts increases their frequency, provided they also undergo subsequent changes. Recall from Table . that in Willis’s () Old English data, constituent negation of an adverb, quantifier, or adjective was the single most frequent use of nāwiht ‘nothing > not’. At this point, two things need to happen for an NPA to become a new standard expression of negation. First, it needs to acquire a formal negation feature (exactly what kind will be clarified in section .) by conventionalization of the implicature triggered by the negative polarity of the NPA. Under neo-Gricean approaches (e.g. Horn , ), this conventionalization exploits the Gricean Maxim of Quantity—if one can expect a speaker to say no more than is necessary, but also to say at least what is sufficient, then ‘exactly’ is implicated. In this case, if something is not the case at all, it is simply not the case.

¹⁰ In information theory, surprisal is the predictability of a linguistic unit in context. The less a unit can be predicted, the higher its surprisal. The term was originally coined by Tribus (), and applied to information theory (Shannon ) by Jones ().

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The rise of negative polarity adverbs



Second, it is necessary for the emergent negative marker to lose its emphatic value, interpreted as narrow focus. Once wide, or identificational (Kiss ), focus is possible for the emerging new negator, the reanalysis is complete in semantic terms. However, there may be structural reasons delaying this semantic reanalysis. As was seen in section ..., case plays a role in the initial reanalysis of nominal reinforcers as NPAs: if adverbs and arguments cannot be distinguished morphologically, the former may be mistaken for the latter. Once a formerly nominal or pronominal reinforcer has acquired the status of an NPA, some languages (temporarily) block the use of the new adverbial reinforcer in transitive clauses outside the bridging contexts, where it might be interpreted as an argument of the verb. This observation can be taken as an argument in favour of optionally transitive verbs forming an important bridging context in the recruitment of new expressions of sentential negation derived from nominal minimizers or generalizers. Such a restriction might arise in the following way. If optionally transitive verbs are the bridging context for the reanalysis of a nominal minimizer as an adverb, then all the input sentences in the PLD which support the adverbial analysis will have the general form subject + optionally transitive verb + nominal minimizer object. The optionally transitive verb will be understood as intransitive and the minimizer understood as adverbial. All instances of the newly grammaticalizing NPA will therefore be with intransitive verbs, that is, optionally transitive verbs (mis)analysed as intransitive. If this distribution is observed and retained by subsequent generations of learners, a transitivity restriction will be imposed. These items only become fully adverbial once they become entirely independent of the argument structure of the verbs they can occur with. A restriction or tendency of this kind held at one stage for both Welsh ddim (Willis : –) and Middle French pas (Foulet  []: , Catalani : , Roberts and Roussou : ). While ddim and pas have fully overcome this restriction and undergone successful extension to transitive contexts, it still holds for items in other languages, such as gnente in the Venetan dialects of northern Italy. This is a negative marker that has grammaticalized from ‘nothing’ (Zanuttini , Poletto a, ). This emphasizer can be used with intransitive agentive verbs in order to express the extent of the action, as in (). However, in many cases, it cannot co-occur with the direct object of a transitive verb, in (), or with the subject of an unaccusative verb, in (); that is, it is still distributed like a nominal element in those contexts where it competes with a theme argument (examples from Poletto a: –). ()

Nol lavora . work.. ‘He doesn’t work.’

()

*Nol magna . eat.. ‘He doesn’t eat sweets.’

gnente. nothing gnente nothing

(Venetan)

la 

roba stuff

dolse. sweet

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

()

*Nol vien . come.. ‘He’s not coming.’

gnente. nothing

One way around such transitivity restrictions is the use of the intended internal argument of the transitive verb as a partitive attribute to the (pro)nominal reinforcer, which is then structurally the internal argument. This is what we saw above in its incipient stage in (), where Old Florentine punto di vino (lit. ‘a point of wine’) could be interpreted as ‘no wine at all’. In (), a second interpretation is possible, namely that of an emphatic (incipient) sentential negator (‘and [they did] not [have] any wine (at all)’). Welsh ddim developed in this direction too, with definite objects in some syntactic configurations coming to be marked with mo < ddim o ‘nothing of ’ (Willis a: –). Schwegler (: , ) explicitly links the use of minimizers with partitive complements in historical French and French dialects to the fact that adverbial reinforcers deriving from minimizers could still be interpreted as arguments with transitive verbs.¹¹ It was suggested in section .. that the possibility of combining an indefinite denominal reinforcer with a partitive attribute aided the reanalysis of Old High German and Old Saxon niowiht ‘nothing’ as an adverbial reinforcer (‘at all’), and ultimately, as the new expression of standard negation (‘not’). In the Old Saxon example in (), the literal partitive interpretation makes little sense, given that someone’s death is not divisible. ()

Ni tharf iu uuiht tregan quat=hie  may . thing distress. say..= minero hinferdio ... passing. ‘My passing should not distress you at all, he said.’ (lit. ‘Nothing of my passing should distress you, he said.’) (Heliand –)

¹¹ Schwegler (: ), also referring to Price (: –), mentions that emphatic negation of transitive predicates was only possible with point or mie in Old French, and initially not with pas. Only the former two minimizers could take partitive complements initially (il n’avoit point/mie d’épouse vs. *il n’avoit pas d’épouse ‘he did not have a wife’), with pas acquiring the ability to negate transitive predicates only in the seventeenth century. For the dialects of the Languedoc, Massif central, and Gascony, Schwegler (: ) reports that new denominal reinforcers ges < Latin gentium ‘people’ and kap < Latin caput ‘head’ are used in addition to the already fully grammaticalized negator pas for the emphatic negation of transitive predicates, but not for the negation of intransitives: (i) ai pas have.. 

ges d’  of

enfant child

‘I don’t have a child.’ (ii) y

a

there have..

pas

kap

de sources

  of

‘There are no springs.’

spring. (Schwegler : )

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The rise of negative polarity adverbs



This seems to indicate that uuiht in () is already in the process of being reanalysed from an NPI indefinite in argument position reinforcing the expression of sentential negation to an NPA and ultimately as an independent marker of sentential negation, with the actual (semantic) argument of the verb appearing in genitive case. This reanalysis is sketched in (). At the earlier stage, uuiht minero hinferdio ‘nothing of my passing’ is a constituent noun phrase occupying an argument position within VP.¹² The genitive case on minero hinferdio is due to its status as the partitive complement of uuiht. After the reanalysis, uuiht is an adverb adjoined to the top of VP, while the argument position is occupied solely by minero hinferdio. ()

vP/VP

vP/VP

0 Qany/no

0 Qany/no

RestrP

Restr0

uuiht

DP/QP

V

DP/QP

RestrP

Restr0

NP

N0

vP/VP

PredP

uuiht

minero hinferdio … V

NP

N0

minero hinferdio

The fact that, on the new analysis, the internal argument of the transitive verb appears in the (partitive) genitive in the scope of negation (rather than the expected accusative) does not necessarily block such a reanalysis; in fact, it may help to make it more attractive to the acquirer. An accusative internal argument makes a transitive verb telic, as it denotes an endpoint. Under negation however, reaching the endpoint of the action is denied. Partitive genitive case on the internal argument would overtly express the non-completion of the event, making this a motivated choice in negative clauses. Such marking of objects, and subjects of unaccusative verbs, occurs in many European languages (Miestamo ), either via marking with partitive (Finnic, Basque) or genitive case (Slavonic, Baltic), or via a partitive preposition (French, Welsh). Sporadic attestation is found in other older Indo-European languages (e.g. Gothic, Streitberg : ; Middle High German, Paul : ). Bailyn () argues that, in Russian, the negative head in Neg systematically assigns genitive case to any internal arguments within its scope, that is, to direct objects or ¹² The verb tregan ‘distress’ in () takes two arguments: a dative experiencer and a nominative cause. We do not wish to commit here to a position on the question of whether or not Old Saxon had nonnominative subjects, as this is immaterial to the discussion at hand.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

subjects of unaccusative verbs in SpecVP. Furthermore, in both Russian and Finnish, this genitive of negation shows some degree of association with imperfective aspect. Once an NPA has been reanalysed as adjoined to a transitive vP, the path to becoming a new negative particle is clear. Before we can formulate a formal account of the transition from NPA to negative particle in section .., we need to develop an account of the different properties of negative particles at different stages of Jespersen’s cycle.

. Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not? Having discussed the emergence of the NPAs required for Jespersen’s cycle, we now turn to the formal analysis of negative markers at different stages of the cycle. .. Previous accounts Since Pollock (), who first proposed a split IP, implemented in () as a split into TP, NegP, and AgrP, the structural locus of sentential negation within generative approaches to syntax has been assumed to be a functional projection, NegP. ()

[TP [NegP [AgrP [VP ]]]

According to the NegP hypothesis, negative markers occupy either the head or specifier position of a dedicated negative projection. Such markers may either be Neg⁰ in the head position or a phrasal AdvP in the specifier position, the choice varying crosslinguistically and diachronically. A variant of this hypothesis treats this projection as a general polarity projection (including therefore both negative and positive polarity), labelled variously as ΣP (Laka ) or PolP (Haegeman ). The NegP hypothesis has been widely used in accounts of Jespersen’s cycle, as it provides for the possibility of a change in the status of an element from phrase (specifier) to head as a reflex of grammaticalization (Frisch , Rowlett , Jäger , Willis ). However, while there is widespread agreement on the need for NegP, there is much division about the exact number of NegPs, their syntactic position, and their precise contribution to interpretation. In the following, we discuss the standard accounts of Jespersen’s cycle in terms of the NegP hypothesis, and then follow Garzonio and Poletto’s intuition that accounts using multiple NegPs are problematic, proposing a NegP-free approach to Jespersen’s cycle (Breitbarth ). Despite the widespread acceptance of the validity of at least some versions the NegP hypothesis, it faces a number of theoretical and empirical issues. Essentially, three main types of NegP approaches have been proposed, each with different consequences for the analysis of Jespersen’s cycle. According to the first, a single NegP is present in negative clauses in all languages. It reflects the scope position of the (overtly or covertly present) logical, negation operator. Such an approach is adopted for Jespersen’s cycle by Roberts and Roussou (), Roberts (), van Gelderen (b, ), and Willis (), among others.

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



Under the second type of approach, a single NegP is projected only in those languages in which there are overtly marked syntactic dependencies, above all, negative concord. This entails that the presence of NegP may vary crosslinguistically and diachronically, according to whether such dependencies are present in a given language. Approaches of this type are proposed for a number of languages by Zeijlstra (), and, for historical English more specifically, by Wallage (). However, the available proposals focus more on the presence or absence of NegP to account for separate synchronic stages as internally coherent systems, rather than for diachronic change between stages of Jespersen’s cycle. Finally, there is a family of proposals according to which there may be several NegPs in each language; these are designed to provide a synchronic account of typological and diachronic variation in the position of negative particles (though not necessarily the scope position of the negative operator) with respect to other material in the clause (verbs, adverbs, and other operators). Zanuttini () sets out such an approach within a cartographic framework. Historically, new negation markers may come to instantiate one of several negation positions in the clause. While their position may reflect aspects of their etymological origin—for instance, former nominal direct objects may grammaticalize into a low, postverbal NegP—they may also change from one position to another as they progress from one diachronic stage to the next (Van Kemenade : ). Only one of these multiple positions is assumed to bear interpretable negation features, raising the question of what the justification is for treating the other positions as negative phrases, NegP. Garzonio and Poletto, for instance, remark that allowing all negators, whatever their position in the clause, to be labelled NegP would mean that they would: have the bizarre property of occurring at different heights in the sentence structure before TP, before TP, before or after AspP, contrary to all other functional projections CP, TP, AspP etc. which always come in the same order. No other functional projection seems to be able to jump around in the sentence as NegP is supposed to do. (Garzonio and Poletto : )

Furthermore, the diachronic connection between the different synchronic stages, with their different ‘activated’ NegPs, has so far not been addressed in great detail in the literature (but see, for instance, Poletto a, b, and De Clercq , ). Under approaches of the first kind, the diachronic connection between the stages of Jespersen’s cycle consists in changes in what elements occupy the head and specifier positions of NegP, and changes in the features that these element bear. At stage I of Jespersen’s cycle, the head of NegP is typically assumed to have an interpretable/ valued negation or polarity feature.¹³ The future adverbial negator initially has no such feature. Either it is simply an NPI, or some other mechanism ensures that it is restricted to negative clauses (for instance, an ‘uninterpretable operator feature’ that needs to be ¹³ Approaches vary regarding the assumed model of feature checking or valuation.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

licensed by a suitable operator, in the implementation of the development of French pas by Roberts : , –). Later, this adverbial element is integrated into the negative system, thereby coming to occupy SpecNegP, and acquires an uninterpretable/unvalued negation/polarity feature. At stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, this licensing relationship is reversed by another reanalysis, which leaves the preverbal marker bearing the uninterpretable/unvalued negation/polarity feature and the new adverbial element bearing the interpretable feature licensing it. This is illustrated for French ne . . . pas in (). ()

NegP

NegP

AdvP

Neg

pas Neg0 [uPOL:NEG] ne [iPOL:NEG]

AdvP

Neg

pas Neg0 [iPOL:NEG] ne [uPOL:NEG]

(adapted from Willis 2012: 96)

Bearing the interpretable/valued negation/polarity feature, the new negation pas is in principle able to express sentential negation on its own, paving the way for the old preverbal marker to be lost. Under approaches of the first type, the question is what triggers and what restricts the changes affecting the material filling the head and specifier positions of NegP, as well as the interpretability of the features they bear. Van Gelderen (b, ) proposes that a number of economy principles channel the developments. In particular, Feature Economy, which was introduced in () above, connects the interpretability of negation features to their phrasal status, and introduces a trigger for the lexical renewal typical of cyclical changes by postulating that uninterpretable features (present on heads) are more economical than interpretable ones (present on phrases). Given that uninterpretable features always need to be licensed by interpretable ones to prevent a derivation from crashing, this causes the grammaticalization of new interpretable material. Because of Feature Economy, van Gelderen’s approach aligns the stages of Jespersen’s cycle with observations about the feature content and phrase-structure status of negative markers (cf. also Zeijlstra : ). In brief, in both Zeijlstra’s and van Gelderen’s understanding, there are essentially three types of negative marker in terms of these properties:

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not? (i)

(ii) (iii)



head negators with an interpretable negation feature, such as Italian non in () (in non-strict negative-concord languages according to Giannakidou’s ,  typology); head negators with an uninterpretable negation feature, such as Czech ne in () (in strict negative-concord languages); and phrasal negators with an interpretable negation feature, such as German nicht in ().¹⁴

()

Gianni non mangia. Nessuno Gianni  eat.. n.one ‘Gianni isn’t eating. No one is eating.’

()

Milan ne=volá. Nikdo *(ne)=volá. (Czech) Milan =call.. n.one =call.. ‘Milan isn’t calling. No one is calling.’ (Zeijlstra : , )

()

Hans kommt nicht. Niemand kommt (*nicht). (German) Hans come..  n.one come..  ‘Hans isn’t coming. No one is coming.’

(*non) 

mangia. (Italian) eat..

As a consequence of this connection between the stages of Jespersen’s cycle and the feature content of negative markers, van Gelderen (: –) points to negative concord as being an indicator of impending renewal of the expression of sentential negation. This reflects the common claim that there is a connection between the phrase-structure status of a negative marker (head or phrase) and the availability of negative concord (cf. also Rowlett , who calls it Jespersen’s Generalization after observations by Jespersen ; or Zeijlstra : –).¹⁵ Van Gelderen interprets the ‘weakening’ of the original negative marker—for Jespersen () the first step in the renewal—as a change in the interpretability of the [NEG] feature of the negative marker. According to Feature Economy, [uNEG] is ‘weaker’ than [iNEG], because a [uNEG] negator needs to rely on an [iNEG] (or semantically negative) licenser. Negative concord, on this reasoning, therefore means that the sentential negator in the language in question is a [uNEG] head requiring strengthening, which the concording element is thought to provide, making the language an incipient Jespersen’s cycle language.¹⁶ ¹⁴ Zeijlstra () further distinguishes between two types of language with phrasal negators, those in which the negator bears an [iNEG] feature (a formal syntactic feature), and enters an Agree relation with bearers of a [uNEG] feature, for example a head negation particle or concording indefinites (NCIs), and those in which the negator is semantically negative. We reject such a distinction, as an element bearing an [iNEG] feature will be indistinguishable from a semantic negator at LF. We return to an analysis of negative concord in chapter . ¹⁵ See chapter , as well as Wallage () and Breitbarth (a), for arguments against this generalization. ¹⁶ Note that Zeijlstra () is less strict in this respect, as he acknowledges that there are negative-concord languages with [iNEG] phrasal negators. See Wallage () and Breitbarth (a) for arguments against a direct dependency between Jespersen’s cycle and negative concord. We return to this point in chapter .

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

While we are going to propose below an account in terms of a form of Feature Economy ourselves, the claim that [iNEG] or semantically negative indefinites or quantifiers are the trigger of Jespersen’s cycle is dubious. Even though semantically negative indefinites do exist (see section .), they are not typically involved in negative concord, particularly not the kind where the indefinite is the subject and dominates the negative-marked verb. This, according to van Gelderen (: –), is the context in which the reanalysis from [iNEG] to [uNEG] occurred in Old English. However, in Zeijlstra’s typology, this is the type of configuration characteristic of a strict negative-concord language (with a [uNEG] sentential negator, [uNEG] indefinites, and a covert [iNEG] negation operator). According to Zeijlstra (), as well as the analysis adopted in chapter , the most typical kind of indefinite in a negative-concord language bears a [uNEG] feature. The comparison of the historical development of indefinites across languages discussed in chapters  and  suggests that indefinites involved in negative concord often arise from NPIs (and potentially formerly positive elements), become increasingly restricted to the scope of negation, and typically stop at acquiring a [uNEG] feature. As we shall see, developing an [iNEG] feature in this way is exceedingly rare, besides being unexpected under Feature Economy. The way [iNEG] indefinites normally arise is through univerbation with a negative that bears an [iNEG] feature (cf. Haspelmath ). Furthermore, if the negator in negative-concord languages were universally [uNEG], one would on the one hand erase the distinction between strict and non-strict negative concord, and on the other hand predict, contrary to fact, that negative doubling cannot co-occur with negative spread, because the [iNEG] indefinites could not cooccur with each other without causing double logical negation. Finally, the proposal offers a rather deterministic view of Jespersen’s cycle: Feature Economy appears inevitably to lead to weakening ([iNEG]>[uNEG]) and renewal. However, as observed in chapter , the expression of negation has remained quite stable in some languages; certainly the stage preceding the actual initiation of Jespersen’s cycle, with only emphatic adverbial emphasizers, seems entirely stable (see also Posner  and Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ). A general problem for accounts of Jespersen’s cycle that propose diachronic change in the elements occupying the specifier and head positions of NegP is the fact that new fillers of SpecNegP mostly follow the old Neg⁰. Hirschbühler and Labelle () demonstrate this for French in their criticism of Pollock’s () analysis of French ne and pas as Neg⁰ and SpecNegP respectively. They provide arguments for the surface order ne pas being the base order rather than [Spec pas [Neg ne]]. It is also not clear whether the position assigned to the new negator is the specifier of NegP, rather than a position adjoined to vP, or the specifier of some other functional projection (for instance, low Focus, see below). This raises questions for language acquisition: why should a functional projection be postulated if the PLD do not unambiguously indicate its position, unless one assumes functional projections and their positions are not acquired, but hard-wired into

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



UG? This, however, could only be reconciled with the third type of approach, namely a cartographic approach to Jespersen’s cycle assuming multiple NegPs. This would represent a return to square one, and require an account of why different negative projections are activated or deactivated at different stages of Jespersen’s cycle. Given that functional projections are not normally free to appear in any one of a number of different structural positions in the way that such an approach would allow, the conclusion seems inevitable: despite the presence of interpretable functional content and agreement phenomena, the empirical evidence for NegP is patchy, and it is therefore questionable whether postulation of a NegP is indeed necessary to capture the data. Poletto (a, b, ) and De Clercq (, ) independently make similar proposals according to which NegP starts out low, at the boundary of vP (or of a nonverbal predicate), as one, internally complex, constituent, containing several projections associated with different features that are checked through movement into positions elsewhere in the clause, such as Focus. These positions inside the complex ‘Big NegP’ (Poletto ) host negative markers with different etymological sources, such as minimizers or existential indefinites: ()

[NegP [FocP  [ScalarP non [MinQP mica [ExistentialP niente ]]]]] (Poletto : )

De Clercq (, : ) concludes on the basis of a crosslinguistic comparison of syncretism patterns and word orders that negation is featurally complex, and can be presented using the hierarchical structure in () (based on De Clercq : –). On her nanosyntactic approach, lexical items, including negative markers, are syntactic trees with features stored in the mental lexicon, which are inserted into the clausal spine whenever they match a corresponding segment of structure there, () (De Clercq : ). ()

PolP

Pol0

not/n’t

FocP

Foc0

NOT

DegP

Deg0

non-

QP

Q0

un-

NegP

Neg0

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

()

PolP

Pol0

TP

TP

she

T0 is not

FocP

N4P

N04

FocP

Foc0

N3P

N3

v0

N2 P

N2

vP

N1P

N1

DegP

Deg0

NegP

Neg0

AP happy

By requiring movement of these markers to check features such as focus, the different positions in the clause in which negative markers can appear can be accounted for independently of negation itself, making at least the flexible attachment of a NegP (e.g. Van Kemenade ), or the postulation of several NegPs along the clausal spine (e.g. Zanuttini ), superfluous. We will return to the pros and cons of such an approach below, when we consider the internal complexity and external syntax of negative markers at different stages of Jespersen’s cycle. Several authors, such as Penka (), have rejected the NegP hypothesis altogether, not simply for individual languages, as Ernst () does for English, or for languages at certain stages of Jespersen’s cycle, as Zeijlstra () or Wallage () do. Penka (: ) proposes treating sentential negation as an operator OP¬ of type requiring a constituent denoting a truth value as its argument, returning the inverse truth value. According to Penka, the smallest projection of type is vP, although other projections are not excluded (Penka : ). As such, negation interacts with other scope-taking material in the clause. The ordering restrictions between projections are taken to follow from independent semantic requirements, and do not need to be doubly represented in a fixed hierarchy of

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



functional projections in the syntax. Following Zeijlstra (), Penka assumes that OP¬ can be covert as long as overt material in the sentence indicates its presence. This happens for instance in cases where negative markers appear in surface positions that do not coincide with the semantic scope of negation, or in the case of negative concord (Penka : ).¹⁷ However, not all of the types of negation marker in Zeijlstra’s () typology, illustrated in ()–(), can be derived under Penka’s proposal. It can handle languages which, on Zeijlstra’s analysis, either have (i) a weak [uNEG] negative marker or affix on the finite verb and a covert [iNEG] OP¬ in SpecNegP (e.g. Czech); or (ii) an [iNEG] phrasal/adverbial negator in SpecNegP in negative-concord languages (e.g. Bavarian), or adjoined to vP in nonnegative-concord languages (e.g. Standard German). In languages of the first type, a NegP is not needed under Penka’s approach, as [uNEG] features are always licensed under c-command by an [iNEG] licenser, and Penka’s proposal allows the adjunction of a covert OP¬ to vP (or a higher < t > projection). This covert [iNEG] operator would c-command the [uNEG] feature of the negative affix on the verb in such languages, parallel to Zeijlstra’s proposal, but without NegP. Languages of the second type can be accounted for without NegP under Penka’s account, as the overt adverbial [iNEG] element can be adjoined to any category of type , licensing any [uNEG] features in its scope. The third type of language consists of non-strict negative-concord languages such as Italian (cf. ()). Problematically for Penka’s account, the negative marker in such languages needs to be an [iNEG] head, an assumption Penka shares with Zeijlstra (). Carrying an [iNEG] feature, it overtly realizes the negation operator under Penka’s own assumptions, and therefore takes a type complement; that is, it must attach directly to the clausal spine. An [iNEG] head taking a vP or TP complement is, however, hard to distinguish from the head of a NegP taking a vP or TP complement; compare () and (). ()

[vP non[iNEG][vP . . . ]]

()

[NegP non[iNEG][vP . . . ]]

Note that assuming instead a covert [iNEG] operator adjoining to vP or TP () is not an option for this type of language, as this would imply that the overt sentential negator bears an uninterpretable negation feature [uNEG], thereby vitiating the distinction between strict and non-strict negative-concord languages.¹⁸ ()

[OP [iNEG][ non[uNEG] [vP . . . ]]

We therefore propose a different approach. ¹⁷ Cf. Ladusaw’s () distinction between expressing and licensing the expression of negation: ‘[The negation operator] need not be part of a lexical meaning: it may be constructional, in the sense that it is associated with some structural feature not necessarily visible in the clause’ (Ladusaw : –). ¹⁸ For more discussion of the formal analysis of different types of negative concord, see chapter .

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

.. Proposal Our proposal combines insights from Penka’s, De Clercq’s and Poletto’s, and van Gelderen’s work. Like Penka, we propose an account of the diachronic development of the expression of negation in languages undergoing Jespersen’s cycle that does not assume a NegP. Like De Clercq and Poletto, we correlate the different positions that negative markers can assume in the clause with the internal complexity of the negative marker. Like van Gelderen, we identify Feature Economy as the motor of the change. As we saw in chapter , Jespersen’s cycle begins with a nominal minimizer, generalizer or (negative) indefinite reanalysed as a NPA, which is then established as a new (adverbial) negative marker. Later, phrasal negative markers can become heads, which may, in terms of their morphophonology, be full words, clitics, and eventually even affixes: ()

syntax: argument > adverbial emphasizer > phrasal negator > head negator phonology: full word > clitic > affix > ∅

This trajectory makes the evolution of negative markers in Jespersen’s cycle remarkably similar to the development of pronouns and agreement morphology (Givón , van Gelderen ): ()

syntax: noun/demonstrative > pronoun phonology: full word > clitic > affix > ∅

Negative markers thus have parallels with pronouns both in terms of the diachronic cline of decreasing internal complexity and in terms of their external syntax. Given these parallels, four classes of negative marker, namely strong, weak, clitic, and affixal, can be distinguished (Breitbarth ).¹⁹ These are distributed in similar fashion to the three classes of pronoun proposed by Cardinaletti and Starke (), namely strong, weak, and clitic. Strong pronouns are syntactically independent, can be co-ordinated, modified, contrastively stressed, and can occur in sentence-initial position, as with elle ‘she’ in the French examples in (). Weak pronouns do not have these three properties and are restricted to sentence-internal positions. Clitics are additionally prosodically dependent on a host, as shown by the reduced form l’ in (a). ()

French a. Je ✓l’ ai   . ‘I helped her.’

aidé help.

(*elle). 

¹⁹ By negative markers, we mean elements that have overcome the NPA stage and come to contribute to the expression of sentential negation, cf. section ...

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

b. Je * ai aidé (✓).   . help.  ‘I helped her (contrastive stress).’ c. Je *☞la ai aidé (☞elle). (☞ = ostension)   . help.  ‘I helped her.’ d. *Je la et l’ autre ai aidé. J’ ai aidé et l’ autre.   and  other . help.  and  other ‘I helped her and the other one.’ e. *Je seulement la ai aidé. J’ ai aidé seulement ☞elle.  only  . help. only  ‘I helped only her.’ (Cardinaletti and Starke : ) According to Cardinaletti and Starke (), strong, weak, and clitic pronouns differ in the amount of internal structure they have. Strong pronouns have the greatest internal complexity, while clitics are structurally the most impoverished. Cardinaletti and Starke postulate three layers of functional structure for pronouns, which, corresponding to the layers of clausal syntax, they term C, Σ, and I. The C-layer encodes referentiality and case on pronouns, the Σ-layer prosodic information, and the I-layer φ-features such as person and number. As Cardinaletti and Starke assume that any lexical projection can have these layers, they call them CLP, ΣLP, and ILP (L = lexical). Weak pronouns lack the outermost layer, and can therefore only occur in positions where their case information is recoverable. For Cardinaletti and Starke, these positions are the specifiers of agreement projections. Clitics, which also lack prosodic information, need to attach to a functional head licensing them prosodically. Cardinaletti and Starke propose an economy principle, Minimize Structure (MS), given in (), which mandates the insertion of the structurally least complex element that still leads to a grammatical outcome (Cardinaletti and Starke : ). In (a), for instance, the stronger form elle cannot be used, because the deficient form la is available and grammatical. ()

Economy of Representations: Minimize Structure Only if the smaller structure is independently ruled out is the bigger alternative possible. (Cardinaletti and Starke : )

Grosz (, ) and Cardinaletti () have extended this proposal to adverbs, arguing that they, too, can be structurally deficient. On this approach, modal particles can be taken to be structurally deficient adverbs. They observe that modal particles in Italian and German cannot be co-ordinated, as shown for German in (), nor can they be modified. In (), ruhig ‘quietly, just’, which has uses as both

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

a modal particle and as a manner adverb, retains only the manner interpretation when modified. Furthermore, modal particles are positionally fixed, (), but are still prosodically independent. ()

*Gehen Sie doch go. .  ‘Just go to the doctor.’

und and

mal 

zum to.

Arzt. (German) doctor (Cardinaletti : )

()

Gehen Sie (sehr) ruhig go. . very quietly/ ‘Go very quietly to the doctor.’ *(‘Go ahead, just go to the doctor!’)

zum to.

Arzt! doctor (manner reading only) (*modal particle reading)

()

a. Das Auto ist klein: billige Autos sind eben so.  car be.. small cheap car. be..  so ‘The car is small: cheap cars are indeed like that.’ b. *Das Auto ist klein: eben sind billige Autos so.  car be.. small  be.. cheap car. so (‘The car is small: cheap cars are indeed like that.’) (Cardinaletti : )

Besides (strong) adverbs and (weak) modal particles, some modal particles also have a clitic variant, such as (dialectal) German dn/n < denn ‘then’ (Grosz , ). Like a C-clitic, appearing in the Wackernagel second position, dn/n is prosodically dependent, while weak denn must appear lower, in the same position as other modal particles, (). ()

Was schenkst (dn)/(*denn) du ihr (*dn)/(denn) zum what give..   .  for. Geburtstag? birthday ‘What are you going to give her for her birthday?’ (adapted from Cardinaletti : )

In the same way, a typology of negative particles can be formulated. Some languages have homonymous forms of negative markers with different distributions. This is similar to French weak elle (ILP under Cardinaletti and Starke’s analysis) and strong  (CLP) being homophonous. The possibility that a language may have available several, possibly homophonous, negative markers at different stages of grammaticalization and with differently sized bundles of formal features offers an account of the apparent dual status that negation markers seem to have in some languages, for instance English or Norwegian. English, in fact, distinguishes three sizes of negative markers with different distributions. According to Zwicky and Pullum (), English -n’t in () is an inflectional affix on finite auxiliaries. The long-standing controversy whether unreduced not is a head or a phrase (Pollock , Ouhalla , Rizzi ) can now be settled by assuming that,

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



when used to express neutral sentential negation, as in (), it is a weak adverb, that is, a deficient phrasal element. ()

Has-n’t John read the book?

()

Has John not read the book?

(Christensen : )

The stressed contrastive form , otherwise homophonous with neutral not, is modifiable, as in absolutely . Under the current proposal, it would therefore be analysed as a strong adverb, distinguished from the deficient element by its distribution. It is this form that is used in narrow-focus negation (Cormack and Smith , , , De Clercq , ) and in constituent negation (which is in some ways similar to narrow-focus negation, cf. Jäger : –). The difference between not and  becomes evident in their differences in LF scope, and hence, assuming compositionality, in their underlying syntactic position. Cormack and Smith () distinguish neutral not Pol [NEG] from the strong (emphatic, contrastive) form  Adv[Neg]. Neutral not must take wide scope over possibility modals, as shown in (), and can be reduced to -n’t. ()

Edwin can’t/cannot climb trees, can he? ‘Edwin is not permitted/able to climb trees.’

 > 

Contrastive  can take wide or narrow scope with respect to possibility modals, as shown in (), and cannot be reduced to -n’t. ()

Edwin can  climb trees, can’t he?  >  ‘Edwin is permitted/able not to climb trees.’ (after Cormack and Smith : )

While the reducible neutral not expresses sentential negation, as shown by the positive question tag (Klima : –) in (), the strong narrow-scope negator  in () does not have sentential scope, as the negative question tag indicates. Like English not, Norwegian ikke has what appear to be affixal or clitic realizations, besides more phrasal ones. Johannessen () shows that ikke productively fuses with a number of mostly monosyllablic verbs in verb-second clauses where the finite verb precedes the negator, leading to sometimes far-reaching phonological restructuring: ()

a. har ikke > b. går ikke > c. ser ikke >

hake gåkke sekke

‘has not’ ‘goes not’ ‘sees not’

(Johannessen : )

She takes this to be evidence of the general head status of ikke. The strong form ikke can be contrastively stressed and modified, like  in English, (), and can appear in clause-initial position in V clauses to express strong contrastive focus, (). At the same time, it acts like a weak adverb in neutral contexts.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

()

Jeg begiper absolutt ikke hvor du har den ideen fra.  understand absolutely  who  have  idea. from ‘I absolutely don’t understand who you got that idea from.’ (Johannessen : )

()

Ikke har han problemer med alkoholen heller.  have  problem. with alcohol. either ‘Neither does he have problems with alcohol.’ (Christensen : )

Phrasal or adverbial negators like German nicht or Dutch niet are analogous to the Norwegian ones; they are ambiguous between the status of strong and weak adverb in the proposed classification. In German, the strong forms can be modified or coordinated, as in (), and contrastively stressed and fronted, as in (). Neutral negative clauses require the weak form, which is restricted to a low position at the left edge of vP. ()

Das stimmt ganz  add.up.. whole ‘That doesn’t add up at all.’

und and

gar wholly

()

Claudia hat A, B und C getan. N hat sie D getan. Claudia . A B and C done  .  D do. ‘Claudia has done A, B, and C. [Contrary to that,] she has NOT done D.’ (Breitbarth a: )

nicht. 

If this analysis is on the right track, then affixal negators, such as English -n’t, Norwegian -kke, and, as Zeijlstra () argues, Czech ni-, co-exist alongside negators that have homophonous strong and weak forms, such as English not/, Dutch niet/ and German nicht/. What is missing in the typology are clitic negators. Many northern Italian dialects have negative markers that form clusters with pronominal clitics, such as object clitics -l (sg.) and me (sg.): ()

No=l me = . ‘I do not like it.’

piaze. please..

(Venetian) (Poletto : )

These are the markers called Neg by Zanuttini (). The clustering with pronominal clitics suggests that they are clitics themselves (see also Poletto a, b, ). Their interaction with NCIs, in the form of non-strict negative concord (see also chapter ), suggests an analysis of them as syntactic heads with an [iNEG] feature (Zeijlstra ), that is, exactly the same type of negative marker that poses a problem for Penka’s () account. These properties are shared with the preverbal negators in other Romance languages too. If we now take them not to occupy a separate head of a NegP (Neg) but rather analyse them as clitics attached to the finite verb and licensed by the functional head T, then a number of empirical facts fall

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



out naturally.²⁰ For instance, the negators in the Romance (and other) languages are known to be incompatible with morphological (‘true’) imperatives, (), unlike languages with affixal negators, like Czech, () (Zanuttini , Tomić ). ()

()

(*Non) telefona!  call. ‘Don’t call!’ (Ne-)pracuj! -work. ‘(Don’t) work!’

(Italian) (adapted from Zanuttini : ) (Czech) (adapted from Zeijlstra : )

Zanuttini () argues that (true) imperatives lack T. If we assume that T prosodically licenses clitic negators in such languages, the absence of true negated imperatives in such languages, and use of a surrogate form (e.g. subjunctive or infinitive) (Zanuttini , Zeijlstra ), follow naturally: without T, there is no host for the clitic negator. Synchronic arguments thus suggest that there are essentially four sizes of negative adverb: strong, weak, clitic, and affixal. However, the relevance of this typology is not limited to synchronic data. It is relevant diachronically too; one such application will be discussed below. Cardinaletti and Starke (: , n. ) explicitly suggest a possible diachronic application of Minimize Structure (), an idea that Grosz () also adopts: more deficient forms develop out of stronger forms.²¹ The question arises as to what could trigger the development of more deficient pronouns or adverbs—negative adverbs in the case at hand. We propose an interpretation of van Gelderen’s Feature Economy as the diachronic trigger for grammaticalization: all other things being equal, elements will be reanalysed as being of decreasing internal complexity, and, because of the change from interpretable to uninterpretable formal features, more dependent on (higher) functional projections. Following Breitbarth (), we propose that different classes of negative markers are differentiated from one another by the amount of internal structure they have, and the interpretability of their formal features. Unlike Breitbarth (), we do not need to posit several structural shells internal to negative markers. This can be avoided by assuming Giorgi and Pianesi’s (: ) Feature Scattering Principle. Giorgi and Pianesi propose that features can also be present as ordered bundles on a single head, and only scatter over several heads if several specifiers need to be licensed, resulting in layers of functional projections. According to the Universal

²⁰ We abstract away here from Zanuttini’s () distinction between two positions for clitic negators depending on their positioning with respect to other clitics. Furthermore, it may be that functional projections other than T host negative clitics in other languages. ²¹ The diachronic connection between full adverbs and modal particles has been captured in terms of grammaticalization by Molnár () among others.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

Ordering Constraint in (), the order in which features are checked is the same whether they are bundled or scattered. ()

Universal Ordering Constraint The features are ordered so that, given F>F, the checking of F does not follow the checking of F. (Giorgi and Pianesi : )

While Giorgi and Pianesi’s approach has so far been used to deal with variation in the realization of functional categories along the clausal spine (in their work, Tense, Mood, and Aspect, by Bianchi  for complementizers, and by Poletto  for subject positions), nothing prevents an extension of the approach to formal features such as focus or negation features on adverbial phrases. We now turn to address the following questions: (a) which features and how much internal structure the different classes of negative markers identified above need to contain; (b) how the content of features and layers of structure are recovered if they are not present syntactically; and (c) how the different possible structures are connected diachronically. Recall that Cardinaletti and Starke proposed C-, Σ-, and I-layers for strong, weak, and clitic pronouns, corresponding to case, prosodic information and φ-features respectively. Based on the considerations above, we can propose that the C-layer in negative adverbs corresponds to a (contrastive) focus feature [FOC], accounting for the fact that elements just making the transition from NPA to standard negator initially still have an emphatic value, and can, for instance. be used to express narrow-focus negation. Additionally, these elements bear an interpretable formal negation feature [iNEG], which they acquire in the transition from NPA to negator, as outlined above. The effect of Cardinaletti and Starke’s Σ-layer, prosodic independence, can be correlated with the phrasal status of weak negative markers: they lack the (contrastive) focus feature (because of the Feature Scattering Principle; this is a result of Minimize Structure), but are still phrasal [iNEG] elements. Lacking the focus feature, they cannot express a different focus by themselves, and therefore need to adjoin to vP, the domain of neutral wide information focus.²² As a result of Minimize Structure, such [iNEG] AdvPs can lose their prosodic independence by turning into [iNEG] heads. They recover their missing prosodic information by attaching to a functional head, such as T, as argued above. The I-layer, finally, corresponds to the [iNEG] feature: clitic negators may still have an interpretable negation feature even after turning into heads. Under Feature Economy, this may turn into an uninterpretable [uNEG] feature, which needs to be licensed by an [iNEG] element. This may be a covert operator, as argued for by Zeijsltra () and Penka (). The result is an affixal negator, which, by Feature ²² In order to assimilate this proposal more closely to Cardinaletti and Starke’s () original proposal that weak pronouns need to occur in the specifier of a licensing functional projection, one could adopt Belletti’s (, ) FocP in the left periphery of vP here.

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



T . The four classes of negative marker and their properties Marker

distribution

formal feature

complexity

reason

Strong Weak Clitic Affix

free, constituent neg adjoined to vP clitic (e.g. on T) affix on verb

[FOC], [iNEG] [iNEG] [iNEG] > [uNEG] [uNEG] > Ø

phrase phrase head head

MS MS FE FE

MS = Minimize Structure; FE = Feature Economy

Economy, may even lose its [uNEG] feature in the end, and which will, in most cases, be lost altogether (although we discuss some exceptions in section .). The changes are schematically depicted in Table .. This proposal is reminiscent of Poletto’s (a, b) and De Clercq’s (, ) in that we make a distinction between focus negation and regular polarity reversal, and in that we link the external syntactic distribution of negative markers to their internal complexity. Like Poletto (but unlike De Clercq), we take focus negation to be internally most complex. Additionally, we assume a diachronic relationship between the layers of structure inside negative markers, and motivate it by referring to independently needed third-factor principles, namely Minimize Structure and Feature Economy. Furthermore, pragmatic factors are likely to play a role: as alluded to in section .., what is needed for an emphatic negator to lose its emphatic value in order to become a standard negator is the reinterpretation of narrow (identificational) focus as wide (information) focus. We can now conclude that this process correlates with a reduction in internal complexity, and a concomitant change in the external syntax of emerging negative markers. We can illustrate the stages of Jespersen’s cycle in terms of this analysis using Old Saxon (Old Low German) and Middle Low German (see Breitbarth ,  for more detail). The Old Saxon negator ni is a [uNEG] head, that is, a negative affix on the finite verb. Evidence for this comes from several sources. First, ni is restricted to finite clauses. Second, Old Saxon has strict negative concord, (), a property of languages with [uNEG] head negators (Zeijlstra ). Furthermore, NPI indefinites can precede the negative particle, (), indicating that the negative particle itself does not mark the scope of negation as an interpretable negative marker would. ()

Neo endi ni kumid thes uuideon never end  come.. . broad ‘The end of the broad kingdom will never come.’

()

so is io endi ni cumit uuelan uunsames so . ever end  come.. happiness delightful ‘Thus the end will never come of it, of beatific happiness.’ (Heliand –)

rikeas. kingdom. (Heliand –)

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

A strong, focal, negative marker, niouuiht ‘not’, had already been grammaticalized in the Old Saxon period. The incipient character of this stage is very clear, since niouuiht still functions either as a negative indefinite pronoun meaning ‘nothing’ in (), as an optional extent argument ‘nothing’ > ‘at all’ in (),²³ or as a narrow-focus negator ‘’ in (). We refer to the element in question as an adverbial phrase for the time being. ()

[TP [DP

niouuiht]i [VP ti [V´ imu biholan]][T ni=is]] nothing . conceal. =be.. ‘Nothing is concealed from him.’ (Heliand –)

() ik [VP [VP thi [V´ (ti) ni=deriu]]  . = harm.. ‘I will not harm you nothing/at all.’

[DP/AdvP neouuiht](i) ] nothing (Heliand )

niet] [DP ekir iro selon ]] neuen ok . . . . only . soul. but also ‘not only their souls, but also . . . ’ (Glossen zu den Homilien Gregors des Großen , –)

() [DP [AdvP

Weak negative markers are phrasal, hence prosodically independent, elements with an [iNEG] feature that have been stripped of the focus feature of strong negators. We can exemplify such a negator with Middle Low German nicht: ()

[CP wei desj [vP [AdvP nicht ][vP ti [VP tj [V who(ever) .  ‘who(ever) does not know about this . . . ’

en=wete ]]]]] =know.. (Braunschweig )

The stages of Jespersen’s cycle are thus connected by an interplay between Minimize Structure and Feature Economy. Minimize Structure favours the insertion of more deficient forms where there is a choice between two available forms; that is, it requires the use of the smallest synchronically available adverb, where possible, and the diachronic reduction of the size or number of features of an available adverb, again where possible. Feature Economy requires the reduction of interpretable features ([iNEG]) to uninterpretable features ([uNEG]) to zero (Ø), again where possible. This raises questions about what determines the diachronic rise of a choice between two forms. Given the possible role of inertia in syntactic change (Longobardi , Keenan , but see also Walkden  and Willis  for scepticism), it would be wise to look for robust triggers for structural change. That is to say that Minimize Structure may not be sufficient to create more deficient forms by itself. We would also like to be able to say what triggers change due to the application of Feature Economy. Clearly, Minimize Structure is also not designed to account for the cyclic renewal of the ²³ The indices in parentheses indicate the reanalysis from rightward movement of the argument to directly merged adjunct.

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Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not?



expression of negation with new phrasal markers. The grammaticalization of new negation markers is a complex interplay of semantic and syntactic properties of input items, lexical bridging contexts, and the loss of original syntactic and semantic distributional restrictions (Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ). .. Back to incipient Jespersen’s cycle We are now in a position to draw together the different strands of argumentation developed above. In section ., we argued that a combination of pull-chain and push-chain scenarios was needed to account for the initiation of Jespersen’s cycle: while a weakening of the original negator could not be sufficient to trigger the establishment of a new negation marker, it was argued to be a necessary precondition. Under the analysis proposed in the previous section, we can now state that an existing negator must have reached the [uNEG] clitic stage or the [uNEG] affix stage before the expression of negation could be renewed by grammaticalization of a new strong [iNEG, FOC] negator from an NPA. This could then evolve into a weak [iNEG] negator by Minimize Structure. That is, the presence of both a [uNEG] negator and an NPA is necessary for a language to be able to shift to stage II. The question remains how an NPA, bearing a [FOC] feature (section ..), can gain an [iNEG] feature. We propose that this is due to a preference in language acquisition for overt carriers of interpretable (formal) features. Zeijlstra (: ) proposes that child acquisition of formal features follows the following algorithm. This makes the postulation of a covert carrier of interpretable formal features (such as a covert OP¬) a last-resort option: I. II.

III.

Assume a : correspondence between morphemes and semantic content; If some morphosyntactic element α manifests the presence of some semantic context F, but cannot be assumed to be the carrier of F itself, then assign a formal feature [uF] to α; Assign [iF] to all morphosyntactic elements that introduce the semantic context that is manifested by [uF]. If no overt morphosyntactic element is responsible, assume some covert element to be present that carries the semantics of F and that should therefore be assigned [iF].

Once standard sentential negation in a language is expressed by a clitic or affixal negator too weak to carry Neg itself, learners analyse that clitic or affix as [uNEG]. They search for some other element that could be the bearer of interpretable negation, but find none, so posit a covert OP¬ with an interpretable [iNEG] feature. However, a [FOC] NPA adjoined to vP constitutes an overt element with the right quantificational structure and pragmatic properties to be the carrier of the [iNEG] feature. Sooner or later, some learners will adopt this analysis, reanalysing the NPA as a strong negative operator adjoined to vP.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

The reanalysis is shown in (): at the earlier stage in (a), a negation is encoded by a null negative operator in SpecTP, while the NPA adverb bears only a focus feature [FOC]; at the later stage in (b), the locus of semantic negation is transferred to this adverb, and learners no longer need to postulate the null operator. () a.

TP

TP

OP¬[iNEG]

T

vP/VP

ne[uNEG] QPNPA[FOC]

0 QNPI/

vP/VP

…V…

RestrP

any

Restr0

NP

N0 b.

TP

T

vP/VP

ne[uNEG]

QPNPA [iNEG,FOC]

Q0

vP/VP

…V…

RestrP

Restr0

NP

N0

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The speed of Jespersen’s cycle



Once the NPA has thus been reanalysed as a strong negation particle, the renewal is complete, and Jespersen’s cycle is properly in stage II.

. The speed of Jespersen’s cycle Although Jespersen’s cycle passes through comparable stages in all the languages that have undergone it, the time a language spends at one given stage varies sharply from language to language. As a consequence, the speed at which languages progress through and eventually complete Jespersen’s cycle is subject to much variation. In the current section, we turn to the motivations for such differences. A former negator may be kept for a (comparatively) longer period for two language-internal reasons: (i) the full grammaticalization of the new/reinforcing element may be delayed; and (ii) the former negator may be preserved in consequence of a lexical split, causing it to leave Jespersen’s cycle. Two language-external causes, (iii) prescriptive pressure and (iv) language/dialect contact, are addressed in chapter . .. Delays in full grammaticalization Full grammaticalization requires the extension of the new structure to contexts beyond the original bridging context (Hopper and Traugott  []), including ones in which the grammaticalizing element would originally have been impossible. In the context of emerging new negators, that is, the transition from stage I to stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, such an extension is for instance observed once former argumental reinforcers become available as sentential negators with transitive verbs where all argument positions have been filled. In some languages remaining for an extended period in stage II, the loss of the preverbal marker from the bipartite construction that would lead to stage III is blocked as long as there are residual contexts that only allow the original negator. The existence of such constructions or contexts means that the postverbal negator cannot be seen as fully grammaticalized. This is arguably the case in those Arabic varieties that have reached stage II. In these varieties stage I negation with single ma is either required (e.g. Moroccan Arabic; Caubet : ) or an option (e.g. Eastern Libyan; Owens : ) in emphatic contexts such as oaths invoking God: ()

w-alḷ ạ̄ hi ma-nagdar(-š) by-God -can..(-) ‘I swear (by God), I can’t.’

(Eastern Libyan Arabic)

Similarly to Libyan Arabic, in Middle Low German the only context in which the old particle ne/en still expresses sentential negation is when direct speech of biblical characters is rendered in religious texts (Witzenhausen b), ().

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 ()

Internal motivations and formal approaches vorwar segge ik iv gi ne eten dat vlesk truly say..  . .  eat. . flesh des mynschen sone . man son ‘Truly I tell you, do not eat the flesh of the Son of man.’ (Qvatuor Evangeliorum versio Saxonica; late fifteenth century)

A similar situation obtains in historical French: while bipartite negation with ne . . . pas spreads during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, a decreasing number of contexts require single ne for sentential negation still in the seventeenth century (Catalani : –), for instance fixed expressions with avoir and a bare indefinite object, (), negative (rhetorical) questions with qui, (), or negative embedded clauses in subjunctive mood after negative/interrogative matrix clauses, (). () Je n’ay garde.  =have.. guard ‘I am not wary [of doing that].’ (Molière, George Dandin ou Le Mary confondu, Théâtre –, vol. V, p. , from Catalani : ) ()

que ce mélange-là nous serait Qui ne croirait ( . . . ) who  believe..   mixture-there  be.. très compréhensible? very understandable ‘Who wouldn’t have thought that this mixture would be very understandable to us?’ (Pascal, Pensées, p. , from Catalani : )

()

& il n’ y a presque point de science à laquelle and   there have.. almost  of science to which je ne me sois appliqué   . be... apply. ‘And there is almost no science to which I have not applied myself.’ (Bouhours, Doutes sur la language françoise, p. Aij, from Catalani : )

During the same period, ne is already occasionally omitted from constructions with NCIs (Catalani : ), and there is evidence that, for instance, expletive uses of preverbal ne (after adversative predicates, in comparatives, and in avant clauses), are mainly supported through normative efforts by prescriptive grammarians (Catalani : ).²⁴ Therefore, the extended duration of stage II in French at least until the seventeenth century is probably partially due to residual negative uses of single ne.

²⁴ ‘Es scheint sich im . Jh. eine Kluft zwischen den Festlegungen der Grammatiker, die oft das ne explétif vorschreiben, und dem tatsächlichen Sprachgebrauch zu öffnen. Vermutlich ist das Füllwort im

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The speed of Jespersen’s cycle



Delays in full grammaticalization are also apparent in languages where newly grammaticalized negative markers retain a restriction to particular pragmatic contexts, sometimes for an extended period of time. Schwenter (), for example, argues that Catalan pas is subject to information-structure constraints; it can be used only in contexts in which the proposition denied is discourse-old and ‘activated’. Similarly, Hansen () argues that new reinforcers start in specific contexts in which they contrast the negative proposition with both the immediately preceding and following contexts (‘janus-faced (non-canonical) negation’). She exemplifies this citing the textual behaviour of Old French mie (‘crumb’), Old/Middle French pas (‘step’) and Italian mica (‘crumb’). Visconti () makes similar observations about Italian mica. The pragmatic meaning of these items, or the contextual restrictions on their use, may in fact help them to persist without developing into fully unmarked sentential negators. In the light of the analysis of Jespersen’s cycle discussed in section ., one may wonder whether such stable emphatic uses are evidence of a stable NPA stage, alongside in some cases an ongoing grammaticalization as a standard negator, or whether they are evidence of diversification or lexical split, namely into a co-existence of a strong [FOC, iNEG] and a weak [iNEG] negator. .. Development of new functions In some languages, stage II may appear to extend over a longer period of time, while there is evidence that the former preverbal negator has in fact ceased to be involved in the expression of sentential negation, and has hence left Jespersen’s cycle. We observed several such cases in chapter , in which a former preverbal particle acquired one or possibly several new functions, as marker of affective polarity, as an exceptive connector, or as an expression of polarity focus. Acquiring a new function is then what keeps the former negative particle in use, and by doing so, can also stabilize stage II of Jespersen’s cycle. How can a former negative marker, at a stage where it has, according to the analysis in section ., become a [uNEG] clitic or a [uNEG] affix, change direction, escape Feature Economy, and leave Jespersen’s cycle, as seen in section ..? An important factor seems to be frequency in the input to L acquisition. As noted in some of the literature on L acquisition (Naigles and Hoff-Ginsberg , Theakston et al. , Lieven ) and in acquisitonal approaches to language change (e.g. Yang , , Roeper ), input frequency can influence aspects of the acquisition of grammar. As noted in the literature on Flemish dialects (e.g. Vergauts ) Zuge der allgemeinen Abschwächung der Funktion von ne im Schwinden begriffen, und seine Erhaltung zum größten Teil dem normativen Einfluß zu verdanken’ (Catalani : ) [In the seventeenth century, a rift appears to open between the prescriptions of the grammarians, who often mandate the use of the ne explétif, and actual language use. Presumably, the expletive is in the process of disappearing in connection to the general weakening of the function of ne, and its maintenance is due largely to normative influence; transl. the authors].

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

and French varieties (e.g. by Fonseca-Greber ), the former preverbal negation marker seems to stabilise at a low frequency of around –% in the varieties affected. As argued by Breitbarth and Haegeman (, ), this low, but stable, frequency may be interpreted by the language learner as an indication of the independent status of the former preverbal negator if an alternative parse is available, aiding its exaptation to a different function, such as polarity focus, a discourse particle, or as an exceptive connector. Certainly, structural factors are also necessary to make such an exaptation likely. Let us therefore look at historical (Low) German ne, Flemish en, and French ne in terms of the analysis developed above. The starting point under that analysis would be that, by Minimize Structure and Feature Economy, these elements had become [uNEG] affixes on the finite verb, set to become featureless altogether by Feature Economy. But instead of doing this, and eventually disappearing, they come to be associated with different functional (features of) heads in the clause. In West Germanic V languages, for instance, where the finite verb moves to C (or a head in the C-domain) in verbsecond clauses, ne could become an exceptive connector (Breitbarth ), expressing domain subtraction instead of sentential negation (Witzenhausen a). ()

CP

XP

C

C

TP

[ne-Vi]j (subj)

T

T0

vP

tj

…ti …

Flemish en, unlike other expressions of polarity emphasis (or polarity focus), for example in Catalan and Spanish (Battlori and Hernanz ), or Italian (Poletto ), is not restricted to root clauses (Breitbarth and Haegeman ). Breitbarth and Haegeman () therefore argue that, unlike polarity focus phenomena in other languages, Flemish en does not lexicalize features of the clausal left periphery. Rather, it is a discourse particle introducing a speaker’s comment on a negative proposition, marking it as unexpected to the speaker and/or addressee, with additional

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Conclusion



contextually determined interpretive overtones. At the point where en lost its [uNEG] feature, it only retained procedural meaning (in the sense of Relevance Theory; Wilson and Sperber , Nicolle ). That is, syntactically, en remains a related affix on the finite verb, a bound morpheme on T. Pragmatically, however, its low, but stable frequency, supported by expletive uses, was reinterpreted as signalling ‘the need for the elimination of a salient and possibly preferred or expected positive proposition in the discourse context in favour of its negative counterpart in which en occurs’ (Breitbarth and Haegeman : ). This loss of any conceptual meaning (negation, polarity) and the retention of the procedural meaning can explain why en was not lost as its West Germanic cognates were. Note that such an exaptation does not happen as a matter of course, but requires particular sociolinguistic situations. We further expound the external causes of diachronic stability in chapter . .. Summary Summing up, the speed at which a language proceeds through the stages of Jespersen’s cycle depends on different factors. A language may retain stage II for much longer, as long as there are residual contexts only allowing stage-I-style negation, indicating to the language acquirer that the original negative marker still carries formal negation features. A language may only appear to remain in stage II in case the original negative marker is reanalysed as still having a systematic function, but as expressing features other than negation.

. Conclusion The current chapter has offered arguments in favour of a push-chain view of incipient Jespersen’s cycle. Emphatic reinforcement of the expression of sentential negation being freely available in most, if not all, languages, independently of the weakness or strength (however defined) of the standard negative marker, means that a change in the properties of the reinforcer, not the original negator, is likely to be the trigger of the renewal of the expression of sentential negation. For the creation of new reinforcers (NPAs), and ultimately new negation markers, a number of semantic and syntactic properties are required, and may need to be obtained through changes. Scalarity is an important property of reinforcers, as it makes negative statements more informative. Changes affecting their internal make-up first create generalized NPAs out of originally nominal minimizers and generalizers. Also their external syntactic distribution needs to be amenable to an adverbial interpretation, highlighting the importance of bridging contexts, on the one hand, but also morphological ambiguity with adverbs on the other, for facilitating such a reanalysis. In order to become neutral standard expressions of negation, NPAs need to overcome the last restrictions imposed by bridging contexts, such as transitivity.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

It was argued above that NPAs inherit from minimizers and generalizers the property of focusing the negative proposition by evoking less relevant or informative alternative propositions. While a covert operator may be the carrier of [iNEG] in a language with only clitic or affixal negators, and while this situation may be diachronically stable due to inertia, we argued in section .. that there is an acquisitional preference for an overt expression for interpretable formal features. Incipient Jespersen’s cycle turns into full-scale Jespersen’s cycle when an NPA acquires the [iNEG] feature in addition to the [FOC] feature, turning it into a strong, focal negator. We argued against the presence of a specific NegP as the locus of sentential negation. Rather, we proposed that, due to independently needed economy principles—more specifically, Minimize Structure and Feature Economy—negative adverbs reduce diachronically the number and interpretability of the formal features they comprise, if such a reduction is possible. The number and interpretability of focus and negation features determines the syntactic distribution of negative markers, and their ability and propensity to co-occur with other expressions of negation, including negative indefinites. We return to the latter point—that is, diachronic changes in negative concord systems—in chapters  and . The internal causes of the differences in speed at which languages proceed through the different stages of Jespersen’s cycle, as observed in chapter , were argued to be factors such as delays in full grammaticalization and exaptation. We now turn to the external causes of change and stability in Jespersen’s cycle.

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4 External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle Thus far our discussion of the mechanisms underlying changes in the expression of negation has focused on language-internal factors, that is, factors which are potentially operative in a monolingual speech community. It makes sense to deal with language-internal motivations first, since these are logically prior: uncontroversially, syntactic change can occur under conditions of monolingualism as well as language contact (but see below). Accepting this premise, however, does not commit us to the view that an internally motivated account of a given change should be sought first as a matter of course and, as long as such an account is felt to be reasonably plausible, the possibility of contact-based motivations for the change need not be considered. Defending this approach, Lass (: ), for example, claims that ‘an endogenous explanation of a phenomenon is more parsimonious, because endogenous change must occur in any case, whereas borrowing is never necessary.’ It is not clear that this logic is valid, however. If we accept that contact can lead to change in at least some cases (as Lass and others undoubtedly do), then our theory of change is already more complex than it would be if we denied contact as a mechanism of change altogether: there are no gains in parsimony to be had if we neglect contact as an explanation in most cases but retain it in a handful of others. As Thomason and Kaufman (: ) point out: ‘if a reasonable external explanation for a change is available, it must not be rejected merely because similar changes have occurred [in other languages] under different antecedent conditions’ (see also Filppula ). Instead, if the goal is to produce accounts of changes that do the best possible job of explaining all the relevant facts, then clearly the evidence for or against the involvement of contact should be considered in each case. As we will see in detail in section ., the evidence for the spread of Jespersen’s cycle via contact in northwestern Europe and North Africa is sufficiently compelling that a separate internal account of these developments for every individual language concerned seems anything but the most parsimonious way to proceed. Moreover, in the past few decades there has been growing recognition of the importance of extra-syntactic triggers for syntactic change. This perspective is most The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

clearly articulated in the ‘Inertia Principle’ of Longobardi () and Keenan (), which states (in the words of Longobardi : ) that ‘syntactic change should not arise, unless it can be shown to be caused’—causation here being limited to syntaxexternal triggers such as changes in phonology and semantics, or contact with another language. Finally, it is increasingly being accepted that unadulterated monolingualism in the sense of a single mentally represented system is a very strong abstraction at best, and perhaps untenable at worst. It has long been recognized (Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog , Coseriu , , Labov , among others) that (diasystematic) variation is an inherent property of natural languages; indeed, as Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog (: ) observe, ‘in a language serving a complex (i.e. real) community, it is absence of structured heterogeneity that would be dysfunctional’, and the ‘nativelike command of heterogeneous structures is not a matter of multidialectalism or “mere” performance, but is part of unilingual linguistic competence’. This, however, entails that even in situations where one cannot speak of contact between typologically more distant languages, there is still a form of language contact, or multidialectalism present. This is in fact the rationale behind variationist models of (internally motivated) language change such as Kroch’s () or Yang’s (). As Trudgill () points out, much furthermore depends on properly languageexternal factors, such as the size, social stability, and density of language communities. According to Trudgill, different types of language-contact situation may give rise to different types of change, with short-term adult (L) language contact leading to simplification (for instance, the loss of the old preverbal negator), while long-term, co-territorial language contact tends to lead to additive complexification (for instance, the preservation and exaptation to new uses of the preverbal negator; cf. section ..). From this perspective, the a priori preference for internal accounts of individual changes is without foundation. Given that children acquiring their native language(s) appear to successfully converge on the grammars of older speakers in the vast majority of cases, when change does occur, it seems at least as reasonable to locate the causes outside of syntax as it does to locate them inside (cf. also Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog’s  ‘actuation problem’). We take the position that neither an account which posits the involvement of contact in a given change nor one which denies it can be considered the default: both must be demonstrated, as far as possible, by means of available historical, geographical, and linguistic evidence. Of course, an actual account of a particular change needs to go further than simply arguing for or against the involvement of contact. An important component of this chapter is the application in section . of the model for understanding contact-induced change presented in section .. to the case study of contact-induced Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa. We will see that it is possible to give a contact-based account that is both empirically justified and theoretically consistent with approaches to syntactic

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Previous accounts



change based on child language acquisition. Before this, section . reviews the previous literature on the role of contact in the spread of Jespersen’s cycle in Europe, while section . aims to provide a more definitive overview of this process.

. Previous accounts It has been noted in the literature that there is a striking correlation between those languages which have undergone Jespersen’s cycle in northwestern Europe and those which tend to be cited as the nucleus of the Standard Average European linguistic area: French, Dutch, German, and the northern Italian dialects according to Haspelmath () and van der Auwera () (who calls this nucleus the ‘Charlemagne sprachbund’; see also Whorf  for the coining of the term Standard Average European). Haspelmath (: ) argues that the close typological resemblance among these languages is due to the long-term cultural and linguistic contacts that undoubtedly existed among different speech communities in Europe (especially northwestern Europe) from the time of the Völkerwanderung in the mid-first millennium onwards. The area in northwestern Europe in which Jespersen’s cycle has occurred in the last millennium is somewhat larger than the Charlemagne nucleus, of course, encompassing also almost all the languages traditionally spoken within France (Basque being a notable exception), as well as English, Welsh, and all the North Germanic languages. All of these, however, except Welsh and Breton, are solidly within the core of Standard Average European, and all are spoken within a contiguous area. The varieties traditionally spoken in the shaded region of Figure . have all undergone Jespersen’s cycle. Naturally, this contiguous distribution of Jespersen cycle languages in Europe has prompted appeals to contact-induced change in various accounts. One example is provided by Price (), who suggests that the distribution of Jespersen’s cycle within Romance—all of Gallo-Romance, the northern Italian dialects, and Romansh but not elsewhere—is best explained by contact with Gaulish (Celtic), as is its occurrence in Brythonic Celtic (specifically Welsh and Breton). There are two serious problems with this suggestion, however. The first is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Gaulish had a stage II negative construction that could have triggered the development of a parallel construction in Welsh and all the relevant Romance varieties. There are a number of clear instances of negation in the corpus of Gaulish inscriptions, and all of these involve just the expected preverbal negator ni, assumed to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European (see, for example, Lambert : , , –, and passim). The Gaulish corpus is, however, rather small, and the interpretation of much of it remains obscure. It is not impossible, therefore, that there was in fact a stage II construction in many contexts in various Gaulish dialects, but that these just happen not to be represented in the corpus. Be that as it may, there is a more serious problem with Price’s suggestion: Gaulish

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Spread of Jespersen's cycle present absent

0

500

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F . Distribution of stage II negation in present-day European varieties

2000 km

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appears to have become extinct by around the sixth century  at the latest (see Lambert : – for discussion)—far too early to plausibly be connected with the Romance and Celtic Jespersen cycles. As late as the fourteenth or fifteenth century, French retains a stage I construction as the principal strategy, with postverbal items such as pas and point arguably only present where the negated proposition is discourse-old (cf. Catalani , Hansen , ). Welsh negation is even slower to undergo Jespersen’s cycle, with a stage II construction becoming obligatory in negative main clauses lacking an NCI perhaps only as late as the eighteenth or nineteenth century (Willis a). For these reasons, a Gaulish origin for Jespersen’s cycle in Romance and Welsh seems entirely implausible. A superficially more plausible suggestion in a similar vein comes from Tanase (), who argues that the French stage II construction was triggered by contact with (High) German. In this case we can at least say that there were definitely linguistic contacts between speakers of French and speakers of neighbouring High German varieties up to and including the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by which time reinforcers of negation such as pas, point, and mie had become frequent in French texts (Price , Hansen : –). However, whether the levels of High German–French bilingualism in the relevant period were sufficient to bring about this change in French is far from clear. The only period in which there was a ruling Germanophone elite imposing features on those Gallo-Romance varieties that later formed the basis of French was at the time of Frankish rule between  and — long before either language embarked on Jespersen’s cycle. However, Tanase’s () proposal contains no discussion of pre-modern German at all. He merely points out that, in Present-day German, negation in main clauses follows the verb, and in main clauses with an auxiliary it follows the auxiliary and precedes the main verb. As this is also true of Present-day French pas, for Tanase this suggests that the use of pas (and other postverbal negators) is modelled on the German pattern. An obvious possible objection here is that the facts of German negation in the relevant period may have been sufficiently different from now as to invalidate Tanase’s whole proposal. In fact, this methodological difficulty is not as damaging to his case as it might have been. While claims in the (older) literature (e.g. Dal : , Schmidt : , Wolf : , Paul : ), that a stage II construction was a prominent and stable feature of Middle High German syntax are certainly overstated (cf. Jäger , , Schüler ), postverbal negation was well established in High German at this time. In fact, a stage III construction with niht alone is more common than a stage II ne . . . niht construction in both East and West Upper German literary, theological, and legal texts around . Only in West Central German charters (from Cologne), does Schüler () find that stage-II-style negation with ni . . . niht predominates (in this area, stage II survives until c. , cf. Pensel ). So the overall picture is that High German negation was arguably sufficiently similar to its present-day form for Tanase’s proposal to survive this

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objection, though it remains to be determined which German variety French should have been influenced by according to Tanase. Nevertheless, there is a serious conceptual difficulty with the scenario Tanase offers, which in our terms amounts to the claim that the French stage II construction was triggered by the German stage III construction. Such a proposal relies on the assumption that a stage III construction in a source language is a possible trigger for the development of a stage II construction in a recipient language. It is not clear that this is a valid assumption. As discussed in section .., contact-induced changes can be divided into two major types: those for which the agents of change are L learners of the recipient language (imposition or source-language agentivity), and those for which the agents of change are L learners of the source language (borrowing or recipient-language agentivity). Concerning the L acquisition of negation, studies such as Stauble () and Meisel () have shown that there is no evidence that native speakers of V–Neg languages, such as Japanese or German (in main clauses), routinely differ from native speakers of Neg–V languages, such as Spanish, with respect to their placement of negation in their L English. In all cases in these studies this was before the main verb, even at very early stages of L acquisition. The available evidence therefore does not allow us to assume that speakers of stage III languages will necessarily impose stage III (or stage II) constructions on a stage I second language. The similar behaviour of Japanese, German, and Spanish speakers in Stauble’s and Meisel’s studies is presumably because evidence for the relative ordering of negators and verbs (in English and other languages) is frequent and salient enough even for beginning L learners to notice and apply this ordering when using their second language, rather than assuming that the position of negation is necessarily the same as in their L. Thus the evidence that we have does not favour Tanase’s hypothetical stage-III-German speakers having imposed a stage II construction on their L French. Turning to the possibility of French stage II negation having arisen through borrowing from German by native speakers of French, there must be doubt as to whether the items which feature as the postverbal element in the French stage II construction are sufficiently similar to German n(iow)iht to warrant this hypothesis. As discussed in chapter , in the case of German we have an original negative indefinite, whereas in French we have a range of minimizers, whose lexical meanings (‘step’, ‘drop’, etc.) must presumably have been transparent to native speakers before their grammaticalization as negative items. Why would native speakers of French have selected these items in particular as parallels for German n(iow)iht? If at the hypothesized time of transfer the indefinite-pronoun origin of n(iow)iht was still transparent to French speakers, then one would expect the postverbal negator in the new French construction to have had a similar origin (in an instance of ‘replica grammaticalization’ in the sense of Heine and Kuteva , ). Note in this connection that although the French indefinite pronoun rien eventually does become

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inherently negative (see also chapter ), it is not among the items that are reanalysed as part of a simple stage II negative construction, in contrast to German n(iow)iht. If on the other hand n(iow)iht was simply analysed as a negator by the hypothesized time of transfer, it is similarly unclear how this would then motivate the grammaticalization of pas, point, mie, and goutte in particular. Moreover, given that a stage III construction with niht alone was much more common in most regional varieties of Middle High German around  than a stage II construction with ne and niht, if French speakers had remodelled their negation system on that of German, the lengthy maintenance of preverbal ne in French is unexpected. We return to the issue of the duration of the transition from stage II to stage III below. In summary, then, a German origin for the French Jespersen cycle seems no more plausible than a Celtic one (but see section .. for some evidence of French influence in the grammaticalization of new adverbial strengtheners—not new negative markers—in German). In all the previous literature on Jespersen’s cycle, Bernini and Ramat () (see also Ramat and Bernini ) are alone in looking at the broad range of languages to have undergone Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and the Mediterranean languages from an areal perspective. However, while the breadth of their coverage is welcome, their analysis of how Jespersen’s cycle came to be a feature of the relevant European (and North African) languages leaves a number of questions unanswered. In essence, they appear to view every occurrence of Jespersen’s cycle in both western Europe and North Africa as the result of ‘diffusion of a structural model’ from a single ‘Gallo-Romance epicentre’ (Bernini and Ramat : ), facilitated by other typological correspondences between the languages concerned. They do, however, acknowledge that North Germanic had reached stage III by the twelfth century, when they state that West Germanic still had stage II as the norm, and that the French Jespersen cycle was later still, but it is unclear how these facts are to be reconciled with the notion of a single ‘Gallo-Romance epicentre’, or, indeed, precisely how this phrase is to be interpreted. It is clear that Bernini and Ramat think that contact must have been an important factor in the spread of Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and the Mediterranean, but they do not formulate a specific hypothesis as to how this may have come about. Finally, let us note that Schwegler () goes to the other extreme in suggesting that functional pressures shared by all of the relevant languages are sufficient to account for their undergoing Jespersen’s cycle, without the need to appeal to contact at all. This kind of analysis runs into the same difficulty as Lass’s (: ) anti-contact bias above: as long as it is accepted in principle that language contact can be a trigger for syntactic change, then a blanket assumption that it is irrelevant for a particular change in a given area, where the languages spoken in this area are known to have been in contact, risks being simply wrong in many cases. There is an additional problem, however. The functionalist picture that Schwegler (: ) paints is as follows (cf. also Detges and Waltereit : , Detges ,

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Eckardt : ): negative emphasizers are found universally; frequent use of these emphasizers (or one in particular) leads to a gradual extension of negative meaning from the negator proper to the emphasizer and to loss of emphatic meaning; the supposedly non-functional redundancy of two separate exponents of negation leads to one of the negative particles being dropped. The difficulty here is shared by any analysis that sees a particular type of functional pressure as sufficient to trigger a given change: since the pressure to undergo the above developments must presumably be felt equally by all languages at all times, it is unclear why the languages which have succumbed to this pressure did so at the time they did, while others have successfully resisted the pressure for centuries. Thus we have an instance of Weinreich, Labov, and Herzog’s (: ) actuation problem: why ‘was [the change in question] not simultaneously actuated wherever identical functional properties prevailed?’ While the existence of the pressures Schwegler invokes is likely a necessary condition for a language to undergo Jespersen’s cycle, it cannot be seen as a sufficient condition. Of course, in many cases of syntactic change there simply will not be enough data for us to point with confidence to the sufficient conditions for the triggering of that change and thereby to answer the actuation problem. Regarding Jespersen’s cycle in the region under study, this will be the case wherever a language is known to have undergone Jespersen’s cycle in a sparsely documented period, but no convincing case can be made for the involvement of language contact. On the other hand, where there is good evidence that language contact was involved and we have a theory of how it is that contact can lead to change, we can go some way to specifying the conditions that were sufficient to trigger Jespersen’s cycle in the language in question.

. Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and North Africa: A reconstruction By taking full account of the available historical data, the rest of this section aims to present a more plausible reconstruction of the history of Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and North Africa than we have seen in the abovementioned literature. The primary focus is on the progression in the relevant languages from the inherited state—only a stage I construction (with, naturally, the possibility of nominal and adverbial strengtheners of negation)—to either a stage II or a stage III construction. Since in many cases, in Germanic in particular, stage III constructions seem to be possible as soon as stage II constructions are common, the question of the role of contact in the progression from stage II to stage III is less relevant. We will see, however, that in a couple of cases there is evidence that contact can inhibit the otherwise expected loss of a conservative stage II construction. .. Germanic Ignoring ancient languages (notably Latin), the first European Jespersen cycle appears to have occurred in Old Norse at some point most likely well before the

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tenth century (Eythórsson , ). The earliest clear evidence of negation in Proto-North-Germanic comes from the seventh-century runic inscription on the Eggja Stone. Here there are several examples of the expected Common Germanic preverbal or clause-inital negator ni: ()

ni=s solu sot uk ni sakse stain skorin =be.. sun. hit. and  knife. stone cut. ‘It is not hit by the sun and a stone is not cut with a knife.’ (Eythórsson : )

The grammaticalization of a new negative suffix to form a stage II construction together with ni (which was later reduced to ne) must have occurred in the couple of centuries following this inscription, but the initial stages of this development are unattested. As Eythórsson (: –) makes clear, by the time of the Poetic Edda (a collection of Old Norse poems preserved in a thirteenth-century manuscript but thought to have been composed several centuries earlier) the original negator ne is rare and is accompanied by a new negative suffix ‑a(t) < ainata ‘one’ in about one third of its occurrences. Negative sentences without ne are much more common, however. In these, negation is either with -a(t) alone or with new adverbial negators. Of these, eigi < ei ‘ever’ + indefinite particle -gi (along with the rare but related þeygi < þó eigi ‘though not’) seems to have been the earliest to emerge, with a second adverbial negator, ekki < *eitt-ki < *eitt-gi, the neuter nominative/accusative singular of the negative adjective/pronoun engi ‘no, nothing’ (Magnússon : ), innovating later. The adverbial negators and -a(t) never co-occur in the same clause (van Gelderen b: ). The adverbial negation strategy with eigi must have replaced the suffix -a(t) rather early in the spoken language: Eythórsson (: –) states that -a(t) is essentially absent from mainland Scandinavian prose (attested in documents from the twelfth century onwards) and is only found in early Old Icelandic prose texts, being ‘absent from the bulk of Old Icelandic prose of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.’ In the Íslendingasögur (–), eigi is easily the commonest marker of sentential negation (Blaxter ). Ekki, once fully reanalysed as a negative adverb and then negator, subsequently comes largely to replace ei(gi) across the whole of North Germanic. In Icelandic, it shows a gradual rise in frequency during the fourteenth century (Blaxter : ); in Norwegian, unambiguously adverbial examples of ekki occur at least as early as the thirteenth century, and a sharp rise in its frequency around  suggests a shift in status to an unmarked negator around that date (Blaxter and Willis ). Finally, in Swedish and some dialects of Norwegian, a fourth Jespersen cycle has occurred, with ekki being replaced by inte < enkti, the regularized neuter nominative and accusative singular of the negative pronoun/ adjective ‘nothing, no’ (Hellquist : ).

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External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

Thus North Germanic seems to have undergone a whole Jespersen cycle before any other European language, with stage I ne, yielding to stage II ne . . . -a(t), yielding to stage III -a(t), which, in turn, must have been replaced in the mainland language by the negative adverb such as ei(gi) by about the twelfth century at the latest (slightly later in Icelandic). A further cycle largely replaced ei(gi) with ekki, by around  in Norwegian, with competition between ei(gi) and ekki surviving into the modern period in Icelandic. Swedish alone experienced a further cycle. All the new adverbs could appear in a range of positions including, frequently, clause-initially, triggering verb-second (Christensen : –, van Gelderen : ). With this information in place, we can now turn to consider the origins of Jespersen’s cycle in the West Germanic languages: High German, Low German, Dutch, Frisian, and English. Strikingly, in all of these languages we witness a directly parallel development. They start with the Common Germanic stage I construction with preverbal ni (or a reduced form ne). This construction is amply attested in Old High German, Old Saxon (Old Low German), Old Dutch, and Old English texts from well before   (the earliest Frisian texts date from  or later; Bremmer : –). In the Old periods of all of these languages there were naturally various means of strengthening or emphasizing negation. In each case, however, the item that was eventually grammaticalized as the new marker of negation was a negative indefinite pronoun formed from prefixation of the negator ni to a noun wiht/wicht, originally meaning something like ‘living being’ or ‘creature’, with an additional intervening element io/eo ‘any, ever’. Thus: English not (< nāwiht), High German nicht (< niowiht), Low German nich(t), Dutch niet (< ni(o)wiht/niweht), and Frisian net (< nawet). It seems unlikely that contact with Old Norse was a relevant factor for the continental developments. We can say this with some confidence because, among High German, Low German, and Dutch, Low German is the slowest to show any signs of grammaticalizing its negative indefinite pronoun as a new negator (Breitbarth b, Jäger ), assuming that the textual record of these languages does not obscure the actual chronology of these developments in the spoken languages. It is a reasonable assumption that, in the eleventh century, when there are early indications of the grammaticalization of niet and nieht as (independent) negators in Dutch and High German (the data for Old Saxon are too scarce for this period to be sure if the same is happening here), there was more contact between speakers of Old Norse and speakers of Low German than there was between speakers of Old Norse and speakers of High German and Dutch: the relative geographical proximity of these languages makes this seem obvious, and it is certainly true later on when Hanseatic trade started in the twelfth century, leading to extensive contact between (Middle) Low German and North Germanic varieties (Sundquist ). But if Low German had the most contact with Norse, then it should have been the earliest to undergo Jespersen’s cycle if contact was indeed a relevant factor here. Since there is no evidence to suggest that

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it was earlier than its West Germanic neighbours, contact with Norse can probably be discounted as trigger for Jespersen’s cycle in this subgroup.¹ We then face the question of how to account for the occurrence of Jespersen’s cycle in directly parallel fashion in every language of the West Germanic subgroup. In principle, this could have proceeded in two ways. First, the reanalysis of the negative wiht-pronoun as a negator could have taken place in a single variety and this innovation could have then diffused across the whole of the subgroup (something which would have been greatly facilitated by the large degree of mutual intelligibility between the different West Germanic varieties in the relevant period, approximately the tenth to the thirteenth centuries). Alternatively, this reanalysis could have taken place independently more than once and the innovation then diffused from two or more centres. There is simply not enough data, either linguistic or historical, to decide between these two alternatives with any certainty. Given this paucity of data, in West Germanic as in Romance (cf. section ..), opinions on the relative plausibility of the two alternatives will be dependent on the general approach taken to invoking contactinduced change versus independent parallel developments (cf. section .). In the following, we explore the extent to which it is possible to invoke diffusion in at least some cases. But we cannot rule out the possibility that stage II negation was innovated independently in each of High German, Low German, Dutch, Frisian, and English. In the late Old High German text of Notker’s psalter translation and commentary (around  ) there are a few examples of nieht, arguably already grammaticalized as a negator, while in Williram’s translation of and commentary on the Song of Songs (perhaps fifty years later) it is widespread (Behaghel : ; cf. also Breitbarth a: –). Likewise in Old Dutch: in the ninth- or tenth-century Wachtendonck Psalms there are a handful of cases of niuueht used as either a constituent or a sentential negator in the absence of the much more common original negator ne, and in the late eleventh-century Old Dutch adaptation of Williram’s Song of Songs, which closely follows the syntax of a late Old High German original, niet is fairly frequent (though it is found in less than % of negative clauses, while ne occurs in all; Breitbarth b: ). This is insufficient information to decide whether the initial reanalysis of the negative wiht-pronoun was in Dutch or High German, but it seems likely that, whichever it was, it then diffused to the other. As stated above, the grammaticalization of the negative wiht-pronoun in Low German occurred later: there is virtually no evidence of it in the extant Old Saxon

¹ This conclusion is strengthened by consideration of the syntax of negation in Old Norse versus West Germanic: whether source-language or recipient-language agentivity is held to be responsible, the verbal suffix -a(t) is not a particularly plausible trigger for the grammaticalization of a negative pronoun as a new negator with the clause-internal positioning of an adverb. Similar factors apply with the newer Old Norse negators eigi and ekki. These are rather free with respect to word order and frequently appeared initially, triggering verb-second (cf. Blaxter : )—a property not shared by the continental West Germanic negators.

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texts, only in Middle Low German texts starting in the thirteenth century. It is therefore quite possible, though by no means guaranteed, that its presence in the latter is due to diffusion from either High German or Dutch, or both. Concerning Frisian, in the earliest texts from about  onwards, negation with nawet is well established, appearing both alone and together with ne. In almost all Old Frisian texts negative sentences with ne alone are in the minority (Bor : ). This is a very similar, if somewhat more conservative, picture to High German and Dutch in the same period. Hence it seems reasonable to say that here too the grammaticalization of nawet as a negator was the result of diffusion from one of these—most likely the directly neighbouring Dutch, though here too we cannot rule out an independent development. This leaves us with English. Willis (: –) shows that adverbial (nonargument) uses of no(h)t occur already in tenth-century late Old English, while Frisch () and Wallage () show that already in the second half of the twelfth century, no(h)t appeared in about one third of all negative sentences (virtually always cooccurring with ne), and Mazzon (: ) notes increased frequency with respect to earlier texts in the early twelfth-century Peterborough Chronicle. Even from a purely chronological point of view, therefore, diffusion from continental West Germanic looks somewhat doubtful. And there is, moreover, little evidence of large-scale linguistic contact between speakers of English and other continental West Germanic languages in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There was of course intensive contact with Old Norse until around this time, following the Viking invasions and settlement in England. Here too it seems unlikely that the presence of the suffix -a(t) could have triggered the grammaticalization of no(h)t. Conceivably, though, the Old Norse negative adverbs eigi/ekki could have had this effect, especially since in early Middle English no(h)t could appear in initial position triggering verb-second, just like eigi/ekki (cf. fn. ): ()

and nohht ne stannt and not  stand.. ‘ . . . and it does not stand still.’

it still. (early Middle English)  still (Ormulum I. ) (Frisch : )

However, it is rather counterintuitive to suggest concerning Low German and English that (a) both languages developed essentially identical stage II constructions; (b) they both had extensive contact with Old Norse; but (c) contact with Old Norse was a trigger for Jespersen’s cycle in English but not for Low German. It seems clearer for English, therefore, than for the continental West Germanic languages that Jespersen’s cycle is an independent parallel development, and not the result of contact with, or diffusion from, other Germanic languages.² ² Regarding the transition to stage III in Middle English, on the other hand, Walkden and Morrison () plausibly argue that this happened fastest in northern and eastern England as a result of imposition by speakers of North Germanic varieties.

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Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and North Africa: A reconstruction

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Where there are independent parallel developments in closely related varieties, it is natural to suppose that these are triggered by shared characteristics inherited from the proto-language; Malkiel () calls this process ‘slant’. What precisely the relevant shared characteristics were in the case of West Germanic is unclear, however. It cannot be sufficient to have a phonologically reduced preverbal negator appearing in the same clause as n-marked indefinites. As mentioned in chapter , these are also characteristics of languages such as Romagnol, which have been conservative with regard to Jespersen’s cycle (see chapter  for more discussion on this point). It does not seem justified, therefore, to default to an assumption of no diffusion between High and Low German, Dutch, and Frisian, on the basis of parsimony. Instead we must acknowledge that the number of independent innovations of Jespersen’s cycle within continental West Germanic remains unclear. .. Romance Let us turn now to consider French and the other Romance varieties that have undergone Jespersen’s cycle. As we have seen, although there was certainly ongoing contact between French and neighbouring High German varieties, it seems likely that the French stage II construction arose independently of contact with German (and Gaulish). On the other hand, Jäger (: ) points out that the fairly widespread use of drof ‘drop’ and netrophen ‘-drop’ in Otfrid’s late-ninth-century Gospel Book and in the Paris Conversations, both likely to have been influenced by Romance, could well represent transfer of the use in French of goutte ‘drop’ as a minimizer not restricted to describing minimal quantities of liquids. If we accept that the French Jespersen cycle was not the result of contact with German, we then face the question of whether the Jespersen cycles in all the Romance varieties of modern France, Switzerland, and much of northern Italy are the result of a single innovation which then diffused across multiple neighbouring, mutually intelligible dialects, or whether they represent multiple separate innovations. Broadly speaking, there seems to be no way in principle of ruling out the latter possibility, and if slant could have been responsible for independent parallel developments in Germanic then why not also Romance? This view is strengthened by consideration of the large degree of structural and etymological dissimilarity among the new negators of the Gallo-, Italo-, and Rhaeto-Romance varieties. Zanuttini (), Garzonio and Poletto (), and Parry () show that there are three basic types (labelled for their etymologies, not their current function): . minimizer negators (such as French pas, Piedmontese pa, Milanese mi(n)ga, Emilian briza, and Romansh buc(a)/brich/betg), which typically immediately follow auxiliaries and precede ‘already’-type adverbs; . quantifier negators (such as Piedmontese nen and Ladin nia), which follow ‘already’-type adverbs but precede past participles; and

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External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

. resumptive negators (no/nu in the dialects where they occur), which typically follow past participles (except in Pavese, where no can precede the past participle). These are all closely related varieties, which have been in contact with their neighbours for centuries. If we were to postulate a single innovation of stage II negation in Romance, which then diffused, we might have expected greater uniformity in the syntax and etymology of the new negative markers (cf. also Schwegler : –, who considers there to have been three geographically distinct, independent Jespersen cycles within the Gallo-Romance varieties). This lack of uniformity is especially striking when we compare these developments with the situation in continental West Germanic. On the other hand, to abandon the idea of diffusion altogether and postulate multiple independent parallel developments seems too hasty. Recall that Jespersen’s cycle has only occurred in a subset of Romance varieties, in contrast to the situation in West Germanic, and all of these are spoken in a contiguous region. This is illustrated in Figure ., which visualizes data from the Italian dialect syntax atlas (Atlante Sintattico d’Italia) for dialect translations of the standard Italian sentence Non so chi laverà i piatti ‘I don’t know who will wash the dishes’ (questionnaire , item ) (Benincà and Poletto ). An appeal to slant in the case of Romance is thus more problematic. Indeed, some very closely related Romance dialects differ from one another with respect to Jespersen’s cycle: northwestern Ladin varieties, for example, are innovative, while southeastern varieties are conservative; and Emilian is innovative while (more southerly) Romagnol is conservative. From this perspective a possible compromise between a pure diffusion account and a massive independent parallel development account is as follows. As we have seen, it seems that all languages have a variety of means of strengthening the expression of negation (and the earlier stages of the Romance languages were no exception; see Parry  for details). Since these negative strengtheners are apparently universal, logically their mere presence cannot be sufficient to trigger Jespersen’s cycle. However, where some additional factors do lead to one or more of a language’s negative strengtheners being grammaticalized as part of a stage II construction, several possibilities suggest themselves for how this language might then impact on stage I languages with which it comes into contact. At one extreme there might be no impact. At the other, perhaps exemplified by continental West Germanic, a single innovation of a stage II construction in one variety could lead to diffusion of precisely the same construction, with the same form and the same syntax, to all other closely related varieties that are in contact (i.e. matter replication in the sense of Matras and Sakel ). Between these extremes, a third possibility is that what diffuses is not a specific construction but merely the possibility of a language’s most frequent negative strengthener(s) being used as part of a non-emphatic stage II construction

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(i.e. pattern replication in the sense of Matras and Sakel , or, roughly, replica grammaticalization in the sense of Heine and Kuteva , ). The diffusion of this kind of strengthener–negator equivalence would allow for the observed variety in Romance stage II and III negative constructions (mirroring the variety of the negative strengtheners they grammaticalized from) without the necessity of postulating multiple entirely independent parallel innovations. Note that there is an important difference between this scenario and that suggested by Tanase () and discussed above, whereby the French stage II construction was said to be the result of transfer of the German stage III construction. In the case of the diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle within Romance, our claim is that the chain of transfer always consisted of a source variety with a stable stage II construction coming into contact with a recipient variety that had just a stage I construction as well as a number of strengtheners, resulting in the innovation of a stage II construction in the latter, and the possibility of further spread in the same way. This picture is supported by consideration of the likely direction of diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle in Romance (see Figure .).

Jespersen's cycle in Switzerland and northern Italy ASIt data points stage I stage II stage III

Swiss German Romansh

German

French

Ladin Slovene Friulian

Ticinese Mòcheno cheno Walser German

Cimbrian Venetan

Lombard

FrancoProvençal Proven al

Piedmontese

Emilian

Occitan Ligurian

Romagnol 0

50

100 km

F . Jespersen’s cycle in Switzerland and northern Italy Note: Broad dialect areas are shaded according to the predominant negative construction among varieties within each area. Circles represent individual survey points sampled in the Atlante Sintattico d’Italia and are similarly shaded according to the Jespersen-cycle stage attested at each point. The size of circles is proportional to the number of speakers sampled at a given point.

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External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

All Romance varieties of France have undergone Jespersen’s cycle. Within Italy, Jespersen’s cycle is a feature of the dialects of the far northwest, Franco-Provençal and Piedmontese, but not in Ligurian immediately to the south. Moving east, it is also a feature of Lombard (including the Swiss variety Ticinese) as well as Emilian to the south. It is not, however, a feature of most of Venetan or the Rhaeto-Romance variety Friulian in the northeast, or of any dialects spoken further south than Emilian. Southeastern varieties of (Rhaeto-Romance) Ladin (e.g. Cortina and the Fassa Valley) have not undergone Jespersen’s cycle, whereas northwestern varieties (e.g. Badia and Gardena) have (Poletto a), as have all Rhaeto-Romance varieties of Switzerland (Krefeld ). This gives a strong impression of Jespersen’s cycle (stage II negation) having diffused into (present-day) northwestern Italy from France and then spread east, north, and somewhat to the south from there. This impression is further strengthened by the fact that the varieties spoken at the southern and eastern fringes of this area (Emilian and northeastern Ladin) have only a stage II construction, whereas Romansh, Lombard, Piedmontese, and Franco-Provençal all have stage III constructions. This picture leads to the tentative conclusion that stage II negation was innovated once in French by the twelfth century (cf. Hansen : –) and then gradually diffused into the other innovative Romance varieties, presumably first into Occitan, then Franco-Provençal and Piedmontese, and gradually east from there. The available information on historical varieties of these languages supports this picture. While stage II negation (with pas and point) was the norm in sixteenthcentury French (and stage I negation strongly receding; Catalani : ), in Occitan of the second half of the sixteenth century there still appears to have been only a stage I construction with negative strengtheners ges and also pas (Berry : ; cf. also Schwegler : ). By the mid-seventeenth century, however, a stage II construction ne . . . pas predominates (Jagueneau : ), and today Occitan has a stage III construction with pas alone, as does Franco-Provençal, in both cases presumably the result of transfer of French pas itself.³ Similarly, sixteenth-century Piedmontese had only a stage I construction (Parry ), with nent (< *nec entem ‘ thing’) being among the more common strengtheners, but by the seventeenth century a

³ As noted above, Schwegler () prefers to see not language contact but putative language-internal functional pressures as the driving force behind any and all instances of Jespersen’s cycle in the Romance languages. Similarly, regarding Jespersen’s cycle in Occitan specifically, Schwegler (: ) says that ‘it seems doubtful that pas, and postverbal negators in general, entered Oc[citan] through French, as is often suggested [ . . . ] In the absence of compelling evidence, there is little reason to assume that [Middle Occitan] pas and ges are not indigenous descendants of [Proto-Romance] forms, or that Oc[citan] did not perform a negation cycle on its own.’ It may well be that the use of pas as a negator in Occitan is not the result of matter replication of the French item. But for the geographical and chronological reasons set out in the present section, as well as the more general methodological considerations set out in section ., it does not seem more parsimonious to us to assume that Jespersen’s cycle in Occitan is independent of developments in neighbouring varieties.

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stage II construction with either n . . . nent or n . . . pa was the norm, and present-day Piedmontese has only stage III, with nent for unmarked negation and pa for presuppositional negation (Zanuttini : , Parry : ). The languages in closest contact with French, then, appear to have borrowed the actual form of the postverbal marker. Further east it is only the stage II pattern that has been transferred. Present-day Lombard has a stage III construction with an originally resumptive negator no (or minga for presuppositional negation), but apparently as late as the eighteenth century the original stage I construction was the norm, at least in Milanese (cf. Beretta ). On the other hand, the modern stage III construction seems to have been firmly established in (Engadine) Romansh by the seventeenth century (Liver : ), upsetting an otherwise neat picture of a gradual eastward diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle across Romance varieties in northern Italy and southern Switzerland. Conceivably therefore, the Romansh Jespersen cycle could in fact be independent of this diffusion from a French origin. This conclusion is also prompted by the fact that the northwestern Ladin varieties have a stage II construction despite the fact that their most important Romance contact—Italian—does not. Of course Ladin, particularly its northwestern varieties, and all the Romansh varieties of Switzerland have long been in intensive contact with Bavarian Tyrolean and Swiss German respectively. The same considerations that spoke against the influence of German in the French Jespersen cycle also apply here (in particular with stage II Ladin), but if we hypothesize the independent development of stage II and III constructions in one of the more northwesterly varieties of Rhaeto-Romance (which then diffused as far as northwestern Ladin varieties in the period when Rhaeto-Romance was more widely spoken in the central and southeastern Alps), contact with German would presumably have supported rather than hindered such a development; note that the syntax of Romansh negation in verb-second structures and negative imperatives does appear to be directly modelled on German (cf. Liver : ; see also Kaiser and Hack , who argue that verb-second and lack of pro-drop in Rhaeto-Romance are also internal developments supported rather than triggered by contact with German). Before we leave Romance, a brief word on the possible role of contact in the progression from stage II to III is in order. As Posner () points out, the French dialects that have been most conservative in their retention of a stage II construction are (or were) those spoken in the far northeast. Posner considers and rejects the proposal that this conservatism could be the result of contact with German, pointing out that the progression to stage III in German was far too early for this to have been a relevant factor. More pertinently, however, these northeastern French dialects are in contact with Picard, where preverbal ne is rarely if ever omitted (Coveney : , Auger and Villeneuve ), and with West Flemish, which, in particular in the French Flemish varieties spoken in the region Nord-Pas-de-Calais in isolation from the emerging Standard Dutch language since , have retained many archaic

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External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

syntactic features (Ryckeboer ). Furthermore, West and East Flemish dialects in Belgium, which could perhaps be argued to have been in contact with northeastern French varieties through, for instance, travelling seasonal workers, have retained the preverbal marker en at least to some extent. Finally, in Belgian French (and Walloon dialects), the preverbal marker is better preserved than in the French spoken in France (Pohl : , cited in Coveney ). While the survival of en in the Flemish dialects in the twentieth century might to some extent depend on an exaptation as a kind of discourse particle expressing polarity emphasis or surprise (Breitbarth and Haegeman , , , Breitbarth et al. forthcoming), it remains to be explained why it remained so frequent in the expression of negation until (at least) the end of the nineteenth century (Beheydt ). However, the slow progress from stage II to stage III in these varieties could also be the result of social stability and lack of mobility. Walkden and Breitbarth () argue, applying Trudgill’s () socolinguistic typology to the explanation of syntactic change and stability, that long-term stable bilingualism in close-knit, low-mobility communities with child bilingualism or bidialectalism (instead of adult/L bilingualism), as in the case of French Flemish, French, and Picard, or the case of East and West Flemish, Belgian French, and Walloon (bipartite negation is most resilient in the south of East Flanders, and of the transitional zone between East and West Flanders; cf. Koelmans , Breitbarth et al. forthcoming), is the reason for the diachronic stability in these varieties. ‘Mature phenomena’, as Trudgill calls them, like the maintainance, and eventually exaptation, of elements that are typically unstable in short-term, adult bilingualism contact situations, like the old preverbal negation particle (Dahl , Trudgill :, Breitbarth b), are expected in this kind of contact situation. A final external cause of maintenance of the original negative particle, aside from straightforward conservatism, or exaptation, is prescriptive pressure, which we can understand as contact between diaphasic varieties of one language. Prescriptive pressure may be involved in the retention of stage II in some varieties of French which otherwise show pressure to move to stage III. In conversational Swiss French, for instance, micro-shifts in register (depending on the topic of the conversation) appear to be a trigger for the use of preverbal ne, which is otherwise infrequently used (Fonseca-Greber : –, see also section ..). Plausibly therefore, the stage II construction could have been preserved for a particularly long time in this region as a result of convergence. Bilingual speakers of West (in particular French) Flemish would identify the en . . . niet construction with the French ne . . . pas construction, resulting in the mutual reinforcement of both. .. Brythonic Celtic The final European languages to be considered in this section are the Brythonic Celtic languages Welsh and Breton. As we have seen, Price’s () suggestion that the

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occurrence of Jespersen’s cycle in both of these is an ancient common development representing diffusion from Gaulish does not stand up to scrutiny. By contrast, contact with French does seem a plausible trigger for Jespersen’s cycle in Breton. Willis (a) shows that stage II negation is absent in Old Breton, but is a widespread feature of Middle Breton texts (–), and replaces the stage I construction entirely soon thereafter. So we have a good chronological fit with the development of stage II negation in French. Willis (a) also suggests that the innovative negative element in Breton, ket, could be derived from a minimizer originally meaning ‘scrap (of clothing)’, thus presenting a close match with minimizer > negator pathway found in French: here, as in the northern Italian Romance varieties, it is the equivalence between a negative strengthener and an actual negator which has been transferred, rather than the form of the negator itself. Like GalloRomance, Middle Breton makes use of a number of reinforcers of negation, at various stages of grammaticalization, some nominal, some adverbial. By far the most common is tamm ‘bit, piece’, which closely parallels French mie. Others include hent ‘way, path’, pret ‘time’, tro ‘turn’. Hemon (: –) mentions also barr ‘twig’, banne ‘drop’, and takenn ‘drop’. At a broad system level, the similarity to the range of elements found in a similar function in the French of the period is striking. Direct French loans pas ‘step’, poent ‘point’, and ger ‘scarcely’ also occur occasionally, confirming the impact of French. Turning to Welsh, the only serious possibilities for external influence on the development of negation are English and Norman French, but even this seems unlikely in the case of Jespersen’s cycle, due to a considerable time lag between developments in each language. As late as  Welsh still had only a stage I construction, with the present-day postverbal marker ddim acting as an optional adverbial reinforcer (Willis ; see also chapter ). In English, a stage III construction becomes the only option already by the end of the fifteenth century (Wallage : ). Quite apart from the difficulties, already discussed in connection to French, involved in positing a postverbal stage III construction as the model for development of a stage II construction, the period in which Welsh underwent this development is in fact after the point at which the modern English pattern of negation became dominant, in which negation follows auxiliary do but precedes the main verb (Kroch ). If anything, this modern English construction might be expected as much to reinforce the Welsh stage I pattern as to prompt the innovation of a stage II construction. A closer parallel between the two languages would be negation in clauses containing aspectual auxiliaries. Even here there are substantial differences between the two languages: auxiliaries precede the subject in Welsh and follow in English; and aspect is expressed through particles in Welsh and through suffixes in English. However, Jespersen’s cycle does result in negation being expressed in a position structurally more parallel to English. Consider the parallel sentences in (). Here it is clear that Jespersen’s cycle allows negation to occur between subject and nonfinite verb as in

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External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

English, rather than in sentence-initial position, and gives Welsh an item that more closely parallels English not. () Nid 

yw Dyw (.)is

Aled Aled Aled Aled

is

not ddim 

going. yn yn 

mynd. mynd. go.

(English) (Welsh, stage I) (Welsh, stage II/III)

Nevertheless, it does not seem that this parallelism is close enough or extensive enough to warrant us revising the view that the shift in Welsh is primarily motivated internally. Welsh therefore appears to be the most recent language in Europe to have independently undergone Jespersen’s cycle. .. North Africa We turn now to consider the situation in North Africa, where Jespersen’s cycle either occurred or is ongoing in: Coptic (the latest stage of the Ancient Egyptian language, spoken until around the fifteenth century); most rural and urban Arabic varieties; and many Berber varieties. Contact with European languages can be ruled out as a trigger for Jespersen’s cycle in this region. We know for certain that Egyptian Arabic had a stage II construction in the fifteenth century (Davies , Diem ), well before the French colonial period, and stage II constructions are common in Coptic texts from the fourth century  onwards (Lucas , Lucas and Lash )—as far as we can tell an internal innovation. Documentation of early spoken varieties of Arabic and Berber is scarce, meaning that the timing of Jespersen’s cycle in these languages can be dated only very approximately. There is therefore no way of ruling out in principle the possibility that the Jespersen cycles in Coptic, Arabic, and Berber were independent parallel developments. However, Lucas and Lash () make the case that Jespersen’s cycle in North African Arabic was triggered by contact with Coptic, and that Jespersen’s cycle in Berber was, in turn, triggered by contact with the relevant Arabic varieties. We can review the relevant evidence as follows (see also Lucas a, ). Among the Arabic dialects there is a broad split between those that have been conservative with respect to negation, maintaining just the original preverbal negative particle mā, and those that have developed a stage II construction with an enclitic particle -š(i) (< šayʔ ‘thing’) in addition to mā (a small subset of the latter have gone on to develop a stage III construction with -š alone; see Lucas a for details). The stage II Arabic varieties are the urban and rural (but not all Bedouin) dialects of all the North African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt), as well as Palestine and certain dialects of Yemen and Oman in the southern Arabian Peninsula. Coptic has a number of different negative constructions but one of the commonest is a stage II construction composed of an element ən which precedes the focus of negation (i.e. the verb plus subject and tense

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prefixes in wide-focus sentential negation) and a second element an, which can either appear directly after the verb or clause-finally. Both Coptic and spoken Arabic have SVO basic word order. Chronologically speaking, transfer of stage II negation from Coptic to North African Arabic is plausible. It is reasonable to assume that the lack of stage II negation in Classical and Quranic Arabic reflects a similar lack of it in the spoken Arabic of the soldiers and civilians from Arabia and the Levant who conquered and settled North Africa and the Middle East in the seventh and eighth centuries. This assumption is given backing by the lack of stage II negation today in peripheral varieties of Arabic spoken in regions conquered early, and whose speakers have been isolated from other Arabic varieties for some considerable time, such as Uzbekistani Arabic (Fischer ). Also relevant is the absence of a stage II construction in written attestations of Andalusi Arabic (Corriente ; see also Wilmsen , , Diem , Lucas ), spoken in Spain from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, and one of the very few varieties of early spoken Arabic for which there is sufficient documentary evidence for us to have a reasonably clear picture of much of its syntax. Since Andalusia was settled from what is now Morocco, and naturally had its closest contacts with Morocco, the apparent lack of stage II negation in Andalusi Arabic suggests that it was not a feature of Moroccan Arabic in the eighth century, nor presumably for some considerable time thereafter. This contrasts with the situation in another peripheral Arabic variety—Maltese— which today features precisely the same stage II construction as is found in all the North African Arabic varieties. Despite the heavy Romance influence that Maltese has undergone, it is clearly most closely related to Tunisian Arabic, and Malta is known to have been settled from Tunisia (via Sicily) during the period of Muslim rule (–). Over the course of the century and a half following the end of this period, all Muslims either converted to Catholicism or were expelled, and from then on there was little contact between the Arabic (Maltese) speakers in Malta and those in mainland North Africa. These facts strongly suggest that stage II negation had been innovated in some North African Arabic variety (other than Moroccan) at some point between the conquest of Egypt in the seventh century and the end of the eleventh century at the latest. This is thus consistent with the hypothesis of a Coptic origin for this construction, allowing a maximum of four and a half centuries of Coptic–Arabic contact in Egypt for the transfer to take place. The current distribution of stage II negation in Arabic dialects is also largely consistent with this scenario, with the spread from Egypt being predominantly westwards, following the prevailing flow of migration in this region. Egypt is not, however, a plausible origin for the stage II construction found in Arabic dialects of Yemen and Oman. The most likely source of the construction here, as detailed by Lucas and Lash () and Lucas (a), is the Modern South Arabian languages spoken in this region, which have also undergone Jespersen’s cycle.

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

Turning to the Berber languages, these are also split between those that have retained the original stage I construction with just the preverbal marker ur (or wer), and those which have developed a stage II construction, in which the postverbal element joining ur has a range of forms across the different varieties (e.g. ara, kra, ka, ša, and ši). Prominent stage I varieties are Tuareg (spoken in southern Algeria and Libya, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso) and Tashelhiyt (spoken in southern Morocco). The other major varieties—Central Atlas Tamazight, Tarifiyt (spoken in central and northern Morocco, respectively), Kabyle and Shawiya (both spoken in northern Algeria)—have either an obligatory (Kabyle and Shawiya) or optional but nonemphatic (Tarifit and Central Atlas Tamazight) stage II construction. Several pieces of evidence point to stage II negation in these varieties being the result of contact with stage II varieties of Arabic. First, stage II Berber varieties are, barring recent migration, only spoken in regions where the local Arabic variety is also stage II: stage I Tuareg is mainly in contact with languages other than Arabic, while Hassaniyya, the Bedouin Arabic variety spoken in most of the region of southern Morocco where Tashelhiyt is spoken, is also stage I. Second, while the postverbal element in stage II Berber varieties has a number of forms, almost all are traceable to words for ‘thing’, and thus potentially calques on the Arabic construction. Finally, stage II varieties of Arabic and Berber show a great deal of overlap in the syntactic and discourse contexts where a stage II construction is excluded or dispreferred relative to a more conservative stage I construction. Many of these contexts (e.g. where there are postverbal NCIs) are familiar from other Jespersen-cycle languages, but some are highly idiosyncratic: for example, oaths invoking God which indicate the strong commitment of the speaker to what is being denied (Mettouchi , cf. section ..). .. Summary To summarize then, we have argued that there have been at least five independent occurrences of Jespersen’s cycle in the European languages surveyed. The first was (repeatedly) in North Germanic. The second was in at least one continental West Germanic variety, with subsequent diffusion throughout the remaining continental West Germanic languages. We argued that these developments were not triggered by contact with North Germanic. The third was in English, which we argued was not the result of diffusion from continental West Germanic, but was likely a case of ‘slant’, in which shared characteristics inherited from a proto-language lead to independent parallel developments in daughter languages. The fourth was in French, which was then transferred into Breton as well as into many of the Romance varieties of northern Italy and Switzerland (though we left open the possibility that the Rhaeto-Romance developments in fact represent another instance of the independent innovation of Jespersen’s cycle in Europe). Finally, we argued that the Welsh Jespersen cycle was an internal development independent of contact with English. The available evidence of the history of Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa points to a

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Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa



single innovation of stage II negation in Coptic, which was transferred into Egyptian Arabic, from there into most other North African Arabic varieties, and finally from these into most of the Berber varieties with which they came into contact. In conclusion, the arguments presented here do not claim to be the last word on the role of contact in the distribution of Jespersen’s cycle in the regions discussed, but we hope to have shown that detailed consideration of the chronology, etymology, and syntax of innovative negative constructions can lead to empirically based, falsifiable hypotheses that avoid much of the speculation inherent in previous approaches to this topic.

. Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa In section .. we discussed different approaches to contact-induced language change and argued that an acquisitionist interpretation of Van Coetsem’s (, ) approach enables an explicit account of how it is that contact leads to the transfer of a syntactic pattern, such as bipartite negation, from one language to another. Under this approach, two processes, borrowing and imposition, are distinguished according to the cognitive dominance a language has in a speaker’s mind. Borrowing was characterized as transfer under recipient-language agentivity, in situations where material or patterns from a non-dominant language or variety are adopted into a speaker’s dominant language. Imposition is transfer under sourcelanguage agentivity, where bilingual speakers impose material, structures, or constructions of their dominant language on their non-dominant language. Under the acquisitional perspective assumed in the current volume, both mechanisms lead to altered input (PLD) for the next generation of language learners, which is where the change will become evident as part of the grammar. With both borrowing and imposition, then, the fundamental mechanism is no different from that assumed for standard cases of internally caused change: some perturbation in the PLD results in children acquiring a grammatical competence that is altered with respect to older groups of speakers. In the next two sections, we use the model laid out in section .. to shed light on two case studies of contact-induced instances of Jespersen’s cycle. Section .. looks at how contact between Coptic and Arabic resulted in the spread of Jespersen’s cycle into the latter (based on the discussion in Lucas , Lucas and Lash ), while section .. gives an account of the spread of Jespersen’s cycle from Arabic to Berber (based on the discussion in Lucas , , ). As noted in section .., a difficulty with studying Jespersen’s cycle in spoken Arabic and Berber is that there is very little written record of most of the varieties in question. Berber is only sparsely attested in written form throughout its history until rather recently, and although there is an extensive Arabic literary tradition from the eighth century onwards, the vast majority of this is in the highly conservative

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

standard language. It is only in some of the spoken (i.e. virtually unwritten) varieties of Arabic that Jespersen’s cycle has occurred. Thus the history of Jespersen’s cycle in Arabic and Berber must chiefly be inferred by reconstruction, from its present-day geographical distribution, and from non-textual historical information. Nevertheless, the likely cases of contact-induced Jespersen’s cycle in Europe tend to suffer from the same lack of documentation in the relevant period, particularly in the case of West Germanic, for example (cf. section ..). Moreover, even if one takes the betterdocumented Romance Jespersen cycles, for instance, we still face the problem of how to distinguish between genuine cases of contact-induced change in mutually unintelligible languages and diffusion of a change through a dialect continuum. The situation in North Africa, by contrast, has the advantage of being clear-cut. When Arabic-speaking peoples began to arrive in the region, the only major linguistic contacts were with Coptic and Berber, and these three would have been wholly mutually unintelligible. In addition, Coptic at least is extensively documented well into the period of Arabization of Egypt, and the sociohistorical situation of Arabs and Berbers, as well as patterns of migration in this region, are relatively well understood. .. From Coptic to Arabic Jespersen’s cycle in Egyptian–Coptic is easily observable in the many texts from the Late Egyptian period. The picture is complicated somewhat by the fact that there were at all times a number of different negative elements employed, depending on a range of factors such as tense, modality, and definiteness. But one of the commonest of these elements undergoes a straightforward instance of Jespersen’s cycle. At stage I we have a construction with a negator nn (with phonologically identical orthographic variant bn, later reduced to ən) preceding the negated element, (a), optionally accompanied by an NPA iwnɜ, (b). At stage II an (< iwnɜ) becomes obligatory in negative contexts together with the original marker ən, typically in a clause-final position, (c), but occasionally immediately postverbal, (d). Finally ən becomes optional at stage III, (e). ()

a. nn jnk pɜjk bɜk   . servant ‘I am not your servant.’

(Late Egyptian)

b. bn mɜ‘ iwnɜ nɜ  true at.all  ‘This is not true (at all).’ c. ən ti-ouōš dōron ənto’ot tēutən  -desire gift from  ‘I do not desire a gift from you.’ d. ən ti-na-tsabo-ou an e-amənte  --teach-  on-hell ‘I will not teach them about hell.’

(Loprieno : ) an 

(Coptic)

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Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa e. anon an pe-nt-a-n-mere   ----love ‘It is not we who loved God.’



p-noute -god (Lucas and Lash : –)

Unfortunately, the prehistory of iwnɜ cannot be traced: from the moment it appears in the historical record it is a strong NPA (Gardiner ). Meltzer () hypothesizes that this is because the dialect adopted as standard Late Egyptian was not simply the descendant of the dialect adopted as standard Middle Egyptian, and it was only in the ancestor of the former, which was not written before the late period, that iwnɜ grammaticalized as an NPA. An interesting feature of the Coptic Jespersen cycle is that the stage II construction shows remarkable stability over many centuries. Lucas and Lash () show that, while the stage III construction is attested from as early as the third century , it remains only a marginal option with respect to the stage II construction as late as the tenth century. An implication of this is that when the Arabs conquered Egypt in the mid-seventh century and the Copts started to learn Arabic as a second language (shifting to it entirely by the sixteenth century at the latest), there was at least the potential for them to impose the stage II construction from their native Coptic on their L Arabic, which by this stage had not developed a stage II construction. On the face of it, however, it seems just as possible that native speakers of Arabic who learnt Coptic as a second language could have been the agents of change and borrowed the stage II construction. Although it is hard to be certain on this point (and some combination of borrowing and imposition cannot be ruled out) there are reasons for thinking that the development of the stage II construction in Arabic was triggered primarily by imposition rather than borrowing. First, there is what we know about the nature of Egyptian society in the first few centuries after the Arab conquest. It appears that the Arabs remained a small military–political elite in this country, as in the whole of North Africa, for some considerable time. It is also clear that the long-term trend, as in the majority of places conquered by the Arabs, was for the local Coptic-speaking population to shift to Arabic and not vice versa. Thus any native Arabic speakers who did learn Coptic as a second language would have been greatly outnumbered by native Coptic speakers learning Arabic as a second language. The second factor favouring an imposition over a borrowing analysis of this change is the difference in the word order and etymology of the stage II construction in the two languages. We saw above that the innovative element of the Coptic stage II construction, an, is derived from a strong NPA iwnɜ, whose earlier history is not known, and that an typically occurs clause-finally. In Arabic, by contrast, the innovative element -š(i) is evidently derived from šayʔ ‘thing’. It is also an enclitic, obligatorily cliticizing to the end of the verb and preceded only by verbal inflections and clitic object pronouns, as in the following Algerian example:

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 ()

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle mziyya mā gāl-ha-lū-š ṛājəl luckily  say..--.- man ‘Luckily it wasn’t a man that told him it.’ (Algerian Arabic; Elhalimi : )

Consider in this connection what we argue to be the counterfactual situation. Native Arabic speakers learn Coptic as a second language, and in so doing become acquainted with the stage II negative construction, which at this stage has no parallel in their native variety. The Coptic stage II construction features a postverbal element an, which appears to be a simple negator and has no obvious connection to any more lexical item. In this counterfactual situation we must suppose that their acquaintance with the Coptic state of affairs then leads the native Arabic speakers to replicate the stage II construction in their Arabic performance. The question in this case is why should they have specifically selected their indefinite pronoun šayʔ, rather than, for example, using an already existing negator or simply borrowing the item an, and why should they have changed the position of the postverbal negator from clause-final in Coptic to immediately postverbal in Arabic? It may be that motivations for these differences can be found under a borrowing analysis, but they fall out naturally from an imposition analysis as follows. We argued in section .. that imposition seems to be a function of the general cognitive strategies involved in the process of learning a second language: while L learners cannot ignore the most salient aspects of the data to which they are exposed (cf. Siegel ), their interpretation of those data is open to influence from a number of directions, including aspects of the syntactic structure of their native varieties. So a native Coptic speaker is liable to approach the task of acquiring communicative competence in Arabic with the expectation that it too will feature a stage II negative construction. There will be no expectation that the postverbal element should necessarily resemble that of Coptic: a prerequisite for any L learning is an understanding that lexical items vary in their phonological realization from language to language. On the other hand, there does generally seem to be the expectation that the word order of the second language should match that of the first (see, for instance, White  on the prevalence of word-order transfer under sourcelanguage agentivity). However, if the evidence is sufficiently salient that certain aspects of word order in the second language are in fact different from what is expected on the basis of the native language, clearly there is no imperative for L learners to impose the word order of their native variety on their second language. Can we, then, find contexts in which native Coptic speakers might have found evidence of a stage II construction in their L Arabic, where the postverbal negator was homophonous with the indefinite pronoun šayʔ, but where this item was immediately postverbal rather than clause-final? We would suggest such contexts as the following:

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Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa ()



A. tašrab qahwa drink.. coffee ‘Would you like some coffee?’ B. lā mā ašrab šayʔ qabl n-nawm no  drink.. anything/ before -sleep L interpretation: ‘No, I don’t drink anything before bed.’ L interpretation: ‘No, I don’t drink [coffee] before bed.’

As discussed in section ..., there is a potential ambiguity that arises in contexts such as these over the interpretation of such elements as šayʔ. If one posits a null object in B’s response, as would be common where there is a salient potential referent in the preceding discourse, here qahwa ‘coffee’ in A’s question, then the possibility is opened up of šayʔ being reinterpreted as something other than an indefinite pronoun, for example a new negator. However, it appears that this is not the kind of reanalysis that children acquiring Arabic natively make. Contexts such as () have always been available in all varieties of Arabic, but it is only in a subset of these that a stage II construction with ‑š(ayʔ) as the postverbal element developed. This subset consists of Egyptian Arabic and a range of North African dialects into which the stage II construction could have diffused from an Egyptian origin. Arabic varieties which have had no such first- or second-hand contact with Coptic have never undergone Jespersen’s cycle. Given the differences between L and L acquisition discussed in section .., however, it is plausible to assume that contexts such as () would have led to the reanalysis of šayʔ as a negator by native Coptic speakers learning Arabic as a second language and expecting to find in it syntactic structures familiar to them from their native varieties. That is, native Coptic speakers would have interpreted data such as those in () as providing evidence for an Arabic stage II construction as in Coptic, albeit one where the postverbal element immediately follows the verb and precedes adjuncts, in contrast to the dominant word order in Coptic. Given that arguments routinely precede adjuncts in Arabic, and that šayʔ in () is an argument to a native Arabic speaker, it would presumably have been sufficiently clear to Coptic learners of Arabic that although, on their interpretation, Arabic appears to have a stage II construction just as Coptic does, its postverbal element šayʔ occupies an earlier position in the clause than its Coptic counterpart an. Following the model of contact-induced change presented in section .., the mere fact of native Coptic speakers having made this interpretation of their L Arabic, and using this innovative stage II construction in their Arabic speech, does not yet constitute change. This is actuated only once the new stage II construction makes it into the grammars of child acquirers of Arabic. This presumably first happened among children from the Coptic community who, as use of L Arabic in that community increased, began to acquire Arabic natively (most likely simultaneously with Coptic at first). In this kind of situation a significant

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

proportion of the Arabic PLD to which such children were exposed will have come from the L speech of native Coptic speakers and would therefore, by hypothesis, have contained instances of this new stage II construction. In contrast to apparently ambiguous contexts as in (), robust evidence of this kind would have been criterial in the development of the stage II construction in native grammars of Arabic. Once this imposition-induced perturbation in PLD had resulted in the innovation of a stage II construction in the grammars of native speakers of Arabic from the majority Coptic community, it would have been a small step for the construction to make its way into the PLD and then the grammars of children from the minority Arab community acquiring their native variety. From there we can envisage the construction rapidly diffusing westward across the North African Arabic dialect continuum, following the prevailing direction of migration of Arabic speakers, reaching Tunisian and Maltese Arabic by the end of the eleventh century at the latest (Lucas ), and Moroccan at some point thereafter. .. From Arabic to Berber Turning to the Berber Jespersen cycle, we argued in section .. that this was most likely the result of contact with Arabic once the Arabic stage II construction had spread to northwest Africa. In keeping with the discussion in section .., the first step in an account of how this change took place is to establish as far as possible whether the perturbation to the Berber PLD came about primarily through borrowing or imposition. In this case, the sociolinguistic conditions are similar to those that obtained in Egypt in the first few centuries after the Arab invasion. In northwest Africa the Arabs were again no more than a small military–political elite. Moreover, a series of genetic studies have shown that there is little or no significant genetic difference between present-day Berber- and non-Berber-speaking populations in this region, or between those who self-identify as Arabs or Berbers respectively. However, all of these populations differ significantly and similarly from presentday inhabitants of the Middle East (and Europe) (see, for instance, Bosch et al. , Fadhlaoui-Zid et al. ). This suggests that the Arabization of the Berbers was essentially a cultural phenomenon, without widespread intermarriage between the two groups. As such we have little reason to think many native Arabic speakers from originally ethnic Arab communities would have learnt Berber as a second language and could therefore have had a significant linguistic impact through imposition. One cannot yet, however, entirely rule out a role for imposition here. A second possibility is that during the ongoing shift of the Berber population of this region to Arabic, children from the Berber community acquired Arabic natively and only later came to learn Berber as a second language. In this case one would expect imposition of features of their native Arabic onto their L Berber. However, again there is reason to doubt that this phenomenon, to the extent that it existed, had a significant impact

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Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa



on the major Jespersen-cycle Berber varieties that remain alive and in robust health to this day. Speakers of these varieties in Morocco and Algeria number well over ten million, and until recently there has been very little in the way of governmentsponsored initiatives aimed at strengthening Berber through education. Thus it is unlikely that changes to these varieties would have been initiated by imperfect learners on the peripheries of these speech communities, who would have had little incentive to make extensive use of their second language, Berber. Instead it seems reasonable to conclude that the development of Jespersen’s cycle in Berber was primarily the result of borrowing on the part of native Berber speakers. This would have worked as follows. Native Berber speakers express negation by means of a stage I construction, as in () from present-day Tuareg, which retains a conservative stage I negative construction. () ur igle  leave... ‘He didn’t leave.’

(Tuareg) (Chaker : )

Through learning Arabic as a second language, these native Berber speakers become acquainted with the Arabic stage II construction, which maps onto their own native Berber construction in obligatorily featuring a preverbal negator, but it additionally involves a postverbal element šayʔ which is homophonous with the Arabic word for ‘thing/anything’. Due to the performance attrition associated with intensive use of and exposure to L Arabic, these native Berber speakers begin to integrate a stage II construction into their Berber performance by appending the perceived Berber translation equivalent of Arabic šayʔ to their standard stage I construction. In different Berber varieties this has a range of different manifestations ()–(), such as kra, ara, and ša, much of the variation occurring within different varieties of the Algerian Berber language Kabyle. () ul ittaggad  fear.. ‘He is not afraid.’

kra 

() ur ykšim  enter... ‘He did not enter.’ ()

ur iffiɣ  exit... ‘He did not leave.’

(Kabyle of the Grande Kabylie) (Rabhi : ) ara 

ša 

(Kabyle of the Petite Kabylie) (Chaker : ) (Central Atlas Tamazight) (Boumalk : )

As noted in section .., in reproducing the Arabic stage II construction in their native Berber performance in this way, these speakers seem also to have maintained what must have been the more salient restrictions on the occurrence of the Arabic

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

stage II construction. For example, as noted in section .., in addition to contexts commonly found to be conservative with regard to Jespersen’s cycle in European languages, such as co-occurrence with NCIs, co-ordinated negated clauses, and so on, stage II Berber and Arabic varieties typically allow only a stage I construction in the context of oaths invoking God: () wəl ḷ ạ̄ h ma-ngūl-ha-lu(*-š) by.god -say..--.- ‘By God, I won’t tell him it.’ ()

wəl ḷ ə̣ h ur-t swiɣ (*ara) by.god - drink...  ‘By God, I didn’t drink it.’

(Moroccan Arabic) (Caubet : ) (Kabyle Berber) (Mettouchi : )

What we have in this case, then, is a perturbation to the PLD caused by recipientlanguage-dominant speakers of the recipient language. An expansion of these speakers’ communicative environment (exposure to and use of a second language) has resulted in a mapping from their native competence to its performance that is less faithful than it otherwise would be, all other things being equal. In the normal way, children have then abduced their native grammars of the recipient language on the basis of this altered PLD, leading to an alteration in the grammar of the recipient language, and bringing it more closely in line with the grammar of the source language.

. Conclusion Clearly, children acquiring their native languages will be blind to whether their PLD has been altered and, if so, how. However, it seems plausible, as Van Coetsem and others have suggested, that borrowing and imposition characteristically lead to different types of changes. On the basis of the cases examined in this section, a construal of this suggestion in terms of equating borrowing with lexical change and imposition with syntactic change (the so-called ‘stability gradient’) is clearly too coarse-grained (see Lucas  for further discussion of the concept of the stability gradient). In the case studies presented here we have argued for a contact-induced syntactic change that was triggered by imposition in one instance and borrowing in another. A key difference we observed between the two, however, was the degree of fidelity of replication of the stage II construction from Coptic to Arabic and from Arabic to Berber respectively. Specifically, we saw that finer details of the Coptic stage II construction were lost and new details were added in the transition to the Arabic stage II construction: the clause-late position of Coptic an was imperfectly paralleled by the Arabic verbal enclitic šayʔ, and the homophony of this new Arabic negator with the indefinite pronoun is absent in the Coptic construction. By contrast, with

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Conclusion



the transfer of the stage II construction from Arabic to Berber we observed a high degree of fidelity of replication, with this same pattern of homophony, the same word order, and the same contextual restrictions all being retained. While this correlation between borrowing and high fidelity, on the one hand, and imposition and low fidelity on the other will not apply universally to all cases of syntactic transfer, we argue that it is considerably more likely than the inverse relationship. The reason for this does not depend on a notion such as Van Coetsem’s hypothesized stability gradient, but instead follows naturally from what we have assumed about the different cognitive statuses of knowledge of first and second languages. We have argued above that, when speakers are in the process of acquiring a second language, they do not impose features of their native grammars as a matter of course. Even if the L acquirer’s default assumption is that the grammar of the second language is the same as that of the first (cf. Schwartz and Sprouse ), imposition will only be persistent in those areas of grammar for which the evidence to which the L learner was exposed was insufficiently salient. On such a view there is no reason to expect the faithful transfer of structures from the source language except in cases of radical underexposure to the recipient language, as in situations of pidginization; though even here, when pidgins stabilize as creoles it rarely seems to be the case that the linear structure of the superstrate language is abandoned entirely in favour of that of the substrate(s) (cf. Siegel ). On the other hand, we have argued that changes due to borrowing come about through an alteration in speakers’ performance of the recipient language, the speakers’ grammars of which are native and have already reached a steady state. As such, any source-language-influenced changes to their performance of the recipient language will necessarily constitute a deviation from their native competence, regardless of whether or not these changes result in structures that closely resemble their counterparts in the source language. Hence, with borrowing, the question of whether one has high-fidelity replication of syntactic structures is independent of the process of acquisition of the recipient language, unlike with imposition, where the two are closely connected. Instead, with borrowing this issue is dependent on the L acquisition of the source language. If one makes the reasonable assumptions that, all else being equal, (a) greater exposure to a second language results in a more target-like knowledge of that language (until fossilization sets in; for which see, for example, Han and Odlin ); and (b) greater exposure to a second language results in more transfer from that second language to the first, then it follows that borrowing will typically involve higher-fidelity replication than imposition. Different sociolinguistic situations give rise to different kinds of transfer. On the one hand, we have argued that contact between adult speakers, with an imbalance in competence between source language and recipient language, was involved in starting Jespersen’s cycle or advancing stage II in many instances discussed over the course of this chapter. The transition from stage II to stage III, on the other hand, was argued to be

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

External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle

significantly slower where long-term child bilingualism or bidialectism was involved. In summary, we have seen that external causes certainly play an important role in the progress of Jespersen’s cycle in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The evidence we have considered in this chapter, however, makes it clear that a number of languages in this region have also entered the cycle independently.

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Part II Quantifier cycles and indefinites

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5 Empirical generalizations Just as with the expression of negation, expressions of indefinite quantification in the scope of negation are subject to certain forms of cyclic renewal. These developments have furthermore been observed to interact with Jespersen’s cycle. The second part of this volume is therefore dedicated to documenting and accounting for the cyclic developments within systems of indefinite pronouns and adverbs and their interaction with sentential negation. Various observers have noted that the development of new indefinites used in negative clauses follows a diachronic pathway according to which an item appears to become increasingly negative (Ladusaw ; see also Jäger , Biberauer and Roberts , Willis a, Hansen , , Ingham and Kallel ). An oftquoted example concerns the French indefinites rien ‘nothing’, personne ‘no one’, and aucun ‘no, none’, which developed out of originally polarity-neutral elements, (colloquial) Latin rem ‘thing.’, persona ‘person’, and aliquis unus ‘someone, anyone’ respectively. Historically, they did not always have their modern negative meaning, but were originally also available in weak NPI contexts such as conditional protases or questions, where they meant ‘anything’, ‘anyone’, and ‘any’ respectively. The consistent directionality of the development across different languages is one reason to call it a cycle; the other is the historical pattern of constant lexical renewal. When aucun ceased to be licensed in positive contexts meaning ‘some’, it was replaced in this meaning by a new element quelque (originally a free-choice marker). In this chapter, we seek to disentangle the various developments indefinite items undergo, from a comparative perspective, focusing on the types and directionality of the developments observed (section .), as well as potential interactions with Jespersen’s cycle, and the emergence of different patterns of negative concord (section .).

The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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

Empirical generalizations

. Common developments .. Series of indefinites and quantifier cycles Although any development will inevitably affect individual lexical items in the first instance, indefinites tend to form series with other items that have similar properties, either in terms of their morphological makeup or in terms of the licensing restrictions that regulate their syntactic distribution. An example of a morphologically defined series is the English some-series (someone/somebody, something, somewhere, some), all of whose members contain the prefix some-. An example of a series defined in terms of licensing conditions is the Welsh indefinite series consisting of neb ‘no one’, dim byd ‘nothing’, nunlle/unman ‘nowhere’, and ’run ‘no, none’ (negative determiner for count nouns). These are mostly not etymologically related, but they share broadly the same syntactic distribution. We will identify such series either by the morpheme common to the majority of members, or, where no such morpheme exists, by the member used for persons. Thus, we will speak, for instance, of the English some-series, Welsh neb-series, or, in the case above, of the French personneseries (cf. also Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth : ). Based on typological generalizations about the structure of indefinite systems across a sample of forty languages, Haspelmath () proposes the implicational map of possible functions of indefinites shown in Figure .. question specific known

specific unknown

indirect negation

direct negation

irrealis non-specific conditional

comparative

free choice

F . Haspelmath’s (: ) semantic map of indefinites

This map orders functions (context–meaning pairs) of indefinite pronouns based on the observation that, if in a given language an indefinite is used in two nonadjacent functions on the map, it is also used in a contiguous set of functions in between. The indefinites of the any-series in English, for instance, are used in NPI contexts, namely questions, conditionals, the standard of comparison, indirect negation, direct (clausemate) negation, and in the free-choice function, which form a contiguous area on Haspelmath’s map.¹ No natural language has a separate series of indefinites for each function on the map; rather, they use a number of series of

¹ ‘Indirect negation’ is a function uniting a number of diverse syntactic contexts, such as clauses dependent on a negative matrix clause, clauses dependent on adversative predicates (e.g. forbid, deny), complements of ‘without’ and ‘before’, or elements within the scope of quantifiers such as ‘hardly’ or ‘few’.

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Common developments



indefinites to divide up the semantic space in different ways. English, for instance, has three series of indefinites: polarity-neutral or positive indefinites (the some-series, restricted largely to the leftmost five functions on the map); NPI indefinites (the any-series, which overlaps with the some-series in questions and conditionals); and indefinites restricted to the scope of direct negation (the no-series). Given its implicational nature, Haspelmath’s map can also serve as a diachronic roadmap for pathways of change: no historical development is expected to yield an indefinite series that is, for example, licensed in conditionals and questions while extending its distribution to the context of direct negation without at the same time extending it to indirect negation. Where there is variation, and frequency data are available, we would expect this also to respect these patterns. For instance, if an item is extending its domain from questions to both indirect and direct negation contexts, we would expect its frequency during the period of transition always to be as high or higher in indirect negation as it is in direct negation. The same expectations hold when an item withdraws diachronically from contexts that previously allowed it. Thus the diachronic retreat of the French personne-series from certain weak NPI contexts and its increasing restriction to negative contexts follows the path that the map prescribes: the development (discussed in more detail in section ..) is depicted in Figure .. Up to the end of the nineteenth century, personne, rien, and the other members of this series were licensed in all weak as well as strong NPI contexts, and have since retreated to comparatives, indirect, and direct negation (bold line). The next step to be expected is the final retreat to the direct negation function only (dotted line). In the following, we consider the cyclic development of new negative indefinites. Two processes can be identified, one by which a formerly non-negative or at least less negative element becomes increasingly restricted to more negative contexts, and one by which original free-choice elements become indefinite pronouns licensed in NPI contexts. We will call the former development the quantifier cycle and the latter the free-choice cycle (cf. also Haspelmath , Willis a).

Present-day French

question specific known

specific unknown

indirect negation

direct negation

irrealis non-specific conditional Nineteenth-century French

comparative free choice

F . Diachronic development of the French personne-series indefinites

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

Empirical generalizations

.. The quantifier cycle: From positive to negative ... The stages of the quantifier cycle As indicated above, there is an often-observed crosslinguistic tendency for (newly created) indefinites to become diachronically increasingly negative. The staged nature of this development can best be illustrated by means of the development of the French negative indefinites already mentioned above. Aucun ‘no(ne)’, personne ‘no one’, and rien ‘nothing’ started out as unrestricted (positive) nouns or pronouns (‘some, any’, ‘person’, and ‘thing’, respectively) (Foulet  [], Haspelmath , Roberts , Roberts and Roussou , Déprez and Martineau ), and are now NCIs restricted to the scope of negation and able to express negation in isolation (for instance in fragment answers), with residual NPI uses especially in comparatives. After they began to replace other items in the scope of negation, they remained available in a wide range of nonnegative NPI contexts up to the end of the nineteenth century. The following examples show the original lexical use of rien, (), and its use as an indefinite pronoun in a weak NPI context, namely a yes/no-question, (), in Old French. ()

Et une riens les reconforte . . . and one. thing  comfort.. ‘And one thing (something) comforts them . . . ’ (FRANTEXT; Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, c. –, p. )

()

Et vos, seignor, qu’ an volez dire? and  sir what . want.. say. Savez i vos rien contredire? know.. here  anything reply. ‘And you, Sir, what do you want to say about it? Do you have anything to reply?’ (FRANTEXT; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, c. , p. )

In Modern French, nominal uses of positive rien (and also non-negative personne without a determiner) as in (), have disappeared.² Up to the end of the nineteenth century, non-negative uses of today’s NCIs still include conditionals, (), questions, (), the restriction of comparatives and superlatives, (), and clauses introduced by avant ‘before’ and sans ‘without’, ().³

² The re-lexicalization of negative indefinite rien as a noun in cases such as un petit rien ‘a little nothing, something small’ (cf. sweet nothings) is an independent development. ³ These statements need some qualification. Hansen (, ) argues that there appears to be an ‘essential difference between adverbial and nominal items’ (Hansen : –). NCIs from nominal sources such as rien and personne undergo the characteristic gradual development outlined here. With adverbial elements, things are more complicated: plus ‘any/no more’ arises initially in temporal use in (strong) NPI contexts, and comes to be restricted to the scope of direct negation early on, while jamais ‘(n)ever’ has never fully given up its much wider distribution as a weak NPI.

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Common developments



()

. . . si personne songe jamais à le critiquer. if anyone dream.. ever to  criticize. ‘[I know that, despite my care, nothing will be easier than to criticize this book,] if it ever occurs to anyone to criticize it.’ (FRANTEXT; Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique. , , p. )

()

L’ as-tu jamais vu dans ton chemin?  .- ever see. in . way ‘Have you ever seen it (the misfortune) on your way?’ (FRANTEXT; Michel Crèvecoeur, Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l’État de New-York, , p. )

()

le spectacle le plus touchant dont j’ aie jamais  play  most touching .  . ever été témoin be. witness ‘the most touching play to which I have ever been witness’ (FRANTEXT; Michel Crèvecoeur, Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l’État de New-York, , p. )

()

sans rien dire without anything say. ‘without saying anything.’ (FRANTEXT; François de Chateaubriand, Lettres à Mme Récamier: –, , p. , )

In Present-day French, these uses have become more restricted. While French NCIs are still felicitous in the standard of comparison, (),⁴ avant and sans clauses, (),⁵ they are no longer licensed in questions apart from rhetorical ones, () (Rowlett ). In conditionals, only jamais can occur in the frozen expression si jamais ‘if ever’, (). ()

a. D’abord, il en a plus besoin que personne. first  . have.. more need than anyone ‘First of all, he needs it more than anyone.’ (FRANTEXT; Albert Camus, La Chute, , p. )

⁴ Use of rien ‘nothing’ is, however, very limited in the standard of comparison. Evidence from the FRANTEXT corpus suggests that, since the Middle French period, rien has appeared in comparatives only where it is compared to something of very small value and thus seems to have only an essentially negative interpretation. ⁵ Native speakers are divided on the grammaticality of NCIs in avant clauses, preferring indefinites of the quelque-series, or free-choice forms, for example, qui que ce soit ‘whoever it may be’ (Amélie Rocquet, p.c.).

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

Empirical generalizations

b. Les États-Unis possèdent plus de centrales nucléaires . United-States have.. more of plant. nuclear. qu’ aucun autre pays. than any other country ‘The USA has more nuclear power plants than any other country.’ (https:// www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/_fr.pdf accessed  March ) c. La situation est plus que jamais préoccupante. . situation be.. more than ever worrying. ‘The situation is more worrying than ever.’ (https://www.handirect.fr/nipauvre-ni-soumis-dans-la-rue-le--septembre/ accessed  March ) ()

a. avant que personne before  anyone ‘before anyone sees you’

vous 

voie see... (Eckardt : )

b. parler sans rien dire speak. without anything say. ‘talking without saying anything’

(song by Sarclon, )

()

A-t-on jamais rien vu .--one ever anything see. ‘Has one ever seen anything this beautiful?’

()

a. Si jamais tu changeais d’ avis, tu peux venir me voir. if ever  change.. of opinion  can come.  see. ‘If ever you were to change your mind, you can come and see me.’

d’ of

aussi beau? as beautiful (Corblin et al. : )

b. *Si tu avais jamais changé d’ avis, if  .. ever change. of opinion tu aurais pu venir me voir.  .. be.able. come.  see. ‘If you had ever changed your mind, you could have come to see me.’ (Hansen : ) Table ., taken from Hansen (: ) summarizes the NPI-uses of Present-day French NCIs. The causality in the withdrawal from and re-filling of indefinite functions in French is disputed. Foulet (: ) believed that the grammaticalization of quelque ‘some’ from a free-relative construction (quel X que [ce soit . . . ] ‘whatever X [this may be . . . ]’, see section ..) followed the change of aucun from a positive determiner (‘some, any’) to an NPI and ultimately a negative determiner ‘no, none’, thus reflecting a pull chain. Conversely, however, Ingham and Kallel () present

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Common developments



T . Negative polarity uses of French NCIs (Hansen : ) NCI

jamais

rien, aucun, personne

nulle part

nul

plus

NPI context sans ‘without’ plus que ‘more than’ trop pour ‘too . . . for/to’ complement clause of negated matrix verb complement clause of semantically negative matrix verb avant ‘before’ peu ‘little’ direct (rhetorical) question conditional indirect interrogative

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ×

✓ ✓ ✓ × × ×

✓ × (✓) × × (✓)

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ × (✓) × ×

× × × × ×

(✓) × × × ×

× × × × ×

evidence that the replacement of aucun by quelque proceeded via a push chain, with quelque taking up more and more of aucun’s original domains. Developments along similar lines, that is, the grammaticalization of an NPI indefinite with subsequent withdrawal from weaker contexts and restriction to stronger ones, have occurred in other European languages. In the early Italo-Romance varieties (Parry ), for example, alcuno ‘anyone’ grammaticalized from a non-negative indefinite (Latin aliquis unum ‘someone’) and could be used in a wide range of contexts, including the scope of negation, both preverbally, as in (), and postverbally, as in (), in weak NPI contexts, (), and in affirmative clauses, (). ()

In sua p(re)sentia alcuno no(n) dè essere lodato. (Tuscan) in .. presence anyone  should be. praise. ‘No one should be praised to his face.’ (Trattati di Albertano, p. , ll. –, thirteenth century) (Parry : )

()

No se dé alcun laudar de soa propïa boca. (Lombard)   should anyone praise. of .. own. mouth ‘No one should praise himself.’ (Patecchio, Splanamento, p. , l. , thirteenth century) (Parry : )

()

Et se alcuno domandasse per qual cagione (Tuscan) and if someone ask... for what reason ‘And if someone asked why . . . ’ (Brunetto Latini, Rettorica, p. , l. , c. –) (Parry : )

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 ()

Empirical generalizations Alcuno à furato d’ una chiesa uno cavallo. (Tuscan) someone . steal. from . church  horse ‘Someone has stolen a horse from a church.’ (Brunetto Latini, Rettorica, p. , ll. –) (Parry : )

Its descendant in Present-day Italian has become a strong NPI, restricted to negative clauses and even there only in postverbal position (Parry : ).⁶ Similarly, in some early Tuscan dialects, the originally non-negative nominal minimizer punto < Latin punctum ‘point’ (see also chapter ) went as far as becoming a negative determiner agreeing with the noun (Garzonio , Parry ): ()

in punte in punto. ‘in no streets’

strade street.

(Tuscan) (Rohlfs : , Parry : )

In Welsh, the noun dim ‘thing’ became an indefinite pronoun ‘any, anything’ in Middle Welsh, which was used in weak NPI contexts such as yes/no-questions, (), as well as under direct negation, (). In Modern Welsh, dim has become restricted to the contexts of direct negation, indirect negation, and comparatives (Willis , , , a).⁷ ()

A wdom ninheu dim y wrth hynny? (Middle Welsh)  know..  anything about . ‘Do we know anything about that?’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .) (Willis a: )

()

Ac ny mynnwys ef dim. and  want..  anything ‘And he didn’t want anything.’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .–) (Willis a: )

Comparatives and ‘without’ and ‘before’ clauses are crosslinguistically often the last non-negative contexts in which a retreating element undergoing the quantifier cycle is found, as in the case of French just discussed. Welsh presents a similar development. The pronouns neb ‘no one’ and dim ‘nothing’, which used to be weak NPIs in Middle Welsh, have withdrawn from weak NPI contexts, but are still able to occur in comparatives, ‘without’ clauses, and ‘before’ clauses with the old NPI meaning (‘anyone, anything’), ()–(), as well as in the scope of negation:

⁶ Note that, as an adnominal quantifier, alcuno behaves rather differently, being a strong NPI in the singular, but unrestricted in its distribution in the plural (Crisma ). ⁷ In a divergent development, ddim has also become the negative marker in main clauses in Welsh; that is, it has fed into Jespersen’s cycle, see section ...

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Common developments ()

heb i neb fy without to anyone  ‘without anyone seeing me’

()

cyn i neb fy ngweld i before to anyone  see.  ‘before any one sees/saw me’

ngweld i see. 



(Present-day Welsh)

We see that the progress of an indefinite along the quantifier cycle, the spread from a less negative to a more negative context, and the ensuing withdrawal from the weaker negative polarity contexts follows Haspelmath’s () implicational map, as indicated above. Conditionals and questions are the first contexts that cease to license such indefinites; comparatives, indirect negation, and ‘before’ and ‘without’ clauses are last. Haspelmath’s map permits an item to retreat from the conditional and question functions in either order. In Welsh, neb ‘anyone, no one’ retreated from conditionals earlier than from interrogatives. Table . shows the percentage of different clause types in which ‘anyone’ is expressed using neb in a corpus of nineteenth-century Welsh texts (see also section .). In this period, it is largely in competition with rhywun ‘someone’ (a minor variant undyn ‘any one’, lit. ‘one person’, ultimately leads nowhere), which replaces it in conditionals and interrogatives. The relative frequency of neb is at all time periods ordered in conformity with the hierarchy in (), with contexts on the right being more innovative. Note that this hierarchy is reflected in frequencies rather than in categorical patterns of use: during the mid-nineteenth century, the loss of neb from conditionals had almost run to completion, while its loss from interrogatives was just beginning (Willis a: ). ()

negative

>

comparative

>

interrogative

>

conditional

In examining this withdrawal, the question arises as to what happens to a context formerly licensing an element that has progressed along the quantifier cycle by becoming more restricted in its distribution. In Welsh, for instance, two new series

T . Frequency of clauses where ‘anyone, no one’ is expressed using neb in Welsh texts, – –

conditional interrogative comparative negative

–

–

%

no. of tokens

%

no. of tokens

%

no. of tokens

   

   

   

   

   

   

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

Empirical generalizations

have encroached into those contexts that once allowed the neb-series, such as questions and conditionals, (): the rhyw- (‘some’) series (licensed in affirmative contexts, questions, and conditionals) and the recently innovated unrhyw- (‘any’) series (< un ‘one, any’ + rhyw ‘kind’) (licensed in all negative polarity contexts). This refilling of contexts vacated by elements undergoing the quantifier cycle also appears to follow the pathway just outlined (Willis a). The question is whether this replacement is to be viewed as a push chain or as a pull chain: does a new (series of) indefinite(s) arise and replace a former (series of) indefinite(s), or do indefinites (automatically) become restricted in their distribution, triggering the creation of new, more positive elements? In Welsh, the recent encroachment of the unrhyw-series onto the territory of the neb-series is very recent, occurring largely only since the twentieth century, and may be due to language contact with English (see chapter  for a full discussion) in a contact-induced push chain. The somewhat earlier spread of the rhyw-series in interrogatives and conditionals at the expense of the neb-series is harder to characterize. The new rhyw-series is a grammaticalization of the noun rhyw ‘type, kind’ (‘a kind of x’ > ‘some x’). This grammaticalization is difficult to date, because it involves a subtle bleaching of meaning, but had certainly occurred by the sixteenth century, hence is not likely to be the direct trigger for the changes observed in Table .. Given this, we tentatively conclude that a pull chain is the more likely scenario, with rhyw-series items being co-opted to express meanings that the neb-series, being viewed increasingly as negative, was no longer able to express unambiguously. Similar developments are found in Breton (Willis a). The negun-series, the main indefinite series used in non-assertive NPI contexts in Middle Breton, becomes more negative over time, and is now restricted to negative clauses and comparatives. In negative uses, some items of this series can be strengthened by a new determiner ebet (< en bet ‘in the world’), for instance, den ebet ‘no one (at all)’. In conditionals and interrogatives, the negun-series has been replaced by a new set of indefinites based on bennak ‘ever’ (unan bennak ‘anyone’). The direction of change is thus clear in that the negun-series items have narrowed their distribution, retreating to the more negative end of the semantic map. Some of the developments parallel French, and the role of language contact needs to be considered closely (see chapter ). Note that the hierarchy in (), while compatible with Haspelmath’s semantic map in Figure ., is more specific, in that it requires the quantifier cycle to lead to items disappearing in the order conditional then interrogative.⁸ In principle, the semantic ⁸ Contemporary Maltese provides further support for the observation that non-negative indefinites retreat from conditionals earlier than they do from questions. In a correction to what is claimed by Lucas (, b), Camilleri and Sadler () show that Maltese xejn ‘anything, nothing’ (< Arabic šayʔan ‘thing’) has not become restricted to negative contexts only, but can also occur in questions with nonnegative meaning. It is, however, no longer acceptable in conditionals with non-negative meaning (Maris Camilleri, p.c.).

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Common developments



map allows any of the orders in (). Welsh instantiates (a). Some items, namely Italian nessuno ‘anyone, no one’, and the Persian hič- and Turkish hiç-series (Haspelmath : –, –, –) occur today in negative, comparative, and interrogative environments, but only marginally or not at all in conditionals. The evidence of these items therefore also supports the existence of this pathway. ()

a. negative b. negative c. negative

> > >

comparative > comparative > interrogative >

interrogative > conditional conditional > interrogative conditional > comparative

The pathway in (c) may arise as a result of the operation of the free-choice cycle (a push chain) (see section ..). This leaves no positive evidence for (b), and it is possible that it does not arise. ... Countercyclic developments Despite the overwhelming preponderance of a repeated development from more positive to more negative in indefinites, we do also seem to find the opposite development, from more negative to more positive. The French determiner nul for example, deriving from Latin nullum, extends its uses from strong negative polarity contexts in Old French to weak negative polarity contexts in Middle French, assimilating its distribution to that of Middle French rien ‘anything’ and aucun ‘anyone’ (Roberts : , Roberts and Roussou : ). In addition to its existing use in negative clauses, illustrated in (), it thus acquires new uses in interrogative clauses, as in (). In doing so, it apparently contravenes the observed positive to negative trend, before ultimately being replaced by aucun ‘no’. () Renart n’ avoit nul ami. (Old French) i Renart  there have.. no friend ‘Renard had no friend there.’ (FRANTEXT; Anonyme, Roman de Renart, branche I. Jugement de Renart, Siège de Maupertuis, Renart teinturier, c. , p. ) ()

Feust Il jamais nul temps de vous absent? (Middle French) be..  ever any time from  absent ‘Was he ever any time absent from you?’ (FRANTEXT; Marguerite de Navarre, Comédie du parfait amant, , p. , [Scène I])

The same seems to have happened in the history of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. According to Poole (), the NCI ninguno ‘no/any’ showed the distribution of a weak NPI in Medieval Spanish, despite its negative etymology (< Latin nec unum ‘not even one’). In this, it patterns with nadie ‘no one/anyone’ and nada ‘nothing/ anything’, which are not etymologically negative (< Latin (hominem) natum ‘born man’, (res) nata ‘born thing’, thus generalizers, originally). Until the end of the fifteenth century, ninguno, nada, and nadie could occur in weak NPI contexts, and

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

Empirical generalizations

could not form negative fragment answers, the presence of the sentential negator no(n) being required in this context. ()

Old Spanish E porende dize en la Santa Escriptura: «Sy Dios es and therefore say.. in . holy scripture if God be.. con nos, quien es aquel poderoso que sera contra nos?» with  who be.. so powerful  be.. against  Asy commo sy dixiese: « Non ninguno.» thus as . say..  n.one ‘And therefore it says in the Holy Scripture “If God is with us, who is so powerful as to be against us?” As it is said “No one.” ’ (El Libro del Caballero Zifar, fourteenth century) (Poole : example ())

Similarly, the Portuguese indefinites ninguém (< Latin nec unum ‘not even one’) ‘no one’ and nunca ‘never’ (< Latin numquam ‘never’), etymologically negative, could historically also occur in weak NPI contexts such as interrogatives (Martins , , ): ()

Viste-me nunca andar em demanda com ninguém senão hŭa see..- n.ever . in fight with n.one except once em Santarem? in Santarem ‘Have you ever seen me fighting with anyone except for once in Santarém?’ (adapted from Martins : )

Finally, Italian nessuno ‘no one’ < Latin nec ipsu(m) unu(m) ‘not even itself one’ can synchronically occur in a number of non-negative affective contexts such as interrogatives (), and comparatives (), and somewhat marginally in conditionals, ().⁹ ()

()

interrogatives Hai visto nessuno ieri? . see. n.one yesterday ‘Have you seen anybody yesterday?’ comparatives Gianni è più ricco di nessuno. John be.. more rich than n.one ‘John is richer than anyone/*no one.’

(Donati : )

(Mathieu : )

⁹ Consistent with the somewhat marginal nature of nessuno in conditionals, the reading ‘if you see no one’ etc. is possible in (), at least for some speakers, especially if the adverb veramente ‘really’ is used; cf. LINGUIST List issue .,  October . See also Haspelmath (: –), who suggests that Italian NCIs are not possible at all in conditionals.

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Common developments ()

conditionals a. Se vedi nessuno, avverti if see.. n.one warn. ‘If you see anyone, let Maria know.’



Maria. Mary (Donati : )

b. ??Se Maria avesse visto nessuno, sarebbe un if Maria have... see. n.one be..  problema. problem ‘If Maria had seen anyone, it would be a problem.’ (Alonso Ovalle and Guerzoni : ) That this is by no means a new pattern can be seen from Parry’s () data, who shows that already in early Italo-Romance dialects, nessuno, along with other originally negative indefinites like niente and nulla ‘nothing’, had spread to non-negative weak NPI contexts such as conditionals and interrogatives: ()

Doma(n)dà s’ el li vit arma nesuna (Venetian) ask.. if  . see.. arm any. ‘He asked whether he saw he had any weapon on him.’ (Atti Lio Mazor, p. , l. , –) (Parry : )

()

fantin si li in nadi de Noxe niente a li harm.. n.thing to . children if  be.. born. of no-licito matrimonio? (Lombard (Milan)) non-legal matrimony ‘Does it harm children at all, if they are born of an illegal marriage?’ (Parry : )

In all these cases, it is clear that individual items join groups of indefinites with a different (wider) distribution, in order to form a single series or build a paradigm with them (as with the English any-, some-, and no- series). Typically, these are indefinites that were morphologically or semantically negative to begin with, and widened their distribution to assimilate to indefinites with a different etymology and historical development. Such countercyclic developments can hence be characterized as a form of analogy under paradigm pressure. If an item joins one of these series, it will adopt the properties of the existing items, on occasion becoming less negative in the process. French nul thus adopted the distribution of the new series of indefinites (personne, rien, aucun, jamais), Portuguese nunca and ninguém that of nada, and Spanish ningun that of nada and nadie. Another type of paradigm pressure manifests itself when a more positive series is lost and a more negative series extends its use to cover the domain of the lost series. This is found in the history of German with the elements of the io-series (ioman >

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

Empirical generalizations

ieman > jemand ‘anybody’ > ‘somebody’, iowergin > iergen > irgendwo ‘anywhere’ > ‘somewhere’). These were originally licensed in NPI contexts in Old High German, but extended their use to affirmative contexts after corresponding elements of the old ete(s)-series (ete(s)wer ‘somebody’, etewar > ete(s)wâ ‘somewhere’) were lost (Jäger : –). It is of course a valid question how a single indefinite from a series can be lost, that is, what triggers such a loss. Old High German etewar > ete(s)wâ ‘somewhere’, for example, simply left the indefinite system when it was reanalysed as an adverb etwa ‘about, perhaps, approximately’ in Early New High German (Jäger : ). In a number of cases, positive or at least non-negative indefinites seem to contain a former negative marker, constituting putative counterexamples to the positive to negative trend. Examples quoted in the literature are Common Celtic *ne-kwos ‘no one’ > Old Irish nech ‘anyone’, Middle Welsh neb ‘anyone’, as well as Russian nekto ‘someone’, Bulgarian njakoj ‘someone’, and cognate items across Slavonic. On one hypothesis these originate from a combination of a negative marker and an interrogative pronoun. However, alternative etymologies are possible and plausible. Willis (a, a) argues that the analysis ‘no one’ > ‘anyone’ (Thurneysen ) is unlikely for the Celtic pronouns and proposes to follow Lewis and Pedersen (: ) in suggesting that *ne-kwos was abbreviated from *kwos ne-kwos ‘someone, someone not’, and that we are thus dealing with a free-choice pronoun in Common Celtic which first generalizes to an ordinary (unrestricted) indefinite before narrowing its distribution to negative contexts in recent Welsh. Likewise, Willis (b) argues that the Slavonic nekto-series more plausibly derives from a free-choice construction ne vě kŭto . . . ‘I don’t know who . . . ’, referring to Haspelmath (, ) and Miklosich (). This etymology would account for the presence of a long vowel in the Common Slavonic reconstructed form *někŭto ‘someone’. Irregular reductive sound change during grammaticalization (in this case, ne vě > ně) is rather common in the grammaticalization of pronouns from free-choice constructions and hence more plausible than lengthening by ablaut gradation of a negative particle. Besides, failure to acquire a negative feature in L acquisition is unlikely, given overwhelming evidence from acquisition studies for the robustness of negative features (e.g. Dimroth  and references cited therein, which conclude that negation is acquired before finiteness). The different types of lexical sources that give rise to developments in the quantifier cycle are discussed in section .... ... Sources of indefinites going through the quantifier cycle Haspelmath (: –) identifies five main sources for what he calls ‘negative indefinites’, that is, items used in the ‘direct negation function’ (= ‘indefinites used in negative clauses’): (i) non-negative scalar focus particles (ii) negative scalar focus particles

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Common developments



(iii) diachronic negative absorption (iv) minimal-unit expressions (v) maximal-unit expressions All source types exploit the scalarity of their ingredients. This property might be inherited from the input items. Alternatively, existing indefinites may be derived by means that equip them with scalar properties (required for them to go through the quantifier cycle), or that make them negative straightaway. We will regroup these source types in order to treat similar phenomena together: A. B. C.

generic nouns and minimal-unit expressions developing into indefinite pronouns incorporation of (negative) focus particles or generalizers into existing indefinites univerbation of an existing indefinite with a negative marker

Additionally, formerly non-NPI indefinites may enter the quantifier cycle, as seen in case of, for instance, French aucun. As we have seen, newly created indefinites enter the quantifier cycle by becoming available in weak NPI contexts, and then gradually retreating to stronger ones. Whether they are available in stronger NPI contexts from the start or become available there only with time depends on the rest of the indefinite system of the language in question. French aucun, discussed above, was, for instance, initially barred from the direct-negation function by the existence of the inherited indefinite nul. Of course, indefinites derived by means of univerbation with a negative marker do not undergo the quantifier cycle in a comparable way to indefinites from other sources, and start out in negative contexts directly. They may nevertheless interact with the developments of other elements through series (paradigm) formation (cf. section ...). We now consider these sources in turn. A. Generic nouns and minimal-unit expressions developing into indefinite pronouns Many languages derive indefinite pronouns to be used in the scope of negation from generic nouns meaning ‘thing’, ‘person’, ‘time’, or ‘place’. Examples from the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean include various Romance, Germanic, and Celtic languages, and Maltese. ()

()

French personne rien

‘anyone, no one’ ‘anything, nothing’

< ‘person’ < ‘thing’

Gothic (ni) manna (ni) waiht(s)

‘anyone, no one’ ‘anything, nothing’

< ‘man’ < waihts ‘thing’

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 ()

()

Empirical generalizations Maltese xejn imkien

‘anything, nothing’ ‘anywhere, nowhere’

< ‘thing’ < ‘place’

Irish aon duine aon rud

‘anyone, no one’ ‘anything, nothing’

< ‘one person’ < ‘one thing’

When such generic nouns enter the quantifier cycle as indefinite pronouns, they are typically restricted to NPI contexts from the start. In other (non-affective) contexts, on the other hand, generic nouns retain their literal meaning, and are not used as indefinites. In Biblical Gothic, for instance, manna in non-affective clauses is interpreted as specific (‘a, some, a certain, . . . man’), as in (), while manna in affective contexts (questions, comparatives, negation) is (or at least can be) interpreted as an indefinite pronoun, that is, ‘anyone, no one’, as in () and ().¹⁰ ()

Þar-uh was manna in Iairusalem, þizei namo Swmaion . . . there- be.. man in Jerusalem . name Simeon ‘There was a (certain) man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.’ (Gothic Bible, Luke :)

() jah manna ni mahta and man  can. ‘and no one could tame him’ ()

ina .

gatamjan tame. (Gothic Bible, Mark :)

ibai witoþ unsar stojiþ mannan, nibai faurþis hauseiþ  law our judge.. man.  before hear.. fram imma jah ufkunnaiþ ƕa taujai? from . and know.. what do.. ‘Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?’ (Gothic Bible, John :)

¹⁰ For conditionals, the situation is less clear; in the example below, manna seems to have a specific interpretation (the ‘because’ clause containing the second manna is a non-affective context and hence not relevant, as it is only an adjunct to the question): (i)

jabai bimait nimiþ manna in sabbato, ei ni if circumcision take.. man on sabbath.   gatairaidau witoþ þata Mosezis; iþ mis hatizoþ, unte tear.... law . Moses.  . hate.. For allana mannan hailana gatawida in sabbato? all.. man. whole.. make.. on sabbath. ‘If a man (someone, anyone?) receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?’ (Gothic Bible, John :)

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Common developments



Examples () and (), repeated here, illustrate the same for historical French. At the time when rien ‘anything, nothing’ was becoming an indefinite, it continued to be used as a noun in non-affective contexts, as in (), where the determiner une ‘a, one’ indicates specificity, while already appearing as an indefinite pronoun (‘anything’) in affective contexts, such as yes/no-questions (). ()

Et une riens les reconforte . . . and one. thing  comfort.. ‘And one thing comforts them . . . ’ (FRANTEXT; Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, c. –, p. )

()

Et vos, seignor, qu’ an volez dire? and  sir what . want.. say. Savez i vos rien contredire? know.. here  anything reply. ‘And you, Sir, what do you want to say about it? Do you have anything to reply?’ (FRANTEXT; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, c. , p. )

Middle Welsh dim retained residual semi-formulaic uses as a noun probably long after it had grammaticalized as an indefinite, notably in expressions of the form ‘the -est thing’: ()

...a chyn vlaenllymet yw a ’r dim blaenllymaf. and as sharp. be.. as  thing sharp. ‘ . . . and it is as sharp as the sharpest thing.’ (Peredur .–) (Willis : )

Minimizers such as ‘(not) an iota’, ‘(not) one bit’, ‘(not) a (single) (living) soul’, and the like can initiate a quantifier cycle as well, besides feeding into Jespersen’s cycle, as discussed in Part I. An example is the negative indefinite negota ‘nothing’ in thirteenth-century Lombard, deriving—with the help of an incorporated negative focus particle, discussed in more detail in the next section—from Latin nec gutta(m) ‘not even a drop’ (Parry ). ()

Lombard Lló negota ’s perde, negota g’ invedrisce there nothing  lose.. nothing there grow.old.. ‘There nothing is lost; nothing grows old.’ (Bonvesin, De scriptura aurea, p. , l. , thirteenth century) (Parry : )

As will be seen in chapter , the development of an NPI indefinite from a generic noun or minimizer correlates with a change in the internal syntax of the item affected (see also section . on the development of standard negators from minimizers and generic nouns).

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

Empirical generalizations

B. Incorporation of (negative) focus particles and generalizers into existing indefinites Another common way of creating NPI indefinites and thus potential candidates for the quantifier cycle is the use of focus particles (‘also, even’) or their negative counterparts (‘not even’). Haspelmath notes that, crosslinguistically, focus particles most frequently combine with wh-pronouns to form indefinites, and less frequently with indefinites derived from the numeral ‘one’ or generic nouns. The latter two, however, are also independently a common source of indefinites undergoing the quantifier cycle. A Romance example of this type is Italian nessuno ‘no one’ < nec ipsu(m) unu(m) ‘not even itself one’ (Haspelmath : , Parry : ). In Moroccan Arabic, ḥ ətta ‘(not) even a’ (< Classical Arabic ḥ attā ‘even, until’) is used as a determiner to derive NPI indefinites (Lucas : –), (). ()

Moroccan Arabic a. ana ma klīt ḥ ətta ḥ āža mən   eat.. even thing since ‘I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.’ b. əl-yom ma ža -day  come.. ‘Today no one came.’

ḥ ətta even

əl-bārəḥ

-yesterday

ḥ ədd anyone

c. A: škun kayskən mʕ-ək B: ḥ ətta wāḥ əd who live.. with- even one A: ‘Who lives with you?’ B: ‘No one.’ (Adila : , Ouali ) (from Lucas : –) Across Slavonic, the ni-series indefinites, found in strong NPI-contexts, derive from a negative focus marker ni ‘not even’. In Serbian and Croatian, the new i-series indefinites, found in weak NPI environments (but not strong ones) derive from a focus marker i ‘and, even’ plus a wh-word. Additionally, generalizers, which also play a role in incipient Jespersen’s cycle, can add a scalar interpretation to an indefinite pronoun or reinforce it, allowing it to enter the quantifier cycle in this way. Relevant examples include generalizers such as ‘ever’ or ‘in this world’. In the older continental West Germanic languages for instance (Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Dutch), the temporal generalizer io ‘ever’ was used to intensify the meaning of NPI pronouns deriving from generic nouns, for instance io-man ‘anyone at all’, io-uuiht ‘anything at all’. ()

ni biscribun gio uuiht thea man umbi menuuerk (Old Saxon)  care.. ever thing . men about evil.work ‘the men did not care (a(ny) thing) at all about the evil [they were doing]’ (Heliand –)

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Common developments



Similarly, Gothic formed NPI indefinites restricted to the scope of negation by means of encliticizing the particle -hun, more or less translating as ‘ever’, to numerals such as ains ‘a (certain)’, generic nouns such as manna ‘man’, and wh-pronouns such as ƕas ‘who’ and ƕan ‘when’, forming (ni) ainshun ‘no (one)’, (ni) mannahun ‘nobody’, (ni) ƕashun ‘no one’, (ni) ƕanhun ‘never’. ()

ni mannan-hun bi wig goljaiþ.  man.- by way greet.. ‘Do not greet anyone along the way.’

(Gothic Bible, Luke :)

Gothic -hun is etymologically related to the Northwest Germanic particle -gi(n) with the same generalizing function (Jespersen : –), cf. Old High German (n-)iower-gin ‘anywhere/nowhere’ (lit. ‘(-)ever-where-ever’), Icelandic ekki ‘not’ < (ni) eitt-gi ‘() one-ever’ (Christensen ; see also Jespersen ). Other common generalizers are phrases signifying ‘in the/this world’. The Welsh indefinite dim byd ‘anything, nothing’ is a contraction of earlier dim yn y byd ‘anything in the world’, whose diachronic path is illustrated in examples ()–(). ()

Yr hynny ual kynt ny wneuthum j dim drwc o ’r byt. despite . as before  do..  anything bad of  world ‘Nevertheless as before I didn’t do anything bad at all (in the world).’ (Ystoryaeu Seint Greal, l. , Middle Welsh) (Willis : )

()

. . . am nad oedd ef yn kasav dim yn y for . be..   hate. anything in  byd yn gymaint a medd dod. world  so.much as drunkenness ‘ . . . since he hated nothing in the world (nothing at all) as much as drunkenness.’ (Gesta Romanorum, l. , sixteenth century) (Willis : )

()

fel na cheis i ddim amser i syfenu dim byd. so.that . get..  any time to write. anything ‘ . . . so that I didn’t get any time to write anything.’ (William Rees, Llythyrau ’Rhen Ffarmwr .–, ) (Willis : )

In (), the indefinite dim ‘anything’ is used as a determiner to the adjective drwc ‘bad’, and o’r byt ‘in this world’ is used as an emphatic generalizer. In (), dim yn y byd ‘anything in this world, anything at all’ has become an emphatic indefinite pronoun. At this stage, it can no longer be modified by an adjective. In (), finally, the emphatic character has been lost, and dim byd is a neutral NPI indefinite meaning ‘anything, nothing’. The same process lies behind parallel Goidelic Celtic indefinites, such as Scottish Gaelic duine sam bith ‘anyone’ < Old Irish duine isin bith ‘person in the world’.

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

Empirical generalizations

A further type of focus maker is adverbial elements such as ‘truly’, which in some Romance varieties have led to the formation of new NPIs and negative indefinites, as with early Tuscan veruno < Latin vere unu(m) ‘truly one’ > ‘someone’ > ‘anyone’ (cf. also Romanian vreun(ul)) (Parry : ). While available in weak NPI contexts such as conditionals, it was also found in negative clauses, (). It could even express sentential negation on its own, as the coordination sentence in () shows. ()

che veruno non lavori nè apra bottega il venerdì  anyone  work.. nor open.. shop  Friday sancto holy ‘that no one work or open shop on Good Friday’ (Breve dell’arte de’ calzolai, p. , ll. –, ) (Parry : )

()

sicché veruno si può lamentare, né dire: Io . . . so.that no.one  can.. complain. nor say. I ‘so that no one can complain, nor say: I . . . ’ (D. Cavalca, Epistola di S. Girolamo, p. , l. , ) (Parry : )

This type of development seems to initially derive polarity-neutral indefinites. Indeed, in some languages items on this pattern have remained neutral or even positive for polarity. This is the case for the Goidelic Celtic positive éigin-series indefinites formed, as in Irish rud éigin, Scottish Gaelic rudeigin ‘something’ < Old Irish rud ‘thing’ + éicin ‘at all’ < ‘indeed’ < ‘truly’ < ‘necessarily, of necessity’, dative of éicen ‘necessity’. Apart from this last type, all strategies described above immediately derive NPI indefinites, in some cases even restricted to strong NPI contexts, namely direct negation. In this type, clearly, the scalar semantics of the focus particles is the reason for their suitability for the creation of new polar and eventually negative indefinites. C. Univerbation with a negative marker Indefinites of any source type—whether derived from minimizers, generalizers, items meaning ‘one’, generic nouns, interrogative pronouns, or any of the above derived with the help of (non-negative) focus particles—can become morphologically negative by incorporating a negative particle. In the Indo-European languages, this has been a very common strategy of deriving negative indefinites (Bernini and Ramat : ). Often-cited examples include Latin nemo ‘no one’ < *ne homo ‘no man’ and nihil ‘nothing’ < *ne hilum ‘no thread’ (Parry : ). As Haspelmath (: ) notes, this process is typically restricted to the direct negation function of indefinites. Haspelmath claims that adjacency is necessary for such an incorporation to occur, and argues that therefore the contribution of ‘negative absorption’ to the creation of new negative indefinites should not be overstated (Haspelmath : ). He furthermore argues that the fact that, for instance, English nothing could co-occur

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Common developments



with the former preverbal negation particle ne in older stages of the language shows that this cannot have been a case of negative absorption. There are, however, indications that the co-occurrence of sentential negation marker ni/ne and indefinites with incorporated ni/ne is a more recent innovation in the West Germanic languages. Originally, the series of indefinites derived with the scalar focus particle io ‘ever’ (see previous subsection) predominated (Jäger , Breitbarth a). Initially, the sentential negation marker ni/ne and the ni/ne incorporated into the indefinite were the same element. As for how this incorporation might have happened, consider again the development of the Germanic indefinites out of generic nouns or interrogative pronouns. Due to their scalar properties, their pronominal use was from the outset restricted to scale-reversing contexts. Gothic manna ‘man’ and waiht ‘thing’, for instance, were used as indefinite pronouns (‘anyone/no one, anything/nothing’) only in negative contexts (in non-negative contexts, they retained their nominal meaning). They would therefore necessarily co-occur with the negation marker ni ‘not’, whether adjacent to it or not (cf. examples ()–()). If Gothic can be taken as indicative for the situation in early Germanic more generally, this suggests that the exceptionless association with the negative marker eventually led to the incorporation into the pronoun. Such contraction of originally non-adjacent elements in the formation of new indefinites is attested elsewhere, for instance, in the creation of the French quelque- or the Italian qualche-series out of former free-relative structures (quel/ qual X que/che . . . ), discussed in more detail in section ... Notwithstanding Haspelmath’s objections, based on older English, it seems likely that the ni/ne-marked indefinites developed out of the ni/ne-free ones by incorporation/univerbation (cf. also Bernini and Ramat , Jäger : ff., Jäger : –). The developments envisaged are, for instance, Old High German and Old Saxon ni + io-man ‘ + anyone’ (lit.  + ‘ever’ + ‘man’) > nioman ‘no one’, ni + io-wiht ‘ + anything’ (lit.  + ‘ever’ + ‘thing’) > niowiht ‘nothing’, and ni + iowergin ‘ + anywhere’ > niowergin ‘nowhere’). Ni-marked forms appear only sporadically in Old Saxon (Breitbarth a, b, a), and originally (in older texts) co-occurrence with the sentential negator was dispreferred compared to nifree indefinites. Jäger’s (: ) data suggest that the same was true for Old High German (cf. section .).¹¹ It furthermore appears that the incorporation can be reiterated, suggesting an originally emphatic function. For Dutch, Zeijlstra () calls such ‘reinforced’ ¹¹ Jäger (: –) states that the combination of negation particle and indefinite must have been fully lexicalized by the Old High German period, and no longer productive. This probably also holds for the other older West Germanic languages at the point when Jespersen’s cycle started. This is important for the distinction between the sentential negation marker ni, which we analysed as [uNEG], at least for Old Saxon, in chapter , and the n-marked indefinites, which we take to be [iNEG] negative quantifiers initially, cf. chapters  and .

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

Empirical generalizations

indefinites formed from a negative indefinite and the sentential negator ‘emphatic multiple negative expressions’, such as niemand niet ‘no one not’ (cf. also van der Auwera, De Cuypere, and Neuckermans , Aelbrecht , ). An argument in favour of incorporation in the case of Dutch ‘emphatic multiple negative expressions’ is the strict adjacency requirement between a negative indefinite and niet (Aelbrecht ), even in fragment answers.¹² The patterns observed by Aelbrecht for colloquial Belgian Dutch, (), are found in Middle and Modern Low German as well, (), and also in Modern Standard Afrikaans, (). ()

Asse Dutch (Brabantine) a. Ij ee niemand  . no.one ‘He didn’t see anyone.’

nie 

b. A: Wie eit=em gezien? who .= see. ‘Who did he see?’ ‘No one.’ ()

gezien. see. B: Niemand nie. no.one  (Aelbrecht )

Low German a. . . . unde beholden us dar nichtes nicht eghens and keep.. . there nothing. nothing own. mer ane to ewigen tiden. (Middle Low German) any.more on to eternal. time. ‘ . . . and [we] keep nothing of it at all to ourselves any more until eternity’ (Scharnebeck //) b. An so wat hest Du nie nich dacht. (Modern Low German) to such something .  never  think. ‘You never thought about something like that.’ (Reuter, Kein Hüsung, ch. ) (Breitbarth a: ) c. ‘Wat hest dor?’ Aewer ick kunn swigen un säd: what . there but  can.. be.silent. and say.. ‘Oh, nicks nich!’ oh nothing  ‘ “What do you have there?” But I managed to stay silent and said: “Oh, nothing (at all).” ’ (Reuter, Schurr Murr, ch. ) (Breitbarth a: )

()

Modern Standard Afrikaans a. Hulle is nooit nie tevrede nie. (Modern Standard Afrikaans)  be never  satisfied  ‘They are NEVER satisfied.’ (Biberauer : )

¹² According to Haegeman and Lohndal (), however, the negative indefinite and niet are not always adjacent, which would speak against an analysis as a single constituent.

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Common developments



b. A: Wie het my sjokolade gesteel? who  . chocolate steal. B: Niemand nie; dis onder jou leesboek! no.one  .be under . read.book ‘Who has stolen my chocolate?’ ‘No one; it’s under the book you’re reading!’ (Biberauer : –) Biberauer (: ) calls this a ‘sub-Jespersen’s cycle’, reinforcing non-clausal elements. In Modern Standard Afrikaans, this ‘reinforcing’ in fact not only affects indefinites, but also definite phrases in constituent negation, ().¹³ ()

Nie die GELD nie, maar die TYD pla hom.   money  but  time worry. . ‘[It is] not the MONEY, but the TIME [that] worries him.’ (Biberauer : )

Outside of Germanic, somewhat similar phenomena may be observed in a range of Arabic varieties. While Arabic varieties generally have distinct morphemes for the negation of verbal and non-verbal predicates (typically mā . . . -š and miš, respectively, for varieties that have undergone Jespersen’s cycle, and mā and mū for those that have not), in many cases the verbal negator may actually cliticize to a wider range of hosts than just clear-cut verbs, including personal pronouns (e.g. Egyptian Arabic huwwa ‘he (is)’ > mahuwwāš ‘he is not’), and the NPI indefinites ḥ add/ḥ ada ‘anyone’ and ʿʕumr- ‘ever’ (< ‘age, life’). This gives rise, for example in Egyptian Arabic, to the negative quantifiers maḥ addiš ‘no one’ and maʿʕumrīš ‘never.’. Haspelmath (: –) views such negative indefinites as genuine cases of absorption and links their appearance to Jespersen’s () Negative First Principle, in view of the fact that these ‘anyone’ and ‘ever’ indefinites may only host negation when they occur before the main verb, as illustrated for Egyptian Arabic in (). ()

a. ma ḥ addi-š yiʕraf  anyone- know.. ‘No one can read my handwriting.’

yiʔra read..

xaṭt-̣ i line-

b. ma šufti-š ḥ add (*šufti ma ḥ addiš)  see..- anyone ‘I didn’t see anyone.’ (Mitchell : , cited in Haspelmath : ) In fact, however, it is doubtful whether such elements should really be seen as lexicalized negative quantifiers (the result of univerbation), as opposed to NPIs with the potential to host the marker(s) of sentential negation, since, unlike typical

¹³ The glosses, in particular of nie as , are Biberauer’s ().

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

Empirical generalizations

negative quantifiers and NCIs, they never occur in isolation in fragment answers (cf. Bernini and Ramat : ). We return to the interaction of the quantifier cycle and negative concord in section .. To summarize, the quantifier cycle begins with non-NPI indefinites such as French aucun, nominal minimizers or generalizers such as Welsh dim, indefinites derived by means of a (negative) focus particle such as Moroccan Arabic ḥ ətta ḥ ədd, and from negative quantifiers formed by univerbation with a negative marker such as German nichts < ni(o)wiht. This is summarized in Figure .. Indefinites that start out as nonnegative diachronically become restricted to increasingly stronger NPI contexts, while indefinites formed by univerbation with a negative marker are initially restricted to direct negation contexts, though they may later align with weaker NPIs (see further section ..., and section ..). nominal minimizer non-NPI indefinite

weak NPI

strong NPI

focus particle + indef neg + indef

F . The quantifier cycle

.. The free-choice cycle Free-choice indefinites as well as free-relative constructions and concessive conditionals can also form a possible entry point into the quantifier cycle, in the sense that they can develop into NPIs and eventually negative indefinites (Willis a, b). Free-choice indefinites are often derived from expressions of choice or volition (‘what (ever) you want/wish/like’) or free relatives (‘what(ever) it may be’). Contrary to the quantifier cycle discussed in the previous section, this ‘free-choice cycle’, illustrated in () and in Figure ., proceeds in the opposite direction in terms of Haspelmath’s implicational map of indefinite functions: items begin by marking free choice only, before spreading into (weak) NPI contexts and potentially beyond; they do not originate as ordinary indefinites available in non-affective contexts. specific

irrealis–nonspecific

question/ conditional

comparative

free choice

Russian ugodno Czech -koli, Lezgian xajit’ani French qui que ce soit Russian -libo Russian -nibud’ Lezgian jat’ani, French quelque Czech - si

F . The free-choice cycle (adapted from Haspelmath : )

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Common developments ()



free choice > comparative >question/conditional >irrealis–non-specific >specific

The reason for calling this development a cycle is once more the renewability of elements arising through this development by means of an iteration of the same process. Russian, for instance, has several series of indefinites in various stages of this development, as Figure . demonstrates. In a number of cases, the free-choice items feeding this process ultimately derive from free relatives. Examples of this type include French quelque ‘some’, quelqu’un ‘someone’, etc. (< quel X que [ce soit, etc.] ‘whatever X [this may be, etc.]’) (Foulet , Combettes : ); Italian qualche ‘some’, qualcuno ‘someone’ < *quale che (sia) ‘which it may be’ (Parry : ); and Breton bennak (compare innovative Breton unan bennak ‘someone’ with more conservative Welsh pa un bynnag ‘whichever one [this may be, etc.]’, with bennak/bynnag < *py ‘who, what’ + nag ‘not’, Willis b). Examples () and () illustrate the univerbation of French quel que as a single unit: in (), quel is a determiner and que a complementizer forming a freerelative construction embracing the noun, while, in (), the two form a single free-relative marker preceding the noun. ()

Mes va quel part que tu but go.. which part   ‘But go wherever you want.’ (Lancelot, )

()

Car mes sires m’ en ocirra en quel que leu qu’il for . Lord  of. kill.. in whatever place = me truist.  find.. ‘For my Lord will kill me in whatever place he should find me.’ (La queste del Saint Graal, ) (Combettes : )

voldras. (Old French) want.. (Combettes : )

The examples in () and () demonstrate the semantic shift from the Old French free relative to a non-specific indefinite occurring in weak NPI contexts such as conditionals in fourteenth-century Middle French, (), and later in this period (fifteenth century) to a specific indefinite, () (cf. also Ingham and Kallel ).¹⁴ ()

Et s’ il y a quelque chose morte . . . je le coupe and if  any thing dead.   cut.. ou retranche. or omit.. ‘If there is anything dead . . . I shall cut or omit it.’ (Jean Daudin, ) (Combettes : )

¹⁴ See Combettes (: –) for more detail and intermediate contexts in the development of quelque.

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 ()

Empirical generalizations Le roy eut quelque amy qui l’ en advertit the king have.. some friend who  . notify.. ‘The king had some (specific) friend who notified him of it.’ (Commynes, Mémoires, /) (Combettes : )

In French, the result is a new indefinite quelque-series available in all contexts (including assertive ones) except direct negation. In Slavonic this pathway creates NPI indefinite series (such as the Russian libo-series, the Polish kolwiek-series and the Serbian and Croatian god-series) with a ‘bagel’ distribution (Błaszczak , , , Pereltsvaig , Willis b), that is, items available in all NPI contexts except direct negation. Combettes () notes that for a certain period in Middle French, quelque was also available in negative clauses such as (). ()

Il n’ est quelque bien qui ne reluise plus   be.. any/some good   shine... more est approuvé par la plaisamment quant il pleasantly when  be.. approve. by . congnoissance de plusieurs. insight of several. ‘There is no good that doesn’t shine more pleasantly when it is approved by the insight of several people.’ (Jean Daudin, ) (adapted from Combettes : )

Ingham and Kallel () argue that this is still an emphatic free-choice use (indeed, since free choice is a meaning, not a syntactic environment, it is perfectly possible for a single instance of a particular item to be both ‘free choice’ and ‘direct negation’ at the same time). Once quelque had lost this meaning, it not only disappeared from free-choice contexts, but also from negative ones. In some cases, a free-choice item may specialize for non-assertive contexts, giving rise to a series of NPI indefinites found in both weak and strong NPI contexts. An example is the Welsh unrhyw-series, derived from unrhyw ‘any’ < ‘any kind of ’ < un ‘one, same’ + rhyw ‘kind’. This arose in the early modern period, and became common in the twentieth century (Willis a, a): ()

Y mae gan y penllywydd . . . hawl i gymmeryd . . . unrhyw  be.. with  head right to take. any gyfran o ’u meddiannau ag a farno ’fe yn proportion of  possessions as  judge...   angenrheidiol . . . necessary ‘The head . . . has the right to take . . . any proportion of their possessions that he judges to be necessary . . . ’ (Historical Corpus of the Welsh Language, Meddyliau yr Esgob Watson, p. ) ()

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Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle ()



llymach nac vnrryw gleddau-daufinioc sharper than any sword-two.edged ‘sharper than any (kind of) two-edged sword’ (Historical Corpus of the Welsh Language, Testament Newydd b, Hebrews :, ) (Willis a: )

In non-assertive environments, the free-choice meaning comes to be bleached, and these indefinites come to replace the existing indefinites in those contexts. While the innovation of the use under direct negation of the Welsh unrhyw series may be attributed to the influence of English any (see section .), no comparable external influence is evident for similar developments in Italo-Romance. Parry (), referring to Rohlfs (: –), discusses historical examples from ItaloRomance dialects in which indefinites originating from free relatives did proceed to negative contexts, namely chivelli < q(u)i / c(u)i velles ‘who(ever) you wish’, covelle < Latin quod velles ‘what(ever) you wish’, as in (): ()

Tuscan (Assisi) se a coloro, coi quagli vive e more, no if to . with . live.. and die..  lassasse covelle leave... whatever ‘if to those with whom he lives and dies, he were not to leave anything’ (Statuti della Confraternita dei Disciplinati, pp. –, ) (Parry : )

Finally, plausible etymologies exist for Polish żaden ‘no’ and Slovene noben ‘no’ that derive them from free-choice items (Willis b: –, –). These are both NCIs that have joined the ni-series of items that are restricted to direct negative contexts. If these etymologies are correct, these items have travelled all the way along the path from free-choice item to full NCI. To sum up, former free-choice items may enter the quantifier cycle by first becoming available in (weak) NPI contexts, where they may remain (or in rare cases extend to strong NPI contexts), or by extending their distribution to non-affective/positive contexts, potentially ultimately even giving up their NPI uses. The free-choice cycle thus has two pathways, one giving rise to non-affective indefinites, and one interacting with the negative system and giving rise to NPIs (or ultimately even NCIs). The second of these, more relevant in the context of negation, is given in (). ()

The (negative) free-choice cycle free choice > comparative >

weak NPI

(> strong NPI)

. Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle and negative concord Another commonly occurring development related to the quantifier cycle is the emergence and disappearance of the different sub-types of negative concord. As we

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

Empirical generalizations

saw in chapter , indefinites in the scope of negation can be: (i) (strong) NPIs; (ii) NCIs; or (iii) negative quantifiers. The latter two can express sentential negation in isolation, and NCIs may co-occur with the expression of standard sentential negation or with other NCIs, this co-occurrence being labelled negative concord (Giannakidou : ). Negative quantifiers on the other hand, being semantically negative, may not co-occur with other negative quantifiers, or expressions of sentential negation, without giving rise to logical double (or multiple) negation (but see the discussion of Old Saxon below and in section ..). Ladusaw’s () notion of a ‘Jespersen argument cycle’ reflects the widespread idea (e.g. Zeijlstra , de Swart ) that there is an intimate connection between the cyclic reinforcement of the expression of standard sentential negation (Jespersen’s cycle) and what we have here called the quantifier cycle, that is, the frequently observed shift of indefinites from less negative to more negative. Ladusaw envisaged four stages in the progression of items through the quantifier cycle, which we can represent as in (). ()

a. b. c. d.

She didn’t say one thing. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t say nothing. She said nothing.

This progression from ‘one thing’ to ‘nothing’ both parallels and interacts with Jespersen’s cycle in sentential negation. The shift from (a) to (b) involves the grammaticalization of an indefinite pronoun from an indefinite noun phrase, and it is often exactly this sort of grammaticalization that creates new indefinites which then feed Jespersen’s cycle (Welsh ddim, Norwegian ikke, etc.). The shift from (b) to (c) involves incorporation of a negative particle into the indefinite, found also in many of the attested new markers of sentential negation (Italo-Romance varieties nen(t), English not, German nicht, Dutch niet, etc.). Finally, the shift from (c) to (d) seems to parallel the shift from bipartite expression of negation to single negation in the shift from stage II to III of Jespersen’s cycle (cf. English ne . . . not > not or French ne . . . pas > pas). The question, then, is whether or not these apparent interactions are the result of genuine connections between the two cycles. In particular, we need to ask whether there is a regular connection between the reinforcement of the expression of negation (under Jespersen’s cycle) and the emergence of negative concord. As we will see, despite various claims in the literature along these lines, there is no necessary link. To see why, we first need an understanding of the typology of negative-concord systems. Given the definitions adopted in section ., a negative-concord system is one that permits: (a) the co-occurrence of a marker of sentential negation with an indefinite that is also able to express negation in isolation (= negative doubling); or

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Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle



(b) the co-occurrence of more than one indefinite able to express negation in isolation (= negative spread); or (c) both of these two possibilities. This means that the co-occurrence of NPI indefinites (e.g. ‘She didn’t give anything to anyone’) is not sufficient for a language to qualify as a negative-concord language. Options (b) and (c) (see below for option (a)) require the indefinites involved to be NCIs, defined in section . as items capable of expressing negation on their own in fragment answers, but also of co-occurring either with other NCIs or the marker of sentential negation, giving rise to only a single logical negation in interpretation. This distinguishes them from negative quantifiers, which can equally express sentential negation in isolation, but whose co-occurrence leads to logical double (or multiple) negation in interpretation. NCIs therefore indicate the presence of a possibly abstract sentential negation operator without being semantically negative themselves. Option (c) is a particularly common way for indefinites and negation markers to interact in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The examples in () (from Giannakidou : –) illustrate the fact that several NCIs may co-occur with each other in these languages without giving rise to several logical negations cancelling each other out. This holds true whether the sentential negation marker needs to be present regardless of the position of NCIs (strict negative concord, ()), or whether the negative marker needs to be absent when an NCI precedes the verb (non-strict negative concord, ()).¹⁵ ()

()

a. Nikt *(nie) uderzył nikogo. n.person  hit.. n.person ‘Nobody hit anyone.’ b. Nimeni *(nu) vazu nimic. n.person  see.. n.thing ‘Nobody saw anything.’ Nessuno ha letto n.person . read. ‘Nobody read anything.’

niente. n.thing

(Polish)

(Romanian)

(Italian)

¹⁵ Giannakidou () considers negative spread and (strict) negative doubling to be, by definition, mutually exclusive (‘we should note again that Greek, Hungarian, and the Slavic languages do not exhibit negative spread and require [the sentential negator] regardless of the number of n-words’, Giannakidou : ; emphasis ours), and reserves the term negative spread for the multiple occurrence of NCIs in non-strict negative-concord languages where the standard negative marker is absent in case of a preverbal NCI. We follow here what we take to be the more conventional definition of negative spread, namely the co-occurrence of several NCIs in a negative clause, whether or not the standard negative marker is also present.

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

Empirical generalizations

Options (a) or (b) can both be found alone, however. In the case of option (a) without option (b), we have negative doubling without negative spread. That is, the indefinites in question are capable of expressing negation in isolation (like negative quantifiers in a non-negative-concord language), they co-occur with the standard negative marker without giving rise to double or multiple negation (unlike negative quantifiers in a non-negative-concord language), but they do not co-occur with each other in a single clause. This sort of configuration seems to be rare, but is sporadically attested in Old Saxon (Breitbarth a, ). In (a), we see negative doubling between ni (fused with the finite verb is ‘is’ into nis) and the indefinite nigienumu ‘none’. If there is more than one indefinite in a negative clause in Old Saxon, at most one can be n-marked, as in (a), where the other indefinite, the determiner enig ‘any’, is not n-marked. In (b), there are two indefinites, and neither is n-marked. That is to say, while negative doubling is possible in Old Saxon, it is not obligatory, and negative spread is excluded. ()

Old Saxon a. more than one indefinite, one n-marked, one not Nis thes [tueho enig] [gumono nigienumu] . . . .be.. .. doubt any man.. none.. ‘There is no doubt about it to any of the men . . . ’ (Heliand –) b. more than one indefinite, none n-marked: te enigoro frumu huuergin it ni mag iu   can . to any... benefit.. at.all uuerdan te enigumu uuilleon. become. to any... happiness.. ‘It is not able to do you any good at all, (bring you) any happiness.’ (Heliand –)

Turning to possible interactions between (some types of) negative concord and Jespersen’s cycle, Haspelmath (: ) suggests that negative spread without negative doubling, that is, option (b) alone, is a combination often found in languages in the process of undergoing Jespersen’s cycle. Cases in point include French, Middle High German, Middle Low German, and Maltese. In these languages, NCIs co-occur either with other NCIs or with the former preverbal negator, but not with the new negator that arose through Jespersen’s cycle. Thus, with respect to the old negator, they are type (c) languages, while, with respect to the new negator, they are type (b) languages. In the Middle Low German examples in (), (a) shows co-occurrence of an nmarked indefinite with the old negator ne. As the old preverbal particle is no longer the standard expression of negation in these languages at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle (see chapter ), this kind of co-occurrence cannot be classed as negative doubling. Example (b) shows two n-marked indefinites co-occurring with one another (in the absence of the old negator); co-occurrence of n-marked indefinites with the new negator nicht is not attested.

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Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle ()



Middle Low German a. Ok en=is de stad Oldenborch nyn lethmathe der also =be..  city Oldenburg no member . Dutschen hanse . . . German Hansa ‘Even though the city of Oldenburg is not a member of the German Hansa (trade league) . . . ’ (Oldenburg //) b. Na sunte Micheles daghe  scal nemen nenne after St. Michael. day.  shall no.one no rok dragen . . . cloak wear. ‘No one shall wear a/any cloak after St. Michael’s day  . . . ’ (Braunschweig )

Similarly, for French, example () exemplifies co-occurence of the old negator ne with two personne-series indefinites; again, co-occurrence with the new negator pas is not possible. In the Maltese example in (), two ħadd-series indefinites may cooccur with the old negator ma, but not with the new negator -x. ()

Sommes-nous censés gober que personne n’ be..- require.. swallow.  no.one  a rien remarqué . . . (French) . nothing notice. ‘Are we really to believe that nobody noticed anything . . . ?’ (http://www. europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE++ ITEMS+DOC+XML+V//FR&language=FR accessed  March )

()

Ħadd ma qal-li(*-x) no.one  say..-.(-) ‘No one told me anything.’

xejn. nothing

(Maltese) (Lucas b: )

Haspelmath (: –) considers this type of negative concord to be a direct result of the interaction of Jespersen’s cycle and changes affecting indefinites in the scope of negation. In order to assess this claim, we need to look separately at two preconditions that make negative concord possible in a language: (i) the availability of the right type of indefinite; and (ii) the availability of the right kind of negator. Recall in this connection that it is indefinites with the distribution of NCIs that participate in negative concord, whether or not option (a) (negative doubling) obtains in addition to option (b) (negative spread). As we saw in section .., indefinites undergoing a gradual negativization, particularly indefinites deriving from generic nouns and minimal-unit expressions, typically proceed from an NPI distribution to the distribution of NCIs, not to that of negative quantifiers. The direct

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

Empirical generalizations

creation of negative quantifiers only seems to occur through univerbation with a negative marker, as with Latin nihil ‘nothing’ < *ni hilum ‘no thread’, nemo ‘no one’ < ne homo ‘no man’ or Old Saxon niouuiht ‘nothing’ < ni io uuiht ‘ ever thing’, nioman ‘no one’ < ni io man ‘ ever man’. This fact accounts for the original distribution and frequency of these items: Classical Latin did not allow negative doubling, and while Old Saxon did have negative doubling (which can be accounted for by the properties of the negative marker ni; see chapter ), it did not have negative spread. The indefinites of these two languages did, however, later develop the distribution of NCIs (in Romance and Middle Low German respectively). Considering that NCIs, too, are capable of expressing negation in isolation (Ladusaw , cf. section .), this should not automatically be considered a weakening or countercyclic development of the indefinites in question: another possibility is a change in the status of the sentential negation marker. The final point to note here is that elements entering the system of indefinites via the free-choice route typically only become NPIs. That is, with isolated exceptions, they do not go on to become NCIs participating in negative concord (cf. section ..). Thus the quantifier cycle typically creates NCIs, mostly via a stage as NPIs. This satisfies precondition (i) for a negative-concord system, and on its own necessarily derives only negative spread (option (b) only). The presence of negative doubling requires satisfaction of precondition (ii), namely the availability of a sententialnegation marker with the right properties. Given this reasoning, Haspelmath’s generalization that option (b) without option (a) is a by-product of Jespersen’s cycle does not automatically hold. Indeed, the fact that the alleged correlation appears often to hold in practice is probably due to the influence of language standardization (see e.g. Weiß , Martineau and Déprez ), because non-standard varieties of languages whose standard varieties appear to corroborate Haspelmath’s generalization sometimes violate it: some do develop negative doubling with the new, postverbal negation marker, as illustrated in ()–(). ()

Italo-Romance a. a veul nen mangé  want..  eat. ‘(S)he doesn’t want to eat anything!’ b. l’ ha minga  .  ‘Nobody has eaten!’

()

mangiá eat.

gnente nothing

(Turinese)

nisün nobody

(Milanese) (Parry : )

Mia hod neamad koa stikl broud ned gschengt (Bavarian) . . nobody no piece bread  give. ‘Nobody gave me a/any piece of bread.’ (Weiß : )

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Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle ()



a. Que voudriez-vous que je fisse? Je n’ what want..-   do...   ai pas rien faire. (sixteenth-century French) have.  nothing to do. ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t do anything.’ (Bonaventure des Periers, Les contes et joyeux devis de Bonaventure des Periers, nouvelle ; from Martineau and Déprez : ) b. J’ ai pas rien trouvé. (Colloquial Parisian French) I .  nothing find. ‘I didn’t find anything.’ (Bauche  []: ) c. Je veux pas rien te dire. (Québécois French) I want..  nothing  tell. ‘I don’t want to tell you anything.’ (Martineau and Déprez : )

For Zeijlstra (), negative doubling of this sort with the newly grammaticalized negator is a sign of an (imminent) return to stage I of Jespersen’s cycle; for Haspelmath (: ), it is a return to isomorphism in the expression of negation. Nevertheless, Martineau and Déprez (: ) observe for French that, while cooccurrence of pas and NCIs has become more frequent in colloquial Canadian French since the beginning of the twentieth century (aucun ‘no’ being joined by pas in fully .% of occurrences in low-register written texts of the period, and rien ‘nothing’ with pas in .%), such structures have in fact been available at a low frequency throughout the history of the French language in both France and Canada. They are thus not best viewed as a recent innovation. It is worth noting in this connection the difficulty of applying Haspelmath’s () own classification of indefinites according to their interaction with the expression of sentential negation. Haspelmath distinguishes the following three kinds of interaction between negative indefinites and sentential negation: (i) NV-NI: the negative indefinite co-occurs with an overtly negated verb, amounting to (a version of) strict negative concord; (ii) (N)V-NI: verbal negation is optionally present, absent especially if the negative indefinite precedes the verb, amounting to (a version of) non-strict negative concord; (iii) V-NI: negation is expressed only on the indefinite. The problem with this division is that, in our terms, the first two types do not necessarily refer to negative-concord systems, with (i) equalling strict, and (ii) nonstrict negative concord, even though this interpretation suggests itself, and is indeed often entertained in the literature (cf. Parry : , Willmott : ). Haspelmath (: ) states that he deliberately uses the term ‘NI’ to refer to an ‘indefinite pronoun that has “direct negation” as an important function’, avoiding a

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

Empirical generalizations

distinction between NCIs (capable of expressing negation in isolation, or ‘negative interpretation of elliptical indefinites’, in his terms), negative quantifiers, and NPIs, which, as seen above, are (depending on their strength) restricted to the scope of negation, but cannot express negation themselves and hence do not take part in negative concord. Haspelmath’s distinction bundles together rather disparate patterns that it is helpful to keep apart.¹⁶ When we do so, it becomes clear that there is no necessary causal link between the progression through Jespersen’s cycle and the development of negative concord. A related but distinct observation that is frequently made in the literature, called ‘Jespersen’s Generalization’ by Rowlett (), must also be treated with caution. According to this generalization, there is a regular connection between the phrasal status of a clausal negator and the presence of negative concord in a language: weakening of the negator is connected to the innovation of negative concord. There are two slightly divergent formulations of this generalization available: ()

A language is [a negative-concord] language iff the overt marker of pure sentential negation is not associated with SpecNegP. (Rowlett : )

()

All languages with a negative marker X0 are [negative-concord] languages [ . . . ]. (Zeijlstra : )

The difference between () and () lies in the direction of the implication. Rowlett excludes negative concord in languages with phrasal elements expressing ‘pure sentential negation’, while a negative head would require a language to be a negative concord language. Rowlett’s formulation is too strong. For example, Northern Sámi has a negative head—a negative verb, as is typical of many Uralic languages—but has neither negative doubling nor negative spread. This is because Northern Sámi only has NPI indefinites, as illustrated for mihkkege () and maidege () ‘anything’ in ()–().¹⁷ These examples show that the indefinite is indeed a weak NPI, since it is available in conditionals () and questions (), besides sentential negation (), and that it is unable to express negation on its own in an elliptical context () (examples due to Marit Julien, p.c.).

¹⁶ This also means that The World Atlas of Language Structures (Dryer and Haspelmath ) is problematic as a resource when looking at the incidence and patterns of negative concord. As Van Alsenoy and van der Auwera () argue, based on a survey of  non-European languages, negative concord is independent of head status (‘preverbal negation’) and stage of Jespersen’s cycle (they call the bipartite expression of sentential negation ‘double negation’). ¹⁷ This form is morphologically complex: mii/maid ‘what’ + ge ‘even, also’. Other indefinites of this geseries are giige ‘anyone’ (‘who’ + ge), oktage ‘anyone (person)’ (‘one’ + ge) and makkárge ‘any kind of ’ (‘what kind of ’ + ge). We are grateful to Marit Julien (p.c.) for providing us with the information on Northern Sámi and with all the Northern Sámi examples.

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Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle ()

Jos leat oaidnán maidege, de if be.. see. anything, then ‘If you have seen anything, you must tell.’

()

Lea go dahkan be..  do. ‘Has s/he done anything?’

()

Sune ii daga maidege. Sune . do anything. ‘Sune doesn’t do anything.’

()

A: Maid don leat oaidnán? what.  be.. see. A: ‘What have you seen?’ B: ‘Nothing’

galggat shall.



dadjat. say

maidege? anything

B: *(In) .

maidege. anything

On the other hand, there are languages with phrasal negators that nevertheless have negative doubling and/or negative spread, such as Welsh (Borsley and Jones , Willis a: –), and the varieties of Italo-Romance, German, and French in ()–().¹⁸ Zeijlstra’s () formulation is weaker than Rowlett’s and claims only that head status of a negative marker (perhaps not even the standard sentential negator) is a sure predictor of a language having negative concord: nothing is said about languages with phrasal negation markers. These may or may not be negative-concord languages. Thus the varieties mentioned in the previous paragraph are not counterexamples to this claim. Nevertheless, Zeijlstra’s formulation of the dependency is still contradicted by languages, such as Northern Sámi, whose indefinite systems simply lack indefinites with the distribution of NCIs, and only have NPI indefinites to use in the scope of negation. And while many nonstandard varieties of English exhibit negative concord, as Zeijlstra (: ) points out, the fact remains that standard English does not exhibit negative concord between its n-marked indefinites and the negator n’t, which is clearly to be analysed as a head. It does not, therefore, seem correct to say that negative concord is the necessary consequence of Jespersen’s cycle or the head status of the marker of sentential negation. Moreover, Jespersen’s cycle does not seem either to influence, or to depend on, the composition of a language’s indefinite system. Many languages have a tripartite division, with a non-affective series, an NPI series, and a series for negative

¹⁸ Weiß () goes so far as to argue that it is precisely because Bavarian has negative concord that the negator ned, which, other than the fact that Bavarian has negative concord, behaves in entirely parallel fashion to Standard German nicht, should be analysed as a syntactic head (of NegP). However, the fact that ned does not block finite-verb movement to C in verb-initial and verb-second clauses casts serious doubt on such an analysis (Jäger ).

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

Empirical generalizations

contexts. Languages differ in how many NPI contexts one series may be licensed in, and in whether indefinites in the direct negation context are weak NPIs, strong NPIs, NCIs, or negative quantifiers. Yet such variation occurs regardless of whether the language has entered Jespersen’s cycle or not, and at what stage it is currently situated. Regarding the head status of the sentential negator, we have seen that there is no exceptionless link here either with the occurrence of negative concord. Nevertheless it does seem to be the case that the existence of a head negator in a language is a strong predictor that negative doubling and negative spread both occur in a language, not least because new phrasal negators arising through Jespersen’s cycle often seem at first to be incompatible with negative doubling. When they weaken to become heads during Jespersen’s cycle, however, negative doubling is then often innovated, as long as NPI indefinites undergo the quantifier cycle. We conclude then that the quantifier cycle does not trigger Jespersen’s cycle, and neither does Jespersen’s cycle cause the quantifier cycle: either process can occur independently of the other. The innovation of negative concord in a language is independent of Jespersen’s cycle in that it requires the availability of NCIs (typically created by the quantifier cycle). But the link here is that the shift from phrasal to head negator at the centre of Jespersen’s cycle seems often to facilitate the innovation of negative doubling and spread. We return to this issue in section ., in connection with van Gelderen’s (, ) feature-based account linking Jespersen’s cycle and the development of negative concord.

. Conclusion The developments affecting indefinites in relation to the expression of negation discussed in the current chapter lend diachronic support to Haspelmath’s () implicational map of indefinite functions originally based on typological generalizations. It was observed that indefinites can be seen as becoming increasingly negative over time, retreating from weaker NPI contexts to stronger ones, possibly replacing (series of) indefinites previously used in these contexts. The spread and withdrawal follows Haspelmath’s implicational map, from conditionals via questions, indirect negation, and comparatives to clause-mate negation. We have called this development the quantifier cycle. In addition, we have identified another common development leading to the creation of new negative indefinites. This development—a variant of Haspelmath’s free-choice cycle—starts out from freechoice indefinites and free-relative or concessive conditional constructions and, compared to the quantifier cycle, typically spreads in the opposite direction in terms of Haspelmath’s map: from the free-choice function via comparatives and conditionals to create a new NPI series, rather than creating non-NPI indefinites (non-specific or specific) as in the canonical version of the cycle.

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Conclusion



As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, indefinites arising through the quantifier cycle typically initially exploit the scalar implicatures of the source constructions, as seen in case of generic nouns, minimal-unit expressions, or indefinites incorporating scalar focus particles. These scalar implicatures become conventionalized in the grammaticalization of these items as indefinites. We will also see that even the free-choice cycle involves a conventionalization of a scalar implicature, namely a universal implicature. (Clausal) comparatives form the bridging context in the free-choice cycle, as they conventionally implicate a negative proposition and can therefore trigger the reanalysis of the universal quantifier as existential. Regarding the relation between the quantifier and free-choice cycles, negative concord, and Jespersen’s cycle, we concluded that the main prerequisite for negative concord in a language is the availability of indefinites of the right type, namely NCIs. The developments subsumed here under quantifier cycles may give rise to NCIs, either via an NPI stage or via an intermediate negative-quantifier stage. Indefinites arising via the free-choice cycle typically terminate with an NPI distribution and have only occasionally been observed to become NCIs. Provided the language in question additionally has a marker of sentential negation whose distribution does not exclude co-occurrence with NCIs (or negative quantifiers), the quantifier cycle may give rise to negative concord in its various forms. The changes that can create a sentential negator of the correct type, namely Jespersen’s cycle, appear to be largely independent of a language’s indefinite system.

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6 Internal motivations and formal approaches Chapter  outlined the main empirical generalizations concerning the development of indefinites in the scope of negation. Two main paths for indefinites were identified: on the one hand, they may become increasingly restricted to more negative contexts through a development we have labelled the quantifier cycle; on the other hand, new NPI indefinites can develop out of original free-choice items. The quantifier cycle begins with an element being recruited into a language’s system of indefinite pronouns and adverbs. The main sources that this development draws on are: (i) non-quantificational generic nouns and adverbs; (ii) non-NPI or PPI indefinites, interrogative pronouns etc.; and (iii) elements that are already (NPI) indefinites, through directly combining with a negative marker. The free-choice cycle is fed through the conventionalization of conversational implicatures associated: (i) with the indefinites involved; and (ii) the contexts they occur in, most notably, the implicated negation in comparative contexts, under which universal quantifiers may become interpreted as existential. The current chapter will address the question of which semantic and pragmatic processes underlie the observed changes, and how they can be analysed formally. Furthermore, a formal analysis of the interactions between indefinites, indefinite systems, and sentential negation (negative concord) on the one hand, and the changing expression of negation (Jespersen’s cycle) on the other, will be offered. In section ., we return to the analysis of the internal syntax of indefinites proposed in chapter  in order to pave the way for the formal analysis of the quantifier and freechoice cycles. This analysis encompasses both the rise of new indefinites entering the quantifier cycle, as well as the diachronic restriction to increasingly negative contexts, which is further developed in section .. Section .. takes a closer look at the external syntax of indefinites going through the quantifier cycle, and argues that as long as no negative concord is involved, a semantic–pragmatic account of licensing is sufficient, and can be made to follow from the internal syntax of indefinites. Section .. discusses how the quantifier cycle can give rise to negative concord in a language, and section . addresses the interactions between the quantifier cycle and Jespersen’s cycle. The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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Structural motivations



. Structural motivations In chapter , it was argued that nominal minimizers and generalizers needed to first become indefinite pronouns, with a particular internal syntactic structure, as in () (Leu ), before they can become NPAs, and thus enter Jespersen’s cycle. Nominal elements, it was argued, can acquire this structure diachronically through upward reanalysis as a functional head within the extended nominal projection. In this chapter, it is suggested that all indefinite pronouns have this internal syntactic structure. ()

DP/QP

Q0some

RestrP

some Restr0 quelque thingi chosei

NP

N0

ti The proposed structure in () is able to capture the empirical generalizations regarding the quantifier and free-choice cycles, assuming changes in the properties of the Q head of the extended nominal projection. In addition to accommodating all the empirical observations set out in chapter , this analysis can also account for the interactions between the quantifier cycle and negative concord on the one hand (section .), and Jespersen’s cycle on the other (section .). As observed in chapter , several authors have proposed some form of N-to-D incorporation to be at work in the formation of indefinites from generic nouns and minimizers, for instance, Déprez (, ), Roberts and Roussou (), Postma (), and Martins (). According to Déprez, indefinites are derived from generic or minimizer nouns by N-to-Num incorporation, where Num denotes ‘zero’. Postma () supports his claim that negative polarity is one of the factors licensing N-to-D movement by reference to the fact that, in present-day European Portuguese, N-movement around an indefinite determiner creates NPIs, as in alguma coisa ‘some thing’ > coisa alguma ‘nothing/anything’, illustrated in () (cf. also Martins ). ()

a. Aconteceu alguma happen.. some. ‘Something happened.’

coisa. thing

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches b. *Aconteceu coisa alguma. happen.. thing some. Intended: ‘Anything happened.’

In fact, since European Portuguese is a non-strict negative-concord language, the distribution of [N algum] is not just that of an NPI, but that of an NCI, as illustrated in (), where the item is used as a preverbal subject without sentential negation não in (a), but requires não when it is postverbal in (b).¹ ()

a. Coisa alguma aconteceu. thing some. happen.. ‘Nothing happened.’ b. Não aconteceu  happen.. ‘Nothing happened

coisa thing

alguma. some.

Martins (), like Postma, takes [N algum] sequences to be NPIs. However, she argues that they are ‘built in the syntax through incorporation of the noun and the indefinite quantifier in a DP-internal abstract negative head positioned above NumP’ (Martins : ). Only a separate further development, namely the innovation of Neg-to-D movement, ongoing in European Portuguese, creates NCI-like uses such as (), according to Martins. This extra step differentiates European Portuguese from Spanish, which otherwise shares the NPI-like use of these inversions. For Postma, on the other hand, the quantifier cycle (positive to negative) comes about because movement of an NPI to a scope position turns it into a negative item (Laka ). As discussed in chapter , the main empirical problem with Déprez’s N-to-Num incorporation approach is that it predicts that a (semantically) negative quantifier is created directly from an indefinite noun when it incorporates into the ‘zero’ Num head. Furthermore, the postulation of a specific NegP (Martins ) seems to miss broader generalizations about the diachronic development of indefinite quantifiers. As observed in Chapter , only indefinites incorporating negative markers are directly restricted to the scope of negation, while indefinites entering the quantifier cycle in one of the other ways (generic nouns, derivation with non-negative focus particles) are initially also available in non-negative NPI contexts, and only become gradually restricted to the context of direct negation. Additionally, they normally do not become (semantically) negative quantifiers, as Déprez implies, but rather stop at becoming NCIs at best. Under our understanding, NCIs are not semantically negative, as they co-occur with other negative markers (other NCIs, standard negators, or negative quantifiers). Where they occur on their own, for instance, in fragment

¹ Although not mentioned by Martins (), native speakers also accept [N algum] in the interpretation ‘no N’ in fragment answers (J. Andrade da Silva, p.c.).

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Structural motivations



answers, they have been argued to be licensed by a covert negation operator (Ladusaw , Giannakidou , , Zeijlstra ). Leu’s () proposal for the structure of indefinite pronouns (section ..) allows us to capture the fact that an original noun loses referential properties to become the restriction of a quantifier, without immediately being restricted to the scope of direct negation. The exact context restriction is localized in the properties of the F-head. A similar proposal, building on Leu’s, is made by Bayer and Brandner (). They also assume that the indefinite is ‘spread’ over two heads. However, unlike in Leu’s proposal, it is not spread over two functional heads, but over (functional) D and (lexical) N. The indefinite may not always be superficially decomposable. This is no longer the case, for instance, for Alemannic ebbes ‘something’ in (a), cf. German etwas < Middle High German etes-waz ‘something’ in (b). In this case, the split over two heads is only historically motivated. Both heads are spelled out together as one word. Bayer and Brandner’s proposed structure is given in (), representing the various languages exemplified in (). ()

a. ebbes z’ essit something to eat. ‘something to eat’

(Alemannic) (Bayer and Brandner : )

b. etwas zu essen something to eat. ‘something to eat’ c. quelque chose de some thing of ‘something beautiful’ ()

nichts schönes nothing nice. ‘nothing nice’

beau beautiful

(French)

DP

D0

etebbnquelque

NP (=PredP/SC)

N0 -was -es ichts chose

Pred0 -es -es de

(German)

AP/NP

schönbeau

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

There are various reasons for preferring Leu’s approach over that of Bayer and Brandner. Besides the arguments given in section .., Leu’s approach is superior in providing an account of the limitations on the productivity of generic nouns in forming new indefinites. Several languages have an indefinite pronoun for ‘person’ based on ‘man’ (Gothic (ni) manna, Old High German nioman < ni-io-man). If the ‘man’ part was merged in N in an indefinite pronoun, we would expect someman, anyman, or noman in English. This is freely permitted in (), yet no such forms exist. On Leu’s analysis, on the other hand, idiosyncrasies and paradigm gaps are expected because -man is a functional head (i.e. a closed-class functional element) rather than a lexical noun. Furthermore, Bayer and Brandner’s approach fails to introduce a structural distinction between some thing (D + N), which can be referential (I saw some (=a) thing, but I could not quite make out what it was), and something (the pronoun), which cannot. If the ‘nominal’ part of the indefinite (-thing, -chose) were still in N, we would expect it to be able to pattern with referentially used nouns. Leu’s proposal can furthermore accommodate indefinites derived from interrogative pronouns, such as German (et-)was ‘something, anything’, irgend-wer ‘someone, anyone’, Slovene kdo ‘anyone’, etc.² These are important because they serve as the most frequent input to the formation of new indefinite pronouns derived by means of focus particles (Haspelmath : ). Under this approach, the interrogative pronoun, which originally binds a variable identifying the restriction of the quantifier, becomes the restriction itself, (). ()

DP/QP

Q0

iowergin Restr0 > irgend ‘some/any’ wer‘who’

RestrP

NP

N0

Finally, Leu’s proposal, combined with a syntactic approach to grammaticalization such as that of Roberts and Roussou (), can account for the typical opacity of

² The fact that some indefinites do not build on nouns, but (interrogative) pronouns, is also a further argument against assuming a basic D + N structure.

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Structural motivations



indefinite pronouns—English being rather atypical with its apparently transparent forms—and their potential further development. For instance, the German prefix irgend- ‘some, any’, which would occupy F (our Q) under Leu’s analysis, is historically itself complex, as it derives from Old High German io-wer-gin ‘anywhere (whatsoever)’ (Jäger : ), lit. ‘ever-some/any-where’ < *wer ‘where’ + *-gi- ‘at all’ (cf. section ...). In this case, a further step of upward reanalysis from Restr to Q needs to be postulated, as in ().³ ()

Foc(P)

io ‘ever’

DP/QP

Q0

-gin ‘at all’

RestrP

Restr0 wer‘where’

NP

N0

An analysis along the lines of Leu () therefore remains the most suitable also for the internal structure of indefinite pronouns and will continue to be adopted here. We identify the quantifier part of the indefinite with Leu’s F-head. This may host (quantificational) determiners (such as English, some-, any-, no-, Welsh unrhyw ‘any’, or Maltese xi ‘some’). The Restr-head is the position into which the former generic noun is reanalysed, or, in case of a different source for the indefinite pronoun, the wh-element or element meaning ‘one’. Incorporating insights from Haegeman (), Haegeman and Lohndal (), and Martins (), all of whom assume a DP-internal NegP, we can identify Leu’s F-head here as a Q(uantificational) head. In the case of negative indefinites, this may behave like a DP-internal NegP by hosting formal negation features. We can assume, however, that it is present more generally, including in non-negative quantificational indefinites. Let us consider how this approach can account for the grammaticalization of particular indefinites, and their further progression through the quantifier cycle.

³ A focus particle, where present, may become part of Q through linear reanalysis, as indicated in ().

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

A generic noun or minimizer with a non-specific interpretation can be attracted by the quantificational properties of Q. Note that Q does not necessarily need to be overt, cf. Déprez’s (, ) arguments for a null indefinite determiner in Old French, or connections between bare nouns, n-raising, and NPI-hood discussed by Postma (). The null determiner in Old French can be identified with Q, as in Déprez’s analysis; however, the noun at most moves as far as Restr, as in (), representing (), if it moves at all. étoit be..

fils son

()

Il n’  

de of

bonne good.

mère mother

()

[DP [Q ø ] [Restr filsi ] [N ti] [PredP de bonne mère ]]

qui . . . 

Restr causes a generic, or sortal, reading of the noun. Q, as a null determiner, encodes the quantificational properties of the phrase (something like ‘any’), and is responsible for the restriction to NPI contexts (see also section ..). New indefinites can arise by elimination of the N-to-Restr movement, leading the former noun to be merged directly in Restr. This is particularly favoured in cases where the meaning of the noun is general enough to be used as restriction on a quantifier (e.g. ‘man’, ‘one’, ‘person’, or ‘place’, etc.).⁴ Once this step has been completed, the quantifier cycle proper can begin. The other source types of indefinites participating in the quantifier cycle (chapter ) can be accounted for using the same structural analysis. The derivation of indefinites by the incorporation of (negative) focus particles or negative markers takes indefinites as its input. (Negative) focus particles and maximizers are adjuncts to the DP in question. These are reanalysed as the Q head under adjacency. Such reanalyses are crosslinguistically common (e.g. Jäger  on Jespersen’s cycle in German, or more generally van Gelderen’s  Head Preference Principle in cyclic change), and have also been studied from the perspective of language acquisition (Hoekstra and Jordens ). Old High German and Old Saxon io-wiht ‘anything’, lit. ‘ever-thing’, where the temporal maximizer io ‘ever’ is used as a focus particle, or Moroccan Arabic ḥ ətta ḥ āja ‘even thing’, containing a focus particle, arise as in ().

⁴ Interrogative pronouns can be used because they too restrict a domain of quantification (‘who’ ~ person, ‘where’ ~ place), and additionally indicate that the value of the variable that they bind is unknown.

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Structural motivations ()

DP

io h. ətta

DP

DP/QP

Foc(P)



Q0

RestrP

Restr0

wiht h.āja

DP/QP

Foc(P)

NP

iowergin Q0 > irgend ‘some/any’ io h. ətta

N0

RestrP

Restr0

wiht h.āja

twiht th.āja

The incorporation of negative particles can be analysed in a parallel fashion. For instance, the negative equivalent of iowiht, niowiht ‘nothing’ (n-io-wiht ‘-everthing’), arises through univerbation with a negative particle, as seen in (). ()

DP

DP

Neg

ni

Neg

DP/QP

Q0

io

Q0

RestrP

NP

Restr0

wiht

N0

DP/QP

ni+io > nio

RestrP

Restr0

wiht

The incorporation of postnominal maximizers like Welsh dim yn y byd ‘(any)thing in the world’ > dim byd ‘nothing’ involves the reanalysis of a post-nominal predicate phrase as Q with incorporation of Restr, as in ().

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()

a.

DP/QP

Q0any

RestrP Restr0 dim

NP N0

PredP/PP

P0 yn

DP

D0 y

Q0any OP

N0 byd

DP/QP

b.

NP

RestrP Restr0 dim

NP N0

PredP/PP Pred0 byd

c.

DP/QP Q0any

RestrP

dim-byd Restr0 tdim

NP N0

PredP/PP

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

Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles

Indefinites arising through the free-choice cycle can also be captured by the proposed analysis. We illustrate the development using free-choice indefinites developing from an interrogative pronoun and a kind of relative clause for Latin, Spanish, French, and Russian in () (‘(which) you like, (which) it may be’). () a.

DP/QP

Q0any

OP

b.

Q0any

RestrP

Restr0

quis cual quel čto

RestrP

0 quelque Restr

NP

N0

DP/QP

PredP/CP

tquelque

NP

N0

vis/libet quiera que (ce soit) nibud’

PredP/CP

tque

Now that the internal structure of indefinites undergoing the quantifier and freechoice cycles is in place, we can turn to the mechanics of the changes in the Q head, leading to the observed negativization of indefinites.

. Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles .. The quantifier cycle Chapter  highlighted the role of two economy principles in the diachronic development of new negative markers in Jespersen’s cycle: Minimize Structure and Feature Economy. While Minimize Structure was argued to be responsible for the gradual formal reduction in the internal structural complexity of negative markers, Feature Economy regulated their interaction with other expressions of negation, such as the possibility of bipartite negation at stage II of Jespersen’s cycle, or the availability of negative concord. Indefinites, like the expression of sentential negation, interact with other elements in syntax. They form distributional series with other indefinites, and they interact with the expression of sentential negation itself (negative concord). Therefore, the quantifier and free-choice cycles have an external, syntactic dimension too. The question addressed in this section concerns the formal analysis of the observed common development from less negative to more negative typical of the quantifier cycle. It was concluded in chapter  that, contrary to claims in the literature (e.g. Ladusaw ), the quantifier cycle cannot directly be compared to Jespersen’s cycle. Apart from the creation of new indefinites, for instance developing from

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

generic nouns (section .), indefinites passing through the quantifier cycle do not seem to undergo grammaticalization. Their core meanings do not become more functional or more bleached. The semantics of indefinites like something, anything, and nothing, for instance, is in essence unchanged (cf. Jäger ); they are existential indefinite quantifiers irrespective of their polarity restrictions. Given the structure of indefinites proposed in chapter  and section ., it is clear that what is different in each case is the semantic content of the Q head, while the content of the R head remains the same. Therefore, an analysis of the quantifier (and free-choice) cycles that adopts the structure of indefinites sketched above will view the changes as affecting the properties of the Q head, whether these are overtly or covertly expressed. The question then is, what are the properties of Q that change, and what causes the changes? Given their interaction with affective operators, including negation, previous approaches have sought to capture the context restrictions displayed by indefinites undergoing the quantifier cycle in terms of formal features. In the following, we discuss a number of previous proposals, address their shortcomings, and then propose an alternative. The crucial semantic property of NPIs is that they widen the quantificational domain (Kadmon and Landman ). They are restricted to contexts in which this widening leads to (pragmatic) strengthening. Normally, the quantificational domain is contextually determined; for instance, in a sentence like Everyone screamed, it is understood that the quantifier does not denote ‘everyone in the universe’, but for example everyone in a (contextually given) room or gathering. In a positive context, the quantificational domain for an existential quantifier is as small as possible in order to make the sentence informative. A sentence containing an existential, such as There is a student I haven’t met, is only informative if the domain is restricted, that is, if what is meant is not ‘any student in the universe’, but rather ‘any student’ in some smaller quantificational domain (e.g. ‘in my school year’). In a positive (upwardentailing) context, use of any instead of a widens the quantificational domain, leading to a loss of informativeness. In a downward-entailing context, on the other hand, the widening caused by any strengthens the proposition: compare I don’t want a dog to I don’t want any dog.⁵ Chierchia () proposes an interpretation of Kadmon and Landman’s strengthening requirement in terms of universal closure of the quantificational domain, which is subject to a mapping condition (cf. Diesing ) between the domain of a certain head in syntax and the scope of a downward-entailing operator achieving the strengthening. According to Chierchia, this is best understood in terms of agreement; he notes that NPI indefinites tend to have ‘special morphology

⁵ Chierchia (: ) notes, however, that NPIs do not necessarily always need to (maximally) extend the domain of quantification. Due to the pragmatic strengthening requirement, ‘even in the limiting case in which there is no suitable expansion around, the proposed semantics still serves a useful purpose, namely that of signalling that the indefinite must wind up within the scope of a [downward-entailing] operator’.

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Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles



to flag that their use may lead to strengthening’ and that ‘if one wants to signal domain expansion, one must resort to some morphological device specialized to this task. And morphological features enter into agreement relations. It is thus to be expected that the morphology of NPIs must agree with the morphology of some suitable head’ (Chierchia : ). Under the assumptions made here regarding the internal structure of indefinites, this ‘special morphology’ flagging the restriction to NPI contexts would be situated in the Q head. In minimalist terms, ‘morphology’ translates into formal features, and agreement is the mechanism ensuring that Full Interpretation is achieved as a result of a derivation, that is, that upon reaching the interfaces, no more uninterpretable or unvalued features remain in a derivation (Chomsky ). What features, then, are those that should reside in Q, and what would they agree with? A first attempt at capturing the synchronic variation and diachronic directionality in the indefinite systems of the Romance languages in terms of formal features in need of licensing was proposed by Martins (). Martins assumes three independent polarity features, [affirmative], [modal], and [negative], the values of which must be checked by indefinites against a syntactic Polarity head. These features can be specified for three possible values, using Rooryck’s () feature system, [] (negatively specified), [+] (positively specified), and [α] (unspecified). The value [] clashes with a [+] specification of the Polarity head and vice versa, while the value [α] is compatible with either. The feature [mod(al)] covers all non-negative affective contexts, and needs to be sub-specified for instance for ‘interrogative’ or ‘conditional’ (Martins : ). In this way, Martins’ feature system can essentially replicate Haspelmath’s hierarchy of contexts if the attributes to the [mod] feature are changed, for instance as in (). ()

aff > modcondit > modinterrog > modcompar > neg

It is, however, not clear how this sub-specification is restricted, as there is no such hierarchical ordering of the attributes of the [mod] feature in Martins’ original proposal. While it is possible to reformulate Haspelmath’s hierarchy in this way, the hierarchy cannot be derived from Martins’ system; that is, it offers no further insight. Martins (: , n. ) does concede that ‘a thoroughly worked out geometry of features will be needed’, without making a concrete proposal. The absence of a hierarchical implicational relation between the features and their values legitimizes combinations of feature specifications that would create indefinites that are not attested in Haspelmath’s large-scale typological overview, including some that should be excluded on semantic grounds, for instance, items specified [α aff,  mod, α neg], which would be licensed in affirmative as well as negative contexts, but excluded in weak NPI contexts, or items licensed in weak NPI contexts that are not connected on Haspelmath’s map, such as [modcondit] and [modcompar] to the exclusion of [modinterrog].

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

Martins does observe that Romance indefinites have tended to reduce their degree of underspecification over time, that is, changing from [α neg] [α mod] to [+ neg], which she accounts for in terms of L acquisition: children acquire the restriction to negative contexts as the more salient restriction first (which is confirmed by work on the acquisition of NPIs, e.g. Van der Wal ), and may fail to notice non-negative licensing contexts (Martins : –, –). However, given Martins’ use of the [mod] feature as effectively a dustbin category, and the abovementioned lack of a hierarchical ordering internal to her feature system, her proposal is not able to model the typical directional, staged shifts described in section ., or to offer an insightful account for why elements conform to Haspelmath’s semantic map. Like Martins, Jäger (, ) proposes a feature system to model the diachronic variation in the distribution of indefinites, distinguishing three syntactic contexts and types of indefinite in terms of polarity, namely (i) the scope of negation, licensing strong NPIs; (ii) weak NPI contexts (conditionals, interrogatives, comparatives, etc., but also negation); and (iii) all other (positive or affirmative) contexts. Indefinites are lexically characterized by the combination of the two features, [
affec(tive)] and [
neg(ative)], restricting them to the relevant subset of syntactic contexts. Jäger proposes that these are purely formal (uninterpretable) syntactic features that require an affective context or negative operator to be licensed. According to the lexical underspecification theory that Jäger assumes, only marked values are stored in the lexicon. Therefore, weak NPI contexts are characterized as [+affec], negated clauses as [+affec, + neg], while polarity-neutral contexts are underspecified with respect to polarity as []: ()

positive contexts: weak NPI contexts: strong NPI contexts:

[] [+affec] [+affec, +neg]

In order to distinguish cases in which indefinites have a bagel distribution (where items are available in all NPI contexts apart from direct negation; Błaszczak , Pereltsvaig ) from cases in which NPI indefinites are licensed under direct negation, Jäger has to assume a particular filtering mechanism. She proposes that, in the former cases, there is a blocking of less specific indefinites by more specific indefinites restricted to the scope of negation (invoking an extension of Kiparsky’s  Elsewhere Condition), which can be historically weakened in the latter cases. She assumes this variable application of the Elsewhere Condition not only with respect to series of indefinites at the level of entire languages, but also for individual lexical items. Biberauer and Roberts () offer various criticisms of this part of Jäger’s account (as well as of her feature system). In particular, they point out that it is not made clear how the re-ranking of the constraints governing the distribution of indefinites works in detail. In particular, a system with optionality between [+affec,

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Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles



+neg] and [+affec] indefinites as found in Old High German would be difficult to model, raising the question of how it should ever arise. According to Jäger, developments from negative to positive are both possible and attested, as well as developments from positive to negative. While we follow Jäger in not viewing shifts in polarity type (as distinct from the emergence of new indefinites) as instances of grammaticalization, we reject this kind of random-walk scenario (see also Willis a).⁶ Countercyclic, or backwards, developments, as discussed in section ..., are much rarer than developments from more positive to more negative. Many proposed examples of the former kind of shift can be attributed to other factors such as analogy (paradigm pressure) or language contact (not involving child language acquisition), or else alternative etymologies offer a plausible alternative narrative (for instance not negative > positive but free-choice > positive). Work on the L acquisition of NPIs (Van der Wal , Musolino, Crain, and Thornton , Crain and Pietroski ) shows that children never appear to overgeneralize affective items to positive contexts (though they may, at a certain stage of acquisition, overgeneralize within affective contexts, for instance using strong NPIs in weak NPI contexts, or to express negation on their own). Based on the acquisitional evidence, the loss of the feature [affec] is unlikely. As Jäger (: ) herself concedes, the [+affec] feature does not allow the kinds of distinction within weak NPI contexts that indefinite systems or individual indefinites may make synchronically and diachronically. This instead points to need for a more fine-grained hierarchy of NPI contexts based on semantic criteria, such as that proposed by Zwarts () and van der Wouden (), set out in section . and repeated here in () (see also Jäger : ). ()

context: licenser: NPI:

antimorphic not one bit

⊆

antiadditive no one yet

⊆

downwardentailing at most three ever

⊆

nonveridical hardly any

Willis (a) proposes to translate the hierarchy of semantic properties in (), which distinguishes NPI-licensing contexts (van der Wouden : –), into a system of features that are borne by lexical items and require licensing, thereby assimilating it to systems of syntactic licensing features such as those proposed by Martins () and Jäger (, ). These features are [antimorphic], [antiadditive], and [monotone decreasing], ordered such that, historically, items passing ⁶ Biberauer and Roberts () address the question of directionality too, but refer only to the grammaticalization of new indefinites from, for example, nouns, as in the history of French (see also section ..), which involves the loss of movement within DP and is in this sense unidirectional (Déprez , Roberts and Roussou ; see also section .). They do not address the directionality of shifts between NPI contexts after this initial grammaticalization.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

through the quantifier cycle will gain more restrictive features on top of those they already had: ()

[] > [monotone decreasing] > [monotone decreasing, anti-additive] > [monotone decreasing, anti-additive, antimorphic]

Clearly, these are explicitly semantic features that should not be confused with formal features that are involved in building syntactic structure (triggering external or internal Merge) and keeping it together (through Agree), and which need to be checked before the interfaces are reached. Unlike with formal syntactic features (such as number or tense), with features of this kind there is no one-to-one relation between licensing and licensed feature: semantically, an antimorphic operator licenses not only antimorphic elements, but also anti-additive and monotonedecreasing ones. The fact that these proposed semantic features stack in the more restrictive contexts serves two purposes. First, it models the semantic hierarchy in (), capturing the implicational relation between the licensing contexts; and, second, it models the diachronic trajectory of polarity indefinites, that is, the addition of context restrictions. Given the difference with respect to formal features triggering Merge or Agree, it becomes understandable why (and how) the process of indefinites becoming increasingly negative as they progress through the quantifier cycle cannot be captured by Feature Economy, as there is no bleaching in terms of featural content, as observed above. These features should be understood as specific lexical properties to be acquired along with the items bearing them. It must be clear that NPI-licensing is not to be understood in terms of syntactic agreement, not least because of its amply documented distinction from negative concord, which is much more clearly a case of purely morphosyntactic agreement (see section .). For instance, the licensing of NPIs such as Dutch hoeven ‘need’ or English can stand, which are not obviously scalar (and cannot therefore be argued to have undergone conventionalization of their scalar implicature as some abstract piece of morphology agreeing with the licenser), cannot be accounted for in terms of morphosyntactic agreement.⁷ Therefore, the features in () and () are semantic in nature, and Ladusaw’s () roofing condition, which requires NPIs to be in the restriction or nuclear scope of a suitable (downward-entailing or non-veridical) operator at the level of logical form (and c-commanded by it at s-structure) is lexically conditioned.⁸ ⁷ The often-cited clause-boundedness of negative concord, as opposed to NPI-licensing, does not hold in all languages under consideration here, but may be a further relevant distinction—Agree is typically clause-bounded, too. ⁸ The distinction made here between semantic NPI-licensing and syntactic agreement in negative concord is not shared by, for example, Biberauer and Roberts (), who propose treating both as syntactic agreement between an operator in C and the indefinite, which bears an unvalued operator feature.

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Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles



The special morphology on NPI indefinites (Chierchia : ), the locus of which was identified as the—overt or covert—F/Q head in the internal syntax of indefinites discussed in section ., serves as a flag indicating the (pragmatic) necessity of a suitable c-commanding licenser, without formally agreeing with it. When a generic noun or minimizer grammaticalizes through N-to-Restr upward reanalysis, its scalar properties, originally denoting a low point on a lexically specified scale, become conventionalized as a flag morpheme in F/Q (see also Eckardt ). That is, the item’s need for licensing in a scale-reversing context becomes part of the lexical meaning of these indefinites. The flag morpheme may be covert (as in French Ø-rien ‘thing’ > ‘anything’ > ‘nothing’) or can be made overt by the crosslinguistically common reanalysis of (negative) focus particles or maximizers (as in Old Saxon io-uuiht ‘anything’, with io ‘ever’, or Moroccan Arabic ḥ ətta ḥ āja ‘anything’, with ḥ ətta ‘even’). Stronger items can be created right away by the incorporation of negative particles into F/Q (as in Old Saxon n-io-uuiht ‘nothing’). These developments were illustrated in (). Given the implicational ordering of the licensing properties in (), the increasing negativization of NPI indefinites seen in section .. can be accounted for by the way NPIs and their distribution are acquired in L acquisition (van der Wal , Tieu ). This is already hinted at by Martins () and further elaborated by Willis (a). The most prominent (i.e. pragmatically strongest) licensing context is naturally direct negation, and negation is a semantically, formally, and psychologically marked category (Horn : ch. ). Studies of the acquisition of the distribution of NPIs (Van der Wal and Koster , Koster and Van der Wal , Van der Wal , Musolino, Crain, and Thornton , Crain and Pietroski ) confirm that children tend to first ‘undergeneralize’ the distribution, acquiring negative contexts first. This is a consequence of the Subset Principle (Berwick : –), according to which children assume the simplest grammar compatible with the PLD until they hear positive evidence for a more complex assumption. Children may in fact temporarily posit an inherently negative meaning for NPIs (cf. Van der Wal : §. on hoeven ‘need’). They start out by making the most restrictive assumption possible given their PLD about the distribution of a polarity item and proceed via a conservative widening of the licensing laws from more to less strongly negative polarity contexts. Over time, acquirers stop this widening process at a more restrictive context than previous cohorts of acquirers, leading to a more and more restricted or negative distribution of an item over time.⁹ In line with the generative view of language change as taking place during L acquisition (Lightfoot , , Roberts ), this provides a straightforward account of the way indefinites ⁹ Although research on the acquisition of NPIs has shown that this idealized scenario is not entirely confirmed by reality, it is by and large appropriate. While children do appear to start out with restrictive assumptions about the distribution of NPIs, they first overgeneralize before they retract to the adult distribution (Van der Wal ). The overgeneralizations are nevertheless shown to be principled in the sense that they are somehow related to negative polarity (‘pseudo-licensing’); that is, the polarity component is in fact acquired early and correctly by children, and only requires fine-tuning.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

retract to increasingly negative contexts as a result of the quantifier cycle: retraction and ultimate restriction to negative contexts can be understood as the failed acquisition of a wider target distribution. Newly created indefinites not involving negative (focus) particles start out being licensed in all non-veridical contexts (see section ...). A newly created NPI indefinite may be blocked (in the morphological sense) from a stronger context by an already existing series of indefinites licensed in that context (cf. Pereltsvaig , Jäger ). The acquisitional account of the quantifier cycle can account for the fact that lexical renewal always appears to follow a push-chain scenario: the loss of blocking can be attributed to the natural acquisition of the distribution of a new series of indefinites, positing the most restrictive context possible in view of a potential blocking series, whose target distribution may not be fully acquired because of the conservative widening strategy of the acquisitional mechanism. The acquisitional account is also supported by the observation that, sociolinguistically, the renewal is typically a change from below, as observed in the rise of Spanish nadie replacing ninguno (Malkiel : –), and similar developments in other languages (see chapter ). Once an element has become restricted to the scope of negation, its pragmatic licensing requirement, that is, its restriction to an antiadditive operator, can be reanalysed as a morphosyntactic feature of the (covert) morpheme in F/Q, leading to the rise of negative concord, as detailed in section .. .. The free-choice cycle Haspelmath (: –), discussing the development of new indefinites from former free-choice items, mentions NPI uses of such elements, but mainly focuses on former free-choice items being a possible source of polarity-neutral indefinites. He argues that the reason that indefinites developing out of original free-choice items never express more than two or three adjacent functions on his semantic map is that their meaning is not generalized, but weakened.¹⁰ This ‘weakening’ is to be understood in the sense that, with every shift to the left on the map, more specific meaning components are lost. For instance, in order to be used as a non-specific indefinite, the scalarity characteristic of both free-choice and NPI indefinites has to be lost; ‘only the semantic component of non-specificity is preserved’ (Haspelmath : ). However, Haspelmath’s weakening account covers only the change from the free-choice function to the irrealis-non-specific function, and from there to the specific functions: ()

Loss of semantic substance of original free-choice indefinites a. free choice > simple non-specific: loss of focusing and scalarity

¹⁰ This is in line with Combettes’s () observations about the development of French quelque, see section ...

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Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles



b. simple non-specific > specific unknown: loss of specificity c. specific unknown > specific known: loss of unknownness (Haspelmath : ) Haspelmath (: ) offers no account for the intermediate changes from free choice to comparative and from comparative to weak NPI contexts (question/ conditional). Semantic bleaching does not adequately capture the development of (NPI) indefinites out of free-choice items. First of all, in relation to (b)–(c), it is not intuitively obvious why a change from non-specific to specific or unknown to known should be a weakening, that is, a loss of a meaning component. Second, as variously observed in the grammaticalization literature (Traugott and König , Hopper and Traugott  []), as well as in the literature on semantic reanalysis (e.g. von Fintel , Eckardt ), ‘semantic change does not necessarily involve bleaching; on the contrary, it usually involves specification achieved through inferencing’ (Traugott and König : ). In particular, Traugott and König () mention metonymic change, which ‘involves specifying one meaning in terms of another that is present, even if only covertly, in the context’, or ‘conventionalizing of conversational meanings’ (Traugott and König : –). In Eckardt’s (: ) words, ‘the reclassification of information from implicature to literal content of an utterance is the initiating step in the change’. Applied to the initial steps in the free-choice cycle, we have to ask what conversational or conventional implicatures of free-choice items on the one hand and of comparative, conditional, or interrogative constructions on the other could be reinterpreted as part of the conventional meaning of emerging NPI indefinites. To begin with, free-choice items, due to their generalizing (domain-widening) property (anyoneFCI = ‘the least specified individual’), can be used to express the low point on a scale (Fauconnier : , Haspelmath : ). Such scalar items are licit in generic contexts. What () encodes, literally, is that (even) the least likely person to solve the problem has the ability to do so. By scalar implicature, the sentence therefore expresses a universal quantification: if the least likely person to do so is able to solve the problem, then everyone is. ()

Anyone can solve this problem. ∀x[person’(x) ! able’(x, (solve’(x, problem’(y))))]

Free-choice items share the property of denoting a low point on a pragmatic scale with NPI indefinites, with the difference that the latter denote a low point on a reversed scale (Haspelmath : ). The reason why comparatives form an excellent bridging context is that both phrasal and clausal comparatives freely allow free-choice items (Hoeksema ). Originally, free-choice items are universal quantifiers. This is shown by the availability of modification with almost or nearly,

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

which is only available for universal quantifiers (Dahl , Horn , Giannakidou ), as in (). Clausal comparatives additionally license (Hoeksema ) or rescue NPIs (Giannakidou , Giannakidou and Yoon ), ()–().¹¹ ()

a. One diamond is more valuable than almost any number of bricks. (phrasal comparative) b. John is taller than almost any of his friends think he is. (clausal comparative) (Hoeksema : –)

()

a. *The sound of her voice is something I can stand. b. The sound of her voice is more than I can stand. (NPI-idiom in clausal comparative)

()

Rescuing by nonveridicality A P[olarity]I[tem] α can be rescued in the scope of a veridical expression β in a sentence S, if (a) the global context C of S makes a proposition S0 available which contains a nonveridical expression β; and (b) α can be associated with β in S0 . (Giannakidou : )

According to Giannakidou (: ), clausal comparatives do not have an underlying syntactic negative operator (as assumed, for instance, by Jespersen  or Seuren ), but merely conventionally implicate a negative proposition, which can then rescue certain types of NPIs. We now have the ingredients for an account of the change that an original freechoice item has to undergo in order to become an NPI indefinite. First, free-choice items, denoting a low point on a non-reversed pragmatic scale, give rise to a scalar implicature, that is, a conversational implicature. Second, clausal comparatives ¹¹ Giannakidou and Yoon () argue, based on Greek and Korean data, that all types of comparative (both phrasal and clausal) are veridical, and that therefore NPIs are only possible in clausal comparatives because they are rescued in this context, but not licensed. They argue that rescuing is only possible for sufficiently weak NPIs. Hoeksema (), on the other hand, claims that the availability of strong indefinites normally requiring an anti-additive licenser like Dutch ook maar ‘even, at all’ in clausal comparatives in (i), but not in phrasal ones in (ii), is evidence that clausal comparatives are a strong NPI context. (i) Wim is gevaarlijker dan (*ook maar Wim be.. dangerous. than at.all ‘Wim is more dangerous than anyone whosoever.’

iemand) / anyone

(ii) Wim was minder vervelend dan ook maar iemand Wim be.. less annoying than at.all anyone was geweest. . be. ‘Wim was less annoying than anyone at all before him had been.’

wie ook. who ever

(Dutch)

voor hem before  (Hoeksema : –)

Note, however, that ook maar is also possible in conditionals, a non-veridical, not anti-additive context. Eckardt () calls elements like ook maar ‘escort particles’, assisting the emphatic scalar use of indefinites such as iemand ‘someone, anyone’ in the present case, which is an indefinite that is licensed in conditionals (as well as non-affective contexts). The availability of ook maar in clausal comparatives is therefore not an argument against Giannakidou and Yoon’s rescuing proposal.

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Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles



conventionally implicate a negative proposition. Third, free-choice items are universal quantifiers (∀), as they can be modified by almost or nearly, while NPI indefinites are existential quantifiers (∃). Fourth, ∀ and ∃ behave as duals with respect to negation, that is, ∀¬ and ¬∃ are logically equivalent. Given that there seems to be a universal preference for wide scope of negation (e.g. Horn : , Palmer : ), the implicated meaning ¬∃ leads to a change in the conventional meaning of the indefinite as an existential quantifier. We therefore argue that the development of NPI indefinites out of free-choice indefinites is a metonymic change by which an earlier implicature is reanalysed as conventional meaning: the scalarity of the item is maintained, but is reversed, as the conventionally implicated negation triggers the reanalysis of the universal quantifier as existential. Note that a free-choice reading of English any is still marginally possible in the next two contexts on Haspelmath’s map, conditionals, (), and polar interrogatives, (), given an appropriate context.¹² ()

If she would do almost anything to keep you, marry her.

()

?Will she do almost anything to keep you?

Given their marginality, conditionals and questions can be taken to be the isolating contexts for the new analysis, that is, the contexts in which it is unambiguously attested (Diewald : –). As discussed above, comparatives form the bridging context, as the items undergoing the semantic change are ambiguous between the old and the new analysis. .. Summary To summarize the discussion so far, the rise of indefinites to enter the quantifier cycle is an instance of grammaticalization, by which a generic noun becomes the restriction of an indefinite quantifier, situated in the Restr head. The quantifier cycle itself, by which an indefinite becomes increasingly restricted to more negative licensing contexts, is not an instance of grammaticalization, and neither is the free-choice cycle. Instead, the quantifier cycle is the result of well-established acquisitional

¹² Rachel Nye (p.c.) suggests that () is only possible under an echoic reading, that is, echoing a previous assertion ‘she would do almost anything to keep me (but I am not sure about committing)’. Availability of free choice is these contexts is certainly highly constrained. Note, for instance, the ungrammaticality in irrealis/counterfactual conditionals: (i) If she had done (*almost) anything illegal, you would have had to have reported her. A free-choice reading is unavailable for subjects in any kind of conditional or question: (ii) If (*almost) anyone calls, put them through to me. (iii) Could (*almost) anyone please help me?

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

mechanisms. Items passing through the cycle come to be equipped with semantic features (monotone decreasing, anti-additive, antimorphic), or combinations thereof, reflecting their distribution. Through several cycles of language acquisition, the feature content becomes more and more restrictive, due to the propensity of children initially to undergeneralize the distribution of such items, selecting the more restrictive distribution first. Free-choice items, starting out as universal quantifiers, can become NPIs, and therefore existential quantifiers, through a metonymic change using clausal comparatives as a bridging context. This has the effect that, once an element has entered the system of indefinites, whether as an NPI indefinite or as a free-choice item, its trajectory is determined by the semantic map of indefinites, the quantifier cycle (an initial picture of which was given in Figure .), and the free-choice cycle in (). ()

The negative free-choice cycle free choice > comparative > weak NPI ( > strong NPI)

Equipped with an account of the quantifier and free-choice cycles, we now turn to the interaction of indefinites with other expressions of negation.

. Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord We now turn to an account of the interaction between the quantifier and free-choice cycles and the expression of negation (itself subject to change as part of Jespersen’s cycle), that is, to an account of the development of different types of negative concord, and the diachronic changes connecting them. The questions to address here are: how the different types of negative concord discussed in section . may arise; how they are diachronically connected; and to what extent our account of the quantifier and free-choice cycles can further our understanding of these diachronic connections. We saw above that indefinites on their way to becoming negative indefinites (negative quantifiers or NCIs) necessarily pass through an NPI stage. While indefinites arising through the free-choice cycle are known to give rise to a bagel distribution (Pereltsvaig ) and only in rare cases go on to become negative indefinites, indefinites arising through the quantifier cycle do not remain restricted to weak NPI contexts, but come to be (through the quantifier cycle) licensed in all scalereversing contexts, including direct negation. As long as they are NPIs, they are always accompanied by the marker of sentential negation in negative contexts. This close association with the negative marker is an important cue in the acquisition of NPI indefinites. But NPI indefinites passing through the quantifier cycle may also eventually become NCIs, and as such participate in negative concord relations. The way NPIs are acquired (see section .) not only accounts for the increasing negativization of these items and their later disappearance from weaker contexts; it also

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Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord



sheds light on how negative concord may arise and be lost. In the following sections we outline an account of how this works. .. The diachronic genesis of negative concord The question now is how NCIs, the crucial ingredient of negative concord, arise through the quantifier cycle. The ambiguity between NPI-hood and NCI-hood observed for NCIs in languages such as Spanish seems to reflect an older stage at which they were simply NPIs. As discussed in section ..., the Spanish NCIs nadie ‘no one’ and nada ‘nothing’ arose via the quantifier cycle, nadie deriving from Old Spanish ome nado < Latin hominem nātum ‘born man/person’ (Malkiel : –) and nada from Latin rem nātam ‘born thing’. The present-day NPI uses of nadie and nada are therefore plausibly relics of older stages of their development into NCIs, something which is certainly the case, for example, for NPI uses of Maltese xejn ‘nothing’ and qatt ‘never’ (cf. chapter , fn. ; Lucas b). The connection between the quantifier cycle and negative concord is therefore clear: negative concord, which requires indefinites that have the status of NCIs, can arise through the quantifier cycle, because NPIs can become NCIs through the quantifier cycle. Formally, the development of NCIs out of NPIs involves their acquisition of a syntactic [uNeg] feature. A possible way to understand this change from NPI to [uNeg] NCI is the preference for agreeing features in derivations as captured in Schütze’s () AMP: ()

Accord Maximization Principle (AMP) Among a set of convergent derivations S that result from numerations that are identical except for uninterpretable phi- and case-features, such that the members of S satisfy other relevant constraints, those members of S where the greatest number of Accord relations are established block all other derivations in S. (Schütze : –, emphasis in original)

The AMP prefers derivations with the maximal number of features involved in Agree (=Accord) relations: ()

INFL must be in Accord with an argument of its clause if there is one that can enter into Accord, but if there is none, INFL can survive without Accord. (Schütze : )

Schütze explicitly uses this principle to account for the acquisition of case and agreement in child language acquisition. He argues that typical errors made by children indicate that although they show evidence of knowing that case and agreement marking reflect a single syntactic relationship, during earlier stages of acquisition they may ignore the preference for maximizing agreement mandated by the AMP, falling back on default case or agreement. This means that the AMP constitutes a preference that is acquired along with the grammar during language acquisition.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

We propose that the AMP is a more general principle or preference governing the way formal agreement correlates syntax and interpretation, covering not just φ- and Case-features, but any kind of formal features. As we observed earlier, indefinites that have already become largely restricted to the scope of negation after undergoing the quantifier cycle can change from NPIs to NCIs by acquiring a formal negation feature [uNEG]. This can now be understood as the result of a generalized AMP, with NPI indefinites turning into NCIs as acquirers seek to maximize the number of Agree relations in the derivation, in this case with the [iNeg] negation operator present in negative clauses, whether overtly or covertly. That is, the AMP, as a mechanism active in language acquisition, feeds into language change: ()

OP¬ must be in Accord with an argument of its clause if there is one that can enter into Accord, but if there is none, OP¬ can survive without Accord.

Clearly, this also implies that the features of NPIs discussed in section .., set out in (), are not (yet) formal features entering syntactic agreement relations. However, it does imply that such features or context restrictions can be reinterpreted as syntactic agreement. The logic of the quantifier cycle—from positive to negative or from less negative to more negative—raises the question of whether negative quantifiers are the final step in the development of indefinites. Note that this is a different question from the expectation that NCIs will at some point become entirely restricted to the context of direct negation, discussed in relation to French, for example, in chapter . It is not necessary for an indefinite to be a negative quantifier in order to be restricted to the scope of negation. A strong NPI or an NCI without weak(er) NPI uses is restricted to the scope of negation too. While the AMP in () can account for the fact that NPIs are reinterpreted as ([uNeg]) NCIs, it is not immediately evident how semantically negative (or [iNeg]) quantifiers could arise from NCIs, given the preference for [uNeg] features under the AMP.¹³ This turns out to be unproblematic, however, when we consider that semantically negative quantifiers appear only to arise in two ways, at least in the languages we have studied for this volume (see section ..): through the incorporation into non-negative indefinites of negative (focus) markers (e.g. Old High German ni(o)uuiht ‘nothing’ < ni+(io)+uuiht ‘++thing’) or through analogical processes associated with paradigm formation (cf. the discussion of ¹³ Note that this is also far from evident under van Gelderen’s (, ) Feature Economy Principle, which posits that semantic features are typically reanalysed first as interpretable and then uninterpretable features, eventually being lost entirely. Under an analysis like Jäger’s () or Penka’s (), on the other hand, this problem does not arise, as the indefinites remain [uNeg] NCIs, but become more restricted in terms of their co-occurrence with other expressions of negation—[iNeg] negative quantifiers do not exist under their analysis; see section .., however, for discussion of some difficulties with Penka’s approach.

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Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord



countercyclic developments in section ..).¹⁴ The latter has, for instance, occurred with German kein < dehein, originally an NPI indefinite (Jäger , ) that became drawn into the series of negative quantifiers (niemand, nichts, nie(mals), nirgends/nirgendwo, . . . ) when the indefinite system went from a threeway (non-negative, NPI, and negative series) to a two-way distinction (nonnegative vs. negative series). By integrating our analysis of (a) the quantifier cycle as a strengthening of NPIs due to their conditions of acquisition; (b) the rise of NCIs from (strong) NPIs due to the AMP; and (c) the rise of negative quantifiers through univerbation with negative markers, we now arrive at the following updated picture in Figure . of the quantifier cycle presented in Figure .: nominal minimizer non-NPI indefinite

weak NPI

focus particle + indef

strong NPI

NCI neg + indef

NQ

F . The quantifier cycle (revised)

We have thus answered the question of how NCIs can arise through the quantifier cycle: via reanalysis of NPIs as bearing a formal [uNEG] feature as a consequence of the AMP. We still need, however, to account for the different ways in which different kinds of indefinites can interact with the expression of negation (i.e. negative concord), and the diachronic links between these different constellations. .. Diachronic changes between types of negative concord A separate issue, to which we now turn, concerns the diachronic relationships between the different types of negative concord mentioned in the previous chapters— strict and non-strict, negative doubling and negative spread. To address these relationships, it is first necessary to clarify what counts as negative concord. Giannakidou’s () informal definition, introduced in section ., makes a distinction between elements overtly indicating the presence of logical negation, which may occur more than once in a clause, and logical negation itself, which is present only once in negative concord:

¹⁴ Note that this is not the case for Jespersen’s cycle: new negators regularly arise from morphologically non-negative minimizers and generalizers, for instance Welsh ddim ‘not’ < ‘thing’, French pas ‘not’ < ‘step’ or Arabic -š(i) ‘not’ < ‘thing’. A crucial difference from the development of indefinites is the fact that new sentential negators first need to adopt an adverbial distribution; see section . for more detailed discussion.

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 ()

Internal motivations and formal approaches Negative concord Generally, we talk about ‘negative concord’ in situations where negation is interpreted just once although it seems to be expressed more than once in the clause. (Giannakidou : )

Other, more inclusive formulations have been proposed. Haspelmath’s (: ) ‘deliberately vague’ characterization of any indefinites as ‘negative indefinites’ that have ‘ “direct negation” as an important function’ (cf. section .) obscures the distinction between several types of interaction, as he counts for instance the English any-series among the ‘NV-NI’ indefinites (Haspelmath : , n. ), that is, ‘negative indefinites’ (on his understanding) that always co-occur with the sentential (‘verbal’) negator. Clearly, this is not how the term negative indefinite is understood here, or indeed in much of the literature on the issue. Biberauer and Zeijlstra’s definition of negative concord in terms of formal negation features is closer to the understanding here: ()

Negative concord an Agree relation involving one element bearing a formally interpretable feature [iNEG] and one or more further elements carrying uninterpretable formal features [uNEG]. (Biberauer and Zeijlstra b: )

It is important to bear in mind that the ‘element bearing a formally interpretable feature [iNeg]’ does not necessarily have to be overt. According to the analysis developed in section ., there are historical stages of languages in which there is a [uNeg] sentential negation marker, licensed by a covert [iNeg] operator—a negative concord situation by the definition in ()—but which only have NPI indefinites. Different types of negative marker—arising through Jespersen’s cycle as outlined by an interplay of Minimize Structure and Feature Economy—coupled with different indefinite systems, therefore give rise to different types of negative concord:¹⁵ ()

Three-way typology of negative concord systems . Languages with an overt [iNeg] negator and [uNeg] NCIs have non-strict negative doubling and negative spread. . Languages with an overt [uNeg] negator and [uNeg] NCIs have strict negative doubling and negative spread. Such languages have a covert [iNeg] operator. . Languages with an overt [uNeg] negator and [iNeg] indefinites have negative doubling, but without negative spread. Such languages have a covert [iNeg] operator in sentences without negative indefinites.

¹⁵ The fourth possibility, languages with an overt [iNeg] negator and [iNeg] indefinites, are of course not negative-concord languages.

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Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord



Pre-attestation Old Saxon, and possibly the pre-attestation stages of other West Germanic languages too (cf. the Old High German data discussed in Jäger : ) were languages of the third type (Breitbarth a). In the earliest Old Saxon texts, from the ninth century, morphologically negative indefinites arising through univerbation of plain indefinites with the sentential negation marker ni were still rare, see section .. As we saw there, they make up only around % of indefinites in the Heliand, and are absent in the Genesis fragments, where only NPI indefinites are used in the scope of negation. It was argued that Old Saxon was a strict negative doubling language without negative spread. This distribution can be accounted for if the sentential negation marker ni is [uNeg] in Early Old Saxon, including in the Genesis fragments. This analysis is corroborated by the fact that (a) there is strict negative doubling in the Heliand (where morphologically negative indefinites do occur), as in (); and (b) even NPI indefinites can be found to precede the sentential negator, as in (), even in the Genesis fragments in (), indicating the presence of a covert licenser scoping over them (Dal and Eroms  []: ). ()

Neo endi ni cumit thes never end  come.. . ‘The broad kingdom will never end.’

()

so is io endi ni cumit thus . ever end  come.. ‘Thus the end of it will never come.’

()

that is ênig seg  . any man ‘that no man was saved of it’

ni 

uuidon broad

rikeas kingdom. (Heliand –)

(Heliand )

ginas be.saved.. (Genesis )

That is, the language underlying the Genesis fragments manifests negative concord according to the definitions in (), but not according to the one in (). As it is not particularly intuitive to analyse a language as a negative-concord language solely on the grounds that it has a [uNeg] negation marker while there are no other overt expressions of negation (in the form of n-indefinites) in the language, Giannakidou’s definition of negative concord, which requires the overt multiple expression of negation, seems more appropriate. Thus, the data in () do not present an instance of negative concord. The historical Low German data afford us further insight into the connections between the quantifier cycle and negative concord. As just discussed, Old Saxon arguably developed strict negative doubling from previously not having any negative concord, with the incidence of morphologically negative indefinites increasing over time (Breitbarth a, a). As we saw in section ., early Old Saxon did not have negative spread. Where there is more than one indefinite in the scope of negation, they are either all NPI indefinites or at most one of them is morphologically negative.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

Middle Low German, on the other hand, had pervasive negative spread, in around % of all negative clauses with indefinites (Breitbarth a: –). At the same time, Low German underwent Jespersen’s cycle. If negative doubling is understood as cooccurrence of an NCI with the expression of standard sentential negation in a language, then Middle Low German no longer had negative doubling; NCIs could co-occur with the inherited preverbal particle en < Old Saxon ni, which can no longer be taken to be the standard sentential negator at this stage, but not with the new standard expression of sentential negation, nicht (Breitbarth a, b, a).¹⁶ In sum, we witness a development from a stage without negative concord via a stage with (strict) negative doubling to a stage with negative spread only (depending on the analysis of the former negative marker at this stage, which is being lost due to Jespersen’s cycle). A very similar development is observed in other languages, for instance the Romance languages. Classical Latin lacked negative concord, but doubling phenomena are found in informal Latin texts and many early Romance varieties appear to have had strict negative doubling (Parry : ). In older GalloRomance, strict negative concord occurred regularly, while doubling with preverbal NCIs occurred optionally in several older Italo-Romance varieties (Parry : –), present in (), absent in (). ()

ché nixun no pò ben finir (Ligurian) for no.one  can.. well end. ‘ . . . for no one can come to a good end.’ (Anonimo Genovese, p. , l. , fourteenth century)

() e nixum gi pò fuzì and no.one  can.. escape. ‘ . . . and no one can escape him.’ (Anonimo Genovese, p. , l. , fourteenth century) (Parry : ) French developed a new case of negative doubling with the inherited preverbal negator (e.g. ne . . . personne) after the loss of the inherited negative indefinites (cf. Latin nemo ‘no one’) and a new set of indefinites (the personne-series) underwent the quantifier cycle and became the NCIs they are today. Contemporary Standard French has (optional) negative spread, but doubles NCIs only with old ne, not with the standard sentential negation marker pas that arose through Jespersen’s cycle. Such a shift has also occurred in Slavonic, with early Slavonic varieties attesting a non-strict negative-concord system: when ni-series items (NCIs) appear postverbally, as in the Old East Slavonic example in (), negation is always marked on the verb, but, when they appear preverbally, there are many examples of the absence of a

¹⁶ See Zeijlstra () for a similar argument concerning Modern French. Zeijlstra proposes an analysis of French ne as an NPI without any negative features.

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Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord



negative marker on this verb, as in (), alongside the more modern-looking pattern with full concord, illustrated in (). ()

I ne svěst’ niktože, gdě položiša ja. and  know.. no.one= where put..  ‘And no one knows, where they are buried.’ (Povest’ vremennyx let, s.a.  [], p. , l. )

()

. . . jako takoja milosti nikto že možet’ stvoriti. how such kindness. no.one  may.. perform. ‘ . . . that no one could perform such kindness.’ (Povest’ vremennyx let, s.a.  [], p. , l. )

()

Věsi, knjaže, jako svoego nikto že ne know.. prince. how own.. no.one   xulit’, no xvalit’. criticize.. but praise.. ‘You know, prince, that no one criticizes their own, but rather praises it.’ (Povest’ vremennyx let, s.a.  [], p. , ll. –)

This non-strict pattern is never compulsory, and, indeed, generally seems to be the minority in the early languages. In all cases, it declines over time and is replaced completely by symmetrical NV-NI with both preverbal and postverbal indefinites in the present-day languages (Křížková , Haspelmath : –, Willis b: –). Haspelmath (: ) argues that the pattern NV-NI is the most consistent realization of Jespersen’s Negative First Principle (see section .), followed by (N)V-NI, and that therefore a change from (N)V-NI to NV-NI is a shift to a functionally preferred system and thus to be expected. However, given his definition of ‘negative indefinites’ as discussed above, NV-NI cannot be directly equated with strict negative doubling and (N)V-NI with non-strict negative doubling. Although the loss of optionality in negative doubling may thus be accounted for in functional terms, this leaves unexplained the development in the Romance languages (cf. Posner , Martins , Parry ), many of which start out from a similar situation to the Slavonic languages described above, that is, optional non-strict negative doubling, but then settle for obligatory non-strict negative doubling, rather than strict negative doubling. The only exceptions are (standard) French, which obligatorily doubles NCIs with the old marker ne, but excludes doubling with pas, and Romanian, which has strict negative doubling as discussed in section .. Given the initial optionality of the negation marker with preverbal NCIs in the early stages of both the Romance and Slavonic languages, it seems that the interpretability of the [Neg] feature on the negative marker was not settled at that stage. While the Negative First Principle is one functional motivation, another may be the preference to overtly mark the presence of logical negation in the clause, assuming that the covert expression of sentential negation is a

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

last resort option (cf. also Zeijlstra : ). Attributing an [iNeg] feature to the sentential negation marker in early Romance led to the rise of non-strict negative concord. The initial unavailability of negative spread in historical Low German, not witnessed in other negative-concord languages, arguably has its roots in the fact that negative indefinites arose through univerbation with the negative marker, creating semantically negative quantifiers from the start, which only later became [uNeg] NCIs participating first in negative doubling and later, in Middle Low German, in negative spread. We have seen above that there are two ways that a language may acquire negative concord. First, the necessary NCIs may arise through the quantifier cycle. Positive indefinites that have turned into NPI indefinites eventually become restricted to the scope of negation and are reanalysed as [uNeg] NCIs under the AMP. Second, negative quantifiers may arise through univerbation with a negative marker, and then become [uNeg] NCIs under paradigm pressure (section ..). The question of how negative concord, of any type, can be lost also involves essentially two scenarios. First, negative doubling can disappear as indefinites undergo the quantifier cycle. This happened in Early Modern English, when the any-series expanded its domain of use to the context of direct negation from an earlier bagel distribution. In so doing, the any-series supplanted the no-series, which, in conjunction with the sententialnegation marker, had until then been the dominant way of expressing an indefinite under direct negation (Iyeiri , Wallage , Nevalainen ). No-series elements became negative quantifiers at this point in standard written English; that is, their [uNeg] feature was reanalysed as an [iNeg] feature. This reanalysis was made possible by the ability of no-series items—as NCIs—to express negation in elliptical contexts (e.g. sentence fragments), coupled with their increasing restriction to such contexts. The second scenario leading to the loss of negative doubling involves Jespersen’s cycle. It has been observed that new negators that arise through Jespersen’s cycle, initially being semantically negative or formally [iNeg], often do not co-occur with NCIs (Haspelmath : –). This can be seen in French, in Breton, in Middle Low German, and in Middle English. French retained negative spread between NCIs to some extent, but, at least in the standard variety, does not sanction negative doubling between NCIs and pas. The development in Breton mirrors that of French. Middle Low German allowed negative spread, but not doubling with nicht ‘not’ (Breitbarth a, b). Middle English broadly resembles Middle Low German: it allowed negative spread until the sixteenth century (Wallage : ), while doubling with not is attested but very infrequent, never exceeding around % of all negative clauses containing indefinites (Wallage : ).¹⁷ ¹⁷ Note that this scenario is not inevitable: both Welsh (Willis a: –) and some varieties of French reintroduced the new marker of negation into some clauses containing negative indefinites, recreating negative concord despite undergoing Jespersen’s cycle (cf. section .).

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Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord



Various analyses have been proposed to account for such systems. Zeijlstra () makes a distinction between formal morphosyntactic [iNeg] features and semantic negation, arguing that [uNeg] NCIs need to be licensed by a feature of the former kind, being blind to semantic negation. Under Haegeman and Lohndal’s () account of negative concord in terms of pairwise (instead of multiple) Agree, there is incomplete matching in terms of the features of the indefinites and the negator, the latter lacking an interpretable Q feature to match and license the [uQ] feature on the NCIs. The fact that languages undergoing Jespersen’s cycle seem to pass through a stage with negative spread, but without negative doubling with the new standard expression of sentential negation, suggests that Haegeman and Lohndal’s proposal is on the right track. Furthermore, the distinction between ‘semantic’ and interpretable formal features proposed by Zeijlstra is not universally accepted; van Gelderen’s (, , ) idea of cyclical change driven by Feature Economy, for example, explicitly assumes that the ‘semantic features’ of newly grammaticalizing lexical items enter agreement relations with [uF] probes that arose through Feature Economy. .. Summary Summing up, the changes that may be observed in the type of negative concord that occurs in a language are a combination of changes affecting the indefinites involved and changes affecting the expression of sentential negation, in particular the renewal of this expression through Jespersen’s cycle. The three-way typology of negative concord systems given in () essentially preserves Zeijlstra’s () synchronic proposal, but adds a third option. However, we are now in a position to see the diachronic connection between the three types of negative concord system: in line with the empirical observations about older Romance languages by, for example, Posner (), Martins (), and Parry (), we expect a diachronic shift from the first to the second type, that is, from non-strict to strict negative concord, if the negative marker undergoes Jespersen’s cycle as analysed in chapter . At the same time, the availability of variation in the input to language acquisition, specifically mixed input reflecting both type  and type  grammars (i.e. an overt [iNeg] negator and [uNeg] NCIs vs. an overt [uNeg] negator and [uNeg] NCIs) may also cause such a shift. The functional motivation of the Negative First Principle (Haspelmath ) can also not be ruled out as a determining factor in the face of such variation. This would explain why the second type seems to be the crosslinguistically preferred option: over time the quantifier cycle will, by the mechanisms of language acquisition discussed above, produce strong NPIs, which, under the AMP, will become [uNeg] NCIs. At the same time, Minimize Structure and Feature Economy will result in [uNeg] negators. Negative concord may be lost with the innovation of new [iNeg] negators (cf. the preference for having an overt exponent of [iNeg] as suggested by Zeijlstra : ) which are unable to agree with [uNeg] NCIs if we assume Haegeman and Lohndal’s () analysis, under which indefinites may have more uninterpretable features that need

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

to be licensed by the negation particle but cannot be. Finally, the availability of negative spread has to be attributed to properties of the indefinites involved: [iNeg] negative quantifiers cannot participate in negative spread, [uNeg] NCIs can.

. Interaction of the quantifier cycle and Jespersen’s cycle We have already seen (section ..) how negative concord can arise in connection with the quantifier cycle. Our discussion of Jespersen’s cycle (chapter ) also implied that it too could be fed by the quantifier cycle: being scalar, NPIs and negative indefinites (NCIs and negative quantifiers) undergoing the quantifier cycle can also come to serve as reinforcers of the expression of negation and eventually as new expressions of negation themselves (e.g. Welsh ddim). But as we saw in section ., Ladusaw’s concept of a ‘Jespersen argument cycle’, which draws a direct connection between Jespersen’s cycle and the stages of the quantifier cycle, conflates distinct processes which do not necessarily proceed in tandem. In the same section we also saw that, while there is a correlation between the head status of a sentential negator and the presence of negative concord in a language, there is no necessary link as claimed by Rowlett () and Zeijlstra (). In the present section we turn to a related proposal, namely van Gelderen’s (, ) account of Jespersen’s cycle, which implies a necessary link between the renewal of negative markers and negative concord. On this account, weakening of the original negative marker (in the sense of Jespersen ) is the first step in cyclic renewal. It is modelled as a change in the interpretability of the [Neg] feature of the negative marker, a weakening from interpretable [iNeg] to uninterpretable [uNeg]. A [uNeg] negator needs to rely on an [iNeg] (or semantically negative) licenser.¹⁸ Negative concord is explicitly understood as a strategy to strengthen a weak negator: for instance, van Gelderen (: –) claims that, in Old English, negative doubling between the negator ne ‘not’ and negative indefinites such as nænig mon ‘no man’ arises first in contexts where the indefinite is a preverbal subject. She interprets this as a situation where the fronted indefinite checks the [uNeg] feature of the negative head by moving through the specifier of NegP. That is, according to van Gelderen, the presence of negative concord in a language means that its negator is a [uNeg] head—and that the language is in the first stages of Jespersen’s cycle. We saw in section . that this view of negative concord is too simplistic, as the assumption that the negative marker in a negative-concord language is a [uNeg] head fails to account for the differences between strict and non-strict negative doubling. Moreover, the idea that concordant indefinites are either semantically negative or ¹⁸ As mentioned at the end of section .., van Gelderen, unlike Zeijlstra (), does not make a distinction between semantic features and morphosyntactic formal features like [iNeg] for the purpose of licensing [uNeg] features.

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Interaction of the quantifier cycle and Jespersen’s cycle



have an interpretable formal [iNeg] feature cannot account for the most common forms of negative concord, in particular the fact that negative doubling (of any kind) most commonly correlates with negative spread. If concording indefinites were [iNeg], there would be no negative spread. Negative doubling without negative spread is crosslinguistically rare, and diachronically unstable. One possible example, Old Saxon, was discussed above, which Breitbarth () analyses as having [iNeg] negative quantifiers and a [uNeg] negative head. Van Gelderen (: ) rejects the possibility of covert [iNeg] operators (contra Zeijlstra  and Haegeman and Lohndal ). Hence a language with a [uNeg] negation marker cannot rely on a covert negative operator, and must instead react to the semantic weakening of the sentential negator either by finding a semantically negative expression of negation or by reanalysing some suitable item to become an [iNeg] element occupying SpecNegP. Aside from the question of why economy considerations should ever cause the element expressing the logical negation of a proposition to cease to be able to do so, there is an empirical problem here: many languages evidently have [uNeg] negative heads—because they are strict negative-doubling languages—but never come close to renewing the expression of sentential negation. Because of this empirical problem, the weakening of the original negative marker cannot be a sufficient condition for the start of Jespersen’s cycle (Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis , Breitbarth a); what is instead required is a generalized adverbial strengthener in the language (i.e. one that has sufficiently overcome initial lexical or contextual usage restrictions; see chapter ). Such supposedly universal strengtheners are not available everywhere, despite van Gelderen’s (: ) suggestion to this effect (‘ready-to-be-recycled negative objects and adverbials and minimizers, such as pas ‘step’ in French and a bit in English’). As we saw in section ., while emphatic reinforcers such as minimizers are probably available in all languages, they need to undergo several rounds of reanalysis in order to become neutral, generally available adverbial strengtheners of negation (cf. also Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis ). Only such context-independent adverbial strengtheners are capable of becoming new negators. From the perspective of the present chapter, the most problematic aspect of van Gelderen’s assumption that negative concord feeds into Jespersen’s cycle (because of the direct correlation between a [uNeg] negative marker and negative concord) is the idea that concordant indefinites, seen as initial strengtheners, are also subject to cyclic weakening. This is contradicted by our observations concerning the quantifier cycle, and its interaction with negative concord, discussed in section .: former NPI indefinites without formal negation features will acquire, not lose, a [uNeg] feature. This emergence of [uNeg] NCIs is the consequence of (a) incomplete acquisition of the distribution of NPIs, leading to an increased restriction to negative contexts; and (b) reanalysis of a semantic licensing condition (the scope of a downward-entailing operator) as a syntactic one (the postulation of uninterpretable formal negation features) under the AMP.

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

Internal motivations and formal approaches

As we saw in chapter  and in section ., the presence of negative concord is virtually exclusively dependent on the nature of the indefinites: they must be [uNeg] NCIs, leaving aside rare transitional systems with [iNeg] negative quantifiers and [uNeg] negators, as found in later Old Saxon. As argued in section ., this requirement seems to be quite independent of the stage of Jespersen’s cycle that the language in question is at, or whether it has undergone Jespersen’s cycle at all, again with the possible exception of transitional systems.

. Conclusion In order to account for the empirical generalizations made in chapter , this chapter has proposed an account of the quantifier and free-choice cycles that combines formal syntactic analysis, pragmatic processes, functional motivations, and an acquisitional approach to language change. Pragmatic processes—more specifically, the conventionalization of scalar or negative implicatures—lie at heart of the inception of these two cycles. Unlike Jespersen’s cycle, the quantifier and free-choice cycles do not involve a weakening and reinforcement of the indefinites involved. Rather, their semantic properties change in a way that makes them become available in NPI contexts, and subsequently become restricted to a narrower and narrower range of NPI contexts. The internal structure of indefinites undergoing the quantifier and free-choice cycles is the same as that of those NPI indefinites that become NPAs and eventually new negators in incipient Jespersen’s cycle (chapter ): complex DPs with a Restr head as well as a quantificational head. The Restr head encodes the type of quantifier, for example, ‘thing’, ‘person’, etc., and may, for instance, be targeted through grammaticalization (upward reanalysis) by a former nominal head, typically a minimizer or generalizer. The quantificational head encodes the contextual restrictions of the indefinite, that is, the semantic features that determine which (subset of ) (non-)NPI contexts an indefinite is licensed in. This head may be overtly expressed morphologically in a language by morphemes such as ‘some’, ‘any’, or ‘no’, but does not have to be. The associations between featural content of the quantificational head and lexical context may be subject to diachronic change, as evidenced by, for instance, the increasing negativization through the centuries of French aucun ‘some(one)’ > ‘any(one)’ > ‘no (one)’. These changes do not constitute instances of grammaticalization: an element that has progressed further along the quantifier cycle is not more or less grammatical than one that is still less negative. The expansion to more negative contexts and the withdrawal from less negative ones that characterizes the quantifier cycle was accounted for in terms of L acquisition: children first acquire the most restrictive licensing context or contexts and then conservatively widen their assumptions about the licensing conditions. Bagel

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Conclusion



distributions and partly also countercyclic developments can be accounted for in terms of paradigm pressure and series formation. The hypothesis that the quantifier cycle is localized in L acquisition is supported by the observation (see also chapter ) that it spreads from below, sociolinguistically speaking. Regarding the interaction between the increasing negativization of indefinites under the quantifier cycle and the rise, or loss, of negative concord, the development of negative concord, that is, the rise of NCIs bearing a formal [uNeg] feature, can be seen as a natural extension of the quantifier cycle: once an indefinite has become restricted to the scope of negation, it may, by a third-factor principle such as Schütze’s AMP, be reanalysed from strong NPI to NCI, equipped with a formal [uNeg] feature. While Jespersen’s cycle correlates with the quantifier cycle in the sense that NPIs can feed Jespersen’s cycle, the often-suggested connection between negative concord and Jespersen’s cycle turns out to be less direct than is usually assumed in the literature.

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7 External motivations for change in indefinite systems In chapter , language-internal mechanisms driving the quantifier cycle and the free-choice cycle were discussed, both in terms of individual indefinites and of series of indefinites. While these processes are available in any language, changes in indefinite systems cannot always be accounted for solely by these means. In this chapter, we therefore turn to discuss possible cases where the form or distribution of indefinites may have been influenced by contact with some other language, as well as the nature of the mechanisms underlying any such changes. The importance of recognizing extra-syntactic, and in particular extra-linguistic, causes of syntactic change was emphasized in chapter , where we showed how the initiation of Jespersen’s cycle can in several cases be attributed to diffusion (in the sense of Labov ) under conditions of language contact. In the present chapter, we extend the use of the apparatus introduced in section .. and chapter  to changes in indefinite systems and changes in the way indefinites interact with sentential negation. Language contact can affect the indefinite system of a language in different ways. In chapter , we saw that both borrowing and imposition can be at the root of the transfer of stage-II-style negation. In cases of imposition, adult learners of an L transfer patterns from their native language to the target language, typically using material from the target (recipient) language to model the structure in the source language. In cases of borrowing, learners of an L transfer material from the L into their native language, either a form, or its distribution, or both. Given that languages normally already have some kind of indefinite system in place before coming into contact with another language, the question is then what effect contact can have here. Several scenarios are found: • individual lexical items are borrowed, whether independent of or together with their distribution; • individual lexical items change their distribution through imposition, with the new distribution modelled on a parallel element in the source language; The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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Recipient-language agentivity and borrowing of indefinites



• the number of separate series of indefinites changes under the influence of a simpler or more complex system: ◦ either as a result of the changes in individual items, whether through borrowing or imposition; ◦ or as a result of wholesale transfer of the structure or organization of the system. These scenarios will be discussed and exemplified in the course of this chapter. We will see that, in general, indefinite systems change less frequently under recipientlanguage agentivity (borrowing), and when they do, transfer of form is what is generally found; the more frequent case involves source-language agentivity (imposition), in which case various aspects of structure (the number of series, their morphological structure, and, above all, their syntactic distribution) are affected.

. Recipient-language agentivity and borrowing of indefinites The first question then is the role of recipient-language agentivity in the development of indefinite systems, and the extent to which indefinites can be directly borrowed into a recipient language from a source language. Haspelmath (: ) states ‘I know of no cases where a complete indefinite pronoun has been borrowed’. While it is certainly the case that borrowing of whole pronouns is rare across most of Europe, there are areas where it is relatively well attested. Within Arabic-speaking regions, for instance, borrowing of bona fide indefinites is not uncommon. Numerous Berber varieties have borrowed the Arabic indefinites ḥ add/ḥ ədd ‘anyone’ and walu ‘nothing’, among others, along with their distributions, while several varieties of Iraqi and Gulf Arabic have hīč ‘nothing, not at all’, borrowed from Persian (or at least had it in the past; see Lucas forthcoming for further details). Another case of borrowing, albeit of an adverbial, rather than pronominal indefinite, involves Cornish neffra < Old English næ¯ fre ‘never’. In addition to the act of borrowing itself, this item also undergoes significant recipient-language influence on its distribution, assimilating to existing Cornish indefinites in showing absence of polarity sensitivity, hence meaning ‘never, ever, always’, depending on clause type. Partial borrowing also occurs in various forms. In a number of cases, the generic noun feeding into the indefinite was borrowed, as in the case of Turkish bir şey ‘something’ with şey < Arabic šayʔ ‘thing’. More common, however, are cases where indefiniteness markers (the lexical content of the F-head under the analysis presented in chapter ) are borrowed to form indefinites in combination with interrogative pronouns, typically under intense contact (Haspelmath : –). For instance, Hungarian has né- from Slavonic ně-, to form indefinites such as né-mi ‘some’ < ‘-what’, parallel, for instance, to Slovak nie-čo ‘something’ < ‘some-what’. Slovak, in turn, has borrowed an indefinite marker bár- from Hungarian bár-, as found in Slovak bár-kto ‘anyone’ and

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

Hungarian bár-ki ‘anyone’. The Russian NCI-marker ni- has been loaned for negative indefinites in various Uralic languages of Russia, including Karelian, Olonets, Lude, Vote, Veps, Skolt Sámi, Akkala Sámi, Ter Sámi, and Komi among others (Blokland : , Hamari : ). In some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between borrowing of an indefinite marker and borrowing of a whole indefinite, since a borrowed indefinite may, presumably via the kinds of developments outlined in section ..., form the basis for a complete series of indefinites, marginalizing lone use of the item. Turkish hiç ‘no, nothing’, loaned from the same Persian item as eastern Arabic hīč above, is a case in point. The lone item hiç is possible, and so, in a sense, an indefinite has been borrowed wholesale. However, in both Persian and Turkish, hič/hiç, as an adnominal quantifier, forms the basis for an entire series of indefinites (Persian hič kas ‘no one’, Turkish hiçbiri ‘no one’, etc.), and thus, in a different sense, only the indefinite marker itself has been borrowed. The same applies to the outcome of hič in various other Turkic languages (e.g. Azeri, Tatar, Kazakh) and some non-Turkic languages (Sorani Kurdish hîç kes(êk) ‘no one’; Omar : ). Bulgarian may offer a hint as to the mechanics of the borrowing process. Turkish hiç has also been borrowed into Bulgarian as xič ‘nothing, no, not at all’ (and similar items in other Balkan languages and dialects). It may appear under direct negation and with bez ‘without’, but not in weak NPI contexts. Furthermore, it has not replaced native equivalents such as nikakăv ‘no’ or ništo ‘nothing’, offering rather a more expressive, colloquial version of them (cf. English items such as (diddly) squat etc.; Postal ). It is thus still a marginal member of the set of indefinites, intermediate between lexical and grammaticalized. Its syntactic distribution is different from and narrower than that in Turkish (and Persian), where hiç is additionally possible in interrogatives and in indirect (superordinate) negation (Progovac : , ). It seems natural to suppose that the introduction of xič into Bulgarian was carried out by L speakers of Bulgarian who had a degree of L competence in Turkish. Native speakers, in borrowing an item, assume that, in terms of its polarity distribution, it follows the pattern of existing, native items with which they are familiar. For Bulgarian speakers, negative uses of hiç were most salient, and it was therefore natural for them to treat it as being a more emotionally charged variant of their existing ni-series items (effectively equating it with ništo ‘nothing’), thereby giving it the distribution of an NCI. Note furthermore that the distributional pattern of Turkish hiç is not found with any indefinite in Bulgarian; hence, Bulgarian speakers were simply not considering that distribution as a possibility when hiç was borrowed. Having considered borrowing of form, we should also consider whether recipientlanguage agentivity can lead to borrowing of structure, for instance, where speakers take over the distributional pattern that some series of indefinites has in another language, and then apply it to their own native indefinites without changing their form. Broadly, the answer to this question seems to be negative. The nearest possible

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Recipient-language agentivity and borrowing of indefinites



case concerns negative concord in the early Slavonic languages, and involves a rather different scenario, in which recipient-language agentivity inhibits change in structure, or at least its expression in the historical record. There is much debate as to whether non-strict negative doubling, found across all the early Slavonic languages, particularly in Old Church Slavonic, but also in Old East Slavonic and Old Czech, was indigenous or arose in the gospel translations under the influence of Greek. Its attestation across all subgroups of early Slavonic and in texts not translated from Greek suggests that it must have had some indigenous basis. However, it clearly comes to be associated with high-register, Greek-influenced ecclesiastical texts, suggesting that Vaillant (– []) was correct to surmise that, although it was probably the original pattern in Common Slavonic, the shift to symmetric negative concord occurred early, and the strength of attestation of the older pattern is due to imitation of Byzantine Greek models. Here then, we are not dealing with imposition of a pattern by L speakers, but rather imitation of the syntactic pattern of a prestige language by L speakers of the variety being influenced. This would, in principle, be the scenario we are looking for. However, language contact here does not induce change; rather, it impedes change in the particular (high-style) register subject to language contact through a literary medium, and the pattern that is being preserved seems to have originally been a native one (see Willis b: –). The situation in the history of Romanian presents rather similar issues. Old Romanian texts provide evidence that it too was an optional non-strict negativeconcord language (Falaus : , Pană Dindelegan : –), whereas Present-day Romanian has strict negative concord. Taken at face value, the language has thus participated in a shift parallel to that of Slavonic discussed above—from optional non-strict to strict negative concord. However, as with the Slavonic shift, there is disagreement as to how to interpret the written record. Rizescu () argues that cases of non-strict negative concord are due to Slavonic literary influence, with texts translated from Slavonic mirroring the use of negative concord in the original. In the spoken language, on the other hand, Rizescu suggests that South Slavonic (Bulgarian) influence strengthened the strict negative concord that became the norm in later Romanian. This scenario is possible if attested examples of non-strict negative concord in South Slavonic were themselves a literary phenomenon maintained under Greek influence. If this is indeed the case, then we are dealing with a situation where recipient-language agentivity leads writers to introduce the structural patterns of another prestige language into the written form of their own. If there was no historical basis for non-strict negative concord in the early Romance of the Balkans (itself debatable), then this represents a stronger case than the Slavonic one above, with recipient-language agentivity introducing a new structure, rather than merely reinforcing an existing one. The Balkan situation is a rather unusual one, since elsewhere we find that recipient-language agentivity tends to be associated with change in form rather

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

than change in system structure. It should be noted, however, that such instances of recipient-language agentivity were all mediated through vernacular varieties and via vernacular contacts between linguistic communities. It is not unreasonable to expect the results of contact mediated via translation and study of literary and ecclesiastical texts to be rather different from those based on vernacular contacts. To conclude: transfer of negative indefinite morphemes, and sometimes even whole indefinites, is not unheard of, and, as would be expected, it is generally carried out under recipient-language agentivity. Under such circumstances, it is expected that form rather than structure will be transferred, and this is generally what we find: speakers do not create new syntactic distributions for borrowed items. If the pattern used in the source language does not exist in the recipient language, the recipientlanguage distribution of the most salient use or uses of the borrowed item is used instead. Hence, for example, the polarity-neutral distribution of Cornish neffra ‘never, ever, always’: when this was borrowed from Old English næ¯fre during the Old or early Middle Cornish period, the inherited Cornish indefinites showed no sensitivity to polarity. Where the two languages in contact already have structurally parallel indefinite systems, the issue of deciding what distribution to assign to a newly borrowed item does not arise. However, even the absence of such parallelism does not seem to be a significant impediment to borrowing, as the Cornish case demonstrates. As we shall see, structure is not immune to transfer; however, the demographic conditions that enable such changes are rather different, and they are not usually associated with significant transfer of form. The remainder of this chapter is largely devoted to changes of this kind.

. Changes in the distribution of individual items due to imposition In sociohistorical contexts indicative of source-language agentivity, we find reorganization of the distribution of existing items in the recipient language in line with the pattern of the source language. In such cases, no new items are introduced, and hence form is replicated successfully; however, the structure of the system, understood, for instance, in terms of a semantic map, is transferred more or less directly from the source language. As a result, individual indefinites change their distribution by imposition. A case in point, discussed by Lucas (a: –), and later Keren (), is the change of Hebrew meʔuma, klum, and šum davar ‘nothing’. These items are (weak) NPIs in historical Hebrew (meʔuma already in Biblical (Classical) Hebrew, klum and šum davar from Rabbinic (Mishnaic) and Medieval Hebrew onwards), as witnessed by their use in, for instance, questions or the antecedent of conditionals:¹ ¹ The examples here follow Keren’s () distinct romanization systems for Biblical and Modern Hebrew.

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Changes in the distribution of individual items due to imposition ()



Biblical Hebrew a. hă-yāḵōl ʾūḵal dabbēr məʾūmā -can. can.. say. anything ‘Can I really say anything?’ (Num. : ) (Faber : –; cited from Lucas a: , Keren : ) b. kō yaʿăsε llī ʾɛ̆lōhīm wə-ḵō yōsip̄ kī ʾim so do.. . god and-so add..  if lip̄nēy ḇō ha-ššεmεš ʾεṭʿam lεḥ εm ʾō ḵol məʾūmā before come. -sun taste.. bread or any anything ‘May God do thus to me and more if I eat bread or anything else before sundown.’ ( Samuel :; from Keren : )

In Modern Hebrew, which was revitalized from written Hebrew from the end of the nineteenth century, these elements are NCIs: they occur together with the standard negator lo in finite negative clauses, (); they are no longer available in weak NPI contexts, (); and they are able to express negation in fragment answers, (). ()

lo raʔiti meʔuma / klum / šum davar  see.. n.thing ‘I didn’t see anything.’

(Modern Hebrew) (Keren : )

()

*ʔim tirʔe šama meʔuma / klum / šum davar . . . if see.. there n.thing ‘If you see anything there . . . ’ (Keren : )

()

A: ma kara B: klum what happen.. n.thing ‘What happened?’ ‘Nothing.’

/

šum šum

davar thing (Lucas a: )

Modern Hebrew is a strict negative-concord language, (), and also has negative spread, (). ()

meʔuma lo yešane ʔet daʕat-am ʕal ha-ħisun n.thing  change..  opinion- about -vaccination ‘Nothing can change their opinion about the vaccination.’ (http://www.ynet.co. il/articles/,,L-,.html accessed  April ; from Keren : )

()

ʔaf ʔeħad *(lo) ʔamar nobody *() say.. ‘Nobody said anything.’

meʔuma / klum / šum davar n.thing (Keren : )

As we saw in chapter , such a change from NPI to NCI can be accounted for language-internally as the application of the AMP in language acquisition: language

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

learners reinterpret the obligatory co-occurrence of NPI and negative particle as an instance of syntactic agreement, that is, negative concord. As Keren (: , fn. ) remarks, however, ‘one could ask if a language without native speakers could be expected to experience such natural processes’, and Hebrew appears to start undergoing the change exactly at the point when L learners with negative-concord languages as their native languages start speaking it. Lucas (a: –) argues that, because the first speakers of Modern Hebrew were predominantly native speakers of Yiddish (Zuckerman : ), the fact that meʔuma, klum, and šum davar changed their distribution from NPIs to NCIs is a result of imposition of the Yiddish negative-concord system. Keren (: –) points out that Yiddish only optionally exhibits negative doubling with gornisht (its equivalent of meʔuma, klum, and šum davar), whereas Modern Hebrew obligatorily has negative doubling. On this basis, Keren (: –) suggests that the emergence of negative concord in Modern Hebrew should perhaps rather been seen as imposition from its Slavonic contact languages, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian, though without rejecting the possibility of Yiddish influence. Either way, it seems uncontroversial that imposition from one or more of these languages underlies the Hebrew developments. This example clearly demonstrates the possibility of changes in the structure of indefinite systems due to imposition. Elements of this process are also present in the Welsh case study in section ., as well as in the development of the Breton indefinite system, which has been undergoing a quantifier cycle parallel to that in French (see Willis a: – for details). Having seen a straightforward example of structural imposition, we now turn to consider other structural changes in more complicated or controversial sociohistorical contexts, beginning with convergence in the Balkan languages.

. Morphological and distributional changes in convergence Similar instances of the transfer of some particular type of negative concord are found under conditions of convergence in linguistic areas, notably in the Balkans. Here, long-standing bilingualism has led to multidirectional transfer of structural patterns, with, however, only very limited borrowing of form. Consider first morphological changes. These concern the morphological pattern according to which the indefinite series itself is formed (rather than its syntactic distribution). Here, we see parallelism across Balkan languages that seem to form part of the convergence processes associated with the Balkan Sprachbund (on the Sprachbund itself, there is a vast literature; see Joseph  among many others). The Romanian ni-series of indefinites (NCIs) is partially reformed morphologically under Slavonic influence. While some items are regular reflexes of Latin items (e.g. nimeni ‘no one’ < Latin neminem  of nemo ‘no one’; and nimic ‘nothing’ < Latin nec micam ‘not even a crumb’), adverbial indefinites are modelled on nici ‘not even’,

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Morphological and distributional changes in convergence



structurally paralleling the equivalent Slavonic items (Sandfeld : –). Dialectally, the resemblances can be even stronger: Sandfeld (: ) cites Banat Romanian nici-cui ‘no one (/)’, which, being in contact with Serbian, parallels Serbian niko. Both items are composed of ‘not even’ + ‘who’. The pattern has also been transferred to Albanian, where the as-series fully parallels Slavonic in morphological structure. Thus Albanian askush ‘no one’ < as ‘not even’ + kush ‘(interrogative) who’ (Mann : –; Newmark, Hubbard, and Prifti : , ) is derived in the same way as Macedonian nikoj ‘no one’ < ni ‘not even’ + koj ‘(interrogative) who’. Other examples are given in ()–(). ()

Bulgarian ni edin ‘no, none (adnominal quantifier)’ < ni ‘not even’ + edin ‘one’ Romanian nici un ‘no, none’ < nici ‘not even’ + un ‘one’ Albanian asnjë ‘no, none’ < as ‘not even’ + një ‘one’

()

Romanian nici-cînd ‘never’ < nici ‘not even’ + cînd ‘when’ Bulgarian nikoga ‘never’ < ni ‘not even’ + koga ‘when’

()

Romanian niciodată ‘never’ < nici ‘not even’ + odată ‘once’ (< Latin data ‘date’) Albanian asnjëherë < as ‘not even’ + një ‘one’ + herë ‘hour, time’ (loan from Latin hōra ‘hour’)

()

Romanian nici-cum ‘in no way’ < nici ‘not even’ + cum ‘how’ Bulgarian nikak ‘in no way’ < ni ‘not even’ + kak ‘how’

The formation ‘not even’ + wh-interrogative is not uncommon as a way of creating new NCIs in the world’s languages (Haspelmath : –). However, the Balkan parallelisms are very close, and a role for language contact in the emergence of these structural morphological similarities seems likely. While this pattern is found throughout Balto-Slavic, it is not found systematically in Romance: Latin neque, nec ‘not even’ does indeed give rise to Romance ‘person’ items such as Spanish ninguno, Catalan ningú, Dalmatian nencioin, nenčoin (Bartoli : , ), among others, but, in other varieties, this pattern does not generalize across the paradigm in the way that nici has in Romanian. Indeed, the Romanian person item nimeni derives directly from Latin nemo, suggesting that nec unus did not become established in this function or was lost.² This suggests that contact with neighbouring Slavonic varieties, where the pattern is inherited and present uniformly in languages outside the region, is the motivation for the analogical extension of this pattern to create a complete series of items (on Old Romanian negative indefinites, see further Pană Dindelegan : –).

² On this view, the adnominal quantifier niciun ‘no’ would be a reformation (nici ‘not even’ + un ‘one’) rather than a continuation of Latin nec unus.

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

We must also consider the possibility that this morphological structure is an areal feature that goes beyond the Balkans. As noted, it is found throughout Balto-Slavic, but its presence there can be attributed to shared inheritance. However, it is also found in Hungarian (e.g. sem-mi ‘nothing’ < sem ‘not even’ + mi ‘what’), and in Uralic languages that have been in contact with Russian. The result is a much wider geographic domain over which this structure may have spread. The reasons for the spread of this pattern seem to involve both a degree of imposition and convergence. Use of nici- indefinites in Romanian is attested already in (seventeenth-century) Old Romanian (Rizescu ) and thus its innovation goes back to the medieval period. Early Slavonic migration into the Balkans left significant numbers of Slavonic speakers north of the Danube, and, while the details are difficult to establish, there was thus a substantial amount of language shift from Slavonic to Romanian during the medieval period, with language shift to Romanian perhaps complete by the thirteenth century (Pătruţ , Boia ). Slavonic later continued to be used as an administrative and ecclesiastical language among the ruling class in medieval Wallachia and in a number of settlements north of the Danube, suggesting also a degree of societal bilingualism among certain groups (although the extent to which this was based on active L competence is disputed; MacRobert : –, –, : –). Large-scale language shift creates the conditions for imposition of Slavonic morphological structure on Romanian; societal bilingualism creates the conditions for convergence, where more evenly balanced bilinguals align the grammars of their languages (Lucas ). Further south, in linguistically mixed regions, the conditions for convergence have long been present, and the spread of a common morphological template for NCIs is an instance of such convergence effects. In the case discussed above, we are dealing with convergence on a broad geographic level. More local changes occur too. Some southern Bulgarian dialects, historically in close contact with Greek, show an implementation of the free-choice cycle whose direction may be structurally influenced by Greek. Mirčev () reports on indefinites in the traditional dialect of Teshovo in southwestern Bulgaria. In this and some neighbouring varieties, a new indefinite, boedin, has been created from what was originally a free-choice item deriving from Old Church Slavonic ljubo edinŭ, where ljubo is a free-choice particle etymologically related to ljubiti ‘like, love’, and edinŭ is the numeral ‘one’. This indefinite appears widely across traditional southern Bulgarian dialects, although its syntactic distribution varies substantially from dialect to dialect, some retaining a distribution closer to a free-choice item, some specializing boedin for negation (Vitanova : ). In the data cited by Mirčev, it is found with irrealis non-specific meaning in interrogatives, conditionals, in indirect negation (in the scope of ‘without’), and in direct negation. This is the distribution of the Greek típota-series of indefinites. It is, of course, not unusual for an item to undergo the free-choice cycle and extend its use to a range of contexts beyond its historical source as this element has done. However, it is striking that the

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system



general Slavonic pattern for the free-choice cycle results in a bagel distribution (see section ..), with items failing to spread to direct negative contexts. On the other hand, Greek típota-series items are found both in direct negative contexts and in other NPI contexts, as well as some positive environments (Haspelmath : –). Since the district of Teshovo had a very substantial Greek-speaking population in the nineteenth century (Synvet : ), it seems likely that we are dealing here with imposition of Greek patterns onto Slavonic by a population for whom Greek was or had become the psychologically dominant language (source-language agentivity). In this section, we have considered the possible role of contact in change in indefinites in the Balkans. Although demographically quite different from the Hebrew situation, the two cases both show structural changes with very limited evidence for transfer of linguistic form. In the Balkans, these structural changes concerned both the morphological structure of indefinites and their distribution. While difficulty in establishing the precise details of the historical demographic situation make an interpretation in terms of language-contact agentivity difficult, we have seen plausible evidence that a mixture of imposition and convergence could have led to the linguistic outcome observed. In the next section, we will develop a more detailed case study, which again shows a mixture of language-contact types, and develop an analysis that integrates language contact with internally motivated change, showing how the different processes may interact in complex ways to produce wide-ranging change in the structural organization of an indefinite system.

. Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system The historical development of the system of Welsh indefinites provides an excellent case study of contact-induced partial restructuring of an indefinite system without direct borrowing of lexical material. Middle Welsh (–) had two series of indefinites, a fully grammaticalized series of weak NPI indefinites, the neb-series, (), and a weakly grammaticalized series derived from generic nouns found in affirmative contexts, () (Willis a: –). ()

neb-series person thing quantity quality place time

neb ‘anyone’ dim ‘anything’ dim + noun / un + noun ‘any’ neb + noun ‘any’ yn un lle ‘in one/any place’ byth (generic or future-oriented) / erioed (past-oriented)

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 ()

External motivations for change in indefinite systems generic-noun series person dyn ‘a person, someone’ (< dyn ‘person’) thing peth ‘a thing, something’ (< peth ‘thing’) quantity peth o (mass noun) / rei o (plural count noun) ‘some’ quality ryw ‘some’ (< ryw ‘kind, type’) place lle ‘a place, somewhere’

The syntactic behaviour of the neb-series in Middle Welsh can be seen in ()–(); it is used in negative contexts, (), as well as in questions, (), conditionals, (), and for the standard of comparison, (). Indefinites from the generic-noun series are used in other, non-NPI contexts. ()

ny eill neb uynet drwydi  can.. anyone go. through. ‘no one can go through’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .)

()

ae guell y gwna neb uy neges i wrthyt  better  do.. anyone  mission  to. ti no mi uu hun?  than    ‘Will anyone carry out my mission to you better than me myself?’ (Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi .–)

()

O gelly wneithur da y nep . . . if can.. do. good to anyone ‘If you can do good to anyone . . . ’ (BBCS ii.) (Evans : )

()

a dywedut bot arnaw o bechodeu mwy noc ar neb and say. be. on. of sins more than on anyone ‘and [he] said that he had more sins than anyone’ (Ystoryaeu Seint Greal )

(Middle Welsh)

Present-day Welsh has a tripartite system, ()–(), closer in overall structure to the English one: ()

neb-series person thing quantity place time

neb ‘no one’ dim byd ‘nothing’ dim (mass or count nouns) / ’run (< yr un ‘the one’) (count nouns) ‘no, none’ nunlle / unman / lle’m byd (dialectally variable) ‘nowhere’ byth (generic or future-oriented) / erioed (past-oriented)

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system ()

()

rhyw-series person thing quantity quality place time manner



rhywun ‘someone’ rhywbeth ‘something’ peth o / rhai (o) / rhywfaint o ‘some’ rhyw ‘some (kind of )’ rhywle ‘somewhere’ rhywbryd ‘sometime’ rhywsut / rhywfodd ‘somehow’

unrhyw-series person unrhyw un ‘anyone’ thing unrhyw beth ‘anything’ quality unrhyw ‘any’ place unrhyw le ‘anywhere’ time unrhyw bryd / byth / erioed ‘ever’ manner unrhyw sut ‘any way’

The neb-series is used in direct and indirect negation and in comparatives; the unrhyw-series is available in all NPI contexts, including negatives, interrogatives, and conditionals, as well as in free-choice meanings; finally, the rhywseries is available in interrogatives and conditionals, where it overlaps with the unrhyw-series, as well as in non-NPI environments. While the correspondence is not exact, neb-series items have an overall distribution close to English no-series items; unrhyw-series items have a distribution close to English anyseries items; and rhyw-series items have a distribution close to English some-series items. Two types of change are involved in the transition between the two systems: the overall inventory of items has changed; and the innovation and development of those items has impacted on the syntactic distribution of the existing items. The overall direction of these changes gives the impression that Welsh has been aiming, so to speak, to establish a one-to-one correspondence with items in English: creating new forms where they did not exist before that are morphologically parallel to English as far as possible, and reorganizing the distribution of these and existing forms to match the distribution of the English items: ()

dim  English no unrhyw  English any neb  English no one unrhyw un  English anyone dim byd  English nothing unrhyw beth  English anything

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

This does not, however, happen in one fell swoop, and there are a number of stages on the road to this system, not all of which are obviously contact-induced. It is, furthermore, still developing in the same direction, and full isomorphism is still some way off. The earliest development along this road seems to be the grammaticalization of the affirmative indefinite rhyw-series. The generic-noun series was given a transparent morphological motivation by the creation of new items based on rhyw ‘some’ < ‘a kind of ’, ultimately from the noun rhyw ‘type, kind’. While this form is found in Middle Welsh with the meaning ‘some kind of, such’, a number of developments occur which bring us closer to the current system. First, variation in the exact form of the expression diminishes (for instance, rhyw had co-existed with neb ryw ‘any kind of ’, etc.). Second, headedness seems to shift from rhyw to the following noun (i.e. rhyw is reanalysed from noun to quantifier and adjective agreement is with the head noun rather than with rhyw). In terms of the formal analysis developed in chapter , this represents a reanalysis of rhyw from N to Q, and thus an overall change in structure from [NP [N rhyw [NP ]]] to [QP [Q rhyw [NP ]]]. Finally, there is semantic bleaching from ‘such an X, an X of this kind’ to ‘some X’ of a kind typically associated with grammaticalization. These changes appear to take place in the sixteenth century. These are not unexpected developments: similar changes commonly occur even in the absence of contact (cf. the somewhat different trajectory of English kind of and sort of, Brems and Davidse ). It is clearly not an instance of replica grammaticalization (Heine and Kuteva ), since it does not replicate a grammaticalization change that took place or could be assumed to have taken place in English. It could be an instance of ordinary contact-induced grammaticalization. However, given the sociohistorical context of the period sketched out below and the fact that the mere creation of new indefinite series is not crosslinguistically unusual, this too seems unlikely. We can therefore reject the suggestion that the actuation of this item was motivated by language contact. Its distribution will be considered below: significant changes in its distribution occur in the nineteenth century which do suggest a role for language contact, although the overall picture is complex. The second item whose innovation needs to be considered is unrhyw with the meaning ‘any’. This has its roots around the same period; however, as with the rhywseries, the changes that may be thought to be contact-induced involve its distribution, and are considerably later. Although the word unrhyw exists in Middle Welsh, its meaning there is ‘same’ (from another possible meaning of un). The meaning ‘(freechoice) any’ for this item is first attested in the sixteenth century, (), and is transparently a grammaticalization of un ‘one, any’ and rhyw ‘kind’. ()

llymach nac vnrryw gleddau daufinioc sharp. than any sword two-edged ‘sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Historical Corpus of the Welsh Language, Testament Newydd b, Hebrews ., ) (Willis a: )

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system



It looks like we are dealing with the creation of an item that happens to be identical to an existing word in the language, rather than a semantic shift. The two unrhyw items are sharply distinct in meaning (only a single meaning is ever present in a given example). For some time, the two meanings co-exist, although the meaning ‘same’ was no longer possible from the twentieth century on. Initially, this new unrhyw seems to have had a free-choice interpretation, and is only incidentally found in negative, interrogative, or comparative contexts. The independent free-choice meaning is clearest from an example where no other context is present, such as that in (). ()

A hyn oll yn ostyngedig a erfynniwn . . . ir rhai ydynt and . all  humble  beg.. to. ones be.. mewn vnrhiw gyfyngder neu galedi . . . in any distress or affliction ‘And all this we humbly beg . . . for those who are in any distress or affliction . . . ’ (Early English Books Online, Thomas Gouge, Catechism byrr sy’n cynnwys sylfeini crefydd Christnogawl, p. , )

Again, the creation of this item, in and of itself, is a rather ordinary semantic development: conventionalization of this form over other possible forms, and bleaching of the semantics of the noun rhyw ‘kind, type’. Free-choice unrhyw remains a rare lexical item in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Noteworthy developments that support a contact account occur later, namely a semantic bleaching that extends the item syntactically so that it increases in frequency in weak NPI contexts. Free-choice unrhyw encroaches onto weak NPI territory very slightly in the eighteenth century (examples may well be free-choice uses that happen to be in comparatives, in interrogatives, or in the scope of negation): ()

os gwnewch unrhyw bethau a orchymynir yn y Sgrythur if do.. any things  command.. in  scripture ‘if you do any things that are commanded in scripture’ (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, John Bunyan, Agoriad i athrawiaeth y ddau gyfammod, p. , ) (translates If you do any Thing commanded in Scripture, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, John Bunyan, The doctrine of the law and grace unfolded, p. ,  edn.)

The example in (), like many other examples from this period, is from a text translated from English. It shows that unrhyw was seen as a translation equivalent of English any. The role of translation furthermore suggests recipient-language agentivity in change: native speakers of Welsh, particularly translators and others working in the two languages, saw unrhyw as a convenient equivalent for any, and started to become habituated to this equivalence. There is little evidence, however, in

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

the eighteenth century, to suggest that this use had spread much beyond the sphere of translated literature. The adnominal use, [NP unrhyw N], comes to dominate in frequency over the nebseries item, [NP dim N], during the course of the nineteenth century. However, other contexts are much slower: the pronouns unrhyw beth ‘anything’ and unrhyw un ‘anyone’ arise later than lone unrhyw: unrhyw beth ‘anything’ is first attested in , and unrhyw un ‘anyone’ only in  (Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru s.v. unrhyw). These seem not to have challenged the equivalent neb-series and rhywun-series items to any extent until the twentieth century. However, the neb-series has now entirely disappeared from interrogative and conditional contexts (although it survives more robustly in comparatives). The historical trajectory of Welsh indefinites is shown in Figure . (data partially from Willis a), which gives the frequency with which ‘anyone, no one’ is expressed by the four possible items, neb, rhywun, unrhyw un, and undyn for four periods from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Data reflect patterns found in a range of literature, mostly fiction for the first three periods, and, for late twentiethcentury Welsh, the CEG (Cronfa Electroneg o Gymraeg) corpus, a balanced corpus of written Welsh assembled in . Details of the patterns will be discussed below, but

100

neb

rhywun

75 50

frequency

25 0 1760–1820 1820–80 1880–1940 100

CEG

1760–1820 1820–80 1880–1940

undyn

CEG

unrhyw un

75 50 25 0 1760–1820 1820–80 1880–1940

CEG

context

1760–1820 1820–80 1880–1940 period

indirect negation

comparative

interrogative

conditional

negation

F . Frequency of Welsh person-indefinites,  to the present day

CEG

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system



the overall pattern is clear: replacement of neb by rhywun in certain non-negative contexts early in the period, followed by recent encroachment of unrhyw un onto the territory of both neb and rhywun. A fourth, minor item, undyn (< un dyn ‘any person’), not directly relevant to questions of language contact, disappears during the period under consideration.³ As can be seen in Figure ., non-assertive negative polarity functions of the nebseries seen in ()–() were taken over first by the rhyw-series. Person indefinites in conditionals are mostly expressed with neb during the period –, but there is a sharp shift to using rhywun in this context in the period –. The trend in interrogatives is the same, though slightly later, with rhywun rising in frequency between the two periods, but becoming the majority option only in the late nineteenth century. This overall development is an instance of the quantifier cycle, and the order of this retreat from conditionals before interrogatives seems typical of that cycle (see section ..). Use of rhywun in conditionals and interrogatives remains a well-attested option today: ()

Os gall rhywun yn ardal gynnig lle i ’r criw . . . if can.. someone in area offer. place to  crew ‘If anyone in [the] area can offer a place for the crew . . . ’ (CEG )

()

Tybed beth oedd ffrwyth yr wythnos honno? Oes wonder what be.. fruit  week . be.. rhywun yn cofio? someone  remember. ‘I wonder what the fruit of that week was? Does anyone remember?’ (CEG )

This shift in distribution seems most likely to be a pull chain, motivated by the increasing restriction of neb-series items to direct and indirect negative contexts and the scope of adversative predicates. Note from Figure . that, despite its decline in non-negative environments, neb actually strengthens its position with direct (clausemate) negation. In fact, it starts to show signs of becoming an NCI, and, in some varieties, a fully fledged negative quantifier, as we will see below. There is no reason to assume that the quantifier cycle is always internally motivated. The suggestion here is not that the shift in distribution of rhyw-series items is due to contact with English, but rather that the trigger for it is the narrowing in the range of use of neb-series items and that this narrowing itself may be due to contact. ³ Undyn ‘anyone’ < un ‘one, any’ + dyn ‘man’ was an earlier (medieval) innovation and functioned as a weak NPI. Its ultimate failure to spread may be due to two factors: (i) its isolation in the system (there being no parallel form for ‘anything’); and (ii) the fact that it parallelled English less directly than the unrhywseries items.

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

Specifically, this series starts increasingly to move towards the distribution of the English no-series of negative quantifiers. Changes in the distribution of the rhywseries are a knock-on effect of this, and are thus indirectly attributable to contact with English. This narrowing occurs surreptitiously. During the nineteenth century, neb-series items begin to appear with negative interpretations in contexts that lack any other explicit expression of negation; that is, they begin to behave as NCIs rather than as weak NPIs. The relevant contexts (not counted in Figure .) begin as contexts where the marker of sentential negation ni(d), which must precede a finite verb, cannot appear. Consider first absolute clauses. Nineteenth-century examples are given in (), and a present-day one in (). ()

a. Dacw Wil eto ar yr heol . . . ond neb yn ei adnabod. yonder Wil again on  road but no.one   recognize. ‘There’s Wil again on the road . . . but with no one recognizing him.’ (David Owen, Wil Brydydd y Coed, p. , ) b. . . . yr oeddwn yn wael iawn, a neb ond fy mam  be..  ill very and no.one but  mother yn fy ngwylio.   watch. ‘ . . . I was very ill, and no one except my mother watching over me.’ (Enoc Huws, p. , ll. –, )

()

O’n i ’n araf dros yr ochr, llithro yn be..   slip.  slow over  side a neb yn poeni o gwbl. and no.one  worry. at.all ‘I was slowly slipping over the side, and no one was worrying at all.’ (Presentday Welsh) (Borsley and Jones : )

In these examples, there is no finite verb in the clause containing neb, hence no verb can bear the sentential negation marker ni(d). An appropriate NPI licenser could be introduced by replacing a ‘and’ with heb ‘without’. For a speaker who equated neb with English no one, this would no longer be necessary. The suggestion is that contact with English makes omission of licensing of neb-series items possible in these marginal cases, biasing future generations towards treating these items as NCIs. The language thus moves towards a negative-concord system where heads that can be marked negative always are, even when a neb-series items NCI is present, but where NCIs are also grammatical with a negative interpretation on their own in contexts where no head can be marked negative. The change thus proceeds by stealth, manifesting itself first in contexts where it is least noticeable.

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system



In the nineteenth century, neb-series items occur in nonfinite complement clauses (bod clauses) only if there is licensing either in the form of an appropriate complementizer (adversative rhag ‘lest’ in () or cyn ‘before’ in ()) or superordinate negation in a higher clause, as in (). ()

a rhag bod neb yn cael eu camarwain and lest be. anyone  get.  mislead. ‘and lest anyone is misled’ (Welsh Newspapers Online, Y Genedl Gymreig,  September )

()

cyn bod neb ar y bwrdd wedi sylweddoli pa beth before be. anyone on  board  realize. what thing a ddigwyddasai  happen.. ‘before anyone on board had realized what had happened’ (Welsh Newspapers Online, Y Werin,  March )

()

Ond ni chlywsom etto bod neb yn ewyllysio cael deddf but  hear.. yet be. anyone  wish. get. law i dyn i briodi ei fam-yng-nghyfraith. alluogi to permit. man to marry.  mother-in-law ‘But we have not heard yet that anyone wishes to have a law to permit a man to marry his mother-in-law.’ (Welsh Newspapers Online, Y Llan,  March )

If such licensing is not present, then overt expression of negation must be introduced either by making the clause formally finite, as in (), or by introducing the marker of nonfinite negation peidio. ()

Cyhoeddir nad oes neb yn cofio publish.. . be.. anyone  remember. gauaf mor oer . . . winter so cold ‘It is reported that no one can remember a winter so cold . . . ’ (Welsh Newspapers Online, Seren Cymru,  March )

In Present-day Welsh, by contrast, this is not necessary, and neb-series items can appear in these clauses without further modification: ()

Dywedodd y cynghorydd bod rhyddhad bod neb wedi say..  councillor be. relief be. no.one  cael anaf. get. injury ‘The councillor said that there was relief that no one had been injured.’ (adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/ accessed  June )

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

Again, the innovation of this type of clause reflects a shift towards a system where neb-series items co-occur with a negative marker only if a relevant head is available: bod has no negative form, so negative concord does not occur. Once sentences like () and () are available, a final step is to reanalyse nebseries items as negative quantifiers that do not trigger negative concord at all. This occurs partially when phonological erosion of negative particles takes place. In (), traditionally, the embedded preverbal particle na(d) would be required before oes ‘is’. However, it is no longer obligatory for present-day speakers and writers, and various reductions are found (nad oes neb > does neb > oes neb > sneb), as in (). Erosion of this particle can be thought of as a manifestation of the Welsh Jespersen cycle, elision of the equivalent main-clause particle ni(d) having occurred two centuries or so ago (see section .). This change thus parallels changes that accompany Jespersen’s cycle in other languages (see section .), and is not necessarily contact-induced. Furthermore, partial negative concord is retained even in (), since the form of the verb bod ‘be’ is oes, that is, a form restricted to weak NPI contexts; thus, while this example shows less negative concord than with traditional usage, it does not indicate a complete loss of negative concord. () Os nad oes neb i if  be.. anyone to ‘If there’s no one to run the race . . . ’ ()

redeg run.

y 

ras . . . race (Present-day Welsh)

Os oes neb i ras . . . redeg y if be.. no.one to run.  race ‘If there’s no one to run the race . . . ’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/ chwaraeon/eraill/.shtml accessed  June )

Full loss of negative concord does, however, occur in some Welsh varieties, specifically those under strong English influence. Some southern speakers, particularly but not exclusively either semi-speakers or sequential bilinguals who acquired English first, lack negative concord. The following example comes from the fieldwork for the Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects (Willis , ): ()

mae neb ’ma nawr be.. no.one here now ‘There’s no one here now.’ (Syntactic Atlas of Welsh Dialects, speaker nedd, item )

Here the form of the verb ‘be’ is affirmative mae, rather than the negative-concord form does (< nid oes). The example thus shows no negative concord, and it is clear that the speaker treats neb as a negative quantifier, as in English. We have thus seen that the Welsh neb-series undergoes a quantifier cycle partially induced by contact with English, and that this sets off a pull chain, in which

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Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system



rhyw-series items fill the semantic space vacated by the neb-series. This produces a greater degree of isomorphism with English, since the distribution of the neb-series comes increasingly to resemble that of the English no-series. However, this change does little to bring the rhyw-series into line in distributional terms with the English some-series. For this to happen, another change needs to occur, namely a contactinduced free-choice cycle involving the unrhyw-series. Recall that the unrhyw-series was originally a free-choice series that shows some limited encroachment into other contexts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century, the unrhyw-series has entered the free-choice cycle, expanding its distribution at the expense of both the rhywun-series and the neb-series. In Figure ., we see a rise in the frequency of unrhyw un in conditionals, interrogatives, and indirect (superordinate) negation. Examples are given below: ()

Os hoffai unrhyw un gyfrannu anfonwch if like.. any one contribute. send.. at y trysorydd. to  treasurer ‘If anyone would like to contribute, send [a message] to the treasurer.’ (CEG )

()

Ond pam y buasai unrhyw un yn gadael but why  be.. any one  leave. parsel mewn lle mor rhyfedd? parcel in place so strange ‘But why would anyone leave a parcel in such a strange place?’ (CEG )

()

ni chaniateir i unrhyw un ganu unrhyw fath  permit.. to any one play. any kind o gerddoriaeth of music ‘it is not permitted for anyone to play any kind of music’ (CEG )

The CEG corpus is a corpus of relatively conservative written Welsh. The frequency of unrhyw un is substantially higher in all five contexts in spoken Welsh, and particularly the Welsh of sequential bilinguals who acquired Welsh after English. It should also be noted that person indefinites seem to be among the less favourable contexts for the rise of unrhyw-items. Extension of unrhyw as an adnominal quantifier ‘any’ seems to have progressed considerably further. The dating of changes is important if we are to understand the sociolinguistic context in which contact-induced change may or may not have taken place. The sixteenth century saw the beginning of the political integration of Wales into the English, and, later, British state. This led to a correspondingly increased knowledge of English among the gentry and townspeople and an increase in the use of English as

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

the written language of administration. While L acquisition of English was limited to a few English-speaking areas and towns along with much of the gentry, a large proportion of the population had more superficial contact with English in administrative and commercial contexts (Suggett and White ). Many published works in this period were translated from English. This creates the conditions for borrowing, rather than imposition. It was suggested above that early spread of unrhyw was due to borrowing facilitated by translation, and thus attributable to recipient-language agentivity by Welsh-dominant educated bilinguals. There is no evidence, however, of structural change in the system of indefinites due to contact with English at this time. The later developments coincide with changes in the sociolinguistic situation in Wales. Until the mid-eighteenth century, there was no significant Welsh–English bilingualism at a community level across most of Wales. In , perhaps % of the population of Wales spoke Welsh, with more than % being monolingual speakers of Welsh (Pryce : , Jenkins, Suggett, and White : –). Rapid population growth during the nineteenth century, from around half a million in  to over two million in  was driven both by immigration and falling death rates. Bilingualism increased, and language shift to English began in some areas. Table . illustrates these developments (for detailed breakdown and discussion, see Ravenstein ). From about  on, bilingual Welsh speakers outnumber monolingual speakers. The picture of linguistic agentivity in this context is complex. The proportions of monolinguals and bilinguals vary significantly from place to place. Furthermore, the nature of the bilingualism varies: some bilinguals are immigrants from England or Ireland, L English speakers with adult L Welsh; or their children, sequential bilinguals with first-learned and dominant English; while others are L Welsh speakers with L English acquired at various ages. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the British government began active attempts to eradicate Welsh, above all through the introduction of English-only education, and this will have lowered the average age of L acquisition of English. This complex scenario suggests a form of convergence, with speakers minimizing cognitive load by treating the two languages, as far as possible, as a single isomorphic system. Against this background,

T . Language ability in Wales, – (%) (Ravenstein , Jenkins )

Monoglot English speakers Bilingual Monoglot Welsh speakers









c.  c.  c. 

  

. . .

. . .

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Conclusion



T . Primary school pupils aged  and over, ability to speak Welsh (%) (Welsh Assembly Government Statistical Directorate ) Language ability Speak Welsh at home Do not speak Welsh at home but who can speak it with fluency Speak Welsh but not fluently Cannot speak Welsh at all

/

/

. . . .

. . . .

we find the increasing tendency to equate Welsh neb with English no one, which simultaneously drives the quantifier cycle, and the very beginnings of the rise of unrhyw. The late twentieth century sees a new phase of development in which imposition from English begins to play a more active role. Active revitalization efforts, above all from the s, have reintroduced Welsh into the education system and introduced widespread immersion education. As language shift has been partially reversed, a new group of English-dominant Welsh speakers has emerged. Welsh-speaking children from non-Welsh-speaking homes now outnumber those from Welshspeaking homes, as can be seen from Table .. While many such children do not go on to actively participate in the speech community as adults, the result is nevertheless a substantial number of sequential bilinguals who acquired English before Welsh, and whose Welsh was acquired via the education system. Such speakers may be expected to impose aspects of their English onto their Welsh (source-language agentivity). Once there is a choice between unrhyw un, rhywun, and neb for ‘anyone’ in a variety of contexts, English-dominant speakers are liable to ‘overopt’ in production for unrhyw un in contexts where they would use anyone in English, above all, in interrogatives, conditionals, comparatives, and indirect negation. This leads to a general, undifferentiated increase in the use of unrhyw un in these contexts. These processes create effects that look like an English ‘substrate’, even though the broader historical background has been one of language shift from Welsh to English.

. Conclusion In this chapter, we have looked at a range of language-contact scenarios involving indefinites. Indefinite systems seem relatively resistant to the effects of recipientlanguage agentivity: a few instances of the borrowing of form are observed, most notably the widely travelled indefinites based on Persian hič, but we have seen that borrowing of form does not typically go along with borrowing of structure, namely the syntactic distribution of that form. Where we have seen structure transferred via recipient-language agentivity, in the case of non-strict negative concord in the

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

External motivations for change in indefinite systems

Balkans, a substantial element of explicit written prestige has been involved. This overall pattern is as expected: L speakers of a language readily introduce lexical items from another language, but, with limited ability in that language, are neither willing nor able to transfer abstract features such as syntactic distributions or negative-concord rules that differ from those in their L. Structural influence through imposition (source-language agentivity) or convergence provides the most far-reaching examples discussed in this chapter. In a number of cases, we have seen major shifts in the syntactic distribution of items, and wholesale reorganization of what indefinite series are available in a language. In these cases, L speakers readily adopt the forms of their L, but, unaware of differences in syntactic distributions, continue to use the syntactic rules of their L; or, in cases of convergence, bilingual speakers streamline production by bringing the rules of their two languages closer together. Finally, we have seen how the interaction of different language-contact processes with internal factors can be appealed to in order to account for observed patterns of historical variation and change.

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8 Conclusion The first volume of this two-volume work presented the development of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean through ten case studies of individual languages and language groups. In the course of the present volume we have synthesized these and related empirical observations, proposing formal accounts for the mechanisms underlying the observed processes. In addition to examining typological and diachronic variation in the formal expression of standard negation in these languages (broadly speaking, Jespersen’s cycle), our focus has also included diachronic developments affecting indefinite quantifiers in the languages under consideration, which have been seen to undergo their own cyclic developments. These we called the quantifier cycle and the free-choice cycle. In order to isolate the factors driving both Jespersen’s cycle and the quantifier and free-choice cycles, we have looked at both developments that go to completion and developments that stop or slow down at different points.

. Jespersen’s cycle Starting from the observation that negation is a universal grammatical category, and that the renewal of the formal expression of this category seems to follow comparable pathways across many of the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean—namely Jespersen’s cycle—we noted that even the failure to continue an incipient development follows common patterns. While all languages have ways of emphasizing the expression of negation—such as minimizers like English a wink or a red farthing—not all such elements go on to actually become new neutral ways of expressing negation under Jespersen’s cycle. In fact, the majority of such elements never go anywhere at all. Under certain conditions, discussed in chapter , such emphasizers, which may have different lexical sources, are reanalysed as NPAs that can emphasize the expression of negation more generally, beyond original lexical restrictions (e.g. English drop may be the complement of drink or spill, but not sleep). The different lexical sources of such NPAs include minimizers such as Italian mica, originally ‘crumb’, generalizers and indefinite pronouns such as Welsh ddim, originally ‘(any)thing’, or quantifiers such as Catalan poc, originally ‘little’. The reason that such elements are so well suited to reinforcing the expression of negation is that they The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. Volume II: Patterns and Processes. First edition. Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis. © Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas, and David Willis . First published in  by Oxford University Press.

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

Conclusion

express extreme ends on pragmatic scales, and thanks to the scale-reversing property of negation, NPAs thus make the clauses in which they are used more informative, and focus the absence of alternatives or their improbability. Such elements are apparently found in all languages. However, not all languages whose histories are recorded or reconstructible have undergone Jespersen’s cycle in the past two millennia. Therefore the presence in a language of emphatic reinforcers, even of NPAs, does not imply that the language will actually embark on Jespersen’s cycle. Rather, we have shown that such emphasizers still need to pass through a number of stages before becoming full-fledged negators, and that the old negator needs to have certain properties. The change from nominal or pronominal emphasizer to NPA involves both a semantic and a syntactic change. On the semantic side, such items need to lose the lexical property that restricts them to co-occurring with certain predicates. Both their internal structure and their external syntactic distribution need to change, as demonstrated in chapters  and . In chapter , we identified two types of bridging context in which such elements can be reanalysed as adverbs instead of arguments. First, verbs with an ambiguous argument structure open up the possibility of reanalysis of an (optional) argument expressing the extent to which the predicate holds as an adverbial reinforcer. This pathway is typically found in verbs of caring, indifference, or harming. Another frequently found pathway involves the initially argumental use of a nominal or pronominal emphasizer taking a partitive complement. In such cases, the emphasizer behaves like a prenominal quantifier of its attribute. Given the scalar properties of the emphasizer, it is reanalysed as an NPA, while the attribute is interpreted as the actual argument affected by the verb. Examples ()–() illustrate the different stages for one minimizer—which ultimately does not go on to become a new expression of negation—in one Old High German text. In (), drof ‘drop’ behaves like the theme argument of gabut ‘gave, returned’. ()

ni gabut dróf umbi daz  give.. drop for that ‘You did not return anything (lit. a drop) for that (= for my gratitude)’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch III, ,)

In (), drof is formally the internal degree argument of mángolo ‘lack’, and it takes a partitive complement, thes ‘of it’, thus explicitly marking the (small) extent of the lacking by force of being a minimizer. ()

joh, drúhtin, mih giléiti, thaz ih ni mángolo but Lord . guide..  .  lack.. thes dróf this. drop ‘But, Lord, guide me, that I do not lack a drop/any of this (/ this at all).’ (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch Hartm –)

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Jespersen’s cycle



In (), drof already behaves like an adverb: forahtet ‘fear’ does not take an internal argument (it is reflexive), hence drof, occurring in sentence-initial focus position in (), is clearly non-argumental. ()

drof ni forahtet drop/  fear.. ‘Do not be afraid at all.’

ir .

iu . (Otfrid, Evangelienbuch III ,)

For the internal syntax of reinforcers of the expression of negation, we argued in chapter  that nominal minimizers and generalizers first need to become indefinite quantifiers. This is an instance of grammaticalization. More precisely, it is an upward reanalysis of the original nominal head as the restrictor of the quantifier, followed by loss of the original movement, (). ()

DP/QP

Q0

Ø

RestrP

Restr0

NP

N0

drof

tdrof Once the emphasizer has been reanalysed as an indefinite quantifier, the change in its external syntax proceeds as illustrated for French pas in (). ()

a.

b.

VP

VP

OP¬[iNEG]

V

VP

VP

OP¬[iNEG]

QP

VP

QPNPA

pas

…V…

pas

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

Conclusion

The reanalysis of the original nominal emphasizer as an NPA is facilitated by formal ambiguity between the two analyses. In several languages considered in the current volume, the absence of overt determiners seems to have been a contributing factor, for example. On the other hand, the full grammaticalization of an NPA as a new negator can be delayed or inhibited by certain lexical and syntactic contexts. Thus, in many languages, the new element is initially not used with certain verbs, while in others there may be transitivity restrictions: with transitive verbs, the NPA may still be interpreted as an argument, not an adverb. In some cases, competing lexical items prevent the development of an emerging NPA, as is the case with Old High German drof in ()–(): all (High) German dialects now use a descendent of a different item, namely Old High German (nio)uuiht ‘(no)thing’. Once a reinforcing NPA ceases to be emphatic, it can become part of the standard expression of sentential negation, entering what we have called full-scale stage II of Jespersen’s cycle. We argued in chapter  that the property of NPAs such that they express narrow-focus negation is initially preserved in emerging new negators in the form of a focus feature [FOC]. A crucial precondition for a language entering stage II of Jespersen’s cycle is that the standard expression of negation in the language bears an uninterpretable negation feature [uNEG]. Such a negation marker is typically a clitic on T, which requires a finite verb as a host. This gives the emergent NPA two advantages: first, it does not need a finite verb, and can therefore be used not only for narrow focus and constituent negation, illustrated for Old English in (), but also in clauses without a finite verb. ()

Ða wæs in sumum tune noht feorr sum ging there be.. in some... hamlet.  far some young ðearfa… pauper ‘There was in some hamlet not far (away) a certain young pauper…’ (YCOE, cobede, Bede_:...) (Willis : )

Second, due to the acquisitional preference for overt exponents of interpretable formal features (Zeijlstra ), the NPA can then assume the expression of the interpretable negation feature [iNEG], as illustrated again for French in (). ()

a.

b.

VP

VP

OP¬[iNEG]

VP

QPNPA[FOC]

…V…

pas

VP

VP

QP[iNEG,FOC]

…V…

pas

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Jespersen’s cycle



Our account relies on the typology of negative markers developed in chapter , according to which there are four classes of element, distinguished by their internal complexity and external syntactic distribution, summarized in Table .. The diachronic connection between these types of negative marker was argued to be governed by two economy principles: Minimize Structure (MS) (Cardinaletti and Starke ), which, all else being equal, requires the merger of the least complex element; and Feature Economy (FE) (van Gelderen ), which postulates that, all else being equal, uninterpretable features are more economical in syntactic derivations than interpretable ones. We can then summarize the stages of Jespersen’s cycle as in Table .. T . The four classes of negative marker and their properties marker

distribution

formal feature

complexity

reason

strong weak clitic affix

free, constituent neg adjoined to vP clitic (e.g. on T) affix on verb

[FOC],[iNEG] [iNEG] [iNEG] > [uNEG] [uNEG] > Ø

XP XP head head

MS MS FE FE

T . The stages of Jespersen’s cycle, exemplified for French Stages

Form

Function

Analysis

Ia

ne V

ne = logical negation

ne = [i/uNEG]

Ib

ne V (pas)

ne = logical negation pas = optional pseudoargumental reinforcer

ne = [i/uNEG]

IIa

ne V (pas)

ne = logical negation pas = NPA

ne = [i/uNEG] pas = [FOC]

IIb

ne V pas

ne+pas = logical negation

ne = [uNEG] pas = [iNEG,(FOC)]

IIc

(ne) V pas

ne = optional remnant, possibly exaptation pas = logical negation

pas = [iNEG]

III

V pas

pas = logical negation

pas = [i/uNEG]

Comparing different languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, we noted that, even where a language enters stage II, the time it remains in this stage varies substantially across languages. For some languages, the continuation of stage II may only be apparent, for instance because the original negation particle undergoes markedness reversal or reanalysis, and ceases to express negation more narrowly

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

Conclusion

defined. However, in other cases, language-external causes have to be sought to account for differences in the speed at which languages pass through the cycle. Chapter  turned to such language-external causes. The languages of Europe and the Mediterranean display evident diffusion patterns, with languages that have embarked upon Jespersen’s cycle tending to be spoken in geographically contiguous areas. The chapter pursued the question of the extent to which this pattern is caused by language contact. We concluded that contact is likely to have diffused Jespersen’s cycle across language boundaries in several (but not in all) instances, either through borrowing, or through imposition. In total, we counted six independent innovations of Jespersen’s cycle in the languages under consideration in this volume: North Germanic (multiple cycles), continental West Germanic, English, French, and Welsh in Europe, and one innovation in North Africa. The North Germanic innovation happened too early to influence the other Germanic languages, and the English and continental West Germanic innovations happened more or less simultaneously, but long after English separated geographically from continental West Germanic. We therefore argued that both branches of West Germanic independently developed in parallel due to common inherited characteristics. French too was argued to have innovated the renewal of the expression of negation independently, given the late onset of the development here as compared to West Germanic, many centuries after there was any large-scale Germanic–Romance bilingualism that could have caused it. Welsh, too, entered a full-scale Jespersen’s cycle only at a time when English had already reached the end of the development and was therefore unlikely to have influenced the adoption of a new negator. We argued that contact with French was likely responsible for the diffusion of Jespersen’s cycle into Breton, and also set off a trail of diffusion across the other Gallo-Romance varieties and the Romance varieties of Switzerland and northern Italy, and that the innovation of Jespersen’s cycle in Coptic led to its spread into several North African Arabic varieties (via imposition), and from those to the Berber varieties that came into contact with them (via borrowing). Finally, the differences in the speed at which languages pass through Jespersen’s cycle were argued to be linked to language-external causes such as the type of sociolinguistic situation. In particular, the differing roles of long-term and shortterm language and dialect contact were explored.

. Indefinites and the quantifier cycle The second part of the volume turned to the diachronic developments in the interaction of indefinite pronouns and adverbs with sentential negation and its changing expression. Here we considered three issues: (i) diachronic changes affecting indefinites in NPI contexts and the scope of negation; (ii) the connection between such changes and the renewal of the expression of negation; and (iii) interactions

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Indefinites and the quantifier cycle



between indefinites in the scope of negation and the expression of negation, that is, negative concord. Haspelmath’s () implicational semantic map, (), based on a typological survey, shows the types of functions that indefinite pronouns perform across languages. As Haspelmath observes, indefinites are organized into series that share a group of such functions, such that, if they have two functions, these must be adjacent on the map, or the indefinite must be found in all functions in between them on the map. ()

Haspelmath’s () semantic map of indefinites question specific known

specific unknown

indirect negation

direct negation

irrealis non-specific conditional

comparative

free choice

In chapter , we observed that diachronic changes in the distribution of indefinites follow Haspelmath’s map, also in that they extend their distribution to further contexts that are adjacent on the map. We identified two developments: (i) either indefinites go from being licensed in (more) positive contexts to becoming restricted to (more) negative contexts; or (ii) indefinites go from being free-choice items to NPIs (and in some cases, to specific indefinites). We called the former development the quantifier cycle, and, following Haspelmath, referred to the latter as the freechoice cycle. The two developments are sketched in () and (), respectively. In particular, in the quantifier cycle indefinites often do not stop once they become strong NPIs, but are reanalysed as NCIs. Like negative quantifiers, these are able to express negation on their own in fragment answers, but, unlike negative quantifiers, they can participate in negative concord. Negative quantifiers, we argued, typically only arise directly through the univerbation of an indefinite pronoun with a negative particle. Through the free-choice cycle, indefinites may become NPIs, but they only rarely go on to become NCIs. ()

The quantifier cycle nominal minimizer non-NPI indefinite

strong NPI

weak NPI

neg + indef

focus particle + indef

()

The free-choice cycle free choice > comparative

NCI

>

weak NPI

NQ

(> strong NPI)

An example of an element having gone through the quantifier cycle is French rien, which, after grammaticalizing as a weak indefinite (‘anything’), (), from a noun

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

Conclusion

meaning ‘thing’, (), became increasingly restricted to stronger NPI contexts, (), and is now an NCI; that is, it is restricted to the scope of (clausemate) negation, and is able to express negation on its own in fragment answers, (). ()

Et une riens les reconforte… (specific known) and one. thing  comfort.. ‘And one thing (something) comforts them…’ (FRANTEXT; Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, c. –, p. )

()

Et vos, seignor, qu’ an volez dire? (question) and  sir what . want.. say. Savez i vos rien contredire? know.. here  anything reply. ‘And you, Sir, what do you want to say about it? Do you have anything to reply?’ (FRANTEXT; Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, c. , p. )

()

sans rien dire (indirect negation) without anything say. ‘without saying anything’ (FRANTEXT; François de Chateaubriand, Lettres à Mme Récamier: –, , p. , )

() A: Qu’ est-ce que tu as vu? what be..-.   . see. B: Rien. (fragment answer, direct negation) n.thing ‘What have you seen? Nothing.’ An example of the free-choice cycle is French quelque ‘some’, which developed out of a free-relative structure. In Old French, it still clearly shows that use in ()–(), while, in fourteenth-century Middle French, it spreads to weak NPI contexts, as in (), and, by the fifteenth century, to non-specific indefinite uses, as in (). ()

Mes va quel part que tu but go.. which part   ‘But go wherever you want.’ (Lancelot, )

()

Car mes sires m’ en ocirra en quel que leu qu’il for . Lord  of. kill.. in whatever place = me truist.  find.. ‘For my Lord will kill me in whatever place he should find me.’ (La queste del Saint Graal, ) (Combettes : )

voldras. want.. (Combettes : )

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Indefinites and the quantifier cycle



()

Et s’ il y a quelque chose morte … je le coupe ou and if  any thing dead.   cut.. or retranche. omit.. ‘If there is anything dead … I shall cut or omit it.’ (Jean Daudin, ) (Combettes : )

()

Le roy eut quelque amy qui l’ en advertit the king have.. some friend who  of. notify.. ‘The king had some (specific) friend who notified him of it.’ (Commynes, Mémoires, /) (Combettes : )

While the main sources of indefinites undergoing the free-choice cycle involve free relatives or expressions like ‘what(ever) you want/wish’, the sources of elements going through the quantifier cycle are more varied. Where the element in question is not already a (non-NPI) indefinite or interrogative pronoun, which then comes to be available in NPI contexts, as in the case of French aucun (< Latin aliquis unum ‘someone’), the initial step in the quantifier cycle is the grammaticalization of a new indefinite element. Often this new element arises from a generic noun, possibly accompanied by a focus particle. Such items seem immediately to assume the distribution of a weak NPI (i.e. in conditionals and questions—these contexts may become available sequentially), without first becoming a specific or non-specific indefinite. We argued in chapter  that this grammaticalization proceeds similarly to the grammaticalization of new negative markers, that is, by upward reanalysis of a noun as an exponent of the restrictor head, (). ()

DP/QP

Q0

Ø

RestrP

Restr0

rien

NP

N0

trien While the restrictor head contains the element identifying the ontological category of the pronoun (person, thing, place, time, manner, etc.), the Q-head contains the

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

Conclusion

semantic features governing the contextual restriction of the indefinite, (). The further restriction of indefinites to ever-stronger NPI contexts in the quantifier cycle was argued to constitute an instance not of grammaticalization, but rather of change in the features of the Q head. ()

[] > [monotone decreasing] > [monotone decreasing, anti-additive] > [monotone decreasing, anti-additive, antimorphic]

The features in () are not to be confused with formal features, which establish agreement relations in syntax; they instead constitute lexical semantic restrictions on the scope of certain operators. The increasing negativization of NPI indefinites undergoing the quantifier cycle is the result of the way in which NPIs are acquired: children first undergeneralize and acquire the more salient, more restrictive context, before widening the distribution as they are exposed to positive evidence that the NPI is possible in other contexts. This widening process occurs less and less in subsequent generations of learners. Once an NPI indefinite has become restricted to strong NPI contexts, or to the scope of negation only, it may acquire an uninterpretable negation feature [uNEG], through an acquisitional preference for associating dependencies that resemble agreement with formal agreement features. This preference is captured by a generalized version of the AMP: ()

Accord Maximization Principle (AMP) Among a set of convergent derivations S that result from numerations that are identical except for uninterpretable phi- and case-features, such that the members of S satisfy other relevant constraints, those members of S where the greatest number of Accord relations are established block all other derivations in S. (Schütze : –)

One thing that is striking about the quantifier cycle, and which represents an argument against taking it to be an instance of grammaticalization, is that it appears to go against Feature Economy: instead of losing a [uNEG] feature, NPIs acquire one as they become NCIs. On the other hand, the tendency of indefinites to form series or paradigms may override etymology-governed distributions, causing originally negative quantifiers to join a series of NCIs with a wider NPI distribution, or non-NCI NPI indefinites. The main characteristic of NCIs is that they participate in negative-concord relations. Being equipped with a [uNEG] feature, they may co-occur with other [uNEG] elements (e.g. other NCIs, leading to negative spread), and need to be licensed by an [iNEG] element. Such an [iNEG] licenser may be overt—the acquisitionally preferred situation—or covert, in case the standard negator is a [uNEG] head. As the features of negative markers change through Jespersen’s cycle, different types of negative concord become available: strict negative doubling of NCIs with a [uNEG] negator, and non-strict negative doubling with an [iNEG] negator. In rare

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

cases, [iNEG] negative quantifiers can additionally participate in negative doubling structures with a [uNEG] negator. Finally, in chapter , we looked at the possibility of contact-induced change affecting the indefinite systems of languages in contact in ways resembling the quantifier and free-choice cycles. We found that, while transfer of form through recipient-language agentivity does occur, and leads to the borrowing both of whole indefinites and indefinite-forming morphemes, structural borrowing is rare, seemingly limited to situations of contact mediated primarily through writing. Most cases of far-reaching language contact involved imposition of linguistic structure, sometimes alongside convergence processes. Such scenarios were found for Hebrew, for the Balkan languages, and for Welsh. In the last two cases, we saw complex interactions between various language-contact processes and internally motivated change give rise to the linguistic outcomes that were observed. Changes of this kind may involve the morphological structure of indefinites, their syntactic distribution, or their interaction with negative concord.

. Conclusion In this book we have sought to construct a holistic approach to explaining the patterns of historical change found in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean over approximately the last millennium. We have attempted, using a range of approaches, to motivate the cyclic renewal of markers of sentential negation in Jespersen’s cycle and the various cyclic ways in which indefinites shift their meaning and distribution. This has involved tracing such changes from their very beginning, and looking in detail at the histories of a range of languages in the region. We have asked what the seeds of change look like in languages that went on to undergo the developments in question, and we have considered the factors that, in some cases, allow change to proceed rapidly, but in others slow change down or arrest it altogether. We have emphasized that such factors can be language-internal, thought of in terms of the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and the biases inherent in child language acquisition, or language-external, in the form of imposition, borrowing, and convergence. Finally, we have attempted to frame these ideas in as explicit a way as possible, in formal generative syntactic terms and by adopting an explicit theory of contact-induced change. While this is a complex area, and this work will certainly not be the final word on the matter, we hope to have shed light on the major ways in which negative systems develop, on the nature of syntactic change and indeed linguistic change more generally, and to have demonstrated the insights that can be derived from large-scale comparison of linguistic histories.

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Index of languages Afrikaans –, – Afro-Asiatic viii,  Albanian  Arabic viii, , , –, , , , , –, –, , , , ,  Algerian – Andalusi  Bedouin ,  Classical , ,  dialectal  Egyptian , , ,  Gulf  Hassaniyya  Iraqi  Libyan (eastern)  Moroccan , , , , , , –,  North African –, , –,  Quranic –,  standard – Tunisian ,  Uzbekistani  Azeri  Baltic , ,  Balto-Slavic – Bantu ,  Basque ,  Berber –, –, –, ,  Central Atlas Tamazight ,  Kabyle , ,  Shawiya  Tarifiyt  Tashelhiyt  Tuareg ,  Breton , , , , –, , , , , ,  Middle ,  Old ,  Bulgarian , , , , , – Cape Verdean Creole ,  Catalan , , , , , , , ,  Modern  Northern 

Celtic viii, , , , –,  Brythonic viii, , – Common  Goidelic , ,  Cimbrian  Coptic , –, –,  Cornish , ,  Middle  Croatian ,  Czech , , , ,  Old  Dalmatian  Dutch viii, , , , –, , , , , , , , –, , –, , ,  Belgian  Middle , , ,  Old , ,  Standard  Egyptian, Ancient  Late – Middle  Emilian , , – English viii, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, –, –, ,  American  British  Early Modern , ,  Middle , , , , , , ,  Old , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , ,  Present-day , ,  Standard –,  Estonian  Finnic ,  Finnish , –,  Finno-Ugric –

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

Index of languages

Flemish –, , , –, –, , –,  East  French  West ,  Franco-Provençal – French viii, , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , – Belgian  colloquial ,  dialectal  Middle , , , , –, – Modern  nineteenth-century – Norman  Old , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Present-day , , – Swiss ,  Standard  Québécois  Frisian , ,  Old  Friulian – Gaelic, Scottish ,  Gaulish –, ,  German , , , , , –, , , , –, , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , ,  Alemannic  Bavarian , ,  High viii, , , , , , –,  Middle , , , , , , , ,  New ,  Old , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , – Low viii, , , , , , , –, , –,  Middle , , , –, –, , –, ,  Modern  Old Saxon , , , –, , , , –, , –, , , , , , –, , , , 

pre-modern  Present-day  Standard ,  Swiss –,  Upper ,  Walser  Germanic , , –, –,  Common ,  Proto- ,  North , –, , ,  Proto-  Northwest  West , , , , –, , , –, , , , , ,  Gothic , , –, –, , , , , ,  Greek viii, , , , , , , , – Byzantine  Hebrew , –, ,  Biblical – Medieval  Modern – Rabbinic  Hungarian , –,  Icelandic –,  Indo-European  Proto-  Italian , , , , , , , , , –, , , ,  Old (Florentine) , , , –, ,  Present-day  Irish ,  Old , ,  Japanese  Kanincin ,  Karelian  Kazakh  Komi  Korean  Kurdish, Sorani  Ladin , , – Latin , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Classical , ,  colloquial , ,  Lezgian  Ligurian –, 

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/2/2020, SPi

Index of languages Lombard –, , ,  Lude  Macedonian  Maltese , , , –, –, ,  Milanese , , ,  Mòcheno  Modenese  Modern South Arabian  Mordvin viii,  Niger-Congo  Norwegian , , , , –, –,  Middle  Norse, Old , –, –, , ,  Occitan , –, , , – Gévaudanais ,  Olonets  Pavese ,  Persian , ,  Picard ,  Piedmontese , , – Polish , , , ,  Portuguese , , , – Brazilian  European , , – Ripuarian  Romagnol , , , – Romance , , , , , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , –, , –, , ,  Gallo- , , , , , , ,  Italo- viii, , , , , , , –, , , , , , ,  Rhaeto- , –,  Romanian , , , , , , – Old , – Romansh , , – Central  Engadien  Sursilvan  Russian –, –, , –, , –, , , , , 



Sámi –,  Northern – Sardinian  Saxon, Old see German, Low Semitic Ethiopian  Serbian , ,  Slavic see Slavonic Slavonic viii, , , , , , , , , –, –, , – Common ,  Old Church ,  Old East –,  South  Slovak  Slovene , ,  Spanish , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  Medieval  Old ,  Swedish , – Tatar ,  Ticinese – Turkic  Turkish , ,  Turinese  Tuscan –, ,  Tyrolean  Ukrainian  Uralic ,  Venetan ,  Venetian ,  Veps  Vote  Walloon  Welsh , , , , , , , , , , –, , , –, , , , , –, , , , –, , , , , –, , ,  Middle , , , , –, , , , , –,  Modern  Early  Present-day , –, ,  Yiddish 

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/2/2020, SPi

Subject index abduction ,  Accord Maximization Principle (AMP) , –, ,  acquisition L –, –, , , , , –, – L , , ,  actuation , , ,  adjunct , , , , ,  adversative , , , ,  affective contexts , , , , , –,  affix(ation) , , , , –, ,  ambiguity , , , –, –, , , , ,  anti-additive –, –, , , ,  antimorphic –, –, ,  argument , –, , –, , , , , , –, –,  extent –, , ,  optional –, , ,  attrition ,  bare nouns , ,  borrowing (RL agentivity) –, , , , , –, , –, , , ,  cartography , ,  clause-final negation –,  cliticization , , , –, , , ,  comparative , , , , – comparing diachronies  conditional , , , –, , , , – constituent negation , , , , , , , , ,  convergence –,  creole, creolization , , ,  determiners , , , –, , , , , , , , ,  discourse marker – do-support , , , 

double negation –,  downward entailment –, , – economy principles , –, –, , , , –,  Elsewhere Condition  emphasis , –, , , –, –, , –, ,  exaptation , , ,  exceptive , , ,  Feature Scattering Principle – features interpretable –, , –, –, , ,  uninterpretable –, –, –, , , –, , ,  finiteness –, , , , , , , –, , –, , –, , , , –,  focus contrastive ,  of negation , , –, , , –, –, , –,  particle , , –, ,  polarity , , – fragment (answers) see sentence fragments free-choice items , –, , –, , –, ,  frequency , , , , , –, , , –, , , , , , , , , , , –, , –,  Full Interpretation ,  full-scale Jespersen’s cycle , , –, , – generalizer , –, , –, , , , –,  generic nouns , , –, –, , , , –, , , , , , –,  grammaticalization , –, , –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , ,  replica , , 

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/2/2020, SPi

Subject index head , , , –, , –, –, , –, , , , , –, ,  homophony , , , , , –, , – imperative , ,  implicational map –, , ,  implicature –,  conventional  conversational ,  scalar , , , , , – imposition (SL agentivity) , , , , –, , , –, , , , ,  incipient Jespersen’s cycle , , , , , , – incorporation –, , , – Inertia Principle , , , –, interrogative , –, , – locative ,  Minimize Structure , , –,  minimizer –, –, , , , , , , , ,  monotone decreasing see downward entailment movement N-to-D –, – V-to-T  loss of see upward reanalysis mutation  n-word see negative concord item negative auxiliary –, ,  negative concord , –, , , , , –, , –, , , –, , , , , –, , – non-strict , –, , , , , –, ,  strict , –, , , , –,  negative concord item (NCI) , –, , , , , , , –, –,  negative doubling , , , –, –, – Negative First Principle , ,  negative polarity item (NPI) –, –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , , –, –, , , , , , –,



, –, , –, , , –, –, –, – negative polarity adverb (NPA) , , –, , –, –, –, –,  strong NPI , , , , , , , –, –, ,  weak NPI , , , –, –, , , –, –, , ,  negative reinforcer –, , , , , –, , –, –, , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , ,  negative spread , , –, , –,  NegP , , –, , , , , , , ,  ‘never’ > ‘not’ , ,  partitive , , –, , – performative paraphrase – pidgin  positive polarity item (PPI)  possessive ,  poverty of the stimulus – pull/push chains , –, ,  prescriptivism , –,  presupposition , ,  primary linguistic data (PLD) , , , –, , ,  quantification existential , , , –, , – negative –, –, , –, , – universal , , , –, , – question see interrogative reanalysis , , , –, –, , . –, , , , , , , , , ,  upward , , , , , , ,  replication fidelity of –,  matter ,  pattern  scale (pragmatic) , , , –, , – semantic map see implicational map sentence fragments , , , , , , , , , , , 

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/2/2020, SPi



Subject index

specificity , – specifier , , ,  stability gradient ,  Subset Principle  surprisal  tests for sentential negation ,  third-factor principles  typology , , , , , –, , , ,  Uniformitarian Principle  universal , –, , , , , , , , 

Universal Grammar (UG) ,  Universal Ordering Constraint – veridicality anti-veridicality  non-veridicality , , , ,  Völkerwanderung  weakening (of negators) , –, –, , , , , , , , , –, – word order –, , , – verb second (V) , , , –, , 

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 24/2/2020, SPi

OXFORD STU DIES I N DIA C H RONI C A ND HI STORI C AL LI NGUI STIC S   Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge   Cynthia L. Allen, Australian National University; Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, University of Manchester; Theresa Biberauer, University of Cambridge; Charlotte Galves, University of Campinas; Geoff Horrocks, University of Cambridge; Paul Kiparsky, Stanford University; Anthony Kroch, University of Pennsylvania; David Lightfoot, Georgetown University; Giuseppe Longobardi, University of York; George Walkden, University of Konstanz; David Willis, University of Cambridge   From Latin to Romance Morphosyntactic Typology and Change Adam Ledgeway  Parameter Theory and Linguistic Change Edited by Charlotte Galves, Sonia Cyrino, Ruth Lopes, Filomena Sandalo, and Juanito Avelar  Case in Semitic Roles, Relations, and Reconstruction Rebecca Hasselbach  The Boundaries of Pure Morphology Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives Edited by Silvio Cruschina, Martin Maiden, and John Charles Smith  The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean Volume I: Case Studies Edited by David Willis, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth  Constructionalization and Constructional Changes Elizabeth Traugott and Graeme Trousdale  Word Order in Old Italian Cecilia Poletto  Diachrony and Dialects Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy Edited by Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway, and Nigel Vincent

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