Is there Negative Inversion without Negative Concord?

Kelly Nedwick kelly.nedwick at YALE.EDU
Tue Sep 29 21:21:45 UTC 2009


I am looking for dialects of English that exhibit Negative Inversion (1)
but do not have Negative Concord. NI can be characterized as question
word order in declaratives. Does anyone know of such a dialect?  Any
related comments would be welcome too.

(1 (1) A. Can't anybody beat that video game.

B. Didn't many people live there then.

C. Wouldn't every student go to the lecture.

D. *Can't nobody beat that video game.

Thanks,
  KN

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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