22.2476, Books: Historical Linguistics/Linguistic Theories/Syntax: Kallel

Tue Jun 14 19:32:51 UTC 2011

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-2476. Tue Jun 14 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.2476, Books: Historical Linguistics/Linguistic Theories/Syntax: Kallel

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1)
Date: 09-Jun-2011
From: Chris Humphrey [chumphrey at c-s-p.org]
Subject: The Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: Kallel

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:28:54
From: Chris Humphrey [chumphrey at c-s-p.org]
Subject: The Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: Kallel

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Title: The Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English 
Subtitle: A Case of Lexical Reanalysis 
Publication Year: 2011 
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
	   http://www.c-s-p.org

Author: Amel Kallel

Hardback: ISBN:  9781443827386 Pages:  Price: U.K. £ 34.99

Abstract:

The loss of Negative Concord (NC) has long been attributed to external 
factors. This study readdresses this issue and provides evidence of the 
failure of certain external factors to account for the observed decline and 
ultimate disappearance of NC in Standard English. A detailed study of 
negation in Late Middle and Early Modern English reveals that the process of 
the decline of NC was a case of a natural change, preceded by a period of 
variation manifested in the obtained S-curves for all the contexts studied. 
Variation existed not only on the level of the speech community as a whole 
but also within individual speakers (contra Lightfoot, 1991). A close study of 
n-indefinites in negative contexts and their ultimate replacement with 
Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) in a number of grammatical environments 
shows that the decline of NC follows the same pattern across contexts in a 
form of parallel curvature, which indicates that the loss of NC is a natural 
process. However, this study reveals that the decline is not constant across 
time and thus the Constant Rate Hypothesis (Kroch, 1989) does not, in that 
respect, fully account for this change. Context behaviour suggests an 
alternative principle of linguistic change, the Context Constancy Principle. A 
Context Constancy Effect is obtained across all contexts indicating that the 
loss of NC is triggered by a change in a single underlying parameter setting. 
Accordingly, a theory-internal explanation is suggested. N-words underwent a 
lexical reanalysis whereby they acquired a new grammatical feature [+Neg] 
and were thus reinterpreted as negative quantifiers, rather than NPIs. This 
lexical reanalysis was triggered by the ambiguous status of n-words between 
[±Neg] and thus between single and double negative meanings. This change 
is treated as a case of parameter resetting as this lexical reanalysis affected 
a whole set of lexical items and can thus economically account for the 
different observed surface changes. 

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Linguistic Theories
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Written In: English  (eng)

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