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

This is the second book in a two-volume comparative history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The work integrates typological, general, and theoretical research, documents patterns and directions of change in negation across languages, and examines the linguistic and social factors that lie behind such changes. The aim of both volumes is to set out an integrated framework for understanding the syntax of negation and how it changes. While the first volume (OUP, 2013) presented linked case studies of particular languages and language groups, this second volume constructs a holistic approach to explaining the patterns of historical change found in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean over the last millennium. It identifies typical developments found repeatedly in the histories of different languages and explores their origins, as well as investigating the factors that determine whether change proceeds rapidly, slowly, or not at all. Language-internal factors such as the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and the biases inherent in child language acquisition, are investigated alongside language-external factors such as imposition, convergence, and borrowing. The book proposes an explicit formal account of language-internal and contact-induced change for both the expression of sentential negation ('not') and negative indefinites ('anyone', 'nothing'). It sheds light on the major ways in which negative systems develop, on the nature of syntactic change, and indeed on linguistic change more generally, demonstrating the insights that large-scale comparison of linguistic histories can offer. Cover 1 The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean: Volume II: Patterns and Processes 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Series preface 8 Preface 9 List of tables 10 List of figures 11 List of grammatical glosses and abbreviations 12 1: Introduction 16 1.1 The changing expression of negation 16 1.2 Standard negation and sentential negation 18 1.3 Cycles of negation 25 1.4 Indefinites in the scope of negation 28 1.5 Mechanisms of change 36 1.5.1 Internally motivated change 36 1.5.2 Externally motivated change 42 1.6 Overview 44 Part I: Jespersen’s cycle 46 2: Empirical generalizations 48 2.1 Incipient Jespersen’s cycle: An overview 49 2.2 Lexical sources for Jespersen’s cycle 51 2.2.1 Minimizers 52 2.2.2 Generalizers and indefinite (pro)nouns 53 2.2.3 (Negative) quantifiers 57 2.2.4 Clause-final repeated negators 57 2.3 Becoming an incipient negator: Bridging contexts 60 2.3.1 Acquisitionally ambiguous argument structures 64 2.3.1.1 Optional transitivity 64 2.3.1.2 Optional pseudoarguments or pseudoarguments 65 2.3.1.3 Modals 69 2.3.2 Adnominal quantifiers 70 2.3.2.1 Adnominal quantifier > pronoun > negative adverb 70 2.3.2.2 Verb [quantifier + noun] > [verb + adverb] noun 71 2.3.2.3 Degree modifiers of adjectives 75 2.3.3 Summary 76 2.4 Stage II and the speed of Jespersen’s cycle 78 2.5 The fate of the original negator after Jespersen’s cycle 81 2.5.1 Markedness reversal 81 2.5.2 Leaving Jespersen’s cycle 83 2.6 Conclusion 86 3: Internal motivations and formal approaches 88 3.1 The triggers of Jespersen’s cycle: Pull chains vs. push chains 89 3.2 The rise of negative polarity adverbs 92 3.2.1 Semantic changes 93 3.2.2 Internal syntactic changes: the importance of something nice 94 3.2.3 External syntactic changes 100 3.3 Jespersen’s cycle: NegP or not? 107 3.3.1 Previous accounts 107 3.3.2 Proposal 115 3.3.3 Back to incipient Jespersen’s cycle 124 3.4 The speed of Jespersen’s cycle 126 3.4.1 Delays in full grammaticalization 126 3.4.2 Development of new functions 128 3.4.3 Summary 130 3.5 Conclusion 130 4: External motivations for Jespersen’s cycle 132 4.1 Previous accounts 134 4.2 Jespersen’s cycle in Europe and North Africa: A reconstruction 139 4.2.1 Germanic 139 4.2.2 Romance 144 4.2.3 Brythonic Celtic 149 4.2.4 North Africa 151 4.2.5 Summary 153 4.3 Case study: Externally motivated Jespersen’s cycle in North Africa 154 4.3.1 From Coptic to Arabic 155 4.3.2 From Arabic to Berber 159 4.4 Conclusion 161 Part II: Quantifier cycles and indefinites 164 5: Empirical generalizations 166 5.1 Common developments 167 5.1.1 Series of indefinites and quantifier cycles 167 5.1.2 The quantifier cycle: From positive to negative 169 5.1.2.1 The stages of the quantifier cycle 169 5.1.2.2 Countercyclic developments 176 5.1.2.3 Sources of indefinites going through the quantifier cycle 179 5.1.3 The free-choice cycle 189 5.2 Interactions of the quantifier cycle with Jespersen’s cycle and negative concord 192 5.3 Conclusion 201 6: Internal motivations and formal approaches 203 6.1 Structural motivations 204 6.2 Accounting for the quantifier and free-choice cycles 212 6.2.1 The quantifier cycle 212 6.2.2 The free-choice cycle 219 6.2.3 Summary 222 6.3 Interaction with other expressions of negation: Negative concord 223 6.3.1 The diachronic genesis of negative concord 224 6.3.2 Diachronic changes between types of negative concord 226 6.3.3 Summary 232 6.4 Interaction of the quantifier cycle and Jespersen’s cycle 233 6.5 Conclusion 235 7: External motivations for change in indefinite systems 237 7.1 Recipient-language agentivity and borrowing of indefinites 238 7.2 Changes in the distribution of individual items due to imposition 241 7.3 Morphological and distributional changes in convergence 243 7.4 Case study: The contact-induced remodelling of the Welsh indefinite system 246 7.5 Conclusion 258 8: Conclusion 260 8.1 Jespersen’s cycle 260 8.2 Indefinites and the quantifier cycle 265 8.3 Conclusion 270 References 272 Sources 272 References 273 Index of languages 302 Subject index 305 "This is the second book in a two-volume comparative history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. The work integrates typological, general, and theoretical research, documents patterns and directions of change in negation across languages, and examines the linguistic and social factors that lie behind such changes. The aim of both volumes is to set out an integrated framework for understanding the syntax of negation and how it changes.0While the first volume (OUP, 2013) presented linked case studies of particular languages and language groups, this second volume constructs a holistic approach to explaining the patterns of historical change found in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean over the last millennium. It identifies typical developments found repeatedly in the histories of different languages and explores their origins, as well as investigating the factors that determine whether change proceeds rapidly, slowly, or not at all. Language-internal factors such as the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and the biases inherent in child language acquisition, are investigated alongside language-external factors such as imposition, convergence, and borrowing. The book proposes an explicit formal account of language-internal and contact-induced change for both the expression of sentential negation ('not') and negative indefinites ('anyone', 'nothing'). It sheds light on the major ways in which negative systems develop, on the nature of syntactic change, and indeed on linguistic change more generally, demonstrating the insights that large-scale comparison of linguistic histories can offer."-- Provided by publisher This is the first of a two-volume comparative history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean. It examines the development of sentential negation and negative indefinites and quantifiers in languages and language groups such as Italian, English, Dutch, German, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek, Uralic, and Afro-Asiatic.