Negative concord and the loss of the negative particle ne in Late Middle English (1).(LINGUISTICS)

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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ABSTRACT

The presence of Negative Concord (NC) and the sentential negative particle ne is investigated in northern, southern, and mixed later Middle English prose texts from around 1400. The typology of negation proposed in Rowlett (1998) is taken as the basis for an examination of whether the loss of an overt Neg [degrees] head element is associated with the loss of NC. It is found that NC, though almost categorical in southern varieties, was showing signs of weakening in northern/northern-influenced texts. In these texts, the decline of NC was usually associated with the absence of ne. However, the converse relationship was not supported. It appears that loss of ne did not exert a direct influence on the grammar of NC in English, but that NC co-existed with the absence of a Neg head for a substantial period of time. This finding of a temporal disjunction is discussed in relation to the notion of cluster effects in parametrised syntax.

1. Introduction

Since Jespersen (1917), it has become customary in historical syntax to speak of a "negation cycle", in which sentential negators with relatively little phonetic substance are eroded and adverbial elements are pressed into service as negative elements, e.g. the process by which nawiht developed into naht and then not, while the Old English and Early Middle English sentence negator ne weakened and was lost. Jespersen believed that negative concord (henceforth NC) was related to the negation cycle--a language had NC if its principal sentence negator had relatively little phonetic substance, but lost it when it gained a principal negator with more phonetic substance. Early Middle English appears to fit Jespersen's characterisation well: it exhibited strict Negative Concord, that is, in a sentence expressing a single negation all non-assertive indefinites had to be marked negatively, e.g.:

1) be feond ne mei neden na mon to na sune the devil NEG may compel no man to no sin 'The devil may not compel anyone to any sin' (AR 82b: 15; a. 1225).

The sentential negator ne was obligatory, at least in 12th and 13th century prose texts (Frisch 1997). It sufficed to negate a clause, although from the early 14th century onwards it tended increasingly to be accompanied by a secondary negator in some spelling form of not (Jack 1978; Frisch 1997; Iyeiri 2001).

Rowlett (1998: 87-89) captured the association between NC and Jespersen's "short" negator in terms of current syntactic theory. Building on the work of Haegeman (1995) and others, he analysed sentential negation in terms of an X' theory phrasal constituent NegP with a head and a specifier constituent (see also Beukema--Tomic 1996). He argued that a language has NC if and only if the sentential negator is the head of NegP, as in Serbo-Croat, where non-assertive indefinites must be accompanied by the head negator ni, e.g.

2) Milan ne daje nitkome nista M. ne gives no-one nothing 'M. isn't giving anyone anything' (Progovac 1994).

Where a language has a negator in Spec NegP, e.g. Norwegian ikke ('not'), the language does not have NC, e.g.:

3) Jeg sa ikke noen (2) gutt I saw not any boy I didn't see any boy' (Johanneson 2003).

It is interesting from this perspective to consider the changes in English negation between, say, 1300-1600. The co-occurrence of multiple negated elements in a logically negative clause eventually went out of use in texts written by educated speakers (see Nevalainen 1998); polarity items such as any or ever became the norm within the scope of a formally marked negative expression. Well before this took place, however, the main sentence negator ne declined sharply in frequency and in the 15th century became extinct as an unsupported sentence negator (Frisch 1997). In the later Middle English counterparts of (1), therefore, one or more negated quantifiers could negate a clause in the absence of ne. This meant that in later Middle English (henceforth LME) Negative Concord could take the form of (i) the co-occurrence of ne and not, or (ii) the co-occurrence of not and a negative quantifier, and (iii) the co-occurrence of multiple negated quantifiers without a sentence negator. These three alternatives are exemplified by sentences (2), (3), and (4) respectively:

4) ... that he ne mowe nought selle his fish (Brembre II: 18; 1384).

5) the aduersairs of John Northampton should noght have be in non offices (Usk: 121; 1384).

6) ... that no man make none congregaciouns (Brembre I: 4; 1384).

Rowlett's (1998) analysis suggests that a transition was taking place from a language with a Head negator to a language with a Spec negator. If transitions in grammar change can be modelled as grammar competition (see Kroch 1989; Pintzuk 1996, etc.) we might expect to see evidence of competition between these two types. In the present case this would take the form of markedly higher incidence of NC in sources with retention of he, as compared with sources lacking ne, assuming NC and ne retention "cluster".

As regards whether the loss of ne was related to the demise in educated English of types (ii) and (ii) during the Early Modern English period, researchers seem to have reached somewhat differing conclusions. Jack (1978: 58-9) and Iyeiri (2001: 144) considered that multiple negation was not affected by the loss of he. Fischer (1992: 281-283) apparently took the view that the decline in the use of ne had a role in the weakening of negative concord, saying: "The disappearance of ne precipitates the erosion of multiple negation". (3) Frisch (1997: 33) suggested that "... the decline in use of ne is concurrent with a decline in the use of negative concord in general". The uncertainty displayed by previous researchers may be at least partly attributable to an insufficient analytic base. The use of the negative polarity item (NPI) any series in negative contexts in later Middle English has not yet been given sufficiently detailed consideration. An exception is Iyeiri (2002), who conducted a survey of NPIs in late ME verse and found a small but apparently non-negligible level of incidence in negated clauses. However, her results included many cases where the indefinite was in a dependent clause, e.g.

7) He was so full of veine gloire, That he ne hadde no memoire That ther was eny good bot he For pride of his prosperite (Conf. Amant.: 2799-2802, after Iyeiri 2002).

As shown by Ingham (2003), using...

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