Abstract
This paper integrates syntactic theory and variationist analysis in an investigation of the variation between English not-negation (I don’t have any money), no-negation (I have no money) and negative concord (I don’t have no money). Using corpora of three varieties of UK English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside and Salford respectively, I test two theoretical accounts of the variation. Account 1 applies Zeijlstra’s (2004) agreement-based theory of negative concord to all three variants, such that n-words (e.g. nobody) which feature in no-negation and negative concord are not inherently negative but agree with a negative operator in a higher NegP. Under Account 2, no-negation is instead derived via negative-marking within the DP followed by movement to the higher NegP for sentential scope (Kayne 1998; Svenonius 2002; Zeijlstra 2011). These accounts, together with observations about the raising properties of functional versus lexical verbs, lead to the formulation of different hypotheses about the distribution of variants in speech according to verb type, verb phrase complexity, and the discourse status of the propositions expressed. Results of distributional analysis and mixed-effects modelling support Account 2 of the variation over Account 1, suggesting structural identity between not-negation and negative concord (in contrast to no-negation). This supports Tubau’s (2016) proposal that English negative indefinites have two distinct structures: one in which negation is marked syntactically in the DP and one in which they agree with a syntactically-higher NegP.
Highlights
Negation is a fervently-debated phenomenon within formal syntactic enquiry, as it is a universal property of language that is, at the same time, highly variable in terms of how it is expressed (Mazzon 2004: 94)
Recent studies have advocated bridging the gap between the two in analysing morpho-syntactic variation and change (Wilson and Henry 1998; Adger and Smith 2005; 2010; Cornips and Corrigan 2005a; b; Adger and Trousdale 2007; Buchstaller et al 2013; Burnett et al under review), with Barbiers (2005: 235) suggesting that “it is the task of sociolinguists to describe and explain the patterns of variation that occur within a linguistic community
These findings are more compatible with Account 2, in which not-negation and negative concord have the same structure with syntactic negative-marking in NegP, while no-negation has negative-marking in the DP
Summary
Negation is a fervently-debated phenomenon within formal syntactic enquiry, as it is a universal property of language that is, at the same time, highly variable in terms of how it is expressed (Mazzon 2004: 94). This paper takes such an approach and argues that integrating formal theory into variationist analysis of morpho-syntactic variation allows for: (i) more careful delimitation of the linguistic variable and its contexts, taking into consideration the constraints of the grammar; (ii) theoretically-informed decision-making as to the inclusion and exclusion of tokens; and (iii) using production data to test hypotheses that can elucidate how variants are derived from the grammar Adopting this approach, my investigation focuses on the alternation between not-negation (1), no-negation (2) and negative concord (3) in English.. Labov 1972a; Smith 2001; Anderwald 2002; Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2004; Anderwald 2005; Szmrecsanyi 2013), perhaps because of its ubiquity across non-standard Englishes worldwide (Chambers 2012) Such studies typically examine the presence versus absence of negative concord, with little (if any) attention paid to whether not- or no-negation are used instead. Analysing discourse status will generate additional evidence to establish whether Account 1 (where all variants mark negation syntactically in NegP) or Account 2 (where no-negation is marked in a post-verbal DP) offers a more comprehensive theory of the variation
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