INVOLUTION OF NEGATIVE CONCORD IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECT

Abstract

The paper studies the history of multiple negation in English. The historical development of negation markers follows Jespersen’s Cycle and includes five completed stages that cover the transfer from the [+NC] model in Old English via [-NC]/[+NC] in Middle English and Early Modern English to [+NC] in Present-Day English. The loss of negative concord in the Early Modern English period was due to a change in the deep structure of the propositional negation. Northern dialects, where contacts with the Scandinavian languages were the most intensive, are a possible source of accelerating the emergence of the rule for non-use of multiple negation in English. However, in the Early Modern English period there is a shift in the leaders of language change, the proponents of the rule being men occupied in professional activities at the royal court in London, especially those who tried to improve their social status, so the involution of multiple negation is a language change ‘from above’. The process was completed in the newly created English standard before the end of the 17th century, although in some non-standard variants, multiple negation continues to be the norm even at present. Prescriptive grammars of the 18th century, therefore, required the use of forms that had already become the usual means for negation marking for the speakers of “standard” English in the previous two centuries.