Late Medieval and beyond: the renewal of NEG1

Abstract

This chapter discusses negator distribution in Late Medieval Greek with texts from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Spoken Greek of this period depicts a stage of variation in the forms of NEG1 and NEG2. Both elements have developed counterparts with which they appear in free variation, as the former NEG1-thing, οὐδέν‎ /udhén/, and NEG2-thing, μηδέν‎ /midhén/, indefinites have bleached into plain sentential negators. Two instances of parameter resetting in Late Medieval Greek are identified: (i) the specifier-to-head shift in the syntactic status of the negators and (ii) the loss of NEG2 from the conditional protasis. The NEG2 was lost from the conditional antecedent for reasons that relate to its syntactic status shift and exact location on the expanded CP.