Not-negation revisited: variation betweenaandanyin verb complements in contemporary spoken American English

Abstract

Innot-negated English sentences with indefinite expressions following the verb, there is variation between the indefinite article andanyas determiners of nouns. The standard view is that singular count nouns take the indefinite article and singular non-count and plural nouns takeany.However, it is possible to encounter examples likeit isn'tany threat,there isn'tany lockorI don't haveany problem.The article studies variation between the indefinite article andanyas post-verbal determiners of singular nouns in 21,084not-negated sentences in the spoken component ofThe Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA SPOK. The indefinite article is dominant with 90 per cent of the tokens. Variation is extremely rare in sentences with copularbeand much more frequent in sentences with existentialbeandhave. Among the reasons for variation between verb types is the use ofdo-support withhave(but not withbe). Expressions such ashave a job/car/homeorthere's not a/anwith uncontractednotmay also prevent the use ofany.Variation occurs mostly with abstract nouns such asproblem,choice,way,place,reason. This finding is surprising as abstract nouns have rarely been discussed in the literature on varying countability of nouns.