The grammaticalisation ofneverin British English dialects: Quantifying syntactic and functional change

Abstract

Neveroriginated as a temporal adverb expressing universal quantification over time (‘Type 1’, e.g.he’s never been to Paris). As Lucas & Willis (2012) report, it has developed non-quantificational meanings equivalent todidn’t, starting with the ‘Type 2’ use which depicts an event that could have occurred in a specific ‘window of opportunity’ (e.g.she waited but he never arrived). Subsequently, a non-standard ‘Type 3’ use developed, wherenevercan be used with other predicates (e.g.I never won that competition yesterday). To what extent does variation in the use ofneverin present-day English reflect the proposed historical development of the form? This study addresses this question by integrating syntactic theory into a quantitative variationist approach, analysingnevervs.didn’tin Type 2 and Type 3 contexts using speech corpora from three Northern British communities. The results show how syntactic–semantic constraints onneverin Type 2 contexts persist in its newer, Type 3 uses, e.g. it is used at higher rates in achievement predicates. While Type 2 contexts are associated with the expression of counter-expectation,neverhas become pragmatically strengthened in its Type 3 use, where it is often used to contradict a previously-expressed proposition.