Jespersen's Negative Cycle Revisited: A Sociolinguistic Study

Jespersen's Negative Cycle Revisited: A Sociolinguistic Study

In Negation in English and Other Languages, Otto Jespersen describes the cyclic development of English negative constructions in terms of the following five stages. (I) Ie ne secge; (2) I ne seye not, (3) I say not; (4) I do not say, (5) I don't say As is often the case, an old linguistic farm may persist and Coexist with a new one until the former disappears Thus, most Middle English texts show the co-occurrence of constructions (1), (2), and (3) In Early Modern English, negative sentences without do were attested along with the newly emerging expressions with do The coexistence of the two constructions can be found in Shakespeare Was the choice between the different types of negative construction in earlier English in any way systematic? This paper will take a sociolinguistic approach to the problem and examine whether factors such as the socio-economic class of speakers, their gender and age as well as the genre and style of the text were relevant to the choice of negative construction in Middle English and in Early Modem English