고대, 중세, 현대 영어의 부정

Negation in OE, ME and ModE: With Focus on Negative Polarity, Negative Concord and Jespersen’s Cycle

This paper aims to explore semantic motivations for historical changes of negative expressions in OE, ME, and ModE in depth with reference to Jespersen’s cycle. So far negative concord but not negative polarity has been paid much attention to. Phonological weakening or surface is not the leading force. Semantic and expressive motivations underlie crucial negative reinforcements implemented by negative polarity. Even n-words in negative concord are based on negative polarity in their core concepts of [negatively biased weakened ne + concessive even + indefinites of lowest scalar values]. With the separate sentential negator ne, this central negative reinforcement by negative polarity denotes semantically strong universal/general negation with emphasis. Negative polarity items such as ænig ‘any,’ æfre ‘ever,’ and an ‘one,’ with covert even, came into being first in OE and they became n-words with n(e) added in negative but not in affective contexts. Then both n-words and NPIs could appear in negative contexts in competition. Because of NPIs, n-words in negative concord in OE and ME could disappear in standard ModE. But negtive concord based on n’t prevails strongly in child, AAVE, nonstandard, and teenagers’ ModE. The competition is never extinct historically in English. The typology and markedness of various negative constructions in different stages are reviewed in OT, and the architecture of generative grammar is also examined for the grammaticalization processes involved in the changes.