Naught, Nought, Not: 문법화 관점에서의 연구

This paper aims to investigate the origin and historical development of the Present-day English words naught, nought and not and to explain the changes in terms of grammaticalization. This paper surveys the sound (reflected in spelling), meaning, and morphological and syntactic frames of the proto-form of these words in Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and Early Modern English (EModE), respectively. OE nawiht/nowiht had the categories of noun and negative adverb that did not function as a sentential negator, but as a constituent negator or the reinforcer of the sentential negation. naught/nought and their later forms nat/not did not become the head sentential negator until the late ME. It was found that the original noun split into noun and adverb, both of which have been further grammaticalized on their own separate paths and have undergone phonological attrition, semantic bleaching, and the reduction of morphological and syntactic frames. This change is additional evidence in support of the grammaticalization theory.