Lexical variation and Negative Concord in Traditional Dialects of British English

Abstract

In the present paper I investigate, from a Minimalist perspective and using data from the Freiburg English Dialect corpus, the patterns of Negative Concord (NC) attested in different Traditional Dialects of British English. By arguing that lexical variation exists in the negative operator used to express sentential negation, which is truly semantic in Standard English but carries an interpretable negative feature in Traditional Dialects of British English, I explain why NC, understood as syntactic Agree between [iNeg] and[uNeg] features, is attested in the latter but not in the former. In the same vein, by arguing that in Traditional Dialects of British English two lexical entries are possible for n-words which contrast in the interpretability of the negative feature they carry ([iNeg] vs. [uNeg]), the optionality of NC in the studied Non-Standard dialects of English as well as the different patterns observed in the data can be accounted for.

Integrating syntactic theory and variationist analysis: The structure of negative indefinites in regional dialects of British English

“…Results of distributional analysis and mixed-effects modelling support Account 2 of the variation over Account 1, suggesting structural identity between not-negation and negative concord (in contrast to no-negation). This supports Tubau's (2016) proposal that English negative indefinites have two distinct structures: one in which negation is marked syntactically in the DP and one in which they agree with a syntactically-higher NegP. …”

“…Haegeman 1995;Watanabe 2004;Wallage 2017: 185) or composed of a negative operator plus an indefinite (e.g. Zeijlstra 2011;Penka 2012;Tubau 2016). Either of these DP structures are tenable for Account 2 and this does not matter for the purposes of my analysis (see Iatridou and Sichel 2011: 610-12), as the crucial property of no-negation in this account is that negation is marked syntactically within the DP.…”

“…A way of reconciling these facts is to propose that English n-words are ambiguous (Herburger 2001) or have two lexical entries (Déprez 1997;Tubau 2016). In other words, n-words can be inherently negative, as in no-negation, or lack syntactic negation, as in negative concord (Déprez 1997: 119;Tubau 2016).…”

“…A way of reconciling these facts is to propose that English n-words are ambiguous (Herburger 2001) or have two lexical entries (Déprez 1997;Tubau 2016). In other words, n-words can be inherently negative, as in no-negation, or lack syntactic negation, as in negative concord (Déprez 1997: 119;Tubau 2016). This kind of account is consistent with a language undergoing change from expressing double negation to expressing negative concord (Herburger 2001) which, as previously noted, is underway in English (Zeijlstra 2004: 146).…”

“…A: Nothing) and in clause-initial position (e.g. Nothing's wrong) (Tubau 2016). 8 The structure of not-negation, no-negation and negative concord under Account 2 is shown in (7).…”