Negative Contraction, Dialect, and the AB Language: A Note on Levin 1958

Abstract

Contemporary discussions of preverbal negative incorporation usually note Levin's 1958 claim that incorporation is a Western and Southern dialect feature in Old and Middle English. In his Middle English data, Levin reports only two unincorporated forms, both in AB texts. This note demonstrates that these two examples appear in the editions Levin used, but not in the manuscripts now thought to be closer to the original AB language. The conclusions are: 1. Levin's claim still has merit; 2. it would worthwhile to revisit his data with an improved understanding of scribal practices, access to facsimiles, and to electronic searches; and 3. researchers should consider editorial "interference" in manuscripts. * Introduction.In Old English and Early Middle English, the usual form of clausal negation is the preverbal particle ne. Certain verbs, namely witan 'know', willan 'want', beon 'be', habban 'have', and agan 'own', allow the negative particle to incorporate into the verb so that ne is (3rd pres. ind. singular of beon) is equivalent to nis. Similarly, ne habbe becomes nabbe and ne wulle becomes nulle. This is a process similar to the present-day English incorporation of contracted not in forms of auxiliary verbs such as isn't, won't, etc. However, although it is apparent that, in present-day English, contraction occurs in more informal contexts and the full forms in formal situations, the reasons Old English and Early Middle English writers used these forms are not so clear. Recent studies of negative contraction, focusing mainly on syntax and meter in poetry,

The subjunctive in the Lindisfarne gloss

“…For example, willan 'want' is either nolde or ne wolde in the past tense. Generally, in northern varieties contraction is rare but in Southern and West Midland varieties it is variable, making negative contraction predominantly a West Saxon phenomenon (Levin 1958;van Bergen 2008;Wood 2002). The distribution of contracted and uncontracted negation has been investigated from the perspective of possible Latin influence and from the viewpoint of variation within the sections.…”