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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 35:4 (2018) ► pp.451–486

Pragmatic differentiation of negative markers in the early stages of Jespersen’s cycle in North Germanic

| University of Cambridge
| University of Cambridge

This article investigates the pragmatic function of new negative markers during incipient renewal of negation in ‘Jespersen’s cycle’. We outline a typology of these markers, suggesting a pathway by which they begin as specialized for use with discourse-old propositions and later expand to inferred propositions before finally becoming possible with discourse-new propositions. This framework is applied to an overlooked case of Jespersen’s cycle in North Germanic: replacement of early Norwegian ei(gi) “not” by ekki (originally “nothing”) from 1250 to 1550. We document a sharp rise in frequency of ekki around 1425, suggesting that, until then, ekki had been restricted to negating discourse-old propositions. Once this constraint was lifted, ei(gi) and ekki competed directly, resulting in rapid replacement of ei(gi) by ekki. This typologically unusual direct replacement of a negator with no intervening doubling stage can be attributed to the new negator’s origin as a negative indefinite and the lack of negative concord in early Norwegian.

Keywords: negation, cyclic change, Jespersen’s cycle, information structure, emphasis, Old Norwegian, Middle Norwegian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background to Jespersen’s cycle
  • 3.Explanations for Jespersen’s cycle: Emphatic negation and information structure
  • 4.Emphasis and activation
  • 5.Operationalizing activation
  • 6.Negation in North Germanic
  • 7.Method
  • 8.Results
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Texts cited
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16040.bla
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