Negative Inversion and the Quantifier Cycle

In this chapter, I turn to the question of which negative words in negative concord have negative force. Feature-based accounts of negative concord, for example Zeijlstra (2004), argue that only one negative word in concord bears negative force and is interpretable as a negative operator at LF. This chapter considers evidence for variation and change in the negative force associated with negative arguments and negative adverbials in early English, then examines how this variation and change interacts with the Jespersen Cycle in negative concord environments.

In negative concord of the type in (163), it is not clear which negative item contributes negation at LF, and which is simply negative in form.

Is it ne or the negative quantifier nanne ‘no’ that marks negative force in (163), or is negative force marked by a non-overt operator (as Zeijlstra (2004) argues)? If the negative marker ne marks negative force and nanne ‘no’ is a concordant negative word, then (163) is an instance of negative doubling. Similarly, if a null negative operator marks negative force in (163) then it involves negative doubling between the null operator and the concordant negative words ne and nanne ‘no’. However, if the negative quantifier nanne ‘no’ marks negative force and ne is in concord with it, then (163) exemplifies negative spread, of the type observed in Present-day French by Giannakidou (2006) and Zeijlstra (2010).

Patterns of negative inversion are not widely discussed in the literature (but see Wallage (2012a), Ingham (2007), Nevalainen (1997)). Here I argue they are a diagnostic that allows us to distinguish words that mark negative force at LF from those that are negative in form only. Changing patterns of negative inversion in OE and ME demonstrate that there is a quantifier cycle of the type proposed by Ladusaw (1993) – a change in the semantic representation of negative words in negative concord – that is bound up with the morphosyntactic weakening of ne. There is competition between two types of negative concord at successive stages of the quantifier cycle – negative doubling, in which ne1 marks negative force at LF; and negative spread, in which ne2 does not.