A History of English Negation.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- List of Abbreviations and Conventions -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1. General and Typological Issues -- Chapter 2. Negation in Old English and Early Middle English -- 2.1. Negation in OE Syntax -- 2.2. Variation in Old English Negation -- 2.3. Some Specific Phenomena and Rules of OE Negation -- 2.4. Non-sentential Negation and Negative Affixation -- Chapter 3. The Middle Ages and Early Modern English -- 3.1. Introduction -- 3.2. A Period of Major Syntactic Changes -- 3.3. Negation Phenomena in Medieval and Renaissance English -- 3.4. Negative Coordination -- 3.5. Constituent and Affixal Negation -- 3.6. Negation and the New Sentence Structure -- 3.7. Genres, Individual Texts and the 'Jungle of ME Manuscripts' -- Chapter 4. Present-Day English Negation -- 4.0. Interlude: Meta-discourse on English Negation at the Beginning of the Modern English Period -- 4.1. The Analysis of Negation in English Linguistics -- 4.2. The Placement of Negation in the Modern English Sentence -- 4.3. Negation with Indefinites, Quantifiers and Comparatives -- 4.4. Negative Coordination -- 4.5. The Cliticization of Not: A Relatively Recent Phenomenon -- 4.6. Inversion in Some Negative Contexts -- 4.7. 'He needn't say but a single word': Various Types of 'Marked' Negation -- 4.8. Affixal Negation in Modern English -- 4.9. Further Discussion on the Pragmatics of Negation -- Chapter 5. Varieties of English -- 5.1. Negation Outside the Standard Variety of English -- 5.2. Negation in Pidgins and Creoles -- Chapter 6. Further Theoretical Considerations and Conclusions -- 6.1. Regularities in the Development of Negation -- 6.2. Negation and Language Universals -- 6.3. History of Negation and Models of Language Change -- Appendix I: Sources for Text Analysis.

Appendix II: Negative Forms -- References -- Index.

This volume traces the history of negation in English from Old and Middle English through to Modern Standard English and other varieties of English. It discusses the developments of negation in the early centuries, which involves looking at the problems of the phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics of Old and Middle English. There is also a chapter on negation in British dialects, non-standard forms, other native forms such as Black English, and non-native varieties such as English-based pidgins and Creoles.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.