From N to D

Based on a thorough review of their feature make up and on novel diachronic data on their modification properties, this paper maps out the internal syntactic structure of French n-words and the historical time course of their internal rise within a nominal projection. It charts out precise steps that directly relate internal structural changes to corresponding changes in concord properties. Indirect modification with autre as in rien d’autre is shown to be an innovation of modern French that serves to provide a distinctive signature of the final morphosyntactic change of n-words into negative quantificational expressions. The evidence offered supports the hypothesis (Déprez 2000; Condoravdi & Kiparsky 2006) that it was change in the internal structure of n-words that determined the current properties of negative concord, not changes in the sentential negation marker, contra Zeijlstra (2004 and following work).