Cover not available

In:The Diachrony of Negation
Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti
[Studies in Language Companion Series 160] 2014
► pp. 185–212

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The grammaticalization of negative indefinites

The case of the temporal/aspectual n-words plus and mais in Medieval French

 | The University of Manchester
Published online: 24 October 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.160.07mos
This chapter traces the diachronic evolution in Medieval French of two temporal/aspectual n-words of adverbial origin, the markers mais (< Lat. MAGIS ‘more, to a greater degree’) and plus (< Lat. PLUS ‘more’), equivalent to English no more/no longer, anymore/any longer, with a view to addressing two theoretical issues: (i) whether the evolution of indefinites is unidirectional, as claimed by Haspelmath (1997), or rather subject to a “random diachronic walk”, as suggested by Jäger (2010); (ii) whether the evolution of the French n-words can be described in terms of a general cyclical development parallel to that of the standard clause negator (commonly known as Jespersen’s Cycle). It is argued that, like those reported in Hansen (2012), the results of this study support the random walk hypothesis, and weakens the case for a quantifier cycle in French. Moreover, the results of the two studies suggest that functional categories, or paradigms, are pragmatic, rather than linguistic, entities.
References (44)
Databases
BFM = Base de français médiéval: [URL]
DMF = Dictionnaire du moyen français: [URL]
TFA = Textes de français ancien: [URL]
References
Buridant, Claude. 2000. Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français. Paris: SEDES.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
den Dikken, Marcel. 2002. Direct and parasitic polarity item licensing. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 5: 35-66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Déprez, Viviane. 2011. Atoms of negation: An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord. In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard P. Ingham (eds), 221-272. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Déprez, Viviane & Martineau, France. 2004. Micro-parametric variation and negative concord. In Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 258], Julie Auger, Clancy Clements & Barbara Vance (eds), 139-158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ducrot, Oswald & Vogt, Carlos. 1979. De magis à mais: Une hypothèse sémantique. Revue de Linguistique Romane 43(171-172): 317-341.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foulet, Lucien. 1946. Le plus quantitatif et le plus temporel. In Etudes romanes dédiées à Mario Roques par ses amis, collègues et anciens élèves de France, 131-147. Paris: Droz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1965. Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français, 3rd edn. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guerzoni, Elena & Sharvit, Yael. 2007. A question of strength: On NPIs in interrogative clauses. Linguistics and Philosophy 30: 361-391. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. 2008. Particles at the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface: Synchronic and Diachronic Issues. A Study with Special Reference to the French Phasal Adverbs [Current Research in the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface 19]. Oxford:Elsevier & Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. The grammaticalization of negative reinforcers in Old and Middle French: A discourse-functional approach. In Current Trends in Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics [Studies in Pragmatics 7], Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti (eds), 227-251. Bingley:Emerald & Leiden: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Discussion of Viviane Déprez: “Atoms of negation. An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord.” In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard P. Ingham (eds), 273-283. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. On the evolution of temporal n-words in Medieval French. Language Sciences 34(1): 76-91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Cyclicity in semantic/pragmatic change: Old French ja between Latin IAM and Modern French déjà . In Discourse and Pragmatic Markers from Latin to Romance [Oxford Studies in Historical Linguistics 9], Chiara Ghezzi & Piera Molinelli (eds), 139-165. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 2002. On the role of context in grammaticalization. In New Reflections on Grammaticalization [Typological Studies in Language 49], Ilse Wischer & Gabriele Diewald (eds), 83-101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoeksema, Jack. 2000. Negative polarity items: Triggering, scope, and c-command. In Negation and Polarity. Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives, Laurence Horn & Yasuhiko Kato (eds), 115-146. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Parasitic licensing of negative polarity items. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 10: 163-182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Polarity items in Strawsonian contexts - A comparison. In Beyond Any and Ever. New Explorations in Negative Polarity Sensitivity [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 262], Eva Csipak, Regine Eckardt, Mingya Liu & Manfred Sailer (eds),47-78. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jäger, Agnes. 2010. Anything is nothing is something. On the diachrony of polarity types of indefinites. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28: 787-822. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and Other Languages [Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-Filologiske Meddelelser I, 5]. Copenhagen: Høstog Søn.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1992. The present perfect puzzle. Language 68(3): 525-552. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladusaw, William A. 1993. Negation, indefinites, and the Jespersen Cycle. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.General Session and Parasession on Semantic Typology and Semantic Universals , Joshua S. Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser & Cheryl C. Zoll (eds), 437-446. Berkeley CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klima, Edward S. 1964. Negation in English. In Jerry A. Fodor & Jerrold A. Katz, eds. The Structure of Language. Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 246-323.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Laka Muzarga, Miren Itziar. 1990. Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1985. Grammaticalization. Synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e stile XX(3): 303-318.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. 1997. La langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècle. Paris: Nathan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, Robert. 1966. Le mot rien et ses concurrents en français (du XIVe siècle à l’époque contemporaine). Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France. 1994. Movement of negative adverbs in French infinitival clauses. Journal of French Language Studies 4: 55-73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moignet, Gérard. 1976. Grammaire de l’ancien français. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muller, Claude. 1991. La négation en français. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Offord, Malcolm. 1976. Negation in “Berinus”: A contribution to the study of negation in fourteenth century French. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 92(3-4): 313-385. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Payne, John. 1985. Negation. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol. 1, Timothy Shopen (ed.), 197-242. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rowlett, Paul. 1998. Sentential Negation in French. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Swart, Henriëtte. 2010. Expression and Interpretation of Negation. An OT Typology. Dordrecht: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Togeby, Knud. 1974. Précis historique de grammaire française. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan. 1998. Phasal adverbs in the languages of Europe. In Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, Johan van der Auwera & Donall P.Ó Baoill (eds), 25-145. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Auwera, Johan & Van Alsenoy, Lauren. 2011. Indefinite pronouns, synchrony and diachrony: Comments on Willis. In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard P. Ingham (eds), 325-345. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willis, David. 2011. Negative polarity and the quantifier cycle: Comparative diachronic perspectives from European languages. In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard P. Ingham (eds), 282-323. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willis, David, Lucas, Christopher & Breitbarth, Anne. 2013. Comparing diachronies of negation. In The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, Vol. I: Case Studies, David Willis, Christopher Lucas & Anne Breitbarth (eds), 1-50. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2008. Negative concord in syntactic agreement. Ms, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Wendy Ayres-Bennett & Mairi McLaughlin
2024. The Oxford Handbook of the French Language, DOI logo
Shormani, Mohammed Q & Fahad Saud Alhussen
2024. The syntax of negative imperatives in Yemeni Arabic: A phase approach. Cogent Arts & Humanities 11:1 DOI logo
van der Auwera, Johan
2022. Nominal and pronominal negative concord, through the lens of Belizean and Jamaican Creole. Linguistics 60:2 ► pp. 505 ff. DOI logo
GIBSON, HANNAH
2021.  Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas & David Willis, The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, vol. II: Patterns and processes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 40). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 292.. Journal of Linguistics 57:3 ► pp. 675 ff. DOI logo
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard
2021. Cyclic changes to the negative coordinating conjunction from Latin to Modern French. Folia Linguistica 55:s42-s2 ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo
van der Auwera, Johan & Lauren Van Alsenoy
2016. On the typology of negative concord. Studies in Language 40:3 ► pp. 473 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue