Sources of change in the German syntax of negation
This chapter explains the main negation markers in the history of German are the neg‐particles ni/ne (Neg°), ni(c)ht (SpecNegP), and n‐words. It also details the ratio of these and their co‐occurrence change diachronically due to phonetic weakening and reinforcement of the neg‐particle and a profound change in the indefinite system. It finds that the underlying syntactic structure remained unchanged.
Keywords: negation, Old High German, Middle High German, negative concord, Jespersen's Cycle
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