Negation in Historical West Flemish and Hollandic: an Investigation of Resilient Preverbal Markers
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Negation in Historical West Flemish and Hollandic: an Investigation of Resilient Preverbal Markers Eline Laperre Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary University of London September 2018 Statement of originality I, Eline Gerda Laperre, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: ELINE LAPERRE Date: 20/09/2018 2 Abstract This thesis examines the development of negation in historical West Flemish and Hollandic, focussing on resilient preverbal markers within a socio-historical framework. In doing so, my study provides a more detailed discussion of the resilient preverbal marker ne/en than previous accounts have done, as well as an explanation of why certain negative markers developed the way they did in the history of West Flemish and Hollandic. The analysis is based on an extensive, purpose-built corpus that comprises data from six centuries – from the thirteenth until the eighteenth – and two dialect regions. The dataset, which is examined using a fine-grained, century-by- century approach, thus provides diachronic breadth as well as a contrastive view of dialectal variation. In the literature, six contexts have been identified in which preverbal ne/en remains resilient: exceptives, expletives, with certain verbs, with certain adjectives or adverbs, fragment answers, and rhetorical questions. The results will be analysed on the level of morphosyntax as well as on a sociohistorical level. Firstly, my study will offer an in-depth diachronic overview of the grammaticalisation of exceptives, will analyse expletive preverbal markers as NPIs that undergo analogical change, and discuss the fossilisation of fragment answers. Secondly, I argue that urbanisation in the thirteenth to fifteenth, and the seventeenth centuries, may explain the West Flemish development of ne/en in the context of adverbs and adjectives, as well as the shift from bipartite to single niet and the loss of expletive markers in the Hollandic data. In addition, I will show that standardisation and prescriptivism can account for the attestation patterns in fifteenth-century Hollandic and eighteenth-century West Flemish. Overall, my research argues against ‘one size fits all’ explanations for the development of negation, and instead emphasises the need for a multi-faceted approach, proposing individual analyses tailored to each type of negative marker in the data. 3 Acknowledgements The dissertation presented here was funded by a full doctoral Arts and Humanities Studentship awarded by Queen Mary University of London. I thank the University for providing me with the opportunity to conduct this research. I am furthermore grateful to the School of Language, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary University of London, as well as The Philological Society of the UK, for their financial support, especially with travel undertaken in the course of this study, from which my research benefited greatly. Special thanks are due to my doctoral supervisor, Katerina Somers, whose guidance, enthusiasm and expert advice have been invaluable to me over these past few years. This work would not have been possible without her never-ending support, academic or otherwise. I am also grateful to Colleen Cotter, my second doctoral supervisor, for her comments on my work, and for her encouragement and advice throughout the writing process. Thanks further go out to Piet van Reenen, for sending me, though at the time on holiday, an annotated version of the Corpus van Reenen-Mulder immediately upon request, a corpus that was instrumental in providing the necessary data for this study. Finally, I am indebted to Coppe van Urk for his extensive comments about exceptives in Present-day Dutch, which contributed greatly to the discussion of exceptives. I would like to thank my family for their faith in me, for always encouraging my interests and academic pursuits, and for supporting me in more ways than I can count. Last, but not least, I am eternally grateful to my fiancé, Roeland Decorte, for his unwavering belief in me. He has been at my side every step of the way, making me laugh and letting me vent without judgement. This thesis was made possible through his love and caring support. 4 Table of contents Statement of originality ................................................................................................ 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 3 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 4 Table of contents .......................................................................................................... 5 List of tables ................................................................................................................. 8 List of figures ............................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 2: Negative contexts and negation in Dutch ................................................. 16 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 16 2.2 Sentential negation versus constituent negation ............................................... 16 2.3 Negative elements ............................................................................................ 18 2.4 Negative Polarity Items .................................................................................... 19 2.5 Multiple negation ............................................................................................. 24 2.5.1 Double negation ......................................................................................... 24 2.5.2 Weakening negation .................................................................................. 25 2.5.3 Negative concord ....................................................................................... 26 2.5.4 Emphatic negation ..................................................................................... 30 2.6 Jespersen’s Cycle ............................................................................................. 34 2.7 Negation in the history of Dutch ...................................................................... 42 2.7.1 Old Dutch ................................................................................................... 43 2.7.2 Early Middle Dutch ................................................................................... 47 2.7.3 Late Middle Dutch ..................................................................................... 56 2.7.4 Sixteenth century ....................................................................................... 57 2.7.5 Seventeenth century ................................................................................... 60 2.7.6 Eighteenth century ..................................................................................... 62 2.7.7 Nineteenth and twentieth centuries ............................................................ 64 2.8 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 75 Chapter 3: Methodology and the corpus .................................................................... 77 3.1 Method .............................................................................................................. 77 3.2 The corpus ........................................................................................................ 84 3.3 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 91 Chapter 4: Negation in the corpus .............................................................................. 93 4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 93 5 4.2 Bipartite – postverbal shift ............................................................................... 95 4.3 Resilient preverbal markers ............................................................................ 102 4.3.1 Exceptives ................................................................................................ 103 4.3.2 Expletives................................................................................................. 124 4.3.3 Preverbal negation in the context of certain verbs