Timeline for Diachronic sources of negators
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 29, 2014 at 7:25 | answer | added | Ivan Kapitonov | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 13, 2014 at 14:58 | comment | added | neubau | Widespread use of rhetorical questions like “where do I have money?” meaning “I don’t have money” might eventually lead to some element of the question grammaticalizing into a marker of negation. See discussion in John Haiman’s grammar of Cambodian (JBenjamins 2011), pp. 230-1. | |
| Feb 10, 2014 at 17:32 | comment | added | TKR | @ColinFine Thanks, but just to clarify, I'm looking for sources of negation other than Jespersen's Cycle. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the question. | |
| Feb 10, 2014 at 0:45 | comment | added | Colin Fine | The process whereby originally separate (usually emphatic) elements become increasingly bound to expressions of negation, sometimes to the point that the original negator disappears entirely, is known as Jespersen's Cycle. (The English case is more interesting than you suggest, because the original negator has not in fact survived: the newiht -> noht -> not was an intensifier that (unlike the French pas) contained a negative element, but it was added to a separate ne which has since vanished.) IIRC you'll find a lot of material relating to your question in Jespersen's book on negation. | |
| Feb 9, 2014 at 16:35 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackLinguist/status/432553260697022464 | ||
| Feb 8, 2014 at 20:24 | history | asked | TKR | CC BY-SA 3.0 |