LINGUIST List 22.437 Mon Jan 24 2011 Books: Historical Linguistics/Lexicography/Syntax: Kallel Editor for this issue: Fatemeh Abdollahi <fatemehlinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers are available at the end of this issue. Directory         1.     Chris Humphrey , The Lexical Reanalysis of N-Words and the Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: Kallel Message 1: The Lexical Reanalysis of N-Words and the Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: Kallel Date: 20-Jan-2011 From: Chris Humphrey <chumphreyc-s-p.org> Subject: The Lexical Reanalysis of N-Words and the Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: Kallel E-mail this message to a friend Title: The Lexical Reanalysis of N-Words and the Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English Published: 2011 Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing                 http://www.c-s-p.org Author: Amel Kallel Hardback: ISBN: 9781443827386 Pages: 195 Price: U.K. £ 34.99 Abstract: The loss of NC has long been attributed to external factors. This study readdresses this issue and provides evidence for the failure of certain external factors to account for the observed decline and ultimate disappearance of NC in Standard English. A detailed study of negation in Late Middle and Early Modern English reveals that the process of decline of NC was a case of a natural change, preceded by a period of variation. Variation existed not only on the level of the speech community as a whole but also within individual speakers (contra Lightfoot 1991). A close study of n-indefinites in negative contexts and their ultimate replacement with NPIs in a number of grammatical environments shows that the decline of NC follows the same pattern across contexts in a form of PARALLEL CURVATURE, which indicates that the loss of NC is a natural process. This study reveals that the decline takes place at the same rate in all observed contexts, something consistent with Kroch's Constant Rate Effect. A CONTEXT CONSTANCY EFFECT is obtained across all contexts indicating that the loss of NC is triggered by a change in a single underlying parameter setting. Accordingly, a theory-internal explanation is suggested. N-words underwent a lexical reanalysis whereby they acquired a new grammatical feature [+Neg] and were thus reinterpreted as negative quantifiers, rather than NPIs. This lexical reanalysis was triggered by the ambiguous status of n-words between [±Neg] and thus between single and double negative meanings. This change is treated as a case of parameter resetting as this lexical reanalysis affected a whole set of lexical items and can thus economically account for the different observed surface changes. Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics                             Lexicography                             Syntax Subject Language(s): English (eng) Written In: English (eng ) See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=52788 New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue -------------------------- Major Supporters -------------------------- Brill http://www.brill.nl Cambridge Scholars Publishing http://www.c-s-p.org Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/ Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd http://www.continuumbooks.com De Gruyter Mouton http://www.degruyter.com/mouton Edinburgh University Press http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/ Elsevier Ltd http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics Equinox Publishing Ltd http://www.equinoxpub.com/ John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Lincom GmbH http://www.lincom.eu MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/ Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/ Palgrave Macmillan http://www.palgrave.com Rodopi http://www.rodopi.nl/ University of Toronto Press http://www.utpjournals.com/ ---------------------- Other Supporting Publishers ---------------------- Page Updated: 24-Jan-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.