'Any' as a Negative Polarity Item: From Old English to Early Modern English 公开

Kirby, Ian Lewis (2014)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/pr76f3688?locale=zh
Published

Abstract

This paper examines the use of the word any from Old English through Early Modern English. In present-day English, any is a clear example of a negative polarity item (NPI). NPIs are word or phrase that can appear grammatically under negation, in conditional clauses, in questions, and as a standard of comparison, but are not grammatical in affirmative sentences. For example, it is grammatical to say 'I don't have any apples', but it is ungrammatical to say 'I have any apples'. The traditional story told in the literature is that any became an NPI between Late Middle English and Early Modern English as a result of the loss of negative concord. Using corpora of Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, I found something quite different. In the Old English corpus, any appears with high frequency under negation. This frequency drops in Middle English, and then rises again in Early Modern English. Much of this paper seeks to explain this U-shaped trend in the historical distribution of any. I argue that, contrary to the traditional view, any was an NPI throughout Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. I propose a four-staged model to explain the U-shaped curve.

Table of Contents

List of Tables. 1
List of Figures. 2
Abbreviations. 3
1. Introduction. 4
2. Negative Polarity Items and Negative Concord. 6
2.1 Negative Polarity Items: An Overview. 7
2.2 NPI Any and Negative Concord. 13
2.3. The ME Negative Concord Loss Hypothesis. 16
2.3.1. Tieken's Chain Shift 17
2.3.2. Iyeiri's Response to Tieken. 18
2.3.3. Kallel's Parametric Variation. 19
2.3.4. Licensing of Any in Conditionals, Questions, and Comparatives in OE, ME. 22
3. Methods. 23
4. Results from Corpus Searches. 26
4.1 Any under Negation. 26
4.2 Any in Conditionals, Questions, and Comparatives. 30
4.2.1. Multiple Licensing of Any in OE and ME. 37
5. Interpreting the Data: Some Hypotheses. 38
5.1. Latin Influence Hypothesis. 38
5.2. Any as N-Word Hypothesis. 41
5.3 Atavism Hypothesis. 44
5.4. Emphatic Any Hypothesis. 45
5.5. Any Always NPI Hypothesis. 46
6. Conclusions and Directions for Future Research. 50
Appendices. 52
A: A Brief Overview of Three-Line Notation. 52
B: Other Figures and Tables. 54
Works Cited. 59

About this Honors Thesis

Rights statement
  • Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.
School
Department
Degree
Submission
Language
  • English
Research Field
关键词
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor
Committee Members
最新修改

Primary PDF

Supplemental Files