Zeitschrift fr Slawistik 2017; 62(4): 647661

Konrad Szczeniak*
Conspicuous negation. The grammaticali-
zation of the locative-existential have

https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2017-0040

Summary: This study focuses on the grammaticalization of the Polish locative-

existential construction featuring the negative use of the verb have (nie ma
doesnt have). The construction is compared to its analogs in other languages,
where the possessive verb can appear in both affirmative and negative uses. It is
proposed that the negative form of the construction is not a mere coincidental
peculiarity, but is a characteristic shared with a number of other constructions,
which suggests that negation plays a more significant role in the development of
the locative-existential construction as well as other grammatical forms. It is
argued that negation serves to make a developing construction more salient, thus
contributing to its priming, repeated use, and entrenchment.

Keywords: negation, grammaticalization, locative-existential construction, rein-

terpretation, entrenchment

1 Introduction
In studies on grammaticalization, special attention is paid not only to individual
peculiarities of grammatical constructions, but, perhaps more importantly, to the
common mechanisms found to be operative in the development of diverse forms
emerging in different, often unrelated languages. Thus various studies (e.g. Bybee

et al. 1991; Jurafsky 1996) show how metaphor, metonymy, and conventionalization
of inference are involved in the reinterpretation of the original meaning of a form
and the emergence of a new, more grammatical, form with a new meaning or
function.
The purpose of the present contribution is to point out another mechanism
which can assist in the development of some grammatical constructions. I will
attempt to illustrate how negation serves as a path of induction making newly

*Corresponding author: Dr hab. Konrad Szczeniak, Instytut Jzyka Angielskiego, Uniwersytet

lski, Ul. Grota Roweckiego, 41205 Sosnowiec, Poland, E-Mail: konrad.szczesniak@us.edu.pl

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648 Konrad Szczeniak

grammaticalizing forms stand out in context, being thus more susceptible to

repeated use under new reinterpreted readings.

2 A preference for negation

A number of grammatical constructions exhibit a preference for negation. That is,
they appear only or almost only in negative form. For example, in the following
three examples, the lexical verbs umie (be able, have a skill), chcie (want),
and mie (have) appear in special grammaticalized uses where they have the
function of expressing INABILITY .

(1) Nie umiem znale kluczy. (as if I dont know how to find the keys)
I cant find the keys.
(2) Samochd nie chcia zapali. (lit. The car didnt want to start)
The car wouldnt start.
(3) Nie mam jak zapaci. (lit. I dont have how to pay)
I have no way to pay.

These verbs cannot be used in affirmative form to express simple ABIL ABILIT
ITYY . If
affirmative variants are attempted, they sound either odd or have literal mean-
ings. For example, in (4)and (5), the uses of umie and chcie sound decidedly
anomalous: reading the first example makes one wonder how finding the keys
would require a special skill, and the next example suggests a special anthro-
pomorphic image of the car, as if it were endowed with volition to choose to start.
Finally, although the have PRON INF construction in (6)can be used in affirmative
form, it presupposes negation in the background which the affirmative use serves
to contradict (Szczeniak 2016).

(4) *Ju umiem znale klucze. (as if I already know how to find the keys)
I can find the keys.
(5) *Samochd potem ju chcia zapali. (lit. The car then wanted to start)
The car later/then would/ wanted to start.
(6) Mam jak zapaci. (lit. I have how to pay)
I do have a way to pay.

It should be pointed out that such special negative uses of verbs in the INABILITY /
REFUSAL sense are not restricted to Polish. In English, it is possible to say The car
wouldnt start, but its affirmative equivalent ?After a moment, fortunately, it would
start is confusing, to say the least. To convey the simple ABILITY
ABIL ITY / lack of REFUSAL
sense, it is more natural to use the lexical verb alone (After a moment, fortunately,
it started).

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3 The locative-existential have

In this study I will focus in more detail on one construction which, like the
examples above, appears only in the negative. It is the LOCATIVE / EXISTENTIAL
EXISTENT IAL use
of the verb mie (have):

(7) Tu nie ma adnych pienidzy. (lit. Here (it) doesnt have any money)
There is no money here.

As is well known, the LOCATIVE / EXISTENTIAL

EXISTENT IAL function of have is also found in other
Slavic languages, such as Bulgarian (8), Serbian (9)and Croatian(10).

(8) .
Here NEG -has money
(9) .
Here NEG -has money
(10) Ovdje nema novca.
Here NEG -has money
There is no money here.

Further, beyond Slavic languages, the LOCATIVE / EXISTENTIAL

EXISTENT IAL have is used in
French:

(11) Il ny a pas dargent ici.

There NEG has NEG DE money here
There is no money here

This function is also found in Portuguese, where it is used colloquially, against

some prescriptive objections:

(12) Aqui no tem terremoto / Aqui no tem vulco. (Gabriel o Pensador, Pega Ladro)
Here NEG has earthquake / Here NEG has volcano
There are no earthquakes here / there are no volcanoes here.

The difference between these languages and Polish is that in the former the
locative-existential uses of have are wider. First, in French, apart from the typical
LOCAT IVE - EXISTENTIAL use, the verb have can also be used in a special EVENTIVE -
EXISTENTIAL construction which does not assert the existence of a new entity but
rather of a new event (Dobrovie-Sorin & Beyssade 2012: 106).

(13) Il y a le tlphone qui sonne. (ex. 36 a in Dobrovie-Sorin & Beyssade 2012: 106)

there has the phone that rings

There is the phone ringing.

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And, as is obvious from example (13), the construction is available not only in the
negative. All the languages mentioned here differ from Polish in that they allow
affirmative uses, as in this example from Bulgarian:

(14) , , ,
. (ordan Popov, Obratna zakhapka: khumoristichni razkazi)
If has cat on can, that means food for cats, if has dog, that is dog food
If theres a cat on the can, that means cat food; if theres a dog, that is dog food.

This diversity could be taken to mean that a construction may exhibit its lan-
guage-specific idiosyncrasies. One could accept the view of idiosyncrasy in the
banal sense that the locative-existential have is applied differently in different
languages: broadly in French or Bulgarian, more narrowly in Portuguese, where
it is subject to register restrictions, and more narrowly still in Polish, where it
requires negation.
However, I would like to approach these uses more systematically, assuming
that they represent different stages in the grammaticalization of the construction.
The analysis offered here is based on the view that at any given time a grams
uses stretch over a sequence of links in the grammaticization chain. Only the
diachronic perspective can reveal how these uses are related and how a given
gram compares to similar grams in other languages (Bybee et al. 1994: 282).
That is, whatever the differences between the construction in Polish, Bulgar-
ian, Croatian and French, they appear less random if they are traced diachroni-
cally.
However, my aim will not be limited to identifying common elements found
in the construction in these languages. I am primarily concerned with exploring a
mechanism responsible for the emergence of new grammatical forms. In this
particular case, I will follow the development of the construction in Polish in
order to propose a process that may trigger the first stages of grammaticalization.
First, however, a brief excursion is in order into the question of negation, since it
is a dominant characteristic of the construction in Polish and, as I will argue, it
also plays a role in its development.

4 Markedness of negation
The absolute preference for negation evinced by the Polish LLOCATIVE
OCATIVE - EXISTENTIAL
EXISTENT IAL
use of have (and the remaining constructions mentioned above) may at first
glance appear to be rather idiosyncratic given the general relative infrequency of
negation, as normally used. The norm observed by Talmy (2000) in simple
declarative sentences is that it is affirmative sentences that are more basic and

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 Conspicuous negation 651

take precedence over negative sentences. Based on the infrequency of negative

sentences, De Swart (2010: 116) treats negation as a marked feature. But perhaps
even more interestingly, negation yields to affirmation in one more sense. As
Talmy notes,

a syntactically negative clause (e.g., I didnt go to Johns party last night) overtly names

something that did not take place but tends to evoke consideration of the corresponding
unrealized positive event and in this respect it differs from a simple positive clause, which
tends not to evoke consideration of its negative counterpart. (Talmy 2000: 291)

Moreover, various studies (Gilbert 1991; Gilbert et al. 1993) suggest that, more
generally, affirmation is the norm also in the case of the human minds processing
new propositions. Specifically, comprehension of new facts proceeds in a way
first proposed by Baruch Spinoza (1982), who argued that when presented with an
idea, we assume immediately that it is true. In practice, this means that any
proposition is analyzed under the assumption of an affirmative default.
To sum up, affirmation typically predominates over negation both in cogni-
tion and language use: propositions as well as simple declarative clauses are
characterized by a strong asymmetry in favor of affirmative sentences. This
asymmetry is completely reverted in the LOCATIVE
LOCAT IVE - EXISTENTIAL have construction,
where it is negative sentences that are not only more frequent, but are the only
possible uses.
In light of the general preponderance of affirmation, the negative preference
of the LOCATIVE
LOCAT IVE - EXISTENTIAL have is puzzling. Intuitively, the possibility of its
negative uses should also presuppose the possibility of affirmative sentences
because, as noted by Talmy, the latter are present in the former both morpholo-
gically and semantically, negative sentences are essentially affirmative sentences
with extra marking. Also, one would expect affirmative uses of the construction if
only because, in accordance with universal implications, the presence of a
marked characteristic implies the presence of its unmarked counterpart (Green-
berg et al. 1963: xix). I will argue that such expectations are justified, as there is
nothing inherently negative about the construction. As is clear from the examples
of French or Bulgarian, the construction is not averse to affirmation the way
negative polarity items are. The negative preference is diachronically transitory.

5 Origins of the LOCATIVE - EXISTENTIAL have

The Polish locative-existential construction had been fully established by the
eighteenth century. Its uses are attested in texts from the nineteenth (15) and
eighteenth century (16).

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(15) Tak nic nie ma staego na ziemi [...] (Eliza Orzeszkowa, Marta, 1873)
So nothing NEG has permanent on earth
So there is nothing permanent on earth [...]
(16) Jeeli zdroiow ywych nie ma, czsto si zim w Kanaach przerble czyni mai. (Krzysz-
tof Kluk, Zwierzt domowych i dzikich osobliwie kraiowych historii [...], 1779)
If springs live NEG has, often REFL winter in canals blowholes make have
If there are no live springs, blowholes should be made on rivers.

However, in seventeenth and eighteenth century documents there appear uses of

the verb have that are ambiguous between the possessive and the locative-
existential senses. For example in (17), the second (negative) use of the verb can
be interpreted as referring to the subject of the main clause (kto whoever, some-
one) or as meaning if there is nothing. Similarly, in (18) and (19), the verb have
is coherent in the context both in the literal possession sense (when it is
associated with the subject of the main clause) and in the existence sense.

(17) Jeli tedy kto co ma przeiwko tey nuce / niechay teraz

If now who what has against this teaching / let (them) now
mowi / ieli nie ma nic / aby rzecz sam i exequowa.
speak / if NEG has nothing / let thing itself it-acc execute
If someone has something against this teaching / let them speak now / if
there isnt (they havent) / they should of course practice it. (Andrzej Wargocki,
Apologia przeiwko Luteranom, 1605)
(18) Podkowa przez ktora tylko Kluc / nie ma Krzy adnego
Horseshoe through which only Key / NEG has Cross any
Horseshoe through which only a Key / Theres no Cross (Bartomiej Paprocki, Herby
Rycerztwa Polskiego: N picioro Xig rozdzielon, 1584)
(19) Papie jeli jest Przerzanym / y zym a std czonkiem Diabelskim:
Pope if is Chosen / and bad and hence member Devilish:
niema mocy nad Wiernymi.
NEG -has power over Faithful
The Pope, if he is chosen / and bad and hence the devils member: has no power/ there
is no power over the faithful.
(Benedict Herbest, Chrzesijaska porzdna odpowied na te Confessia, 1567)

Another possible source of the construction is the negative use of the verb have in
second personal singular form, which in sixteenth century Polish was spelled both
separately nie masz and together niemasz (Doroszewski 1958). In examples (20)
(22) below, the verb is not used by way of addressing a second-person listener,
because such an interlocutor is not mentioned in preceding discourse. Instead, the
form is purely impersonal, similar to the English generic you, as in If you are Obama,
you have responsibilities. Grammaticalization through the use of an impersonal
subject is a plausible scenario in that it allows for the bleaching of the possess
sense, which is not naturally associable with a backgrounded subject like that.

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 Conspicuous negation 653

(20) W tym wieku niemasz nic i przedtem

In this age NEG -have-22 PSG nothing and before
wzmianki o potomstwie tej familii.
mention of offspring that family
In this century you have not / there is not anything or before any mention of the
familys offspring.
(Bartomiej Paprocki, Herby Rycerztwa Polskiego: N picioro Xig rozdzielon, 1584)
(21) Kto rczy, e spi wszyscy, e nie masz zasadzki?
Who guarantees that sleep all, that NEG have-22 PSG ambush?
Who can guarantee that all are asleep, that you have / there is no ambush?
(Wacaw Potocki, Wojna chocimska, 1670)
(22) Wszdy peno nierzdu, gdzie nie masz dozoru!
Everywhere full disorder, where NEG have-22 PSG supervision!
There is much disorder where you have / there is no supervision! (Wacaw Potocki,
Wojna chocimska, 1670)

It is not clear exactly how the construction grammaticalized: it may owe its origins
to only one of the above structures or it may be a product of combined contribu-
tions from these two sources, but however the transitional form was processed in
the minds of the speakers of sixteenth and seventeenth century Polish, the
scenarios presented above share the same pattern. That is, the development of the
construction with a new meaning can be viewed as following a familiar scenario:
the form is originally used with what Heine (2002: 84) refers to as the source
meaning, next a new target meaning appears, first as an inference, and then it is
conventionalized as its main meaning. In this case, the source meaning of posses-
sion is accompanied by the inferentially available meaning of locative-existential
target meaning. The construction may be ambiguous between the two senses for
some time, but the ambiguity is eventually resolved, as the original meaning is
eliminated. The inference of existence triggered by the possessive sense is intui-
tively reasonable given the well known facts of interaction between being and
having the two concepts are closely interlinked, so it stands to reason that one
brings to mind the other1.
This account, however, carries an obvious problem: any mention of POSSES-
SION automatically invites the inference of L OCATION / EXISTENCE ( one can only
LOCATION
possess something whose existence is presupposed)) , and it would be rather
calamitous if the latter were to inevitably conventionalize and eliminate the
POSSESSIVE sense. Languages would be in constant need of renewing their means

1 Not without relevance here is the finding that in various languages, have constructions tend to
develop out of locative domains (Heine 1997; Clancy 2010). The construction discussed in the
present study is a case of a reverse process, where location is inferred from possession.

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654 Konrad Szczeniak

of expressing POSSESSION if it were so prone to evolve into LOCATION / EXISTENCE .

Clearly, the use of have alone is not enough to conventionalize the implicature;
which is why various scholars (e.g. Evans & Wilkins 1998; Bybee et al. 1991; Heine

2002) stress that special contextual conditions must hold for the change to occur.
One such condition is that, if the possessive meaning is to be lost in the use of
have, the link between the verb and the subject must be obscured. That is because
the presence of the subject guarantees the interpretation of the intended meaning
of possession, and in uses where the verb can straightforwardly be related to a
subject, the possession sense does not yield to the locative-existential reading.
However, when the verb have is used in a clause that is more distant from the
subject, as is the case in (17)(19), there may be some uncertainty as to what that
verb refers to. While it is of course possible to link the verb to the subject in both
these sentences, the verb can potentially be reinterpreted as heading a subjectless
clause, in which case, it is open to a non-possessive reading. Note that the second
person singular scenario also meets this condition, because a generic you does
not specify a clear subject that could function as a possessor.
But that is only part of the explanation. While a special syntactic configuration
may clarify how a new reading is entertained in preference to the original sense, it
says little about how the new meaning becomes contagious enough to be conven-
tionalized. For this to occur, frequent exposure to the new usage is necessary,
preferably by large numbers of language users. It is rather questionable that the
first condition, that of sufficient frequency, is easily met. While Polish and other
Slavic languages allow sentences without an overt subject, making it perfectly
natural to find instances of have without a subject, the frequency with which such
uses do occur may not be enough for the change to gain currency. In the next
section, I will focus on a psycholinguistic mechanism that may help consolidate a
construction like this, even assuming lower frequencies of exposure.

6 Salience
A number of mechanisms have been identified in the literature explaining how
grammaticalization proceeds. For example, metonymy and conventionalization
of implicature have been shown to be responsible for the development of con-
structions such as the FUTURE will and going in English (Bybee et al. 1991). While
such accounts clarify the logic of the meaning shifts in many constructions
(including the LOCATIVE
LOCAT IVE - EXISTENTIAL have), what they do not address is the ques-
tion of how a form with a new meaning is noticed by speakers. New meanings are
assumed to enter the language gradually and imperceptibly, as they are picked
up by speakers who are not even aware of a change in progress. Aware or not,

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 Conspicuous negation 655

language users must nevertheless absorb and internalize the new meaning at the
expense of the original meaning, a mental operation that relies on the salience of
a new piece of information. In what follows, I will attempt to point out how a new
construction benefits from increased salience.
Language users are likely to repeat structures recently observed in their
language interaction. Exposure to a given form serves to prime it in the speakers
memory, making that form a strong candidate for immediate reuse. It is interesting
that speakers may be primed not only by their interlocutors (or by a written text)
but also by themselves. This fact is illustrated by Taylor (2012) who shows that a
construction used at a given point may influence another subsequent form. In
example (23), the choice of the synthetic comparative slipperiest occurs despite its
oddity (relative to the more common analytic form more slippery), likely as a result
of self-priming by the previous use of the synthetic comparative form hardest.

(23) They say that sorry is the hardest word. It can also be the slipperiest. (ex. 1 in Taylor
2012: 208)

The speakers tendency to echo preceding discourse is also evident from the
observation that the choice of grammatical constructions used when answering a
question depends on the very questions construction. In other words, the speaker
is, consciously or not, sensitive to the questions surface form [which] can affect
the format of the answer given (Levelt & Kelter 1982: 78).
The phenomenon of such immediate recycling, also referred to as structural
priming (an earlier use activates the structure in question, making it more easily
available to the speaker) (Taylor 2012: 210), may perhaps be unsurprising and, as
such, hardly needs mentioning. After all, it is quite obvious that learning new
forms, and indeed any changes to the linguistic knowledge, must be traceable to
causes found in the input.
However, structural priming is of special interest to discussions of grammati-
calization. Assuming that grammatical change occurs through reinterpretation of
a form, it is reasonable to treat the reinterpretation in question as an act of
learning that form by a generation of language users. The challenge is to explain
how a given form can be reinterpreted not just by an individual speaker, but, if
not by an entire generation of speakers, at least by a community large enough to
constitute a critical mass changing the system for the entire generation. I believe
that this challenge is met by priming mass reinterpretations of a form become
more possible when we examine the details of priming.
One important characteristic of structural priming is that it does not apply
equally strongly to all forms. Some structures are inherently more salient than
others, therefore more likely to be activated and more tempting to be used. It
has been found that language users tend to notice and repeat those elements of

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656 Konrad Szczeniak

input that are unusual when compared to other forms. Thus, for example, the use
of the passive voice can be trigger enough for the speakers to build a passive
sentence themselves: even though the passive voice is not a particularly unusual
form, it is considerably less frequent than the active voice, and is therefore likely
to stand out in the input. This regularity has been named the inverse frequency
effect: the less frequent structure primes more (Jaeger & Snider 2008: 1064). By
virtue of being less frequent, an expression has the so called surprisal effect
which assures its noticeability.
Note that a forms infrequency is a powerful determinant of its inclusion in the
speakers linguistic representations and consequently its potential role in gram-
maticalization, even if it is not repeated in ensuing discourse. The fact that speak-
ers are often caught reciting recently attested expressions suggests that, whether
or not they are aware of it, they attend to these expressions surface form. That is,
the surprisal effect on its own can lead to entrenchment, being responsible for a
change in the linguistic representation, according to the view championed by
authors like Bybee (2010) and Taylor (2012) that each exposure to a given form and
each linguistic encounter lays down a trace in memory (Taylor 2012: 3). En-
trenchment can, of course, increase through repetition by a speaker (self-priming),
with the additional consequence that each reuse perpetuates the new form.
The implications of structural priming under the condition of infrequency
should be obvious in the case of negation. Because it is much less frequent than
affirmation, it increases the salience of a construction, which may make a differ-
ence for registering an ambiguity. Otherwise, witnessing a construction with an
ambiguous interpretation once or twice may not be enough for a language user to
correlate the new sense with that construction the ambiguity may be overlooked
or dismissed as an incidental feature in a given situation, without much general
consequence for the constructions use. However, negation may make a new use
of the construction more noticeable and thus easier to register with the listener
upon few exposures, because if the ambiguity in question happens to appear in
negative sentences, it will stand out as a correlation that language users cannot
help but notice.

7 Diffusion across tense constructions

An interesting question to consider here is why the locative-existential use of have
is restricted not only to negative contexts but also to the present tense construction.
The present-only have is found not only in Polish (2425), but also in Croatian (26
27), languages which employ the verb be in the past and future tenses:

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(24) Nie byo pienidzy na lekarstwa. (Adam Garbicz, Kino, Wehiku Magiczny)
NEG be-P A R T money on medication
There was no money for medication.
(25) Tu nie bdzie zasigu. (Rafa Szczepanik, 17 miertelnych bdw szefa)
Here NEG be-F U T reception
There wont be (cell phone) reception here.
(26) Ili nije bilo novca, ili nije bilo volje. (Pavao Pavlii, Kronika provincijskog kazalita)
Or NEG - is be-P A R T money, or NEG - is be-P A R T will
There was either no money or there was no will.
(27) Tu nee biti milosti. (Juraj Njavro, Glava dolje ruke na lea)
Here NEG - FUT be mercy
There will be no mercy here.

(The confinement of the locative-existential have to the present tense in Croatian

may appear surprising, given that Croatian is more liberal, allowing have in
affirmative.)
One likely explanation of this uneven distribution is that grammaticalization
did not automatically affect all contexts at once, but proceeded in piece-meal
fashion, starting from one ambiguity-prone use and was then extended by ana-
logy to other uses. Here one can speculate that the starting point was, also in the
case of Croatian, present-tense negation, later extrapolated to present-tense
affirmation, with the potential to eventually percolate to the past and future
tenses. This is likely what happened in French (28)(29) and Brazilian Portuguese2
(30)(31), where the locative-existential have is used both in negative and affirma-
tive sentences, past and future:

(28) Il ny avait pas dadresse de retour. (Hlne Brodeur, Entre laube et le jour)
There NEG have-P A S T NEG DE address DE return
There was no return address.
(29) Il y aura des consquences. (Grard Slama, Prise en charge du diabte)
There have-F U T some consequences
There will be consequences.
(30) Aqui no tinha tanta violncia. (J.F.Selbach, Ruralizao)
Here NEG have-P A S T so-much violence
There wasnt so much violence here.
(31) Ter consequncias severas. (Caio Fernando Nicolette, Evelyn)
Have-F U T consequences severe
There will be severe consequences.

2 In European Portuguese such uses are also attested, but they are discouraged by normative
grammarians, since the Portuguese locative-existential construction features the verb haver (to
be, exist) for this purpose. In Brazilian Portuguese, both haver and ter are used in all tenses, with
the latter being regarded as more informal.

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Why then should the present tense, and not the past, be a trigger point for the
grammaticalization of the existential construction? A number of factors may have
converged on making the present tense a conducive grammaticalizing context.
One is that present tense uses of the verb have are simply more frequent than their
past tense counterparts. For example, the present tense negative form in second
person singular nie masz / niemasz (you dont have) appears in 52 documents
from between the 16th and 18th centuries, against only 4 attestations of past tense
nie miae / niemiae (masculine you didnt have) and 0 attestations of nie
miaa / niemiaa (feminine you didnt have) in the same period. The frequency
of the past tense have may have been too low to build up sufficient salience.
But perhaps a more important factor has to do with the kind of meanings
typically conveyed in the present tense. That is, the present tense serves to express
not only events that can be placed temporally, but also general truths that are
valid always, not only in a given moment. Such uses of the present tense, termed
state present, assume no inherent limitation on the extension of the state into
the past and future (Quirk et al. 1985: 179). When a speaker says you have X, that
can often be interpreted as permanent possession of X, ambiguous with existence.
On the other hand, negative uses in past tense do not lend themselves to ambig-
uous readings as easily. When the verb have is used in the past tense construction,
it is often done in clearly narrative contexts referring to fairly concrete develop-
ments, rather than general truths. Example (32) below illustrates an episodic use
of have which allows little if any room for ambiguity with an existential reading.

(32) [...] nic nie mia gorczki (P. Tyssot, Rada dla Pospolstwa, 1785)
nothing NEG have-past fever
He had no fever.

This is not to say that general statements cannot be made in past tense sentences or
that episodic narratives are impossible in present tense. The point is that they are
rather rare; for example, present tense descriptions of ongoing events sound like
live commentaries (You are opening the door) and as such they require fairly special
circumstances, making such uses less frequent than their past tense equivalents.
Thus, the hypothesis proposed here is that the locative-existential have devel-
ops by diffusion, spreading from one kind of use in one tense to others. If the
above is an accurate account of the course of grammaticalization as it affects
contexts of use, the diffusion of the locative-existential have can be illustrated as
follows in Figure 1.

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 Conspicuous negation 659

Figure 1: Diffusion of the locative-existential have

negative negative and affirmative negative and affirmative

> >
present present present, past, and future

8 The role of negation

The preceding sections may make it tempting to venture that negation is a starting
point for other grammaticalizing constructions. However, to attempt to estimate
the share of constructions that negation may have helped grammaticalize, with-
out detailed large-scale studies of great numbers of constructions in old docu-
ments, would be to engage in pure speculation. Such an undertaking would, in
any case, be impossible, given that many constructions had consolidated in pre-
recorded history, so there is no way we could trace their early uses to see if
negation played a role. Most certainly, many constructions do not need it at all,
because their syntactic shape is unusual enough for surprisal effect and priming.
Still, it is equally certain that the locative construction discussed here is not the
only form whose emergence may have been precipitated by increased visibility. The
Polish inability construction shown in example (1)and in (33) below is another
example. Currently used only in negative form, it seems to be in its early stages of
development. Although it may remain a negative-only construction, it seems that in
principle, nothing should keep it from moving beyond negation and being used the
way the verb can is used in modern English. Note that can too was originally a
mental ability verb which evolved into a root ability verb expressing general
enabling conditions [...] not restricted to the internal condition of ability (Bybee et
al. 1994: 178).

(33) Patrz tak zaskoczona, e przez chwil ust nie umiem otworzy.
I look so surprised that for a moment I cant open my mouth. Lit. ...that I dont know
how to open my mouth. (Julianna Stachurska, Z notatnika Kleopatry, 2000)

Similarly, the verb mie (dare) is now used in the prohibition sense in Polish,
only in negative form (34)3. But in some other Slavic languages, its cognates have
grammaticalized further to express not only permission (in affirmative uses) but
also general ability, as in Czech, where the verb smt, originally used with the
meaning have courage, now appears in sentences such as (35). The same is true
of its cognates in Serbian, Croatian and Macedonian.

3 I was alerted to this fact by Sabina Dubiel.

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660 Konrad Szczeniak

(34) Przygwodony stoisz na miejscu, bo podoga trzeszczy niemiosiernie, ani miesz usi
na fotelu, bo moe zajty [...]
Nailed down, you stand in place, because the floor screeches mercilessly, you dont
even dare sit in the armchair, because it may be taken [...]
(Jadwiga Toeplitz Mrozowska, Soneczne ycie, 1963)
(35) Zvata u smte z urit vzdlenosti pozorovat.
You can now observe animals from a certain distance
As if, you now dare observe...
(Astrid Falk, Terarijn zvata, 2006)

9 Conclusions
I hope to have demonstrated the role of negation in the grammaticalization of the
Polish nie ma locative-existential construction. If the analysis offered here is
correct, negation may be another mechanism enabling the grammaticalization of
constructions, especially in cases of forms appearing less often, which thus are
less likely to be noticed and reinterpreted with grammaticalized readings.
The view of negation as a contributing factor increasing a constructions
visibility is also consistent with the claim that verbs undergo semantic change
only under special grammatical conditions (Bybee et al. 1991: 30). Under this
view, negation provides a specific grammatical configuration that can consis-
tently be associated with a new meaning.
Thus, the stable association of a form with a new meaning, highlighted by
negation, has better chances of being noticed and recorded in the minds of
language users. A construction setting out on such a path of induction benefits
from priming which is sufficiently long-lived to be cumulative (Jaeger & Snider
2008: 1061), which means that a newly observed form does not have to be repeated
soon after it is heard. Once noticed, it is registered and activated for novel uses.
These in turn make it available to ever larger numbers of language users, making
the change a self-propelling process, which can eventually move beyond negative
contexts, through affirmative present tense uses to non-present tenses.

Acknowledgment: I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer for insightful com-

ments that gave me new ideas I had not considered in the original draft. I am also
grateful to the editors Holger Kue and Peter Kosta for editorial assistance and
advice in preparing the final version of the paper. Aditionally, I owe thanks to
Maria Jos Alegre, Alicia Ivanissevich, Daniela Katunar, and Erika Mather for their
availability to discuss fine points of usage. Any mistakes and inaccuracies are
mine only

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 Conspicuous negation 661

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