Cyclical Change

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA)

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph
studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics,
morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust
empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.

General Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / Rijksuniversiteit Arizona State University
Groningen

Advisory Editorial Board

Cedric Boeckx Christer Platzack
ICREA/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona University of Lund
Guglielmo Cinque Ian Roberts
University of Venice Cambridge University
Günther Grewendorf Lisa deMena Travis
J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt McGill University
Liliane Haegeman Sten Vikner
University of Lille, France University of Aarhus
Hubert Haider C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
University of Salzburg University of Groningen
Terje Lohndal
University of Maryland

Volume 146
Cyclical Change
Edited by Elly van Gelderen
Cyclical Change

Edited by

Elly van Gelderen

Arizona State University

John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Cyclical change / edited by Elly van Gelderen.

p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166-0829 ; v. 146)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax. 2. Linguistic change. I. Gelderen,
Elly van.
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 Table of contents

List of contributors vii

chapter 1
Cyclical change, an introduction 1
Elly van Gelderen

part i. Negatives

chapter 2
Jespersen recycled 15
Jack Hoeksema

chapter 3
The Jespersen Cycles 35
Johan van der Auwera

chapter 4
The negative cycle in early and modern Russian 73
Olena Tsurska

chapter 5
Jespersen off course?:The case of contemporary Afrikaans negation 91
Theresa Biberauer

part ii. Pronouns, agreement, and topic markers

chapter 6
Weak pronouns in Italian:Instances of a broken cycle? 133
Diana Vedovato

chapter 7
The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in old North Russian 157
Kyongjoon Kwon
 Cyclical Change

chapter 8
Two instances of a broken cycle:Sentential particles in Old Italian 185
Cecilia Poletto

part iii Copulas, auxiliaries, and adpositions

chapter 9
The copula cycle 209
Terje Lohndal

chapter 10
Rather: On a modal cycle 243
Remus Gergel

chapter 11
Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 265
Clifton Pye

chapter 12
The preposition cycle in English 285
Cathleen Waters

part iv An experiment

chapter 13
The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 303
Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

Author index 323

Subject index 327

 List of contributors
Johan van der Auwera
Department of Linguistics
Antwerp University
Rodestraat 14
2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
johan.vanderauwera@ua.ac.be
Thomas G. Bever
Department of Linguistics
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
tgb@email.arizona.edu
Theresa Biberauer
Faculty of Modern and Medieval
Languages
University of Cambridge
Sidgwick Avenue
Cambridge CB3 9DA, U.K.
mtb23@cam.ac.uk
Elly van Gelderen
Department of English
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287–0302, USA
ellyvangelderen@asu.edu
Remus Gergel
University of Tübingen
English Department
Wilhelmstr. 50, R. 407
D-72074 Tübingen, Germany
remus.gergel@uni-tuebingen.de
Roeland Hancock
Department of Linguistics
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
rhancock@email.arizona.edu
Jack Hoeksema
Department of Linguistics
University of Groningen
P.O. Box 716
9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands
j.hoeksema@rug.nl
Kyongjoon Kwon
Harvard University
Department of Slavic Languages
& Literatures
12 Quincy Street, 3rd Floor, Barker
Center
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
kkwon@fas.harvard.edu
Terje Lohndal
Department of Linguistics
1401 Marie Mount Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742, USA
terje@umd.edu
Cecilia Poletto
Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio
Università di Venezisa Ca’ Bembo
Dorsoduro 1075,
Venezia, 30123, Italy
poletto@unive.it
 Cyclical Change

Clifton Pye Diana Vedovato

University of Kansas via Beato Pellegrino, 1
Department of Linguistics 35137 Padova, Italy
The University of Kansas diana.vedovato@unipd.it
Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Cathleen Waters
pyersqr@ku.edu
Department of Linguistics
Olena Tsurska University of Toronto
Department of English 130 St. George Street, room 6076
Arizona State University Toronto, Ont. M5S 3H1, Canada
Tempe, AZ 85287–0302, USA cathleen.waters@utoronto.ca
olena.tsurska@asu.edu
 chapter 1

Cyclical change, an introduction

Elly van Gelderen

Arizona State University

This chapter provides a general background to the linguistic cycle and cyclical
change. It reviews some of the cycles that we know, the steps that are typical in a
cycle, some differences between various cycles, and examines where cycles start.
The chapter also considers a theoretical account. While reviewing the types of
cycles, it sets the stage for the issues discussed in the chapters that follow.

The chapters in this collection present an excellent overview of work on cyclical proc-
esses relevant to synchronic and diachronic syntax. Most recent research on the cycle
has focused on the negative cycle and the papers in this volume reflect that interest. As
is obvious from the other papers, some linguists have also started to examine agree-
ment phenomena, and that involves pronouns as well as auxiliaries and copulas, in the
light of cyclical change. Looking at adpositions, modals, and elements in the left pe-
riphery through a cyclical lens can also provide a new perspective and analysis, both
in the syntax and semantics.
The current volume is based on papers presented during the Workshop on the
Linguistic Cycle that took place at Arizona State University in April of 2008. The dis-
cussions during the workshop were lively and very focused and emphasized the varia-
tion in the cycles. Crucial questions in relation to the linguistic cycle are the following,
with (a) to (d) being descriptive, and (e) and (f) asking why language is the way it is.
The latter kind of question is currently the focus of much minimalist inquiry
(e.g. Chomsky 2005).
(1) a.
Which cycles exist and why?
b.
Are there typical steps in a cycle?
c.
What are the differences between cycles?
d.
What are the sources of renewal once a cycle has desemanticized a lexi-
cal item?
e. What insights or explanations can certain theoretical frameworks provide?
f. Why is there cyclical change?
 Elly van Gelderen

Sections two to seven of this introduction will discuss how the papers contained in this
volume relate to these six questions. In section one, some brief background to cyclical
change is provided first.

1. The linguistic cycle and cyclical change

The Linguistic Cycle is a name for changes where a phrase or word gradually disap-
pears and is replaced by a new linguistic item. The most well-known cycles involve
negatives, where an initial single negative, such as not, is reinforced by another neg-
ative, such as nothing, or replaced by never, and subjects, where full pronouns are
reanalyzed as endings on the verb. The former is often called Jespersen’s Cycle, after
the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, but as van der Auwera & de Vogelaer (2008)
point out, the Egyptologist John Gardiner was earlier in identifying this process.
Clausal markers, demonstratives, aspect markers, and copula verbs also undergo cy-
cles of internal change.
There are early advocates of the view that language change is cyclical, e.g. de Con-
dillac (1746), Tooke (1786–1805), von Humboldt (1822), and Bopp (1816). The oft-
cited passage in von der Gabelentz (1901: 256) uses ‘spiral’ to indicate new cycles are
not identical to the old ones:
immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungslinie krümmt sich zurück nach der Seite
der Isolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eine annähernd parallele. Darum
vergleiche ich sie der Spirale. (von der Gabelentz 1901: 256)1

In the 1950s, Tauli (1958) provides many examples of cyclical change, but apart from
sporadic work, e.g. by Hodge (1970), Greenberg (1978), Givón (1976), and Tauli
(1966), not much research had been done up to very recently. The renewed interest in
grammaticalization starting in the 1980s was, of course, essential to understanding the
linguistic cycle, with work such as Givón (1976), Lehmann (1985, 1995), Traugott &
Heine (1991), Abraham (1993), and others.
Recently, work on the negative cycle has started to appear. For instance, from June
2008 to May 2009, one-day events on the negative cycle took place in Birmingham
(http://www.lhds.bcu.ac.uk/english/cycles-of-grammaticalization), but other cycles
have not been given as much attention. Cycles of language change have not been stud-
ied in generative linguistics (apart from again the negative cycle), and only sporadi-
cally in other formal frameworks. The workshop in Arizona in April 2008 was an at-
tempt to bring together linguists who are interested in cyclical change from a variety
of frameworks and to contribute to new directions in work on language change.

1. “always the same: the development curves back towards isolation, not in the old way, but in
a parallel fashion. That’s why I compare them to spirals” (my translation, EvG).
 Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction 

Table 1. Examples of Cyclical Change

Negative
negative argument > negative adverb > negative particle > zero
negative verb > auxiliary > negative > zero
Subject (and Object) Agreement Cycle
demonstrative/emphatic > pronoun > agreement > zero
Copula Cycle
demonstrative > copula > zero
verb/adposition > copula > zero
Definiteness2
demonstrative > definite article > ‘Case’ > zero
Future and Aspect Auxiliary
adverb/adposition > modal > complementizer
Place/time
noun > adposition > complementizer

A partial list of cycles is presented in Table 1 and Section 2 outlines which chapters of
the book deal with which change.
The examples in Table 1 are, of course, perfect instances of grammaticalization
clines. Yet, the current literature on grammaticalization has been reluctant in embrac-
ing the cycle. Cyclicity is mentioned only three times in Hopper & Traugott (2003).
They talk about grammaticalization as a “continuously occurring phenomenon”
(p. 124) and point out that the cyclical model is “extremely problematic because it sug-
gests that a stage of a language can exist when it is difficult or even impossible to ex-
press some concept” (p. 124). They see renewal not as replacing a weakened lexical
item but as competing with it.
The clines in Table 1 could be adapted to show overlap between the reduced form
and the start of a new cycle. A number of chapters in this volume adopt such an ap-
proach explicitly, e.g. all four chapters in Part I. The model of Feature Economy that
some authors adopt also accounts for the overlap: once a feature has been reanalysed
as uninterpretable, it becomes a probe and needs new semantic features (more on this
in section six).
Thinking of change as cyclical assumes that it is unidirectional. Some generative
linguists have argued against this unidirectionality, for instance, Newmeyer (1998: 263–
275) and Lightfoot (e.g. 2006: 38). However, Traugott & Dasher (2002: 87) make the
point that the number of real counterexamples to unidirectionality is small and not
systematic. This volume takes that approach.

2. The definiteness cycle is not represented in this volume, but see Lyons (1999) and van Gel-
deren (2007)
 Elly van Gelderen

2. The cycles discussed in this volume

The cycles typically discussed nowadays affect a minor part of the grammar of a lan-
guage, e.g. negation or modality. There are people who look at the shifts in typological
character, e.g. Hodge (1970) and Baker (2001), but most people are more conservative.
For instance, Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 246) argue that there is “more jus-
tification to apply the notion of a linguistics cycle to individual linguistic develop-
ments” rather than to changes from analytic to synthetic and back to analytic. The
papers in this book follow this trend, but section six mentions some ways of looking at
cyclical change from a typological perspective.
Part I in this book contains four chapters on the Negative Cycle. Two typical
sources for negatives, or starting points of cyclical change, are listed in Table 1. They
are full phrases, such as English no thing, and verbal heads, such as Chinese bu ‘not’
(from a verb meaning ‘to die’) and Lewo toko ‘not’ (from a prohibitive verb, see below).
The majority of the data in the volume deals with the first of these sources. Biberauer
examines negative concord elements in Afrikaans, Tsurska does so in various stages of
Russian, and Hoeksema focuses on the development of a polarity item into a negative
marker in Dutch. The main trend here is “polarity items turning into negative quanti-
fiers [and then turning] into adverbial elements” (Hoeksema, this volume).
Van der Auwera mainly examines the phrasal type of the negative cycle, providing
detailed information on phrasal negation from varieties of Dutch. He also adds data
on the verbal/non-phrasal origins of negatives in languages such as the Austronesian
language Lewo. In (2a), toko is a verb but (2b) shows it is also used as negative.
(2) a. Na-kan-ena toko! Lewo
nom-eat-nom desist
‘Desist from eating!’
b. Ve a-kan re toko! Lewo
neg 2sg-eat neg neg
‘Don’t eat it!’ (Early 1994: 76; see van der Auwera, this volume)
The three chapters in Part II examine agreement, subject marking, and the left periph-
ery. They all provide evidence for the intricacies of cycles. The traditional agreement
cycle can be represented as in Table 1, namely as having a demonstrative/pronominal
source. In many languages, the agreement affix resembles the emphatic pronoun and
derives from it. The most well-known case is, of course, French subject pronouns. In
the history of French, the subject jo ‘I’ is reanalyzed from emphatic pronoun to subject
pronoun to clitic je and is currently regarded by many (Lambrecht 1981; Zribi-Hertz
1994) as an agreement marker, e.g. (3a) shows an additional emphatic typically present,
(3b) and (3c) show that subject marker is obligatory. The same is true for the second
person and in many dialects even for third person, as in (4).
 Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction 

(3) a. Moi, j’ai vu ça. Colloquial French

me I-have seen that
‘I’ve seen that.’
b. *Je lis et écris Colloquial French
I read and write
c. *Je probablement ai vu ça French
I probably have seen that
(4) Personne il a rien dit Colloquial French
person he has nothing said
‘Nobody said anything.’ (Zribi-Hertz 1994: 137)
The three chapters in Part II add complexity to this picture. Vedovato’s chapter care-
fully examines the Italian pronominal paradigm and provides evidence of emphatic
pronouns being reanalyzed as weak pronouns. She then argues that prescriptive forces
interfered in this agreement cycle and stopped the weak pronouns from further devel-
opment in standard Italian. Vedovato coined the term ‘broken cycle’ in her original
contribution to the workshop in April. Kwon’s chapter provides some evidence for the
reanalysis of a be-verb as a pronoun in earlier stages of Russian. This is a change not
represented in Table 1, but corroborates Katz (1996) who indicates a possibly similar
development in the history of Hebrew and of Turkish. Poletto’s paper examines the
development of Italian e and sì, topic and focus markers in the left periphery. She also
shows that the grammaticalization cycle can be ‘broken’, i.e. stopped or changed by
other changes going on in the language.
Part III contains studies on the various cycles that heads such as copulas, adverbs,
modals, auxiliaries, and adpositions take part in. They are, of course, the prototypical
instances of grammaticalization and follow a path of being reanalyzed as higher, more
abstract elements. Copulas and auxiliaries can also be derived from (phrasal) demon-
stratives and in that sense they bridge Parts II and III. Copulas have two main sources,
demonstratives and verbs. Lohndal examines these two paths giving a uniform analy-
sis through Feature Economy. Auxiliaries and prepositions are involved in many kinds
of cyclical change. The most well-known data show them as originating from more
lexical categories. Gergel’s work shows that grammaticalization also affects semantic
structure. His data and Pye’s examine modal and aspectual auxiliaries and their more
adverbial and verbal origins whereas Waters examines the periodic reinforcement of
spatial prepositions through a noun.

3. The steps in a cycle

All papers discuss steps in a particular cycle. Hoeksema outlines four stages: from
single negation, to optionally reinforced, to obligatorily reinforced, to optional again.
 Elly van Gelderen

The last stage leads back to the initial one but with a new negative. Van der Auwera
argues for an alternative to the Jespersen Cycle, with his account describing “exactly
eight possible trajectories or ‘cycles’”. Both van der Auwera and Biberauer emphasize
the repetitive clause-final negation, as in (5). Its role is not to emphasize, so it cannot
be pragmatic renewal.
(5) Ik heb niets gekregen niet Variety of Dutch
I have nothing received neg
‘I haven’t received anything.’ (van der Auwera, this volume)
Biberauer argues that “structural height and deficient featural properties can disquali-
fy a concord element … from being reanalysed as a ‘real’ negator”. Tsurska examines
the steps from a non-strict Negative Concord language, in which the pre-verbal n-
words are used without the preverbal negative marker to express negation, to a strict
Negative Concord language, where n-words are unable to express sentential negation
alone. The steps she observes can be put in terms of a change in features.
As mentioned above, the steps in the cycles discussed in Part II are less uniform,
especially since some are ‘interfered’ with. Those in Part III typically involve a reanaly-
sis in a higher position. Thus, Waters finds nouns being reanalyzed in higher positions,
but in a way that makes use of the expanded PP, and Gergel’s analysis of rather shows
intricate steps from lower adverb to higher modal. A factor that is important in the
cycles is the structural position of the element. As Biberauer and Lohndal show, the
element that would be a candidate for reanalysis might be out of reach.

4. The differences between cycles

Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 244) note that “little is known about the time
span of grammaticalization processes”. Some change is fast, e.g. the verb to auxiliary
and noun to preposition reanalyses. Other change, such as the Chinese verb ba ‘to
grasp’ being reanalysed as object marker, takes much longer.
The papers in this volume show that some change is faster than other change and
most changes can be ‘interrupted’. They also show that the negative cycle is perhaps the
most uniform. Possibly because negation is pragmatically so important, it can be sub-
ject to extremely fast change. For instance, the relatively conservative Athabascan lan-
guage family of North America displays enormous variation where negation is in-
volved (see van Gelderen 2008a). The archaic varieties, as in (6), show evidence of an
incorporated verb whereas more innovative varieties, as in (7), show renewal.
(6) tendhghaaghetltenęę Lower Tanana
fut-qua-neg-qua-qua-1s-cause-ice-neg
‘I won’t freeze it solid.’ (from Kari 1993: 55)
 Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction 

(7) Doo dichin nishłįį da Navajo

neg hungry 1s-be neg
‘I’m not hungry.’ (Young & Morgan 1987; 350)
Change in agreement markers is uniform since the source is pronominal, as indicated
in Table 1. There is, however, some disagreement as to which pronoun sets the cycle in
motion, so to speak. Givón’s (1976) work suggests that it is the third person but data
from French (see (3)) suggests that it is first person. The object cycle, not discussed in
this volume, shows that object agreement typically starts with animate definite objects.
Markers of mood and modality experience fast change like negatives (see, for in-
stance, Traugott & Dasher 2002) as do aspect markers (see Brinton 1988 and Sims 2008 ).
Their source is typically a more lexical head, but can on occasion be a phrase as well (not
indicated in Table 1). Well-known examples of verbs reanalyzed as auxiliaries can be
found as part of future cycles in Romance, Germanic, and Urdu/Hindi. Well-known
cases of Aspect Cycles involve adverbs incorporated into phrasal verbs and become as-
pect markers.

5. The sources of renewal

As indicated in Table 1, sources of renewal can be full phrases as well as single lexical
items. The sources are familiar from the vast literature on grammaticalization, e.g.
Heine & Kuteva (2002). A few are listed in Table 2. The reason for these sources is that
they provide new semantic features for what was ‘grammaticalized away’: person and
number (phi-features) in the case of agreement and copulas, negative features in the
case of negatives, spatial features in the case of prepositions, and so on.
Once the functional element has lost its semantic and interpretable features, this
would be formulated within a Minimalist framework as becoming a probe looking for
an element to value its features. Some elements are straightforward renewers: demon-
stratives have phi-features and can renew agreement and adverbs have temporal or
spatial features and renew prepositions and complementizers.

Table 2. Examples of Renewal

Agreement: Emphatic pronoun/noun

Copula: Demonstrative/verb
Modal: Verb/adverb
Negative: Minimizer/Negative nominal/Negative adverb
Preposition: Noun
 Elly van Gelderen

6. Insights of certain theoretical frameworks

The grammaticalization literature has been a wonderful resource in outlining the clines
of change, but has been less eager to look at the linguistic cycle (see e.g. Hopper &
Traugott 2003, mentioned above). As indicated in Section 1, one can think of a Mini-
malist account that incorporates the clines in Table 1 as well as the necessary renewal.
Starting with Chomsky (1995), the features relevant for and accessible during the
derivation are formal. Formal features can be interpretable (relevant to the semantic
interface) or uninterpretable (only relevant to move elements to certain positions).
Interpretable features are acquired before uninterpretable ones, as argued in Radford
(2000), but are later reinterpreted as uninterpretable, triggering the functional/gram-
matical system. The same happens in language change. Changes in negatives can be
explained by arguing that their (initially) semantic features are reanalyzed as interpret-
able and then as uninterpretable, as in (8), from van Gelderen (2008b). Phrases like
never have interpretable negative and phi-features that are probed by a probe in a func-
tional category. Once the phrase is reanalyzed as a head (e.g. Old English ne ‘not’),
another element is required.
(8) Feature Economy
Minimize the interpretable features in the derivation, e.g:
Adjunct Specifier Head affix
semantic > [iF] > [uF] > [uF]
Hicks (2009: 204) characterizes Feature Economy as “establish[ing] dependencies where
possible” and calls this principle Maximize Featural Economy. An early version is per-
haps Schütze (1997) who uses an agreement maximization principle. The same change
as in (8) occurs with the subject cycle: the interpretable person (and gender) features of
a full pronoun are reanalyzed as uninterpretable when they become agreement3.
(9) emphatic > full pronoun > head pronoun > agreement
[i-phi] [i-phi] [u-1/2] [i-3]4 [u-phi]
The clines in Table 1 should therefore be seen as having the renewing element on the
left side of a cline overlap with the item on the right side of the older cline. Feature
Economy requires such a renewal.

3. This is compatible with Chomsky’s (1995: 230; 381) views on features: “formal features have
semantic correlates and reflect semantic properties (accusative Case and transitivity, for example)”.
4. In van Gelderen (in progress), I argue that third person pronouns have deictic features in ad-
dition to phi-features and are therefore harder to reanalyze as the uninterpretable phi-features of
T/agreement.
 Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction 

7. Why is there change and why are there cycles?

Many historical linguists see language change as determined by two kinds of factors.
There are internal factors, such as those instigated by the Economy Principles or by
‘Ease’, as in Jespersen (1922). These approaches deal mainly with the articulatory ease
of pronunciation. Children acquiring a language use these principles to analyze their
input. Principles such as (8) above and (10) below are examples of that.
There are also external factors for language change such as a need on the part of
speakers to be innovative and creative or conservative. I will discuss both briefly in this
section since some of the contributions (e.g. Vedovato) mention external factors. Ex-
ternal factors include pragmatic ones. The urge of speakers to be innovative may intro-
duce new, loosely adjoined elements into the structure. Hagège (1993: 153) uses the
term Expressive Renewal. Speakers may want to be explicit and therefore choose full
phrases rather than single words. One source of new specifiers and words is borrow-
ing. Heine & Kuteva (2005: 3) give examples of wh-interrogatives being expanded to
relatives in Tariana under the influence of Portuguese, where interrogatives and rela-
tives share the same form. The same pattern occurred in the history of English: wh-
pronouns were used in questions but were later extended to relative contexts under the
influence of French (see van Gelderen 2004). Heine & Kuteva (2005: 73) give many
other examples, e.g. Tariana speakers renewing their evidentials by using Portuguese
expressions such as eu vi ‘I saw’.
Another external factor is the ‘need’ to be conservative and prescriptive. This may
stop change altogether. In the chapters that follow, we will examine some examples.
For now, I will mention stranding and negatives, where prescriptive rules are very
strong. Considering Economy, a principle such as (10) is expected.
(10) Stranding Principle
Move as little as possible.
This principle has been used to explain why speakers in English typically front the DP,
as in (11) and (12), rather than the full PP in (13).
(11) Who did you talk to who?
(12) Quilc men mai get wundren on
‘which men may yet wonder about’
(Genesis & Exodus 3715, from Denison 1993: 132)
(13) To whom did you talk to whom?
Preposition stranding in English, as in (12), starts in the 13th century (Denison
1993: 125 ff.). It is preferred under (10) and it is estimated that in speech 86% of prep-
ositions are stranded while in writing only 7% are. This difference between spoken and
written data points towards strong prescriptive pressure. Bullokar’s grammar from
1586 contains stranded prepositions, but one century later, most grammarians pre-
 Elly van Gelderen

scribe against its use. Yáñez-Bouza (2007) finds that these prescriptivists indeed had
an influence on the language. Other languages may experience prescriptive pressure as
well. As chronicled in great depth in Fleischer (2002), in many varieties of German
preposition stranding is frequent though some describe it as “älter oder umgangssprach-
lich” (137). It is also common in North-American varieties of French.

8. Conclusion

If cycles are real, we need an explanation. This volume hopes to contribute to both the
description of cyclical change and an account (or more than one). The book therefore
ends with the description by Hancock & Bever of a proposed experiment to test the
psychological reality of cycles.

Acknowledgements and practical notes

Many thanks to the internal and external reviewers, as well as to Henning Andersen,
Aryeh Faltz, and David Ingram. Thanks to Olena Tsurska for helping to organize and
think about the workshop, to Werner Abraham and Terje Lohndal for thinking through
some of the issues in this introduction, and to Harry Bracken and Olena Tsurska for
editorial assistance.
Since there are a number of languages represented in this book, abbreviations to
glosses and languages are provided in the first (or second) footnote to each chapter.
This makes it easier to read chapters on their own. References are also listed after each
chapter. Names starting with van or van der or de are listed in Dutch publications un-
der the letter that follows these connectors but in Belgian publications under v or d. US
and other usage is mixed. The reference lists at the end of each chapter keep to the
Dutch use (except for Belgian authors). The exception is in the references to van der
Auwera’s chapter.

References

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analyse: Einander ausschließende oder ergänzende Begriffe? Folia Linguistica Historica
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Baker, Mark. 2001. The Atoms of Language. New York NY: Basic Books.
Bopp, Franz. 1816. Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem
der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprachen. Frankfurt am Main:
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Brinton, Laurel. 1988. The Development of English Aspectual Systems. Cambridge: CUP.
 Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction 

Bullokar, William. 1586 [1970]. Bref Grammar. In The Works of William Bullokar II, John Ray-
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Chomsky, Noam 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36(1): 1–22.
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de. 1746. Essai sur lórigine des connaissances humaines. Paris.
Denison, David. 1993. English Historical Syntax. London: Longman.
Early, Robert. 1994. Lewo. In Typological Studies in Negation [Typological Studies in Language
29], Peter Kahrel and René van den Berg (eds), 65–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fleischer, Jürg. 2002. Die Syntax von Pronominaladverbien in den Dialekten des Deutschen. Wi-
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Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Weigel. (Reprint Tübingen: Narr 1972).
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Gelderen, Elly van. 2007. The definiteness cycle in Germanic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics
19(4): 275–305.
Gelderen, Elly van. 2008a. Cycles of negation in Athabaskan. Working Papers in Athabaskan
Languages 7: 49–64.
Gelderen, Elly van. 2008b. The negative cycle. Linguistic Typology 12(2): 195–243.
Gelderen, Elly van. In progress. The Linguistic Cycle. ms.
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tual Framework. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2005. Language Contact and Grammatical Change. Cambridge: CUP.
Hicks, Glyn. 2009. The Derivation of Anaphoric Relations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hodge, Carleton. 1970. The linguistic cycle. Linguistic Sciences 13: 1–7.
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(Reprint: Humboldt (1972): 31–63).
Jespersen, Otto. 1922. Language. London: Allen & Unwin.
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Proceedings 50–56.
Katz, Aya. 1996. Cyclical Grammaticalization and the Cognitive Link between Pronoun and
Copula. PhD dissertation, Rice University.
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matics & Beyond II:6]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: CUP.
 Elly van Gelderen

Newmeyer, Frederick. 1998 Form and Function. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
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PapersPublications/perfection.htm).
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van der Auwera, Johan & De Vogelaer, Gunther. 2008. Negation and quantification. In Syntactic
Atlas of the Dutch Dialects, Vol. II, Sjef Barbiers, Johan van der Auwera, Hans Bennis, Eefje
Boef, Gunther De Vogelaer & Margreet van der Ham (eds), 58–72. Amsterdam: Amster-
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1900. PhD dissertation, University of Manchester.
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Zribi-Hertz, Anne. 1994. La syntaxe des clitiques nominatifs. Travaux de Linguistique et Littera-
ture 131–147.
part 1

Negatives
 chapter 2

Jespersen recycled

Jack Hoeksema
University of Groningen

The Jespersen cycle, the series of changes in which single negation is replaced by
double negation, which in turn is reduced to single negation, is fleshed into its
component parts: the various changes which conspire to feed the cyclical change.
Special attention is given to the process by which a negative polarity item is
reinterpreted as the bearer of negation. It is argued that this process only applies
when the likelihood of negation, given the presence of the polarity item, is very
high. Items such as English ever or any do not fall into this category, since they
appear in a wide variety of contexts. Another change, sometimes overlooked in
the literature, is the one from DP-like polarity item (such as English naught) to
adverbial negation element (English not). Some contexts are identified where the
difference between DP and Adverb appears to be neutralized, and it is speculated
that the reinterpretation process starts precisely in such contexts.

1. Introduction1

In this paper, I take a look at certain aspects of the so-called Jespersen cycle. In par-
ticular, I want to consider more closely the role of negative polarity items in the re-
newal of negation, and the grammatical interpretation of this renewal in terms of the
NegP hypothesis.
The Jespersen Cycle is a series of processes by which negation markers get re-
newed in the manner depicted in Figure 1.
By ‘double negation’, I am referring here to formal features only, since the usual
interpretation of such double negation is single negation. The phenomenon of double
negation serving to express a single negation is also known as Negative Concord
(Labov 1972, Ladusaw 1992, 1993).

1. The material in the paper was presented at the Linguistic Cycles workshop, organized by
Elly van Gelderen at the Arizona State University, in Tempe, April 2008. I am grateful to Elly and
to the audience at this meeting for feedback and discussion, as well as to Johan van der Auwera
for his comments on an earlier draft.
 Jack Hoeksema

I: Solitary negation: A

IV: Optional double II: Optional double

negation: (A)+B negation: A+(B)

III: Obligatory double

negation: A+B

Figure 1. The Jespersen Cycle

The cycle in Figure 1 turns out to be quite common and has been attested in Latin
(Jespersen 1917, Bernini & Ramat 1996), French (Jespersen 1917, Rowlett 1998, Dep-
rez 2000, Roberts and Roussou, 2003, among others), Greek (Kiparsky and Condorav-
di 2006), German (Jäger 2008, Breitbarth 2008), English (van Kemenade 2000, van
Gelderen 2004a), Dutch (Hoeksema 1997, Postma 2002, Zeijlstra 2004), Welsh (Willis
2008), Arabic and Berber (Lucas 2007), Chinese, and Athabaskan (van Gelderen 2008).
As van der Auwera & de Vogelaer (2008) point out, Jespersen was not even the first to
discuss the cycle of negation, as he was preceded by Gardiner (1904) and Meillet
(1912), at the very least.
The structure of this paper is as follows. I will start with a discussion of Stage I, and
then work my way around to Stage IV and back to Stage I. Along the way, I will be
looking at the changes involved, their nature, what might prompt them, as well as the
question to what extent the changes are unidirectional.

2. Stage I

Stage I would seem not to require a whole lot of attention. It is the starting point of the
cycle, and has what one might call the most parsimonious and simple system of nega-
tion. Indeed, one might wonder why a language would ever want to drift away from this
stage. At the same time, one may wonder which language ever completely conformed to
this rosy picture. Simple, solitary negation is often found in sentences, but rarely in a
whole language. First of all, languages tend to have multiple ways to express negation.
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

A language like modern standard Dutch, which many would probably classify as being
in Stage I, usually expresses negation by a single negative marker:
(1) Hij is niet sterk
He is not strong
‘He is not strong.’
However, there are several optional ways to strengthen negation by adding modifiers, as
well as a number of expressions which serve as occasional, marked, alternatives to niet:2
(2) Hij is allerminst sterk
he is all-least strong
‘He is not strong at all.’
(3) Hij is geenszins sterk
He is no-way strong
‘He is not strong at all.’
(4) Hij is allesbehalve sterk
he is all-but strong
‘He is not strong at all.’
Of course I have not even begun to discuss negative polarity items.
In this respect, modern Dutch is not in any way unusual, but probably quite typi-
cal of languages in general: they have multiple means to express negation, even at Stage
1, and these means may differ not only in syntactic properties, such as whether they
appear in finite or non-finite clauses or in indicative, interrogative or imperative con-
structions, but also in their semantics and pragmatics. Some negation markers are
emphatic in nature, leading to stronger, more expressive statements; others may have
some special discourse function. Schwenter (2006) has pointed out that Catalan pas
and Italian mica, for instance, are used for denying discourse-old propositions. I do

2. The negative character of these expressions is not just indicated by the fact that they can be
paraphrased by regular negation, but also by the fact that they trigger items which are otherwise
only triggered by negation (cf. Van der Wouden 1994, 1997, Zwarts 1998), such as the Dutch
polarity-sensitive predicate mals ‘mild’, which fails to be triggered by weaker forms of negation,
such as n-words and quantifiers like weinig ‘few/little’:
(i) a. Zijn oordelen waren niet / allesbehalve / geenszins mals
his judgments were not / all-but no-way tender
‘His judgments were not (at all) mild.’
b. *Geen van zijn oordelen was mals
none of his judgments was tender
‘None of his judgments was mild.’
c. *Slechts weinige oordelen waren mals
only few judgments were tender
‘Only few judgments were mild.’
 Jack Hoeksema

not know whether there are any languages (with the exception of artificial languages
such as Esperanto or predicate logic, and impoverished languages such as pidgins or
early stages of child language) which have only one marker for negation.

3. From stage I to stage II

Given the availability of alternative negation signs, one may wonder why lexical re-
newal of negation does not simply involve some process of competition, at the end of
which one of the alternative signs wins out and replaces the old unmarked negation
sign. That would turn the Jespersen cycle into a one step process, and clearly take all the
fun out of it. But to be frank, it is not entirely clear to me, why this is not, as far as I can
tell, the most common way for the negation system to change. Presumably, the thing
that makes the Jespersen Cycle such a common process is its conservative nature. Rath-
er than replacing one negation sign by another, we keep the old one, but add another
one, and only when the new sign is as familiar as the old one, do we drop the old sign.
For Jespersen, the driving force behind the cycle was phonetic erosion. Gram-
matical markers such as negation often undergo phonetic reduction, leading to a point
where they become almost inaudible. Given that negation is too important to let go
unnoticed, something has to be done. A polarity item is enlisted to prop up the falter-
ing negation marker.
Now this kind of process can be witnessed in many areas of the grammar, not just
negation. Grammatical markers often undergo reduction, leading to changes in the
grammar. Sometimes they are renewed, and sometimes they are not. One may think of
the loss of case marking in English or Dutch, a complex process in which a great many
factors are at play, but reduction is clearly one of them. However, here there seems to
be no sign of a cyclical process. Case marking was lost, and whether it will ever be re-
newed by some future process is very doubtful. Clearly, there is a difference between
case marking and negation. While case marking is not essential for the expression of
meaning, given that there are other means to encode grammatical functions, negation
is essential. It would be very hard to do away with negation. One could, of course,
imagine a language where every verb and every adjective has a negative counterpart.
Not just an antonym expressing contrary negation, but a true contradictory counter-
part. Such a language would seem possible, given that contradictory antonyms exist.
For example, present and absent seem to be perfectly contradictory in the sense that
everything is either present or absent, and nothing is both. However, a grammar with-
out the category of negation would entail doubling large parts of the vocabulary, a very
costly move. Natural languages are not optimally parsimonious in their vocabulary,
but neither are they utterly wasteful. Moreover, it would seem that some negative verbs
might be exceedingly hard to learn. Just consider the problems a child may have in
mastering a verb that means ‘not to hiccup’, if, first of all, that verb is not related in its
form to the verb for hiccup, second, is probably not used a whole lot, and third, there
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

is no negation in the language that might help the parent to explain the meaning of the
verb. The evolutionary advantages of having negation in a grammar are so strong that
no language would want to do without it. So even without assuming that the presence
of negation is an innate property of natural language, one may, for purely functional
reasons, expect it to be universal. Clearly, when erosion threatens to destroy the ex-
pression of negation, something has to be done. Negative polarity items to the rescue!
For Jespersen himself, this is pretty much where the story ends. The cycle is driven by
phonetic erosion and the desire to keep the category of negation intact. The rest is details.
Now one thing where Jespersen may well be wrong is in his insistence on the
causal role of reduction. Jespersen argued that the reduction of French negation to ne
inevitably led to the emergence of double marking as a way to reinforce the weakened
sign of negation. This in turn rendered ne entirely superfluous, leading ultimately to its
disappearance in the spoken vernacular. However, one might also argue the other way
around. If negation is so important, and clearly it is, why would one want to reduce it
at all? Ease of articulation is certainly not of such paramount importance that speakers
should let it prevail over the clarity of their message. Perhaps it is the fact that negation
is often predictable, because of double marking or because of constructional features,
that makes it easy prey for phonetic reduction. Consider in this connection English.
The contracted forms of negation only came about after do-support had made the
presence of negation easier to detect. I would not want to say that do is a marker of
negation, but it certainly helps identify a sentence as negative. So it is a construction
feature that made it relatively unproblematic for not to turn into n’t. In addition to this
point, I might note that not every instance of the Jespersen cycle seems to necessarily
involve phonetic reduction (cf. Kiparsky and Condoravdi 2006 on Greek).
It is arguable that a more essential characteristic of negation driving the Jespersen
cycle is its double role as a device for the expression of logical polarity and a rhetorical
device. Negation is first and foremost a logical operator, changing the truth-value of a
proposition to its opposite. This basic function is what makes it indispensible. How-
ever, negative sentences often express more than just the negation of their positive
counterpart. They may develop special pragmatic uses such as understatement or em-
phatic denial. For these pragmatic functions, regular negation may be used, but various
colorful alternatives are on offer as well. If someone tells you it will rain tonight, you
might respond with it won’t rain tonight, if you want to contradict him, but also with
Like hell it will, or no way will it rain. Negative polarity items often start out as colorful
terms intended to strengthen or weaken the force of negation. From what I can tell,
every documented language has such polarity items. Apparently, there is great need for
expressions that serve to boost the rhetorical effect of negation. And it is precisely the
availability of negative polarity items which is essential in setting up a system of double
marking which eventually leads to complete lexical replacement of the original marker
of negation. In the course of this process of replacement, the rhetorical character of the
polarity item gets lost (Kiparsky and Condoravdi 2006, Schwenter 2005).
 Jack Hoeksema

4. Polarity items

Polarity items come in a great many varieties. Only some are ever chosen to become
the main sign of negation in a language, like pas in French or not in English. However,
some of the typical changes involved in the Jespersen cycle may be witnessed among
the less important polarity items as well. One such change is the one from nonnegative
item in the scope of negation to a negative item that no longer requires licensing.
Horn (2001), referring to as-of-then unpublished work by Ross and Postal (but see
Postal 2004), discussed a set of English taboo items which still take, but no longer re-
quire, negation:
(5) a. He didn’t tell me fuck all about the car.
b. He told me fuck all about the car.
(6) a. Fred doesn’t know jack shit about the car.
b. Fred knows jack shit about the car.
(7) a. There isn’t diddly squat in the fridge.
b. There’s diddly squat in the fridge.
(8) a. The cops didn’t tell me dick.
b. The cops told me dick.
What is striking about these items is their uniform behavior and their lack of a deter-
miner. Most minimizers in English, such as an iota, a word, a thing, a hope in hell etc.
are preceded by a(n) or one. The reason might be that the items in (5) to (8) are mass
nouns, but that in itself is rather unusual for minimizers.
In German, various words for bowel movements (for which Horn 2001 has coined
the term drecative) show a very similar behavior:
(9) a. Google schert sich keinen feuchten Dreck um den Datenschutz.
Google bothers self no moist shit about the data protection
‘Google does not give a damn about data protection.’
b. Google schert sich einen feuchten Dreck um den Datenschutz
Google bothers self a moist shit about the data protection
‘Google could care less about data protection.’
Dutch has an expression that underwent a quick change from polarity item to negative
idiom within a short period (Hoeksema 2002). It is likewise a taboo term:
(10) a. Hij begrijpt er de ballen niet van.
He understands there the bollocks not of
‘He doesn’t understand jack shit (about it).’
b. Hij begrijpt er de ballen van.
He understands there the bollocks of
‘He understands jack shit (about it).’
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

Semantically, the expression belongs to the group of taboo expressions with minimiz-
ing properties, but syntactically it stands out as unusual within that set because it is
formally definite, rather than indefinite. I cannot help but think that it is the excep-
tional features of these expressions which allowed them to split off from the pack and
to undergo a turn of the Jespersen cycle which other minimizers in English and Dutch
do not seem ready yet to submit to. In addition, one may note that the taboo items in
question belong to the domain of substandard usage, where some form or other of
negative concord is common enough. In order to get at sentences like (10b), we first
need to have a reanalysis of (10a) where the taboo expletive is interpreted as a negative
quantifier, a rude counterpart to nothing, and not as semantically vacuous. Such a rea-
nalysis is natural enough in varieties of English or Dutch that have negative concord,
but would be odd in languages that otherwise have no traces of it.
After this reanalysis, dick or bugger all have taken on many of the characteristic
properties of English nothing, including some of the typical collocates of that word,
like sweet or next to, as the examples in (11) and (12) show:
(11) a. I know sweet bugger all about politics.3
b. When all’s said and done, so-called concurrent processing means sweet
diddly squat in terms of saving time.4
c. Your advice on Australian Idol means sweet jack shit.5
(12) a. Admittedly, I know next to jack shit about electronica music.6
b. He won us nothing in the last 2 season and sold our best players for next
to fuck all.7
c. Sadly, he’s recently admitted he knows next to squat about how the econ-
omy works.8
I did a small corpus study of these taboo expressions, by informally collecting occur-
rences of these items from printed sources, Internet, as well as TV shows and putting
them in a database. The sentences were classified according to type of environment.
After analyzing the data set, it emerged that these taboo terms appear pretty much
only in strictly negative contexts: see Table 1.

3. From: http://forums.vault9.net/..
4. From: http://ungratefulimmigrant.blogspot.com
5. From: http://www.defamer.com.au/2007/08/144
6. From: http://www.byroncrawford.com/2005/11/the_best_songs.html
7. From: http://arseblog.com/columns/2007/07/09/gallas-says-players-are-questioning-ar-
senals-future/
8. From: http://oncommonground.blogspot.com/2008/02/weekly-poll-it-takes-woman-to-
stimulate.html
 Jack Hoeksema

Table 1. Distribution of English taboo expressions

Shit, diddly squat, dick, fuck all etc

Environment N %

Not 150 92%

N-word 12 67.3%
Without    1 0.7%

Total 163 100%

In this small sample, nearly all occurrences were from negative contexts.9 None were
found in questions, conditionals, comparatives, in complements of negative or adver-
sative predicates, etc. There are two lessons to be learned from these items. First of all,
they clearly show that polarity items do not just get reinterpreted as negative elements
after they have become virtually obligatory in negative sentences. On the contrary,
these taboo items are fairly infrequent in most people’s speech, with the possible ex-
ception of the likes of Tony Soprano, and still they got reinterpreted. Second, it may be
more important for this semantic change that the items that undergo it only appear in
negative sentences.
From the historical record, it emerges that the types of polarity items that undergo
grammaticalization as new negation markers are typically minimizers, indicating
some minimal quantity or extent, polarity sensitive indefinites, meaning ‘something/
anything’, or generic nouns, meaning thing. In French and Catalan, the markers of
negation are derived from minimizers. In Welsh (Willis 2008), the marker ddim de-
rives from a generic word meaning ‘thing’ that had turned into a polarity-sensitive
indefinite in the Middle Welsh period. The same can be said about the Arabic postver-
bal marker of negation ši (Lucas 2007). In Germanic, an indefinite pronoun gets
merged with an extra copy of clitic negation, and becomes the new marker of negation
(Jäger 2008). Given the wide variety of polarity items, it may come as a bit of a surprise
that negation markers are selected from such a small subset. In (13), a partial list of
English types of polarity items is given. In Dutch and German the list of polarity items,
in spite of some minor differences here and there, is much the same.

9. The fact that the only not strictly negative environment is a PP headed by without does not
come as a surprise. Of all the environments in which polarity items may appear, without-PPs
seem to be most strongly akin to regular negation. Thus in Greek, emphatic elements of the
kanenas-series, the n-words of that language, appear in negative clauses and clauses initiated by
xoris ‘without’ (cf. Giannakidou 1998, 2000). In French, aucun and other negative elements ap-
pear with negative ne and in PPs introduced by sans (cf. de Swart and Sag, 2002, Deprez and
Martineau 2004). In Giannakidou’s (1998) terms, without is antiveridical, in the sense that it
implies negation: p without q entails ¬p. Other types of environments maybe downward entail-
ing, or nonveridical, but antiveridicality is a stronger property, since it entails the others.
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

(13) Types of polarity items in English

– Minimizers: a word, a thing, a syllable, a moment, an inch
– Adverbial minimizers: in the least, in the slightest, one bit, the least bit
– Taboo items I: a fucking thing, a bloody word, a damn thing, a blasted thing
– Taboo items II: shit, jack shit, diddly squat, squat, dick, fuck all, bugger all
– Minimizing predicates: say boo to a goose, lift a finger, sleep a wink, bat
an eyebrow, know the first thing about, have a clue, have a prayer
– Particles: anymore, yet, as yet, either
– Indefinite pronouns: any, anybody, anything, anywhere, anyone
– Domain wideners: whatsoever, on earth, in the world, at all, in years, in
ages, in decades
– Domain restrictors: in his right mind, self-respecting, worth his salt
– Modal strengtheners: for the life of me, if my life depended on it, for the
world, for love or money
– Downtoners: all that, exactly, the sharpest knife in the drawer
– Modal verbs and idioms: need, humanly possible, strictly necessary
– Verbs: budge, faze, mind
– Verbal idioms: can be bothered, can care less, can stand/abide, take long,
make bones about, give the time of day, would be caught dead in
– Litotes: take no for an answer, miss a beat, can deny, a day goes by without
– Scalar items: so much as, much less, least of all
The distributional characteristics for a number of minimizers are given in Table 2 (data
from the same corpus as data in Table 1).
Similar distributional properties can be observed for Dutch and German, as
shown in Table 3.

Table 2. Distributional properties of some English minimizers

environment a thing % a word % a damn thing % one bit %

Not 78 84% 120 55% 35 88% 41 93%

N-word 10 11% 36 16% 4 10% 2 5%
Without 2    2% 40 19% 1    2% – –
Question – –    4 2% – – 1 2%
Other 3    3% 18 8% – – – –

Total 93 100% 218 100% 40 100% 44 100

 Jack Hoeksema

Table 3. Some Dutch and German minimizers

Environment een woord (D) % ein Wort (G) % Een bal %

Negation    55    3% 1    2% – –
N-word 1256 70% 43 84% 440 98%
Without 358 20 6 12%    5    1%
Other 121    7% 1    2%    6    1%

Total 1790 100% 51 100% 451 100%

For minimizers and taboo expressions, we see a very strong affinity with negation.
Only the items meaning ‘word’ show up in a different environment as well, the com-
plement of without. This is due to a special idiomatic use of the items. Compare the
examples in (14):
(14) a. Jones left without saying a word.
b. Jones left without a word.
c. Jones left without saying a thing.
d. *Jones left without a thing. [* on the interpretation of 12c]
e. Jones left without a coat.
Normally, without NP means without having an NP, as in (14e). Only without a word
has the special interpretation without saying a word (not: without understanding a
word, without regretting a word, without receiving a word, etc.). Other minimizers,
like a thing, do not have this special interpretation, as you see in (14d). If you take out
the idiomatic without a word, but keep cases like without saying a word and so on, the
percentage of occurrences in without-clauses drops to about 10%, and you have a dis-
tribution rather like that of the other minimizers.
Comparing minimizers with other polarity items, such as ever or any, you will
notice a sharp contrast. In Table 4, I have listed the results of a corpus study of English
ever and its counterparts in Dutch and German, ooit and je(mals).
The main thing to notice here is how these expressions are all over the map, showing
up in all sorts of environments, not merely in negative sentences. The same can be noted
for English any. Occurrences of free choice any, by the way, are excluded from this table.
Perhaps you have wondered why English any or ever have not undergone negative
reinterpretation. If words like shit or squat can develop into negative quantifiers, why
not their more respectable cousins any and ever? Part of the explanation here might be
prescriptive grammar, which has fought hard to keep negative concord out of the
standard language. If a sentence like I will ever love you is to develop the meaning
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

Table 4. Ooit, ever, je(mals)

Item→ ooit ever je(mals)

environment↓ N=17.304 N=3082 N=792

Comparative 20 13 21
Conditional 10 8 5
Hardly 1 2 5
Negation 22 25 18
Negative Predicate 3 5 4
Superlative 10 17 13
Question 24 19 21
Without 5 1 6
Other 5 10 5

Table 5. Distribution of polarity-sensitive any

item→ any %
environment↓ N=3718

Comparative 216 6
Conditional 401 11
Hardly    20 0.5
Negation 1736 36
Negative predicate 343 9
Superlative    45 1
Question 699 19
Without 141 4
Other 117 3

I will never love you, there must be a prior stage in which I won’t ever love you is reinter-
preted as I won’t never love you, with negative concord:
(15) Stage I: I won’t ever love you [standard interpretation]
Stage II: I won’t ever love you [ever = never; due to negative concord equiv-
alent in interpretation with Stage I]
Stage III: I will ever love you [ever = never; loss of redudant negation]
This is probably why the taboo expressions, which are not subject to prescriptive gram-
mar to the same degree, are more prone to undergo semantic reinterpretation than
other polarity items. However, we may also consider the distributional characteristics
of the items in question as important preconditions. It would seem to be much harder
to reinterpret an item like ever as a negative quantifier, if the majority of its occurrences
 Jack Hoeksema

are not even in negative sentences. My expectation, therefore, is that any and ever are
unlikely to undergo the kind of reinterpretation needed to partake in the Jespersen
Cycle, and that one will be hard-pressed to find a dialect or variant of English where it
does, unless, of course, it is from a dialect where these words have come to have a
rather more restrictive distribution, comparable to the minimizers we have looked at.
At the same time, we have a little bit more grip on the issue why languages typically
employ minimizers in the Jespersen Cycle. I take semantic reinterpretation of indef-
inites as negative quantifiers to always involve, at least initially, an interpretation error,
not unlike the errors in noisy channels studied by information theory. The overall in-
terpretation of an utterance is correctly computed, but not in a compositionally-cor-
rect manner. The wrong item is taken to express negation.
A notion from information theory might come in handy here, namely mutual in-
formation, which is a measure of redundancy. When two items tend to co-occur, like
negation and polarity items, their relative informational value decreases. If two varia-
bles x and y are completely independent, the chance of the two co-occurring is p(x),
the probability of x, times p(y), the probability of y. If the two items are not independ-
ent, the probability of the two co-occurring, p(x,y), is greater than or smaller than p(x)
times p(y). So if you divide p(x,y) by (p(x) times p(y)), you get a measure for whether
the two are more likely to co-occur or less likely to co-occur than would be predicted
on the basis of their individual probabilities. By taking the log of that division, you get
a measure, called specific pointwise mutual information. If it is 0, there is no effect of
one variable on the other, if it is below zero, the two variables are less likely to co-occur
than their individual probabilities would predict, and if it is positive, the two are more
likely to co-occur than you might have guessed given their individual probabilities.
See the formula in (16):
p(x,y)
(16) MI(x,y) = log _________
p(x)×p(y)
The notion of mutual information is used in corpus-based study of collocations
(Church and Hanks 1990, Manning and Schütze 1999). Clearly, minimizers are prime
examples of expressions with high mutual information with respect to negation, other
polarity items less so.
Since we want to look at the probabilities of various polarity items co-occurring
with negation, one of the two variables x and y in (15) is given, namely the probability
of negation itself. If we likewise forget about the logs, we can simplify the formula to
the one in (17):
p(x,y)
(17) ______ = p(x|y)
p(y))
which is the conditional probability of x given y. In our case, the conditional probabil-
ity of negation, given some polarity item. The larger this probability, the greater are the
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

chances of misconstrual and reinterpretation. For minimizers and taboo terms, this
conditional probability is well in the 90% range. For other items, it is a lot lower. Note
that conditional probability is not a symmetric notion. The probability of negation,
given the presence of some minimizer, may be very high, while the probability of that
minimizer, given the presence of negation, is very low. As we see from the example of
the English taboo NPIs, the latter probability does not seem to matter much. They
underwent reinterpretation, regardless of their low overall frequency.
Unfortunately for the historical study of the Jespersen Cycle, we usually lack good
corpus data that might help inform us about conditional probabilities. This is why it is
important to study these changes in contemporary stages of languages, using the
present to explain the past, to quote Bill Labov.
Another point of interest is the reversibility of the change. If we can reinterpret
polarity items as negative quantifiers, can we also reinterpret negative quantifiers as
nonnegative polarity items in negative concord languages? The answer to this question
appears to be affirmative (cf. Hoeksema 1997). In languages like Middle Dutch, we see
negative quantifiers, clearly marked as such by the presence of the negative prefix n-,
showing up in polarity contexts without a negative meaning:
(18) Die bliidste soudic wesen dan
the happiest would-I be then
Die nie man sach op erterike;
That never man saw on earth10
`I would be the happiest [woman] that one ever saw on earth.’
The lack of concord marking on the finite verb, typical for such cases, shows that we
are no longer dealing with an n-word, but with a homophonous polarity item.

5. Adverbials from minimizers

Now that we have seen how minimizers might be prone to reanalysis as negative quan-
tifiers, we are still at a loss how these negative quantifiers may become negative adverbs.
Clearly, the change from the quantifier naught to the adverb not is a big one. There are
several scenarios describing how this might have happened. One is misanalysis of nega-
tive quantifiers that serve as objects to optionally transitive verbs as adverbial modifiers
(cf. Jäger 2008, Lucas 2007, Bayer 2007 for suggestions along these lines):
(19) Jones [neg ate naughtDP] → Jones [[neg ate] naughtADV]
This adverb then spreads to other types of VP, on its route to becoming the main expo-
nent of negation.

10. Example taken from Hein van Aken’s medieval Dutch romance Roman van Heinric ende
Margriete van Limborch.
 Jack Hoeksema

Table 6. Some English verbs of indifference

Environment Care (N = 792) Matter (N = 406)

Negation 53% 57%

Other negative 12% 7%
Interrogative 15% 13%
Affirmative 20% 20%

A slightly different scenario is one where the n-word is used as a measure-like argu-
ment with verbs like matter or care. These verbs take on a variety of nominal adjuncts
which measure the degree of indifference felt by the human experiencer:
(20) a. Jones did not care much.
b. Jones did not care a whit.
c. It does not matter a jot to Jones.
d. It does not matter much to Jones.
e. It matters nothing to Jones.
f. Jones cares nothing about it.
g. It matters very little to Jones.
Note that these nominal adjuncts are entirely optional:
(21) a. Jones did not care.
b. It does not matter to Jones.
Dutch also has a largish class of similar verbs and verbal expressions. What is interest-
ing for our purposes about these particular verbs is that they are quasi-polarity items,
in the sense that 80% or more of their occurrences are in environments that are well-
known contexts for negative polarity items (cf. Hoeksema 1994). Table 6 lists some
data from that paper.
While these verbs are probably not as frequent as some of the most common op-
tionally intransitive verbs, they are much more likely to occur with negative quantifiers.
After all, how often do we say ‘John ate nothing’ or something of the kind? And so these
verbs of indifference might deserve some special scrutiny as possible hosts for the
change from nominal argument to adverbial modifier. However, as soon as this change
has taken place, there is likely to be a quick spread to other contexts, and so it may be
impossible to tell, with any degree of certainly, where the change actually originated.
Adverbial uses are by no means restricted to negative quantifiers turning into ne-
gation proper, like English naught, Dutch niet, or German nicht. We see similar changes
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

among minimizers. For instance, one bit is clearly adverbial in English. When it is used
as a nominal complement, the result is degraded:
(22) a. Jones did not like her one bit.
b. ?Jones did not feed her one bit.
c. *Jones did not eat one bit.
Even more striking is the case of adverbial any:
(23) a. That did not help the soldiers any.
b. It hasn’t changed him any.
c. Would that bother her any?
d. Don’t you worry about it any.
So in some cases, the indefinite that became the marker of negation in the course of a
Jespersen Cycle may well have been adverbialized even before it got reinterpreted as a
negative quantifier. We will need extensive and refined corpus data to see for each case
in what way a nominal quantifier may have developed into a negative head.

6. The Neg-P hypothesis

This leads me to the final part of this paper. We have looked at polarity items turning
into negative quantifiers which turned into adverbial elements. At some point, there
usually is a system of double negation, involving some kind of negative head and the
new adverb of negation. Commonly, this situation is given a grammatical treatment in
terms of some version of the NegP-hypothesis (cf. Pollock 1989, Haegeman and Za-
nuttini 1991, Ouhalla 1990, Zanuttini 1997, among others). The old negator is typi-
cally the head of NegP, and the new adverb is a specifier of that head. The final stage of
the Jespersen Cycle is the one which involves the disappearance of the old negator and
its replacement by the new item. To make the Cycle truly circular, one needs to place
the specifier in the position of the head. Under most people’s understanding of mod-
ern generative syntax, this cannot be done by regular rules moving elements from
SpecNeg to Neg0. The Spec position is a phrasal position, and Neg0 is a lexical head. So
how do we get from Spec to head? The only remaining road seems to be syntactic rea-
nalysis, by which the former specifier is reanalyzed as the head of the construction.
This is an option which is especially attractive when the specifier is already a single
word, such as is the case with French pas.
Elly van Gelderen has proposed a principle called Head Preference Principle:
(24) Head Preference Principle (Van Gelderen 2004b)
Be a head, rather than a phrase
 Jack Hoeksema

For items in the Spec of NegP that are small enough to look like heads, rather than phras-
es, this principle is a call to arms, to rise from the ranks to assume a commanding position
as the head of NegP when this position is no longer occupied by another element.
In part, as van Gelderen points out, the Head Preference Principle is a restatement
of an old observation from grammaticalization theory, namely that function words
tend to originate as nonfunctional words from open classes. However, by combining
this older insight with notions from modern syntax, in particular the complex array of
mechanisms surrounding the NegP hypothesis, with its associated verb movements to
various head positions, we reach a stage where a principle such as the HPP actually
makes some predictions. For modern spoken French, for instance, it predicts immi-
nent reanalysis of pas as a head. This will entail that it changes position with respect to
the verb, either by becoming a clitic to it, like ne used to be, or, if it is not, by blocking
movement of the verb to positions higher than NegP due to the Head Movement Con-
straint (Travis 1984). Whether this prediction is likely to ever come true is of course
mere speculation at this point. However, I submit that in languages with stable word
order patterns, such as modern French or English, such changes are unlikely to occur.
Word order patterns of functional elements are especially resistant to change. We see
this clearly in a language like Dutch, which has had simple negation by a single adverb
ever since the demise of negative concord in the 17th century. During this period, the
position of the negation element niet has never changed. Well, actually, there is one
example in the literature that there was a change, a recent one in fact. In their history
of Dutch in the 20th century, Van der Horst and Van der Horst (1999: 286) state:
“Het ziet ernaar uit dat het woord niet in de afgelopen eeuw een andere plaats
gekregen heeft, namelijk meer naar voren.”
[It appears that the word niet has received a different position in the course of the
last century, namely more to the left].

They illustrate this with examples such as (25):

(25) ge hoeft dien brief zoo stevig niet vast te houden
you need that letter so tight not to-hold-on-to
‘You need not hold on to that letter so tightly.’ (L. van Deyssel, 1889)
where more modern writers would prefer to write (26):
(26) ge hoeft die brief niet zo stevig vast te houden.
However, these examples are not so much evidence for a different position of negation
as they are of the decline of scrambling in the 20th century. Example (24) is an instance
of scrambling of the adverbial phrase zo stevig across negation. As I have shown else-
where (Hoeksema 2003, 2006), scrambling has been declining since the 18th century, at
differing rates for different types of expressions. Scrambling, of course, does not involve
heads changing position, but constitutes an optional movement process of phrasal ma-
terial in the middle field, both in Dutch and German. When you focus on the position
 Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled 

of negation in sentences like 25, it may seem that the position of negation has changed,
but actually, it is the position of the scrambled element. This is clear from the fact that
scrambling across other elements than negation is also on the decline, something that
would be unaccounted for if only the position of negation were to have changed.
But that leaves us with a bit of a puzzle. If the position of negation in Dutch has not
changed at all since the Middle Ages, in spite of the disappearance of negative concord
in early modern Dutch, what does that tells us about the Head Preference Principle? At
this point, a number of options suggest themselves. One might suppose that the Head
Preference Principle is held in check by countervailing forces. One might postulate an
Inertia Principle for historical change that prefers changes which do not affect the
surface order of constituents. In the absence of catastrophic changes due to heavy lan-
guage contact, or severe paradigmatic pressure, the position of functional elements is
quite fixed. Alternatively, it might be worthwhile to consider abandoning the NegP
hypothesis, and to view negation as either adverbial in nature, for languages such as
Dutch, German or Norwegian, or part of the inflectional system, in languages such as
English. Treating negation as an adverbial adjunct in Dutch or German has the advan-
tage that we do not have to say anything special about constituent negation in sen-
tences such as (27), where the negative adverb acts like any other focus adverb, being
adjoined to a phrasal projection:
(27) a. Niet in alle landen sneeuwt het in de winter.
not in all countries snows it in the winter
‘It does not snow in all countries in the winter.’
b. Niet eens zo lang geleden sneeuwde het nog.
Not even so long ago snowed it yet
‘It snowed not even that long ago.’
The fact that verbs move to C in Germanic without any hinder from negation is then
simply what is expected, and not something that could change as soon as negation gets
reassigned from Spec of NegP to being a Neg-head.
Of course I don’t want to claim to have found the solution to all or even many
syntactic problems surrounding negation. To the contrary. However, it does not seem
right to treat constituent negation as completely divorced from sentential negation, as
the NegP theory requires one to assume, even for languages which employ the same
expression for both kinds of negation, such as English or French.
To return to the Jespersen Cycle, let me conclude this section with the following
remarks. For Dutch or German, my account no longer assumes a cyclical change from
negative head to double negation by Spec-Head agreement, followed by Spec-only ne-
gation, possibly to be turned into head only negation. Rather, we have clitic negation
on an inflectional head in the first stage, let us say early Old Dutch, then n-word +
clitic negation in Middle Dutch, and finally adverbial or n-word negation in modern
Dutch. It is unclear whether or how the current system might ever turn back into one
of clitic negation. I suspect the system is stable, and that the new millennium won’t see
 Jack Hoeksema

too much change in this area, assuming, of course, that Dutch and German do not
disappear under the onslaught of English. But that is a different story altogether.

7. Conclusions

In this paper, I review the various linguistic changes that together constitute the Jes-
persen cycle. My focus in this paper has been on the European languages mainly, and
so certain types of change, say from prohibitive verb to marker of negation, have not
been discussed here. I have argued that one particular change, from negative polarity
item without negative import to negative quantifier, is limited to those items which
occur primarily in strictly negative environments, rather than the much larger set of
contexts where e.g. English any may show up. I have motivated this claim with data
from English taboo terms such as diddly squat, and I hope that others will feel inspired
by this hypothesis to test it further.
I have also made a suggestion regarding the change from nominal quantifier to
adverbial negation that takes place in many (though certainly not all) languages as part
of the Jespersen cycle. The suggestion is that the change may be the result of reanalysis
in constructions with polarity-sensitive verbs that take measure-like complements,
such as matter and care. At the moment, this suggestion is very speculative, as are al-
ternative suggestions.
The paper ends with a brief discussion of the Head Preference Principle (van Gel-
deren 2004b) and the status of NegP. I am skeptical about the possibility that negation
will change linear position as a result of reanalysis when Spec of NegP turns into Neg0.
This may happen whenever verb movement through NegP interferes with the position
of negation. Here, too, more evidence needs to be gathered, in this case for sudden
jumps in linear position, to ascertain the validity of such an account.

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 chapter 3

The Jespersen Cycles*1

Johan van der Auwera

University of Antwerp

This chapter analyzes the kind of renewal of clausal negators referred to with
the term of ‘Jespersen Cycle’. It describes how a negator may collocate with a
strengthener, which may later become an additional exponent of negation and
possibly the only one. Through an analysis of a century’s worth of scholarship, not
only giving pride of place to Jesperen (1917) but also Gardiner (1904) and Meillet
(1912), the paper sets out to describe parameters such as the role of emphasis, the
identity or difference of the old and the new negator, and the question whether
or not the stage of the two exponents simplifies into a single exponence stage
or takes us to a three negator stage. In so doing, the paper also advocates taking
Jespersen cycle research beyond the confines of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Introduction

This paper deals with Jespersen’s Cycle, also known as the ‘Jespersen Cycle’ and ‘Nega-
tive Cycle’. I will offer an account that is more general than the one envisaged by

* This paper was presented at the April 2008 Tempe conference on Linguistic Cycles and at
the May 2008 Helsinki NORMS Workshop on dialectology (NORMS = Nordic Center of Excel-
lence in Microcomparative Syntax). I have also profited from attending the June and August
2008 Leverhulme Trust Seminars on cycles of grammaticalization (Birmingham). Special thanks
are due to Theresa Biberauer (Cambridge), Ludovic De Cuypere (Ghent), Gunther de Vogelaer
(Ghent), Robert Early (Port Vila), Franck Floricic (Paris), Eitan Grossman (Jerusalem), Liliane
Haegeman (Lille), Jack Hoeksema (Groningen), Mark Janse (Ghent), Mena Lafkioui (Ghent),
Pierre Larrivée (Birmingham), Mair Parry (Bristol), Amina Mettouchi (Nantes), Matti Miesta-
mo (Helsinki), Samia Naïm (Paris), Lene Schøsler (Copenhagen), Joop van der Horst (Leuven),
Elly van Gelderen (Tempe), Willy Van Langendonck (Leuven), and Klaas Willems (Ghent). Spe-
cial thanks are also due to Jean Winand (Liège), who drew my attention to his 1997 paper, which
then directed me to Gardiner (1904). I also acknowledge project P6/44 on Grammaticalization
and (Inter)Subjectification of the Belgian Federal Government for financial support.
The paper uses the following abbreviations: COP ‘copula’, NEG ‘negation’, NOM ‘nominali-
zation’, PL ‘plural’, R ‘realis’, REL ‘relative’, SG ‘singular, SUBJ ‘subjunctive’, X ‘element other than
negation’, 1 ‘first person’, 2 ‘second person’, and 3 ‘third person’.
 Johan van der Auwera

Jespersen (1917) and others. This paper has four sections. In Section 1, I sketch what
Jespersen (1917) meant, how his view has been represented, and how it is partially
wrong, at least for the data that he had in mind. I discuss the alternative view, also go-
ing under the label of the ‘Jespersen Cycle’ and spell it out in some detail. I will also
argue that the alternative view has room for the original Jespersenian idea, in more
than one way, and the resulting account will describe exactly eight possible trajectories
or ‘cycles’. In Section 2, I discuss an additional type of Jespersenian negation renewal,
which is worthy of being called a ‘Jespersen Cycle’ as well, not least because it fits the
system described in Section 1. Section 3 develops the typology even more. The typol-
ogy allows at least four questions, the answers to which will be positive and show yet
more variation. Section 4 is the conclusion.
For the analysis of Jespersen’s original idea, I will mostly rely on French, which is
one of the languages that Jespersen (1917) had in mind and for which we possess an
enormous amount of research. For the development of the typology, I will primarily tap
micro-variational and macro-variational sources. For micro-variation, I will use mate-
rials and analyses concerning Dutch and especially Belgian Dutch negation, which have
recently come to the foreground (Barbiers et al 2009, Neuckermans 2008).1 For macro-
variation, I will use and partially reinterpret the facts of the Vanuatu language Lewo,
which have stood as a challenge for Jespersen cyclists since Early (1994a, 1994b).
Despite the goal of reaching a general account, let me point to some restrictions.
This paper is only about the development of negative strategies that involve something
like a doubling stage. To take the text book example and to present it in a simplified
way, French once had a ne negator, it is heading for pas, but there is also a middle stage
with both ne and pas. Pas is the newer strategy and, to reach that stage, the language
went through a doubling ne… pas stage. Negative strategies need not pass through any
such stage, however. Negative markers may directly develop from verbs (e.g. from a
verb meaning ‘not exist’) or nouns (e.g. from a noun meaning ‘taboo’) in ways that
have been described by Croft (1991), van der Auwera (2006), van Gelderen (2008),
and van der Auwera (In print b). Furthermore, this paper focuses on clausal negation,
the negation that has scope over an entire clause or proposition. So not much will be
said about the development of ‘negative quantifiers’, such as pronouns meaning ‘no-
body’ or adverbs meaning ‘never’, even though the development of clausal negation
and quantificational negation are interconnected. There will be nothing on negative
concord either. Negative polarity will be mentioned quite often, but again this matter
will not be focused on. Finally, there will be nothing on language contact or areal ty-
pology, even though this dimension has been crucial in quickening the interest in the

1. Barbiers et al (2009) and Neuckermans (2008) emanate from a Flemish Dutch dialect syn-
tax project called ‘SAND’ (‘Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten’), which received
funding from 2000 to 2003, but continues to spawn and influence publications and new projects.
Of course, Belgian Dutch negation had become important in theories of negation before, esp.
thanks to Haegeman (e.g. Haegeman 1995). Other publications generated by SAND referred to
in this paper are van der Auwera & Neuckermans (2004) and Zeijlstra (2004).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

Jespersen cycle through the pivotal work of Bernini and Ramat (1992, 1996) (see also
van der Auwera In print a) and remains important up to today (e.g. Lucas 2008).
As already adumbrated in the above, I prefer the term ‘Jespersen Cycle’ to ‘Jes-
persen’s Cycle’ (because there is too much variation to warrant the definitizing geni-
tive) and to ‘Negative Cycle’ (to single out the cycles with a doubling stage from all
other negative cycles).

1. The two Jespersen accounts

1.1 What did Jespersen (1917) mean?

The paragraph from Jespersen (1917) that has been most influential, not least because Dahl
(1979: 88) drew attention to it and coined the phrase ‘Jespersen’s Cycle’, is the following:
The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness the fol-
lowing curious fluctuation: the original negative adverb is first weakened, then
found insufficient and therefore strengthened, generally through some additional
word, and this in turn may be felt as the negative proper and may then in course of
time be subject to the same development as the original word. (Jespersen 1917: 4)

This scenario is usually represented as involving three, four, or five stages. For French,
the three-stage model has slots for ne, ne... pas and pas. The five stage model is essen-
tially the same but it makes explicit that the changes from ne to ne... pas and from ne...
pas to pas involve the in-between stages of pas, resp. ne being optional. The four stage
models typically2 include the three stage model but either add non as the phonetically
stronger ancestor to ne or make clear that the pas that is added to ne was not origi-
nally negative—I will symbolize this with the subscript X instead of NEG. The repre-
sentation in (1) is limited to the French cycle. One could, of course, go back to Latin,
and list ne—another ne, i.e. a Latin ne different from the French one—as the ancestor
to non, as Jespersen (1917: 7) did, and recently also Muller (1991: 206) and Lenz
(1996: 183). This is not represented in the schemas in (1). I have chosen French instead
of English, for English is more complicated in that it has arguably started a new cycle
or, at least, a new development. English has had a development from ne to not via ne...
not, not unlike what we have in French, but English now also has a weakened n’t cliti-
cized to a preceding auxiliary and it also saw the development of do periphrasis. Lenz
(1996: 184–5), Anderwald (2002: 19) and Zeijlstra (2004: 56) thus have the three or
five stages but they add one or more stages with a not or n’t in front of the lexical verb,
as in I do not say and I don’t say. When Jespersen (1917: 9–11) discusses English, he
also lists I do not say and I don’t say, even as separate stages, and adds them onto a three

2. An example of an untypical case is Van Kemenade (1999: 148; also in Fischer et al. 2000: 305).
Here the four stages are stages 1, 2, 4, and 5 of the five stage model.
 Johan van der Auwera

stage model. I will leave such developments out of account, as they follow the cyclical
end point of the cycle starting with ne and ending with not.
(1) Three stages Four stages Five stages
A B
1 nonNEG
1 neNEG 2 neNEG 1 neNEG 1 neNEG
2 neNEG... pasX
2 neNEG (…
pasNEG)
2 neNEG … pasNEG 3 neNEG …pasNEG 3 neNEG … pasNEG 3 neNEG … pasNEG
4 (neNEG …) pasNEG
3 pasNEG 4 pasNEG 4 pasNEG 5 pasNEG

(2) shows where these models can be found; the list is far from exhaustive.
(2) Three stages Burridge (1983: 36); Bernini & Ramat (1996: 33),
Haspelmath (1997: 203), Zanutttini (1997: 11–14), Horn
(1989: 455), Hoeksema (1997: 140), Horn (2001: 190),
Roberts and Roussou (2003: 154–155), van der Auwera &
Neuckermans (2004: 458), Mazzon (2004: 5), Willis (2005),
Lucas (2007), Jäger (2008)
Four stages – A Dahl (1979: 88), Muller (1991: 206), Lenz (1996: 183–4),
Larrivée (2004: 18–19), van Gelderen (2008: 210)
Four stages – B Schwegler (1988), Schwegler (1990: 158), Schwenter
(2006: 327)
Five stages Donhauser (1996), Honda (1996: 207), Beukema (1999),
Anderwald (2002), van der Auwera & Neuckermans
(2004: 458), Zeijlstra (2004), Willis (2005)

The five stage representation has two stages with two strategies. ‘neNEG (… pasNEG)’, for
instance, in effect says that the language has both the neNEG and the neNEG … pasNEG
strategy. This is a good way to visualize that two strategies are in competition. But this
method obviously makes for more complex representations, and one can avoid quite
of bit of complication by simply stating that at one period a language could be at more
than one stage, not least because some constructions may be ahead of other construc-
tions. For instance, in Brabantic Dutch of 1650 declaratives barely allowed nietNEG (the
counterpart of to pasNEG) and still overwhelmingly used enNEG … nietNEG (the coun-
terpart to neNEG... pasNEG), whereas the statistics are exactly the opposite for prohibi-
tives (Burridge 1983: 33, see also Hoeksema 1997: 145, van der Auwera 2006: 18).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

Another point to note in this respect is that the two transition stages of the five stage
model each only have two strategies. There is no reason why a construction could not
at any one period allow more than two strategies. Consider the example in (3).
(3) French
a. Il ne peut venir ce soir.
b. Il ne peut pas venir ce soir.
c. Il peut pas venir ce soir.
he neg can neg come this evening
‘He can’t come tonight.’
(3a) exemplifies the archaic strategy, (3b) is standard written French, and (3c) is typical
for a casual spoken register. So the three stages may actually be said to coexist, at least
for some constructions (like with the verb pouvoir ‘can’ illustrated in (3)). And yet
there is no doubt that neNEG came first, that neNEG … pasNEG followed and that solitary
pasNEG was the last one. While admitting the value of a model in which the stages show
competing variants (for a plea to that effect, see e.g. Martineau and Mougeon 2003: 146),
I will use the simpler representations in this study, i.e. the ones without transition
stages (except when in (13) below the discussion crucially concerns the nature of tran-
sitional stage).
In (4), I reconstruct the cycle in six stages, again using French, and I then paraphrase
it using the words of Jespersen (1917) (between single quotation marks). The reason I
choose six stages is that it captures Jespersen (1917) better than the simpler schemes.
(4) Stages Strategies
1 nonNEG
2 neNEG
3 neNEG … pasX
4 neNEG … pasNEG
5 neX … pasNEG
6 pasNEG
NeNEG is the formally ‘weakened’ form of the ‘original negative adverb’ nonNEG. At
stage 2 only the weakened form occurs, at stage 1 only the original form and the weak-
ening takes place in between. Between stages 2 and 3 neNEG ‘is found insufficient’ and
‘strengthened … through some additional word’. The strengthening is both formal and
semantic: the addition of the word makes for a formally new strategy, and the addi-
tional word has a meaning of its own, but it is not that of clausal negation yet—that is
why the subscript ‘X’ is used and not ‘neg’. At stage 3 this strengthened strategy has
ousted the old one. At stage 4 the ‘additional word’ partakes in the negative meaning
as such and the strengthening effect is lost. Between stages 4 and 5 the second part of
the negator is beginning to ‘be felt as the negative proper’, a process that is completed
at stage 5 at the semantic level. Now neX is an ‘additional word’; I again mark the ab-
sence of the negative function with the subscript ‘X’. At stage 6, the process is finished
 Johan van der Auwera

at the formal level: the non-functional additional word has disappeared. The represen-
tation in (5) repeats that of (4) and it adds the notions of formal vs. semantic weaken-
ing and strengthening.
(5) Stages Strategies
1 nonNEG
formal weakening

2 neNEG
formal & semantic strengthening

3 neNEG … pasX
semantic weakening

4 neNEG … pasNEG
semantic weakening

5 neX … pasNEG
formal weakening

6 pasNEG

The representations in (4) and (5) are a little bit more detailed than the usual ‘recon-
structions’. It represents essentially the three stage model, enriched with the nonNEG
stage of the A type of the four stage model, the neNEG pasX stage of the B type of the four
stage model, and a parallel neX pasNEG stage. But (4)/(5) is still a simplification and
there are several issues that demand a comment. Let me mention two. First, it is gener-
ally assumed that pas was introduced in the context of movement verbs at a stage
predating the earlier texts (e.g. Buridant 2000: 60) and then spread to other verbs.
Jespersen’s (1917) quote does not deal with this and for this reason (4)/(5) does not
show this stage either, nor will I go into this matter later. Second, the schema abstracts
from word order properties. The citation from Jespersen (1917) does that too. Never-
theless, it is obvious that word order does matter, as the positions of French neNEG and
pasNEG are markedly different: whereas neNEG precedes the finite verb, pasNEG follows
it. It is less clear, however, how exactly word order matters, at what stage, whether it is
a consequence or a cause, and to what extent there could be cross-linguistic generali-
zations. In any case, I will leave these issues out of consideration, not least also because
proposals positing strong correlations between the placement of negation and general
word order properties and aiming to explain the cycle (e.g. Vennemann 1974, Harris
1978, van der Horst and van der Wal 1979) have been criticized and largely abandoned
(e.g. Schwegler 1983).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

1.2 What do many other linguists mean?

The scenario sketched in (4)/(5) is not in fact the only one that goes under the name of
‘Jespersen cycle’. In an alternative view (see (8) for references and see also Breitbarth In
print for a similar and independently arrived at classification), the claim is not that
neNEG is weak and that it is therefore strengthened. Instead, the claim is that the lan-
guage has both a neutral and an emphatic negative construction, and that the latter
may lose its emphatic flavor, become a competitor to the erstwhile negation, and even-
tually replace it. So what starts off the process is not the weakness of the original nega-
tor, but the general process of the inflation of an emphatic use and the consequent
bleaching. (6) is a first attempt to represent the crucial stages of the alternative sce-
nario, again illustrated with French.
(6) Stages Emphatic strategies Neutral strategies
n neNEG … pasNEG neNEG
n+1 neNEG... pasNEG
At stage ‘n’, the language has two strategies, an emphatic neNEG … pasNEG and a neutral
neNEG. Then neNEG … pasNEG bleaches and loses the emphatic meaning, thereby be-
coming a competitor to neutral neNEG. At stage n+1, the fully bleached neNEG … pasNEG
has replaced the earlier and simpler neutral neNEG strategy. (7) repeats (6) and identi-
fies the changes. The loss of the emphatic meaning is semantic weakening and the si-
multaneous replacement of the neutral simple neNEG by the more complex but also
neutral neNEG … pasNEG is formal strengthening.
(7) Stages Emphatic strategies Neutral strategies
n neNEG … pasNEG neNEG

n+1 neNEG …. pasNEG

Semantic weakening Formal strengthening

Somewhat paradoxically, the appearance of neNEG … pasNEG in the domain of neutral
negation instantiates both weakening and strengthening: the weakening is semantic
and relates to the emphatic neNEG … pasNEG construction, and the strengthening is
formal and relates to the simple neNEG construction.
I stressed that under the alternative scenario neNEG is not claimed to have been
weak and in need of strengthening, but this claim only concerns its function as a neu-
tral strategy. Of course, we see that neNEG is a component of the emphatic strategy as
well, and one can grant that for emphatic purposes neNEG, as an unstressed preverbal
clitic, was indeed weak, and it could do with formal and semantic strengthening. So
something like stages 1 to 4 of scheme (4)/(5) are indeed relevant for the full picture of
French negation, even under the alternative scenario, but, crucially, this component of
formal and semantic strengthening of neNEG with an ‘additional word’ pasX only
 Johan van der Auwera

features in the history of emphatic negation. When Latin non formally weakened to ne,
it remained perfect for neutral negation, but not for emphatic negation, and it is here
that it accepted formal and semantic strengtheners of various types, one of them with
the lexical element originally meaning ‘step’.
As implied in the preceding lines, I believe that for the development of pasNEG
from neNEG over neNEG … pasNEG, the alternative account is correct and that the origi-
nal Jespersenian account, which has the process start off with phonetic erosion, is
wrong. In the words of Kiparsky & Condoravdi (2006: 175), typical for a growing
number of linguists, `The role of phonetic weakening […], however plausible it might
seem, is not backed up [by] any data as far as we know.’ And interestingly, more or less
clear endorsements of the alternative account even antedate the formulation by Jes-
persen, with Gardiner (1904: 134), and with Meillet (1912: 393–394 [1926 139–140]).
Gardiner (1904) discusses Egyptian and Coptic and notes ‘the often noted likeness’ to
French and then writes about pas and point:
These words, from the Latin passum and punctum, were originally adverbial ac-
cusatives placed at the end of negative sentences for the purpose of emphasis; just
like the English “not a jot”, “not a straw”. […] Pas and point, and like them the
Demotic , Coptic ⲁⲛ, next lose their emphasizing force, and become mere ad-
juncts of the negative words (French ne, Coptic = ⲛ̅). Last of all, they come them-
selves to be looked upon as negative words. (Gardiner 1904: 134)

In the famous paper that seems to introduce the term ‘grammaticalization’ Meillet
(1912: 393 [1926: 140]) discusses Latin, French, and German and writes the following:
Là où l’on avait besoin d’insister sur la négation […] on a été conduit à renforcer
la négation ne... par quelque autre mot. […] On sait comment pas a perdu, dans
les phrases où il était un accessoire de la négation, tout sons sens propre—sens
conservé parfaitement dans le mot isolé pas—, comme dès lors, pas est devenu à
lui seul un mot négatif, servant à exprimer la négation […]. (Meillet 1912: 393
[1926: 140])3

3. On the next page, he writes in a way that could have seduced Dahl (1979) to honor Meillet
rather than Jespersen:

Les langues suivent ainsi une sorte de développement en spirale : elles ajoutent des
mots accessoires pour obtenir une expression intense : ces mots s’affaiblissent, se dé-
gradent et tombent au niveau de simples outils grammaticaux ; on ajoute de nouveaux
mots ou des mots différents en vue de l’expression ; l’affaiblissement recommence et
ainsi sans fin. (Meillet 1912 : 394 [1926 : 139–140])

 ote that when Dahl (1979: 88) coins the phrase ‘Jespersen’s cycle’, he didn’t say that Jespersen
N
(1917) was the first to make the relevant observation. This has been misunderstood later (e.g.
Burridge 1983: 36, Postma 2002: 44, Mazzon 2004: 5, Roberts 2007: 142). Note that I do not
claim that Gardiner (1904) was the first either. For French, for instance, the idea that the weak-
ness of neNEG plays a causal role is nicely expressed in Perle (1878: 407). So the historiography of
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

At this moment, both accounts find their supporters since both are after all very simi-
lar and the difference might go unnoticed or be irrelevant. There are also statements
that are neutral with respect to this difference. (8) categorizes some of the literature.4
(8) Hypotheses Supporters
Weakness - Jespersen (1917), Wackernagel (1926), Dahl (1979), Pohl
Strengthening (1968), Horn (1989: 454–457), Lenz (1996), Beukema
- Bleaching (1999: 10), van Kemenade (1999), Breitbarth and Haege-
man (2008), Jäger (2008)
Emphasis - Gardiner (1904); Meillet (1912 [1926]), Hock (1991), Hop-
Bleaching per and Traugott (2003); Dahl (2001: 473); Detges & Wal-
tereit (2002), Kiparsky and Condoravdi (2006)
Neutral Marchello-Nizia (1979), Bernini and Ramat (1996);
Haspelmath (1997); Schwenter (2006)

(9) summarizes the discussion. It integrates the Jespersenian formal and semantic
strengthening, but only for emphatic negation, and the ‘alternative’ idea of a transfer of
an emphatic strategy to the realm of neutral negation, as represented in (7).

the idea of the Jespersen cycle remains to be written, and an important part will concern schol-
ars of Egyptian, Coptic, Berber and Arabic working independently of Jespersen (1917) and of
the name giving Dahl (1979) (e.g. Gardiner 1904, Winand 1997 for Egyptian and Coptic and
Chaker & Caubet eds 1996 for Arabic and Berber).
4. A full classification would also categorize accounts that neither follow Jespersen or Gar-
diner nor count as neutral but offer yet a different analysis. A recent account that belongs here is
Breitbarth (In print), followed by Breitbarth & Haegeman (2008). Breitbarth (In print) claims
that in West Germanic there was never a stage in which negation had two exponents. She argues
(again only for West Germanic) that as soon as the strengthener became compulsory, it was the
only negator. The reason for this is that by then the old negator had expanded its territory to
non-negative uses and it was already used with negative pronouns and adverbs. I find the argu-
ment problematic, for the expansion of negators to non-negative yet still negatively polar con-
texts is a general property of negators (see the discussion around examples (10) and (11) below)
and so is the collocation of a clausal negator with a negative pronoun or adverb (‘negative con-
cord’) and it is at least not obvious how these general properties imply that the negativeness of
the negator is damaged. With respect to the negative concord property, it is suggestive that in
present-day Belgian Dutch dialects all allow negative concord: if they don’t have it with the old
en, they do it with the new niet¸ and in the middle area they allow both en… niet, (thus combin-
ing with e.g. niemand ‘nobody’ and yielding en… niemand, niemand … niet, and en … niemand
… niet (van der Auwera and Neuckermans 2004). This suggests that the old en is no less negative
than the new niet. Furthermore, the arguably most progressive dialect has denegativized the
pronoun niemand but kept the clausal negator niet, thus yielding iemand niet ‘nobody’, literally
‘somebody not’ (van der Auwera, De Cuypere & Neuckermans 2006).
 Johan van der Auwera

(9) Stages Emphatic strategies Neutral strategies

Formal weakening
1 nonNEG
Formal & semantic strengthening
2 neNEG
Semantic reanalysis
3 neNEG … pasX neNEG
Formal strengthening
4 neNEG … pasNEG neNEG
Semantic weakening
5 neNEG … pasNEG
Semantic weakening
6 neX … pasNEG

Formal weakening
7 pasNEG

Like all other representations given in this paper (9) is only a skeleton sketch. First, the
sketch focuses on the neutral strategies. It brings in just one emphatic strategy and
then only to the extent that it provides a source for a neutral strategy. While (9) does
claim that at stage 1 the negator nonNEG allowed both neutral and emphatic uses, the
latter, I assume, requiring stress (see the discussion of example (12) below), it does not
claim that there were no other emphatic strategies then, or of course at any later stage.
(9) also does not sketch how the noun step, a ‘minimizer’ (i.e. a noun referring to a
small quantity) developed into the emphatic pasNEG, from the ‘not even a step’ to ‘not
at all’, a phase of progressive specialization for negation going through a more general
phrase of negative polarity (e.g. Muller 2004). In the Jespersenian account, this step
was considered to be weakening, for it was taken to involve the loss of the emphatic
effect of the ‘additional word’. But in this account, the emphatic effect remains. It is
correct that step loses its lexical meaning, but then it gains a pragmatic meaning. So
something is lost, and something else is gained: for this situation (9) uses the term
‘semantic reanalysis’. Second, (9) does not sketch the competition that pas had from
other minimizers, most prominently point ‘point’ and mie ‘crumb’ (see Möhren 1980
and Kawaguchi In print). Third, (9) is restricted to declarative negation and does not
take into account the influence of sentence type, such as declarative vs. interrogative or
imperative, a factor that is indeed important for French (Martineau and Mougeon
2003: 119–120, Martineau and Vinet 2005) no less than for Dutch (as alluded to in the
paragraph just before (1)). Fourth, a full account of the history of neNEG, pasNEG and
neNEG... pasNEG will have to provide for the fact that even when pasNEG was established
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

as the main exponent of negation and left the pure negative polarity stage, it still al-
lowed negative polarity uses, as did and do neNEG and neNEG... pasNEG.(10) gives some
older and recent examples.
(10) a. 17th century ne (Muller 1991: 375)
Je n’ignore pas qu’il n’ait voulu me nuir.
I neg ignore neg that he X would.have wanted me damage
‘I don’t ignore that he would want to damage me.’
b. 17th century ne... pas (Muller 1991: 24)
Vous ferez plus que vous ne estes pas proposé.
you will.do more than you X are X proposed
‘You will do more than you have proposed.’
c. 18th century pas (Muller 1991: 25)
C’est la plus jolie fille qu’ y a pas dans le canton.
This is the more pretty girl that there has X in the canton
‘This is the prettiest girl there is in the canton.’
(11) a. Present-day ne (Muller 1991: 367)
Ils estiment que leur situation militaire est
they think that their situation military is
suffisamment solide pour empêcher que cet assaut
sufficiently solid for prevent that this attack
ne devienne une promenade militaire.
X become.subj a walk military
‘They think that their military situation is solid enough to prevent that
their attack would become a military walk.’
b. Present-day French ne pas (Larriveé 2004: 28)
La Grande-Bretagne déconseille à ses ressortissants
the Great Britain discourages to its citizens
de ne pas se rendre à Bali.
of X X oneself go to Bali
‘Great Britain advises its citizens not to travel to Bali.’
c. Present-day French pas (Larriveé 2004: 27)
J’imagine que je désire plus que j’peux pas obtenir.
I imagine that I desire more than I can X obtain
‘I imagine that I want more than I can obtain.’
The fact that each of the negators had and has negative polarity uses is a reflection of
the fact that the negative polarity uses of negators, often called ‘expletive negation’, are
a universal potentiality (see also Joly 1981, van der Wouden 1997: 196–204, van der
Wurff 1999 for both European and non-European examples). Of course, this potenti-
ality can be grammaticalized or not and, if so, in different ways (i.e. in different negative
 Johan van der Auwera

polarity contexts) and with different strengths. The link with the Jespersen cycle seems
double. First, chances that a negator has negatively polar uses are high if it has in fact
developed from a negative polarity item, as is the case with pas. From this perspective,
the older uses of pas and ne... pas, illustrated in (10b-c) can be seen as relics of the
negative polarity past of pas (this is also the hypothesis offered in Muller 2004 and in
Eckardt 2003, 2006: 128–170). Second, a point already made by Jespersen (1917),
chances that a negator has negative polarity uses are also high ‘if the negative em-
ployed no longer has its full force’ (Jespersen 1917: 75). What he had in mind were the
modern uses of ne as in (11a) (see also Breitbarth & Haegeman 2008 for Belgian Dutch
and Wallage 2008 for Middle English).5
Another point worth observing is that (9) implicitly takes solitary neNEG to disap-
pear because of the introduction of the newcomer neNEG... pasNEG. This makes sense.
The renewal of grammatical markers, with originally expressive markers becoming
neutral and ousting the original neutral markers, is the essence of grammaticalization,
with lots of examples in classic texts on grammaticalization. Of course, the fact that
other domains of the grammar have new constructions oust old constructions does
not predetermine the outcome of the competition between the old neNEG and the new
neNEG … pasNEG. For one thing, lots of old constructions do successfully hold com-
petitors or potential competitors at bay and, even in the domain of French negation,
newcomers like neNEG... pointNEG and neNEG... mieNEG did not make it. And for an-
other thing, neNEG... pasNEG is less economical than neNEG, and so for reasons of econ-
omy, one would actually expect neNEG to hold ground. So why did neNEG... pasNEG gain
supremacy over neNEG?
I suppose that there is no single answer. Part of the explanation will have to do
with dialect and register variation and the competition between dialects and registers,
a competition which did not merely involve neNEG and neNEG … pasNEG, but also neNEG
… pointNEG and neNEG … mieNEG and yet other constructions. I suspect that the devel-
opment of concord structures such as neNEG … personne ‘not nobody’ promoted ne …
pas as well, in a mutual support constellation. Let me offer two additional considera-
tions. First, a complex construction such as neNEG... pasNEG holds one advantage over
neNEG. Even though neNEG... pasNEG is no longer compositionally dedicated to empha-
sis (with pasNEG having lost its emphatic effect), it does have a component that can be
stressed, viz. pasNEG, and thus serve emphatic uses anyway, in contrast with solitary
neNEG, which cannot be stressed, at least not since the end of Middle French (Mar-
tineau & Mougeon 2003: 124). There is a similar contrast in English: free standing not
can be stressed, but cliticized n’t cannot.

5. The negative that no longer has its full force is always an old negative. I venture the hypoth-
esis that the likelihood of negative polarity is also partially a function of age: the older the mark-
er the longer it had a chance of developing negative polarity uses. Thus, all (?) the old Romance
and Slavic markers corresponding to French ne also have negative polarity uses, whether or not
the languages have set on a Jespersen trajectory.
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

(12) a. Je ne... veux pas!

I neg want neg
‘I do not want it!’
b. *Je ne veux!
I neg want
*‘I doN’T want it!’
Now economy is in favor of neNEG... pasNEG. With neNEG... pasNEG, speakers have a
construction that allows both a neutral use (without emphatic stress) and an emphatic
use (with emphatic stress on pasNEG). For this double use, solitary neNEG is indeed too
weak, so here Jespersen (1917) is right after all.
The second consideration that helps explain why neNEG … pasNEG replaced neNEG
concerns the timing when pasNEG in neNEG … pasNEG was beginning to ‘be felt as the
negative proper’. In (9), this is represented as happening after the demise of neNEG. But
this is probably a simplification, due to the decision taken in 1.1 to avoid to modeling
competing variants. In fact, when neNEG … pasNEG becomes a neutral construction, it
alternates with neNEG for some time and one may assume that the reinterpretation of
the neNEG component of neNEG … pasNEG as an exponent of negation to the status of
‘additional word’ took place before the disappearance of solitary neNEG, and that this
reinterpretation in fact proved a(n additional) factor in the demise of solitary neNEG. I
represent this alternative scenario in (13). Stages 4 and 5 correspond to those of (9).
(13) Stages Emphatic strategies Neutral strategies
... ... ...
4 neNEG... pasNEG neNEG
neNEG … pasNEG & neNEG
neX … pasNEG & neNEG
neX … pasNEG & neX
5 neX … pasNEG
... ...
When neNEG bleaches to a mere ‘additional word’, one may assume that this happened
first in the doubling construction, for it is only here that there was another exponent
of negation, viz. pasNEG. The ongoing bleaching from neNEG into neX could have in-
fected solitary neNEG as well, and thus added to its downfall.6

6. Note that this period of the ‘cohabitation’ of neNEG ... pasNEG and neNEG was essentially all of
Old and Middle French and a bit beyond (9th to 17th century). There has been quite a bit of
work, most recently Hansen (In print), Hansen and Visconti (In print), largely inspired by work
of Schwenter (2006 on Catalan, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese) aiming to show whether for
some of this time the two strategies were different in terms of discourse status. Simplifying these
accounts, one could say that the neNEG ... pasNEG strategy was more ‘presuppositional’ (or ‘dis-
course-old’). I find this rather plausible given that typical ‘not even a step’ and ‘not at all’ uses are
also more presuppositional than the simple ‘not’. Bleaching then would first take away emphasis
 Johan van der Auwera

A final point concerns the fact that in all scenarios so far the deemphasizing of
neNEG... pasNEG precedes the demise of neNEG as a part of neNEG... pasNEG, i.e. the formal
weakening of neNEG... pasNEG to pasNEG only happens to neutral neNEG... pasNEG, and not
to emphatic neNEG... pasNEG. This is indeed the case in French and in fact in all other
cases I know of, yet it might not be a universal. The facts of Horn’s (2001) ‘squatitive’
negation (see also Postal 2004: 159–172, Hoeksema 2009) are suggestive. The term
‘squatitive’ refers to minimizers that employ taboo expressions, like English squat, shit, or
fuck. In a negative context, they can mean ‘nothing at all’. Here is an attested example.
(14) He … discovered writing didn’t pay squat. (Horn 2001: 186)
This is emphatic, just like ‘not even a step’ has been emphatic, but different from the
French ‘step’ notNEG squat didn’t neutralize, and yet it did simplify. (15) is an attested
solitary squat in which squat by itself means ‘nothing at all’.
(15) Students complain that they are learning squat. (Horn 2001: 187)
Of course, these squat uses are still nominal or, better pronominal, for in (15) squat has
become a negative pronoun meaning ‘nothing whatsoever’, but we know from French
pas and English not that minimizing and negative indefinites can turn into adverbs. If
that happened for squat, we would have a clausal negator that did not neutralize at the
doubling stage. It would arrive at the new solitary stage as an emphatic negator, pos-
sibly, of course, neutralizing still later. Another illustration would be a variety of French
(probably an imaginary one) that keeps both neNEG … pointNEG and neNEG … pasNEG,
with neNEG … pointNEG as the emphatic variant and neNEG … pasNEG as the neutral one,
and in which neNEG … pointNEG is turning into pointNEG just like neNEG … pasNEG is
turning into pasNEG. Interestingly, no good example of an emphatic solitary clausal
negator that derives from a minimizer has yet been found. However, in principle, it
could come about this way, not least also because we see that a negative indefinite can
originate this way (as in the squat example). (16) sketches the imaginary clausal devel-
opment from an emphatic notNEG…squatX to emphatic notNEG…squatNEG to emphatic
squatNEG to neutral squatNEG as well as the attested development from emphatic
neNEG…pasX to neNEG…pasNEG to pasNEG. The attested developments are symbolized
with a full line, and the imaginary one with a dotted one.

but leave the higher presuppositionality. Note though that the Schwenter approach has been
criticized for French (Larrivée 2008, Schøsler 2008).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

(16) neg1 X neg1 neg2 Ø neg2

a. –emphatic –emphatic
neNEG … pasNEG pasNEG

+emphatic +emphatic
neNEG … pasX neNEG … pasNEG

b. –emphatic
squatNEG

+emphatic +emphatic +emphatic

neNEG … squatX notNEG … squatNEG squatNEG

1.3 Clause-final repeated negators

In the preceding two sections, I rejected Jespersen’s idea (1917) that it was the weak-
ness of neutral neNEG that called for neNEG … pasNEG. I did not, however, reject this idea
completely. First, I granted that neNEG was indeed too weak for emphatic negation.
Second, as a marker allowing stress to mark both neutral negation (no stress) and em-
phatic negation (stress) it was also too weak. Let me now come to a third way in which
Jespersen’s (1917) point about weakness has some value, and again, not in the way that
he imagined. The matter concerns the clause-final doubling of the clausal negator
(symbolized as ‘NEG#’). This kind of doubling is perhaps best known from Brazilian
Portuguese (e.g. Schwegler 1991, Schwenter 2006) and Afrikaans (e.g. Roberge 2000,
Biberauer In print, Biberauer 2008, this volume) but it occurs more widely in both
Romance (e.g. Schwegler 1990, 1996 for Spanish and Ramat 2006 and Floricic and
Molinu 2008 for Italian) and Germanic (e.g. Pauwels 1958 for Dutch, and for Swedish,
we can again go back to Jespersen 1917: 72). (17) shows attestations from Belgian Bra-
bantic dialects of Dutch (Neuckermans 2008: 210–226; Barbiers et al. 2009). In (17a)
the negator nietNEG is repeated, in (17b) the repeated negator is flanked by the additive
particle ook ‘also’. (17c) and (17d) shows that the clause-final negator is also allowed
when the earlier part of the sentence contains a quantificational negator, whether or
not the latter uses nietNEG (niemand niet ‘nobody not’ vs. niets ‘nothing’).
 Johan van der Auwera

(17) Belgian Brabantic (Neuckermans 2008: 215, 213, Pauwels 1958: 443, 440)7
a. Hij wil geen soep niet meer eten niet.
he wants no soup neg more eat neg
‘He doesn’t want to eat any more soup.’
b. Els wilt niet dansen en ze wil niet zingen ook niet.
Els wants not dance and she wants neg sing also neg
‘Els doesn’t want to dance and she doesn’t want to sing either.’
c. Ik heb niemand niet gezien niet.
I have nobody neg seen neg
‘I haven’t seen anyone.’
d. Ik heb niets gekregen niet.
I have nothing received neg
‘I haven’t received anything.’
In these constructions, the addition of the clause-final negator does not have any em-
phatic effect and it cannot be emphasized (Pauwels 1958: 444–445), even though its
formally identical ‘clause-earlier’ negator can. At most, it helps to secure the correct
uptake, a reminder to the hearer that the proposition is negative, but this functionality
is not necessary and its use may be fully bleached. Then, the clause-final negator is
simply a partial exponent of neutral negation, a part of nietNEG … niet#NEG, just like
pasNEG as a part of neNEG pasNEG. niet#NEG has no additional semantic effect either: the
sentence is negative already. The lack of any special meaning is corroborated by the
fact that speakers are often not aware that they are using it, a fact specifically men-
tioned both by Pauwels (1958: 445), the linguist responsible for the classic description
of niet#, and by Blancquaert (1923: 65), the linguist who first wrote about it.
So much for the synchrony of Belgian Brabantic clause-final negation! Let us now
relate it to the Jespersen cycle. Can the appearance of the repetitive clause-final nega-
tion be explained with the Jespersen cycle hypothesis, in the variant that posits empha-
sis and bleaching? In that case, the clause-final negation must have had an emphatic
effect before, even if it does not have one now. Cross-linguistically, this indeed seems
the most common analysis. For Brazilian Portuguese (but also Jespersen 1917 and
Bernini & Ramat 1996: 43 for other languages), Schwegler (1991: 209; 1990: 169–173),
for instance, derives (18b) from (18a), a structure with a reinforcing intonationally
separate pragmatic particle, which is crucially identical in form to the clausal negator.
(18) Brazilian Portuguese (Schwegler 1991: 209)
a. Eu não quero, não!
I neg want no
‘I don’t want to, absolutely not!’

7. Here and elsewhere, no attempt is made to represent to faithfully represent the sounds or
forms of the Dutch dialect facts.
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

b. Eu não quero não.

I neg want neg
‘I don’t want to!’
This analysis exists for Dutch too, most clearly presented by Roberge’s (2000: 146–147),
supported by Biberauer (2008), with structures such as (19) as the source of clause-fi-
nal negator doubling.
(19) Ik ga niet, nee!
I go neg no
‘I am not going, no!’
The context in which this claim figures actually concerns Afrikaans clause-final nega-
tion, which Roberge traces back to Dutch. In the Dutch case, the analysis is problem-
atic in that the pragmatic particle in (19) is nee and not niet. Bernini & Ramat (1996: 78)
therefore reject the pragmatic hypothesis, at least for Dutch and Afrikaans (but inter-
estingly, not for Berbice Creole Dutch, in which the clause-final negator contains the
morpheme -nε, reconstructed from the Dutch pragmatic particle neen (Kouwenberg
1994: 264)). Roberge (2000: 147), in turn, rejects Bernini & Ramat’s rejection pointing
out that early Modern Dutch did at least allow niet as an answer particle, as well, next
to neen. However, this use of niet was very rare and that of neen very common (Joop
van der Horst, p.c.). Hence, it is not plausible to assume that it is the rare use that
grammaticalized the way Brazilian Portuguese não and markers in other languages
did. So I, in turn, reject Roberge’s rejection.
In fact, there are two hypotheses that trace Belgian Brabantic clause-final negator
to a non-emphatic origin, both due to Pauwels, viz., Pauwels (1958) and Pauwels
(1974). Actually in both publications Pauwels is sympathetic to the pragmatic hypoth-
esis as well, but he offers two different hypotheses in addition. First, Pauwels (1958: 457)
thinks that clause-final doubling could derive from a negative concord construction in
which a negative quantifier is followed by nietNEG. This construction is illustrated in
(20). Like clause-final negation, it is typically Belgian Brabantic. This construction is
not emphatic and nobody has hypothesized that it was.
(20) Belgian Brabantic
a. Ik heb niemand niet gezien.
I have nobody neg seen
‘I haven’t seen anybody.’
b. Ik zag niemand niet.
I saw nobody neg
‘I didn’t see anybody.’
The idea is that the nietNEG of the negative concord construction may come at the
clausal end, as illustrated in (20b), and that it became associated with that position.
Second, in his last public pronouncement on this matter, Pauwels (1974: 76) supports
 Johan van der Auwera

the idea that clause-final negation is essentially just a repetition strategy, devoid of
emphasis and devoid of additional semantics. He compares it with preposition dou-
bling as in (21).
(21) Belgian Brabantic (Pauwels 1974: 76)
Ik kan nie aan het plafond aan.
I can neg at the ceiling at
‘I can’t reach the ceiling.’
I suppose that this kind of repetition at best makes the meaning clearer, a locational
one in (21), and a negative one in (17). To the extent that repetition can be said to
‘strengthen’ a meaning, the non-repeated meaning can be said to be weaker than the
doubly expressed meaning, but whether expressed with just one negator or with two,
the meaning is just a neutral, non-emphatic negation. This then brings us back to the
Jespersenian weakness idea: the simple expression is not exactly ‘too weak’, but it is a
least ‘weaker’ (i.e. weaker than the doubling expression).
Belgian Brabantic clause-final doubling has not been simplified into a construc-
tion with a solitary clause-final negator. This is different from Brazilian Portuguese
não#NEG, though it is not clear whether the solitary Brazilian Portuguese não#NEG is
emphatic or not. Schwegler (1991: 206) thinks that this construction ‘has by and large
lost its emphatic character’. Biberauer (2008), however, compares it with English (22),
which would seem to imply that the construction is emphatic.
(22) She came to the party … not!
So perhaps we should keep both hypotheses open, just like we did with the analyses of
clause-final doubling.
(23) summarizes the facts and hypotheses about clause-final negator doubling for
Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese. Full lines represent the scenarios proposed in the
literature and retained as plausible: (i) the Dutch doubling is not emphatic and it nev-
er was, and it didn’t develop a new solitary stage; (ii) Brazilian Portuguese doubling is
emphatic and the solitary neg1# could have been emphatic or not. Dotted lines show
hypotheses that I add myself: if solitary Brazilian Portuguese neg1# is non-emphatic,
it must have bleached, either at the doubling stage or only at the final, solitary stage.
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

(23) neg1 neg1 neg1# neg1#

a. –emphatic
nietNEG
nietNEG … niet#NEG

b. –emphatic –emphatic
nãoNEG … não#NEG não#NEG
nãoNEG
+emphatic +emphatic
nãoNEG … não#NEG não#NEG

1.4 Intermediate conclusion

I hope to have shown that the scholarship on classical cases of the Jespersen cycle such
as the progression from French neNEG to pasNEG via neNEG … pasNEG has been inter-
preted in two different ways, both involving a notion of strengthening. In the approach
associated with Jespersen (1917), a neutral negator is claimed to be too weak and to be
‘strengthened’ as a result. In the alternative approach, the neutral negator gets competi-
tion from a construction that is originally emphatic—‘strengthened’—and undergoes
bleaching in a natural process of grammaticalization. I have argued that the second
approach is correct for the analysis of neutral negation. However, Jespersen was still
right and even in three ways. First, for emphatic negation neNEG was indeed too weak.
Second, neNEG was also too weak as a multifunctional negator, serving both neutral and
emphatic negation.8 Third, although a neg … neg# construction may have its origin in
emphasis, it may also have a non-emphatic origin, and in that case one can compare, as
strategies for expressing neutral negation, the single neg and the double neg … neg#
construction, and then the former is weaker, in a trivial sense, than the latter.
The general picture that emerges is represented in (24). First, one can get from a
single negator to a doubling pattern by either reanalyzing an element X, a minimizer
or a negative quantifier (but also a negative existential; Croft 1991: 10, 13–14), and this
construction is necessarily emphatic, or can simply repeat the negator at the end of the
clause, a process which may be emphatic or not. Second, doubling constructions may
turn into solitary constructions, most clearly when they are non-emphatic, but the
squat and não evidence suggests that emphatic negators may also turn single. Third,
emphatic constructions may bleach, most clearly at the doubling stage, but on account
of the não evidence, one can also hypothesize bleaching at the solitary stage. For ease
of understanding, in (24), neg1# will be represented as ‘neg2’, and I do not distinguish

8. This claim follows from the first one, but it is worthwhile separating both claims, for the
second one, and not the first one, was argued to help explain the demise of the neutral neNEG use.
 Johan van der Auwera

between full and dotted lines anymore—at this level of abstraction all lines except the
one from neg2 +emphatic to neg2 –emphatic have in fact been proposed, either in a
neNEG … pasNEG type scenario or in a nietNEG … niet#NEG type scenario, or in both.
Like in all other schemas, negative polarity uses such as illustrated in (10) and (11) are
not taken into account, essentially because they can occur at all stages of the life cycle
of a negator.
(24) neg1 neg2 neg2
–emphatic –emphatic

neg1

neg1 X neg1 neg2 neg2

+emphatic +emphatic +emphatic

2. Any more variation?

It is implied in (24) that the X source is always emphatic. But is that really the case?
And relatedly, does this element have to be a minimizer or a negative quantifier (or, if
Croft 1991: 10, 13–14 is right, a negative existential)? A negative answer, an implicit
one because it did not relate the issue to Jespersen cycles, was given for Arizona Tewa
(Kiowa-Tanoan) by Kroskrity (1984), supported by Honda (1996: 41–44), who pro-
vides additional data (Honda 1996: 207) and does relate them to the Jespersen cycle.
In 2007, two further negative answers appeared, one by Lucas (2007) and the other by
De Cuypere et al. (2007: 309–312, repeated in De Cuypere 2008: 238–245). I will re-
strict the discussion to the latter two answers. Lucas’ (2007) answer is this:
The evidence from Spoken Arabic suggests that the only condition for JC [Jes-
persen’s Cycle] to be set in motion […] is that some postverbal element could
potentially be reanalyzed as a marker of negation. (Lucas 2007: 427)

The evidence concerns the spoken Arabic form -š, which is argued to have had nega-
tive contexts in which its original indefinite pronoun meaning ‘anything’ (itself deriv-
ing from the noun ‘thing’) could have been interpreted as an exponent of negation. The
case is far from clear, I find, for after all ‘anything’ comes very close to a minimizer, and
the original noun ‘thing’ is arguably even closer to e.g. ‘step’, and would thus invite an
account in terms of emphasis and bleaching, an invitation taken up by Bernini & Ra-
mat (1996: 47), Roberts and Roussou (2003: 155), François (2003: 317), and Miestamo
(2005: 225) for Arabic, and by Willis (2005) for Welsh. Lucas (2007: 417) is aware of
this kind of approach, yet does not find ‘this explanation entirely convincing’ (Lucas
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

2007: 420). His phrasing still means, however, that he finds it fairly convincing anyway.
I conclude that the case is not settled yet.
The other negative answer is due to De Cuypere et al. (2007: 309–312 (also De
Cuypere 2008: 223–249).9 Their starting point is Miestamo’s (2005) work on asym-
metric negation. Miestamo notes that positive and negative declarative sentences often
differ from another in more than just the absence vs. the presence of a negative mark-
er. Consider negation in the Salishan language Bella Coola. Third person singular
positive declarative verb forms mark the information as either old or new. However, in
the corresponding negative declaratives there is no choice: the verb form is obligato-
rily marked for old information.
(25) Bella Coola (Miestamo 2005: 136, based on Nater 1984: 36; also in De Cuy-
pere et al. 2007: 312 and De Cuypere 2008: 242)
a. ksnmak-Ø
work-3sg.new
‘He is working.’
b. ksnmak-s
work-3sg.old
‘He is working.’
c. ?axw ksnmak-Ø
neg work-3sg.old
‘He is not working.’
This asymmetry has a functional motivation: in negatives one tends to express a nega-
tive evaluation of something that is presupposed (given, old) in the context (in a way
that needs to be more precise—see note 6), and what Bella Coola has done is to gram-
maticalize this tendency (Miestamo 2005: 213). The relevance of this asymmetry is the
following: imagine that the marker for old information disappears in the positive con-
struction and that it remains in the negative one. This would easily allow this marker
to be reanalyzed as an exponent of negation, and would thus offer a good case for the
reanalysis of a marker that is not a negative quantifier or minimizer (nor of course a
repeated clause negator) and mostly importantly, not emphatic.
The Bella Coola case is an imaginary case: the old information marker has not left
the positive declarative. It is problematic that De Cuypere et al. (2007) do not offer any
convincing case (and neither does De Cuypere 2008: 223–249). Let me discuss one of
their examples. In some Vanuatu languages, a partitive marker, which at least optionally
appears in negative declaratives, in which negation already has one exponent, can be
interpreted as an additional exponent of negation, and one which may oust the first one.
This has been argued for Lewo (Early 1994a) and for Motlav (François 2003: 317–318).

9. A terminological difference between Lucas (2007) and De Cuypere et al (2007) and De

Cuypere (2008) is that the latter do not consider the scenario described as a ‘Jespersen cycle’ but
rather as an alternative.
 Johan van der Auwera

(26) Motlav (François 2003: 313, 318)

a. Et igni-k te.
neg wife-my neg
‘This is not my wife.’
b. Ino te, ikē!
I neg he
‘It is not me, it is him!’
For both languages, the grammarians remark on the similarity with the classical Jes-
persen cases of the French neNEG... pasNEG type. The key question is whether the parti-
tive once had an emphatic function or whether it was just a concomitant of a negative
sentence, a marker of asymmetry, which again has a functional explanation (in this
case relating to a tendency of negatives having non-referential objects—see Miestamo
2005: 232). The answer may be different from one language to the next, but at least for
some Vanuatu languages it seems that the partitive was in fact used for emphasis, just
like a minimizer. For Motlav, François (2003: 317) is fairly explicit: the combination of
the negator with the partitive must have served to deny the event that didn’t even con-
cern a (small) part of something. Paamese is interesting too. In this language, the ele-
ment corresponding to te is not obligatory yet, and maybe for this reason Crowley
(1982: 140–142) still considers it to have partitive meaning, but his gloss is more than
just partitive. The combination of the negation and the partitive is not just to mean that
something is partially unaffected, but rather that it is not even partially affected, i.e. not
even a bit, which can surely be called emphatic in the same way as ne … pas ‘not even
a step’ is.10 So at least in some Vanuatu languages, the partitives would rather plausibly
have lent their service in the emphasis-cum-bleaching cycle. Interestingly, in Avava,
yet another Vanuatu language, the second element is not related to a partitive marker,
but to a marker meaning ‘first’ (Crowley 2006: 84–85, 99). Crowley (2006: 99) is uncer-
tain as to how to relate to two meanings, but an emphasis-cum-bleaching cycle would
again seem possible, with the original meaning of the now bipartite negative being that
some event did not even affect the first part of something. Consider English know the
first thing about in this respect (J. Hoeksema, p.c.).
(27) He didn’t even know the first thing about checkers.
Yet our search for a Jespersen cycle that concerns neither emphasis with bleaching nor
non-emphatic repetition is not in vain. The Vanuatu language Lewo may have an em-
phasis-driven partitive element re, but the element that is of interest here is the first
marker, which is either pe (for realis) or ve (for irrealis).

10. When something is not even partially unaffected, it means that it is completely unaffected. So
one might imagine a completeness marker to slide in the pragmatic Jespersen path and De Cuypere
et al. (2007: 310) actually mention that the second of two negation exponents of the Barbacoan
language Awa Pit is diachronically linked to a completive aspect marker (Curnow 1997: 332).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

(28) Lewo (Early 1994a: 69)

Pe ne-pisu-li re Santo poli.
neg.r 1sg-see-try neg Santo neg11
‘I’ve never seen Santo.’
This pe/ve marker derives from the positive copula, which also comes in both a realis
and an irrealis form. One might venture the hypothesis (see Dahl 1995: 80; Miestamo
2005: 79) that pe/ve is in fact the copula12, and indeed, as Miestamo (2005: esp. 75–80)
makes clear, copulas are frequently used as the finite verbs in negative clauses. Yet,
though the copula will indeed be the highly plausible origin of the pe/ve marker, at
present the pe/ve marker is not a copula anymore. Different from a real copula, illus-
trated in (29), the negatively dedicated pe/ve markers do not carry subject markers. In
fact, prefixal subject marking is attached to the lexical verbs. (29) furthermore shows
that the negative unconjugated pe and the conjugated pe copula can occur together.
(29) Lewo (Early 1994a: 72)
Teras la nap̃a pe a-pe praktis re poli …
youth pl rel neg 3pl-be practise neg neg
‘The young guys who haven’t practised …’
And interestingly, there is one construction in which the pe/ve marker does carry sub-
ject prefixes, viz., in second person imperatives, and here the lexical verbs lack prefixes.
This use is restricted to older speakers, so from a grammaticalization point of view, this
construction could be considered a relic, with the original copula construction.
(30) Lewo (Early 1994b: 422)
O-pe tag re!
2sg-cop cry neg
‘Don’t cry!’
The upshot of the discussion is that an element involved in the asymmetry that char-
acterizes negation in the sense of Miestamo (2005), such as a copula, can indeed

11. Note that there is even a third neg marker poli. I will discuss tripling in 3.3.
12. The interpretation by Dahl (1995) and Miestamo (2005) is supported by some of Early’s
phrasing. Early (1994a: 66) says that the pe/ve marker is ‘identical in form to that of the copula’,
but it is clear from the rest of the analysis that it is really only the stem that is identical. Early
(1994a: 80) also asked speakers whether they felt the negative markers and the copula to be the
same and the answer ‘was somewhat confirmatory, and it certainly was not the same as some of
the other homophones of ve (verbs meaning ‘to weave’ and a commonly reduced from of one of
the verbs ‘to say.’ This somewhat confirmatory stand can easily be interpreted as meaning that
speakers still felt the negative markers and the copulas to be related. Or as Robert Early (p.c.) puts
it: ‘while speakers are readily aware of the phonological identity of the two forms, they generally
understand the negative pe/ve as meaning ‘no’ and are somewhat bemused, and certainly don’t
show any clear agreement, when asked if they think that it is the “same” as the copula pe/ve.’
 Johan van der Auwera

provide a non-emphatic source for a second negator. It is time, therefore, to update the
figure in (24). All we have to do is to add one source construction (marked in (31) with
shading): next to the emphasis neutral neg1 source and the +emphatic neg1 X source,
there is a –emphatic neg1 X source, which can feed directly into an equally non-em-
phatic neg1 neg2 construction.
(31) neg X neg1 neg2 neg2
–emphatic –emphatic –emphatic

neg1

neg1 X neg1 neg2 neg2

+emphatic +emphatic +emphatic

If one wants to count cycles, one will find that there are eight possible cycles, i.e. eight
different trajectories to get from one of three possible single negator source construc-
tions to either of the two possible single negator outcome constructions. The basic idea
remains relatively simple though: either through the repetition of a clause negator or
through the reanalysis of something else, one arrives at a bipartite negative construc-
tion, which is either emphatic or neutral. In the bipartite construction, the new nega-
tor can oust the old one, and at both the bipartite or the new simple stage the emphasis
can disappear.

3. Even more variation?

The schema in (31) is also useful as a starting point. First, in (31) the doubling strategy
cannot stay emphatic: it either neutralizes at the doubling stage (as with neNEG... pas-
NEG) or it loses one exponent of negation, and then it may stay emphatic, but it is not
of course a doubling construction any more. So the question is whether a doubling
strategy cannot in some way become emphatic (again). I will discuss this in 3.1. Sec-
ondly, in the schema in (31) the two solitary stages are interestingly different: the first
solitary stage has a negator (neg1) and either some marker X or nothing, whereas the
second solitary stage has a negator (neg2) or nothing, i.e. all the first negator seems to
be able to do is to disappear. I will discuss this in 3.2. Thirdly, in (31) the reinterpreta-
tion of a marker X into a negator (neg2) or the mere addition of this negator is only
allowed after a stage of a solitary negator. But would it be ruled out that a doubling
construction can also receive a new exponent of negation, either through reinterpreta-
tion or addition, thus resulting in a tripling construction? This will be discussed in 3.3.
Fourth, when neg1 X is followed by neg1 neg2 there are two bipartite stages, the dif-
ference is, of course, that the second part of the first stage is not negative yet. One
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

wonders whether the second bipartite stage is absolutely essential, i.e. whether a lan-
guage cannot also go directly from neg1 X to Ø neg2. I will discuss this in 3.4.

3.1 A new emphatic strategy at the doubling stage

The first question that I asked in the introduction to this section is whether a doubling
construction is really fated to weakening, either semantically (reinterpretation of em-
phatic negation as neutral negation) or formally (with a double negator turning into a
solitary one). That the situation is more complex has been claimed by Haegeman
(2002: 181) and again by Breitbarth and Haegeman (2008) relative to contemporary
West and East Flemish dialects. The hypothesis is this: at the stage where enX … niet-
NEG is in competition with nietNEG, speakers could find the enX … nietNEG strategy
useful for emphasis. Haegeman (2002: 181) provides a minimal pair: in (32) the con-
ditional without enX is claimed to be an open conditional, but with enX it is emphatic
and presuppositional: the speaker expects rain.13
(32) West Flemish (Haegeman 2002: 181)
a. Oat nie regent, moe-j de blommen woater geven.
if.it neg rains must-you the flowers water give
‘If it doesn’t rain, you must water the flowers.’
b. Oat nie en regent, moe-j de blommen woater geven.
if.it neg1 X rains must-you the flowers water give
‘If it does not rain, you must water the flowers.’
Haegeman (and Breitbarth) do not explain why the contrast is the way it is, maybe in
part because they consider it obvious. To me, it would indeed seem obvious: if the
contrast sketched in (23) is real, then the motivation will be iconic: stronger, heavier,
marked form is for the stronger meaning (see Horn 1991: 86 for many examples). (33)
schematizes the possible reanalysis.
(33) Stages Emphatic strategies Neutral strategies
N enX … nietNEG & nietNEG
Semantic strengthening
n+1 enX … nietNEG enX … nietNEG & nietNEG

It is important that this emphatic use of Flemish enX … nietNEG has not become the only
use, and, to be judged from the large dialectological literature (see Neuckermans 2008
for an overview), which does not mention any emphatic use of enX … nietNEG, the
neutral enX … nietNEG use must be considered the more important use. Also, if enX …

13. Note that in subordinate clauses nietNEG precedes enX. It will be remembered from 1.1 that
word order matters are not dealt with in this paper.
 Johan van der Auwera

nietNEG indeed allows a secondary emphatic use now, one would expect this to have
been possible earlier as well, and thus there might even be a continuity of emphatic enX
… nietNEG uses (weakly suggested for subordinate clauses in the early 20th century
South-Holland dialect of Katwijk aan Zee by Overdiep 1933a: 22—repeated in Over-
diep 1937: 453, 1940: 203). If there was continuity, note that the nature of the em-
phatic use will have changed. Emphatic en … niet started out as combination of the
neutral negator en and the ‘additional word’ niet, but now emphatic enX … nietNEG
does not contrast with solitary enNEG but with solitary nietNEG and thus the ‘additional
word’ is enX now. And in between both en and niet were exponents of negation.
(34) Emphatic strategies
enNEG... nietX → enNEG... nietNEG → enX... nietNEG

3.2 Denegativizing

In the Jespersen cycles, the new solitary stage does not have the old neg1 anymore. It is
legitimate to say that it actually already disappears as the doubling stage whenever it is
no longer a true exponent of negation but only an ‘additional word’ X. We have already
mentioned that when the old neg1 marker has reached this X-stage, it is particularly
liable to allow negative polarity uses. In this connection, I will discuss two questions.
First, is it possible for an old neg1 marker to have negative polarity uses and to have
lost the negative proper use? For example, would it be possible for a future variety of
French to allow (11a), repeated as (35a), yet not a simple negative declarative like (35b)?
(35) French
a. Ils estiment que leur situation militaire est
they think that their situation military is
suffisamment solide pour empêcher que cet assaut
sufficiently solid for prevent that this attack
ne devienne une promenade militaire.
X become.subj a walk military
‘They think that their military situation is solid enough to prevent that
their attack would become a military walk.’
b. Cet assaut ne devient pas une promenade militaire.
This attack neg becomes neg a walk military
‘This attack does not become a military walk.’
This scenario has not materialized for French, obviously, and it has not happened for
Dutch either. Of particular interest here are dialect data for Belgian Dutch. Belgian
Dutch has the enNEG … nietNEG counterpart for neNEG …pasNEG, and like French neNEG,
Belgian Dutch enNEG allows negative polarity uses. It appears from Neuckermans
(2008: 181) that whenever a dialect allows en with negative polarity uses, it also allows
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

the strictly negative uses, but not vice versa.14 For Middle Low German and Middle
English, however, the literature does contain the claim that an old negator may lose its
negative uses and become entrenched in a negative polarity use. First, the Middle Low
German case concerns ‘exceptive clauses’, i.e. ‘unless clauses’, exemplified in (36) in
which en is hypothesized to have survived longer than in simple negative clauses
(Breitbarth In print).
(36) Middle Low German (Breitbarth In print)
Vnde dar moste nummentyn, he ne gheue V mark vp dat minste
and there must nobody.in he neg would.give five mark up that least
‘and nobody must be admitted unless he gives at least five marks.’
The problem is though, in my view, that the ne marker still carries negative force, as we
see when we paraphrase (36) as follows ‘if nobody is admitted, then any potential per-
son trying to be admitted did not give at least 5 marks’. Of course, the point remains
interesting, because the exceptive clause is a very special type of negative clause.
Second, the claim about Middle English is found in Wallage (2008: 666–668), with
Breitbarth (In print) in support. It says that when in (Late) Middle English neNEG did
not exist anymore, it still had a negative polarity use in complements of negated doubt.
(37) Middle English (Wallage 2008: 666)
No man douteth that he ne is strong in whom he seeth strengthe
no man doubts that he X is strong in whom he sees strength
‘No one doubts that that person is strong in whom he sees strength.’
I now come to a second question: can a neg1 marker develop uses that are not even
negatively polar anymore? Here the answer is positive, and for Dutch it has been
claimed twice. The first case concerns the South Holland Katwijk dialect, again, and its
grammarian Overdiep (Overdiep 1933a:23, Overdiep 1933b:45, Overdiep 1937: 455,
Overdiep 1940). (38) is a case in point.

14. Breitbarth & Haegeman (2008) argue that the fact that en allows negative polarity uses
helped maintain en in negative en … niet contexts. Given the dependency of negative polarity
uses on negative uses, one would rather say the opposite. As already adumbrated by Jespersen
(1917): though negative polarity uses of negative markers are always possible, they are particu-
larly likely when a language is at the neNEG … pasNEG stage. A further critical remark on the
claim that negatively polar en helped maintain en … niet concerns that the fact negatively polar
en was common in Middle Dutch in areas where it no longer is now (i.e. whether it is either gone
completely or where its use is very restricted) (Neuckermans 2008: 316–318; cp. also Postma
2002, Van der Horst 2008: 519, 753). So for these areas the negatively polar uses did not in fact
save en … niet. This remark is the diachronic counterpart to the synchronic one that there are
currently no dialects with negative polar en without negative en … niet.
 Johan van der Auwera

(38) Katwijk
Toen ze bij de poort en kwamme ...
when they at the gate X came
‘When they arrived at the gate …’
This en was restricted to subordinate clauses, it was optional, but under certain pro-
sodic conditions15 quite common, and because of the relevance of these prosodic con-
ditions, Overdiep calls this use of en its ‘rhythmical’ use. A similar case has also been
documented for present-day Belgian Brabantic dialects.
(39) Belgian Brabantic (Neuckermans 2008: 176)
Ze pakte eu portefueille waar dase eu sleutel in en doet.
She took her wallet where that.she her key in en does
‘She took the wallet of hers in which she puts her key.’
Here too, the use is optional and restricted to subordinate clauses.
The restriction of this ‘meaningless’ en to subordinate clauses makes sense. It has
long been known that en survives best in subordinate clauses. Perhaps Overdiep was
the first to make this observation and it has been confirmed many times including also
for the current dialects (Barbiers et al. 2009; see also for references). What we see in
(39) can be considered as a final stage in the demise of the en marker: en still option-
ally occurs in its last stronghold, the subordinate clause, but it has totally lost its nega-
tive and its negative polarity meaning. At most, it can still be considered a marker of
embeddedness, and an optional and rare one, for that matter. The fact that it currently
only survives in Belgian Brabantic makes sense, too, for here enNEG only survives in
subordinate clauses. So we don’t have the subordinateness marker in dialects which
have completely lost the negative use.

3.3 Tripling

The third question addressed at the beginning of Section 3 is whether Jespersenian

accumulation can only set in at a stage with a solitary negator. If it can also set in at the
doubling stage, then we will effectively have tripling. The question was already asked
by Blancquaert (1923: 68): he specifically asked whether Dutch niet#NEG could be
combined with en NEG … niet NEG. It was a real question, in the sense that Blancquaert
did not himself know the answer. We have to wait until Pauwels (1958: 454) for an
answer, and it is positive. He claims that in the Belgian Brabantic dialect of Aarschot of
the first part of the twentieth century, niet#NEG could be added to subordinate enNEG …
nietNEG.

15. With the trisyllabic alternative past tense kwaeme, for instance, the en particle is impossible
(Overdiep 1933b: 45).
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

(40) Pas op dat ge niet en valt nie.

fit on that you neg neg fall neg
‘Take care that you don’t fall.’
Note that each of the negators is clausal: we are not dealing with a clausal negator in
concord with some negative pronouns or negative adverbs of time, place or manner.
There is no information as to whether this construction carries emphasis, but since at
the time of the study neither enNEG …nietNEG nor niet#NEG carried emphasis, I suspect
that the tripling didn’t carry emphasis either.
A second positive answer takes us back to Lewo. According to Early (1994a, 1994b)
reinterpreted a little by van der Auwera (2006), the language has two tripling strate-
gies, one realis and the other irrealis. I will here focus on the irrealis strategy, because
it is more transparent than the realis one (but see (28) for an example of realis tripling).
With a second person subject prefix, the irrealis strategy has a prohibitive use. It comes
in both a doubling and a tripling pattern.
(41) Lewo (Early 1994a: 76)
a. Ve a-kan re!
neg 2sg-eat neg
‘Don’t eat it!’
b. Ve a-kan re toko!
neg 2sg-eat neg neg
‘Don’t eat it!’
c. Na-kan-ena toko!
nom-eat-nom desist
‘Desist from eating!’
The tripling structure is an innovation. The marker toko derives from a verb meaning
‘desist’. As a verb, it combines with a nominalization, which also expresses prohibition.
In the pattern in (41b), toko is therefore not a verb with a complement ‘eating’: the
form of the verb ‘eat’ is wrong and if it were the complement, the construction as a
whole would have to mean ‘desist from not eating’, i.e. the opposite from what is actu-
ally meant. Early (1994a: 77) stresses that (41b) has no phonological break between ve
akan re and toko and that it does not therefore mean ‘Don’t eat it, desist!’ or ‘Don’t it,
don’t!’ However, I find it rather plausible to suppose that this double clause structure
was the point of origin, an emphatic prohibition, which then, in good Jespersenian
fashion, bleached to a neutral prohibition.
(42) and (43) schematize the two cases of tripling discussed above.
 Johan van der Auwera

(42) neg1 neg2 Illustration

neg1 neg2 neg2#
neg2 neg2#
– emphatic – emphatic enNEG …nietNEG …niet#NEG

(43) neg1 neg2 X neg1 neg2 neg3 Illustration
+emphatic +emphatic –emphatic veNEG … reNEG … tokoNEG

Note, finally, that what happens in Lewo tripling is a bit like Flemish reemphasizing. In
both languages we had a –emphatic doubling strategy which became emphatic. In
Flemish it happened through reanalysis of the doubling construction, and Lewo
through the addition of yet a third negator.

3.4 Skipping the reanalysis of doubling

Leaving out of account the tripling just discussed, we see that the scenarios discussed
so far have a bipartite construction with two markers both of which are or become
negative. If the new marker is not negative already (like Belgian Brabantic niet#), the
reanalysis crucially takes place at a bipartite stage through the influence from the old
negative marker. However, there is at least one situation where the old marker can be
absent and the context can have a negation-inducing effect. Interestingly, the cases
documented concern emphatic negation only. The example in (44) (discussed in Det-
ges & Waltereit 2002: 187) concern French pas du tout ‘not at all’. In the context of pas
du tout occurring as an answer to a polar question, it can be shortened to du tout.
(44) - Est-ce votre avis?
Is-this your opinion
‘Is this your opinion?’
- Du tout!
of all
‘Not at all!’
The pas that could have been present is still fully negative, of course. It is not the case
that du tout is taking over from pas. Rather, du tout is just an economical, i.e. elliptical
version of pas du tout. It is hard to imagine how this phenomenon could ever make du
tout a general negator and thus this phenomenon does not really deserve the ‘Jes-
persen cycle’ label. Yet these facts are of course related to the Jespersen facts, and the
use of du tout should not be relegated to pragmatics. The elliptic use of du tout has
been conventionalized, in a way that distinguishes it from English at all, which does
not allow this elliptic use.
 Chapter 3. The Jespersen Cycles 

3.5 Another intermediate conclusion

The schema in (31) served as the intermediate conclusion of Section 3. It already

showed more Jespersen cycles than usually accepted. But this section pointed at even
more action. (31) showed that if constructions change in emphasis, they invariably
lose emphasis. But Section 3.1 showed that if Overdiep, Haegeman and Breitbarth are
right, constructions might also gain an emphatic value, at least to a limited degree. (31)
showed that an old negator will disappear. Section 3.2 did not contest this, but it docu-
mented a stage in which an old negator may survive without negative and even with-
out negative polarity meanings; in the case at hand, it survives as a marker of embed-
dedness. (31) embodies the claim that double negators can only simplify: this is not
correct, after doubling one may get tripling. Finally, Section 3.4 reminds us of an el-
lipsis phenomenon that allows an emphasizing element to function as an exponent of
negation without any intermediate doubling stage.

4. Conclusion

By now there are too many possible Jespersen cycles to try to represent them all in one
schema. I will use two schemas. The schema in (45) shows what happens to the nega-
tive constructions. In (45a), I describe the development of the combinations of NEG1
and either X (a minimizing or negative quantifier or any element of Miestamo (2005)
asymmetry) or Ø (in case the new negator is the clause-final repetition of the existing
one). The interesting stage is the third one: we either get a simplified solitary negator
or we get negator tripling. In (45b-d), I show what happens to the components of the
two source constructions. (45b) shows what happens to the old negator; the X in the
third stage stands for the Middle English expletive and for the subordinateness marker
of Belgian Brabantic. Sentences (45c-d) show how the new negators, arising through
either reanalysis ((45c)) or addition ((45d)), become second negators in the doubling
constructions, and then either new solitary ones or third negators.
(45) a. neg1 X or neg1 Ø neg1 neg2 Ø neg2 or neg1 neg2 neg3

b. neg1 neg1 X Ø

c. X neg2 neg2 or neg3

d. Ø neg2 neg2 or neg3

Diagram (46) describes the evolution of emphasis marking. Source constructions can
be either –emphatic or +emphatic, and both reanalysis of an X element and the
 Johan van der Auwera

repetition of a negator can yield –emphatic and +emphatic constructions, independ-

ent of whether the results are doubling or tripling constructions. Constructions can
more easily change from +emphatic to –emphatic (this is simply inflationary bleach-
ing), but a change from –emphatic to +emphatic is not to be ruled out (the Flemish
reemphasizing scenario discussed in 3.1.)
(46) neg1 X neg1 neg2 Ø neg2
–emphatic –emphatic –emphatic
neg1 neg2 neg3
–emphatic
neg1 Ø
neg1 neg2 neg3
+emphatic
neg1 X neg1 neg2 Ø neg2
+emphatic +emphatic +emphatic

I hope to have shown that pluralizing the label ‘Jespersen cycle’ makes sense. The Jes-
persen cycle is more than a straightforward progression from elements like neNEG to
pasNEG over neNEG … pasNEG, and even this cycle is far from straightforward. I am not,
of course, claiming that every variation will be equally frequent in the world’s lan-
guages. Most certainly not: a tripling cycle might be rare, as might be the cycle that
makes clause-final negators that start as repetitions of clause-earlier negators. But just
how rare these phenomena are we don’t know. Tripling, for example, is at least not ex-
ceedingly rare: it is also attested in a few Italian dialects (Parry 1997: 251) and more
widely in Bantu (Devos, Kasombo Tshibanda and van der Auwera 2008). I agree with
van Gelderen (2008) that to get the whole picture, we have to look at the whole world.

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 chapter 4

The negative cycle in Early

and Modern Russian*2

Olena Tsurska
Arizona State University

In this paper, I examine changes in the negative structures in the history of

Russian. The data indicate that both in Early and Modern Russian, multiple
negative elements could be used simultaneously to express sentential negation.
However, in Early Russian, the main preverbal marker ne is sometimes optional
when preverbal n-words are present, while in Modern Russian, the use of
ne is mandatory when both pre- and postverbal n-words are used. Using the
Minimalist framework, I show that Russian sentential negation has undergone
cyclical changes from Non-Strict to Strict Negative Concord, which involved
changes in the feature interpretability of Russian negative elements, more
specifically the loss of the [ineg] feature of the preverbal negative marker.

1. Introduction13

It has been suggested in the literature that linguistic change is cyclical, that is languages
tend to change from synthetic to analytic to synthetic. Various researchers have studied
different types of linguistic cycles such as subject cycle, aspect cycle, etc (Hodge 1970;
Givón 1984; van Gelderen 2008, in progress). One of the most famous studies on the

* Parts of this paper were presented at the Linguistic Cycles Workshop at Arizona State Uni-
versity and LASSO XXXVII in 2008. I thank these audiences for their comments on the paper. I
am deeply indebted to Elly van Gelderen for fruitful theoretical discussions, insightful com-
ments, helpful suggestions, and constant inspiration. I am also grateful to Jack Hoeksema,
Theresa Biberauer, Diana Vedovato, Cathleen Waters, and Terje Lohndal for helpful feedback.
All remaining errors are mine.
1. List of abbreviations used in this article: CE – common era, FUT – future tense, iNEG –
interpretable negative feature, iPOL – interpretable polarity feature, LF – logical feature, LI –
lexical item, M – masculine, NC – negative concord, NEG – negative marker, NegP – negative
phrase, NPI – negative polarity item, NQ – negative quantifier, PART – particle, PF – phono-
logical feature, PL – plural, PST – past tense, SG – singular, uNEG – uninterpretable negative
feature, uPOL – uninterpretable polarity feature.
 Olena Tsurska

negative cycle is the monograph by Otto Jespersen, Negation in English and Other Lan-
guages (1917), in which he argued that negative structures in languages tend to change
in the following manner. First, negation in a language is expressed by a negative adverb
or some adverbial-like expression (e.g. Old English na wiht ‘no creature’, which later
becomes not). With time, the adverb loses its semantic power and weakens becoming a
negative particle, and it may further become too weak, turn into a clitic, and get at-
tached to the verb it is negating (e.g. English -n’t ). The negative clitic then would re-
quire some extra reinforcement and an additional negative element may start being
used together with the clitic to express negation (double negation in English as in I don’t
see nothing.) In many cases, the clitic may get completely deleted, the reinforcing nega-
tive element becomes the only expression of negation, and the cycle begins again.
The negative cycle in Slavic has not been studied very extensively. The negative
structure in Russian, in particular, has not undergone the process of grammaticaliza-
tion that is usually involved in a linguistic cycle. However, the structure of the Russian
negative concord and the interaction between the preverbal negative marker and other
negative elements in a sentence has changed over time. In this study, I examine the
data from several Early Russian texts as well as Modern Non-Standard Russian dia-
lects, which reveal the ways for expressing sentential negation that are not present in
Modern Standard Russian. Using the Minimalist program and the analysis of the neg-
ative concord by Zeijlstra (2004, 2008), I show that the Russian negative concord has
been undergoing some changes. The data indicate that Early Russian had features of a
Non-Strict Negative Concord language, in which the preverbal n-words could be used
without the preverbal negative marker to express negation. Modern Standard Russian
is a Strict Negative Concord language, and no n-words are able to express sentential
negation alone. The corpora data from Modern Russian also indicate the frequent use
of minimizers, e.g. ni kapli (‘not a drop’), that strengthen the negative marker ne. I ar-
gue that this indicates the weakening of the [neg] features of ne, which might lead to
the continuation of the cycle and future reanalysis (if not disappearance) of ne.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical framework
used in this study. Section 3 includes a brief history of Russian and the data from a
variety of Early Russian and Modern Russian sources. Section 4 presents an interpreta-
tion of the data described in Section 3 and the analysis of the NC cycle in Russian.
Section 5 is a conclusion.

2. Theoretical considerations

In this section, I provide a brief overview of the main theoretical assumptions that I
use in my analysis of the Russian data.
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

2.1 Feature checking in Minimalism

According to Chomsky (2001, 2004, 2005, 2007), syntactic structures are formed from
the projections of lexical items (LIs) that are taken out of the lexicon. Each LI is con-
sidered to be a bundle of features: phonological, semantic, and formal. Phonological
features are interpreted at PF, and semantic features are interpreted at LF. Formal fea-
tures are categorical features and phi-features, and they carry the information for the
syntactic component. Formal features can be either interpretable or uninterpretable.
Uninterpretable features need to be checked and deleted during the syntactic deriva-
tion, otherwise they cannot be interpreted at LF, and the derivation crashes. Feature
checking is a process when a category with uninterpretable features can check them
against the same interpretable features of another category. Chomsky (2001) argues
that this takes place during the operation Agree when the category with an uninter-
pretable feature called a Probe looks down for another category with the same inter-
pretable feature (Goal) and gets the uninterpretable feature checked, or valued.
As summarized in Zeijlstra (2008), some researchers have slightly modified the
Chomskyan Probe-Goal relationship and have suggested that Agree can take place
from bottom up, i.e. the Probe with the uninterpretable feature can be looking up for
the corresponding Goal that c-commands the Probe. According to Zeijlstra (2008: 21),
this idea can be “traced back to Rizzi’s (1989) proposal for criteria (where semantically
active operators always had to occupy specifier positions whilst agreeing with their
respective heads)”.
Several researchers (Ura 1996; Hiraiwa 2001) have suggested the notion of Multi-
ple Agree. This phenomenon refers to cases when a single interpretable formal feature
enters into an Agree relationship with multiple uninterpretable formal features given
that the proper locality conditions are fulfilled:
(1) Multiple Agree (multiple feature checking) with a single probe is a single
simultaneous syntactic operation; Agree applies to all matched goals at the
same derivational point derivationally simultaneously. (Hiraiwa 2001: 69)
In this study, I consider the notion of Multiple Agree2 as well as the bottom up Probe-
Goal relationship plausible for my analysis of the feature interpretation of multiple
negative elements in Russian negative sentences.

2.2 Negative Concord

Russian is a Negative Concord (NC) language. NC is a linguistic phenomenon that

describes linguistic environments, in which multiple negative elements in a syntactic

2. Please see Haegeman & Lohndal (forthcoming) for an alternative account not using
Multiple Agree.
 Olena Tsurska

structure of the sentence express only one semantic negation. Italian is traditionally
given as an example of an NC language (from Zanuttini 1997):
(2) Non ha detto niente. Italian
neg has said nothing
‘S/he hasn’t said anything.’
As shown in (2), in addition to the negative marker, negative sentences in NC languag-
es can also contain other negative elements, called n-words (Laka 1990; Giannakidou
1998, 2000). N-words are negative indefinites that, on the one hand, behave like inher-
ently negative elements, e.g. they can be used as one-word answers, as in (3), and on the
other hand, require negative licensing in other contexts, as in (4):
(3) Kogo ty videl? Nikogo. Russian
who you saw nobody
‘Who did you see?’ ‘Nobody.’
(4) No vi ninguno. Spanish
neg 1sg-pst-see none
‘I didn’t see any.’ (from Vallduví 1994: 266)
In Russian, Czech, and other Slavic languages, the preverbal negative marker is obliga-
tory whenever n-words are used in the sentence. In Italian, however, the negative
marker is mandatory only if n-words are in the postverbal position, as in (2) above.
Giannakidou (1998), following den Besten (1986), calls the type of NC in which n-
words in the postverbal position require the presence of the negative marker, NC
proper (which can be further divided into Strict and Non-Strict). There are some lan-
guages where NC involves co-occurrence of two or more n-words without the negative
marker, and this kind of NC is called negative spread, however, this phenomenon will
not be of relevance in this study.
Two other types of elements that may occur in negative environments are negative
polarity items (NPIs) and negative quantifiers (NQs). Unlike n-words, NPIs do not oc-
cur only in negative sentences, but can also appear in questions (Hoeksema 1997). NPIs
require a licensor, which is often a negative or interrogative operator. N-words are often
argued to be self-licensing (Ladusaw 1992). NQs require no trigger as well, and unlike
n-words and NPIs, NQs are semantically negative, i.e. they carry independent negative
force and can express negation without the presence of any other negative element:
(5) I saw nobody.
If two or more NQs occur in the same clause, they yield a double negation reading.
According to Giannakidou (1998, 2000), there are two types of NC proper: Strict
and Non-Strict. Strict NC languages, like modern Slavic languages, require n-words to
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

be always accompanied by a preverbal negative marker, even if the n-word is in the

preverbal position. The following examples illustrate that:
(6) Nikdo nic neviděl. Czech
nobody nothing neg-saw
‘Nobody saw anything.’
(7) Neviděl nic.
neg-saw nothing
‘He didn’t see anything.’ (from Rechzieglova 1995: 119)
(8) Nic nikomu nie powiedziałem. Polish
nothing to- nobody neg said-1sg
‘I didn’t tell anybody anything.’
(9) Marysia nie dała nikomu książki.
Mary neg gave nobody book
‘Mary didn’t give anyone a/the book.’
(from Przepiórkowski and Kupść 1997: 8)
Non-Strict NC languages, such as Italian and Spanish, do not allow n-words to precede
the preverbal negative marker, i.e. if the n-word occurs in a subject position, the addi-
tion of the preverbal negative marker makes the sentence ungrammatical (unless the
n-word is emphasized, in which case the sentence will render a double negation read-
ing (from Zanuttini 1997: 8, 1997: 10 and Vallduví 1994: 266):
(10) Non ho visto nessuno. Italian
neg have seen nobody
‘I haven’t seen anybody.’
(11) Non ha ditto niente.
neg has said nothing
‘S/he hasn’t said anything.’
(12) Nessuno (*non) ha detto niente.
(13) No he visto a nadie. Spanish
neg has seen to nobody
‘I haven’t seen anybody.’
(14) No vi ninguno.
neg saw none
‘I didn’t see any.’
(15) Nadie (*no) ha dicho nada.
nobody neg has said nothing
 Olena Tsurska

There are different varieties of Catalan with respect to the NC type. One variety re-
quires n-words to be always used with preverbal negative markers, thus exhibiting a
Strict NC, as shown in (16) (from Zeijlstra 2004: 147):
(16) a. No ha vist (pas)3 ningu. Catalan (I)
neg has.3sg seen neg n-body
‘He didn’t see anybody.’
b. No functiona (pas) res.
neg works neg n-thing
‘Nothing works.’
c. Res *(no) functiona (pas).
In a Non-Strict NC variety of Catalan, preverbal n-words cannot be used with the
preverbal negative markers, as in (17):
(17) a. No ha vist (pas) ningu. Catalan (II)
neg has.3sg seen neg n-body
‘He didn’t see anybody.’
b. No functiona (pas) res.
Neg works neg n-thing
‘Nothing works.’
c. Res (*no) functiona (pas).

2.3 NEG feature interpretation in NC languages

In this study, I adopt Zeijlstra’s (2004, 2008) proposal that NC is a case of syntactic
agreement between the interpretable negative feature of the negative operator and un-
interpretable features of other negative elements.
Zeijlstra argues that “NC is an Agree relation between a single feature [ineg] and
one or more features [uneg]” (2008: 20). N-words in NC languages are indefinites that
are formally, but not semantically negative, i.e. they have a syntactic [uneg] feature.
According to Zeijlstra, the negative operator carrying [ineg] feature in NC languages
can be covert or overt. The negative marker in Non-Strict NC languages (like Italian
non) has [ineg] and is an overt negative operator. Contrary, in Strict NC languages, the
negative marker carries [uneg]. Zeijlstra presents a number of supporting arguments
for this proposal, including the evidence that the negative marker in Italian is a phono-
logical realization of the negative operator because it falls in the scope of the quantify-
ing DP like molto, which is not the case in the Strict NC language, like Czech.

3. Pas is the optional negative adverb that maybe used in NC chains in both Catalan varieties
(Zeijlstra 2004: 147).
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

In Strict NC languages, the covert negative operator “immediately c-commands

the highest instance of [uneg]”, as shown in the following examples from Czech
(Zeijlstra 2008: 25):
(18) Dnes nikdo *(ne)volá. Czech
Today n-body neg.calls
‘Today nobody is calling.’
(19) Milan nevidi nikoho. Czech
Milan neg.sees n-body
‘Milan doesn’t see anybody.’
(20) [Dnes Op¬[iNEG] [TP nikdo[uNEG] nevola[uNEG]]]
(21) [TP Milan Op¬[iNEG] [Neg° nevidi[uNEG]i [vP nikoho[uNEG] ti]]]
In Italian, as mentioned earlier, the negative marker is a phonological realization of the
negative operator, and the postverbal n-words can check their [uneg] features against
it, as in (23) (Zeijlstra 2008: 26):
(22) Gianni non telefona a nessuno. Italian
Gianni neg calls to n-body
‘Gianni doesn’t call anybody.’
(23) [TP Gianni [NegP non[iNEG] telefona [vP a nessuno[uNEG]]]].
When an n-word precedes the verb in a sentence without the preverbal negative marker,
then there is no overt negative operator to check the [uneg] features, therefore an ab-
stract operator, immediately c-commanding the n-word is assumed (Zeijlstra 2008: 27):
(24) Ieri nessuno ha telefonato a nessuno. Italian
Yesterday n-body has called to n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called anybody.’
(25) [Ieri Op¬[iNEG] [TP nessuno ha telefonato a nessuno]].
This analysis is suitable for my examination of the negative cycle in Russian. The cycle
involves the weakening of the negative elements, and therefore weakening and loss of
their features. My data indicate that Russian has changed from the Non-Strict to Strict
NC language, and Zeijlstra’s analysis of NC as syntactic agreement allows me to inter-
pret the change of the NC type in terms of feature change (e.g. the loss of the interpret-
able [ineg] feature of the sentential negative marker ne). The use of minimizers in
Modern Russian also proves that ne continues to lose its strength and requires rein-
forcement. This analysis is also consistent with the Feature Economy principle, which
states that it is more economical to minimize semantic and interpretable features (van
Gelderen in progress) than not to.
In this section, I have outlined the main theoretical considerations relevant to my
analysis of the Russian data, to which I now turn.
 Olena Tsurska

3. Negation in Russian

3.1 A brief note on the history of Russian

Russian, like other Slavic languages, comes from a Proto-Slavic, or Common Slavic/Sla-
vonic language that existed around two thousand years ago (Press 2007). By the ninth
century CE, the differences among numerous dialects of the Proto-Slavic language be-
come quite significant due to the migration and formation of individual Slavic states.
According to Press (2007, 2008), in the 9th century, the books were written in the
‘Slavonic’ language to be used in the Eastern Christian Church. A linguist Constantine
(who before his death took a name Cyril) created a written Slavonic alphabet based on
the language spoken in the area where he lived (modern Macedonia). This language
was Old Church Slavonic, and the alphabet is called ‘Glagolitic’. This alphabet was
widely used in Bulgaria, but some scholars who came to the Balkans in the tenth cen-
tury began using another alphabet closer to Greek, which is called ‘Cyrillic’. This lan-
guage and Cyrillic alphabet came to Russia in 988, when it took on Christianity. The
language was very close to languages spoken in Russia, and over the time it “became
more localized/Rusified, though it retained its ‘high style’ character, and may be re-
ferred to as the ‘Rus(s)ian recension of Old Church Slavonic’, or ‘Rus(s)ian Church
Slavonic’” (Press 2008: 7). In the 14–15th centuries, some scholars came to Russia from
the Balkans and brought with them an older form of Church Slavonic with many fea-
tures, which most likely had ceased to exist at that time in somewhat isolated Russia.
As Press points out, these features were adopted by the Russians because of their desire
to be “the bastion of Christianity in the East” (2008: 8). But only the written language
was influenced, and over the next couple of centuries it started to be used as purely
‘Church language’, or Russian Church Slavonic, and not in everyday speech. When
Peter the Great implemented linguistic reforms, he wanted the ‘Standard Russian’ to
reflect the ‘real’ speech. The language that is now Russian fully emerged by the middle
of the nineteenth century.

3.2 Early Russian

In Early Russian (11th -12th cc.), there appear to be two competing strategies for ex-
pressing sentential negation4. The first strategy, an indicator of its Indo-European
roots, is the use of the preverbal negative marker ne:
(26) …Koli sokol… ne dast gnezda svojego v obidu …
if falcon neg give nest his to harm
‘If a falcon doesn’t let his nest be harmed’… (The Igor Tale, 12th c.)

4. The examples of sentences in Early Russian are taken from the Anthology of Old Russian Litera-
ture by Stender-Petersen(1954) and from the Historical Grammar of Russian by Borkovskij (1978).
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

Occasionally, n-words can be also used in the presence of ne (preceding or following

it) to render a single instance of negation:
…i Xam i
(27) Afet, razdelivše zemlju, i žrebii metavše… ne
and Xam and Afet divide lands and coins toss neg
prestupati nikomuže v žrebii bratene…
cross no one part in deal taken
‘… and Xam and Afet divided the lands and tossed coins [to determine what
land belongs to whom] … for anyone not to cross the brother’s lands…’
(The Tales of Bygone Years, 12th c.)
(28) On že reče mi nikomou že bedy ne stvoriti
he part tell to-me to-no-one part harm neg cause
‘He tells me to cause harm to nobody.’ (Sinaj Paterik, 11th-12th c.)
(29) Nikoli že ne prezeri ouboga plačušta…
never part neg despise to-God crying
‘Never despise those crying to God…’ (Izbornik, 1076)
In addition to the use of the preverbal marker ne, n-words preceding the main verb
also serve as markers of sentential negation without the additional help of ne:
(30) … i nikto že mene vidit.
and no-one part me sees
‘…And nobody sees me.’ (Izbornik, 1076)
(31) I nikto že prixodil k nim…
and no-one part came to them
‘And nobody came to them...’ (Life of Feodosij Pečersky, 12th c.)
By the 15th -17th centuries, the use of preverbal n-words without the preverbal nega-
tive marker ne became less and less frequent, and according to Borkovskij (1978), sen-
tences such as (32) below became more prevalent in formal written documents and
not in colloquial speech:
(32) Nikto že bez truda venčan budet.
no-one part without work wed fut
‘Nobody will be wed without labor.’ (Domostroj, 16th c.)
N-words used together with the preverbal marker are quite prevalent in the texts of
that period:
(33) … I ja is požaru ničevo ne pospel vynest’
and I from fire nothing neg managed take
‘And I didn’t have time to take anything out of the fire.’
(An Appeal of V. Krečatnikov, 17th c.)
 Olena Tsurska

(34) Slugi že mimo xodašče ne daša jemu ničto že

servants part by passed neg gave to-him nothing part
‘The servants that passed by didn’t give him anything.’
(The Tale about Saints Boris and Gleb, 14th c.)
(35) Takovago gromu skazyvajut nigde nikto ne slyxal ot načala
such thunder say nowhere nobody neg heard from start
miru
world
‘They say that no one has heard such a thunder anywhere since the beginning
of the world.’ (Second Novgorod Chronicle, 14th c.)
Examples (33)-(35) show that, by the 17th century, Russian had the features of the
Strict NC language.

3.3 Modern Standard Russian

In Modern Standard Russian, sentential negation can be expressed by means of the

negative marker ne that always precedes the verb and nothing can typically be placed
between the verb and ne:
(36) Ja ne pročitala etu knigu.
I neg read this book
‘I have not read this book.’
(37) My ne xodili v kino.
we neg went to movies.
‘We did not go to the movies.’
Since Russian is an NC language, n-words occur together with ne in a sentence. To-
gether with the negative marker, n-words yield one instance of semantic negation (ex-
amples (42) and (43) below are from Brown (1999)):
(38) On nikogo ne videl.
he no-one neg see.pst.m
‘He did not see anyone.’
(39) *On nikogo videl.
(40) Ja včera nikuda ne xodila.
I yesterday nowhere neg went
‘I did not go anywhere yesterday.’
(41) *Ja včera nikuda xodila.
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

(42) Nikto nikogda nigde ni s kem ne tancuet.

no-who no-when no-where no with who neg dance
‘No one ever dances anywhere with anyone.’
(43) *Nikto nikogda nigde ni s kem tancuet.
As shown in (39), (41), and (43) above, the presence of n-words in a sentence is un-
grammatical without ne, thus Russian, as mentioned earlier, is a Strict NC language.

3.4 Modern non-standard Russian dialects

Most non-standard dialects of Russian exhibit similar NC patterns, i.e. n-words are
used only in the presence of the negative marker ne5:
(44) Nicevo-to nigde ne bylo
nothing nowhere neg was
‘There wasn’t anything anywhere.’ (Arhangelsk region)
(45) Ničevo my ne pokupali takova
nothing we neg bought of-a-sort
‘We bought nothing of a sort.’ (St. Petersburg region)
(46) Jona ni budo nikogda slobodna
she neg will-be never free
‘She will never be free.’ (Novgorod region)
(47) Naverno ni odin i ne voz’m’ot – srodu taka v’ortuška!
probably not-one and neg take from-birth such flirt
‘Probably no one will take [her] – she has always been such a flirt!’
(Pskov region)
(48) Nečovo ne podelyš
nothing neg do
‘There is nothing you can do.’ (Tver’ aka Kalinin region)
(49) Nikto uxu u nas ne pominat
nobody fish-soup with us neg mention
‘Nobody mentions ‘uha’ (fish soup) at our place.’ (Pskov region)
(50) Laptej ni najdeš ni u kogo
lapti neg find not with anybody
‘Nobody has lapti (‘handmade shoes from bark’) (you won’t find lapti).’
(Kaluga region)

5. The examples in (44)-(51) come from the collection of texts in non-standard Russian dia-
lects by Mel’ničenko (1985).
 Olena Tsurska

Table 1. History of Russian sentential negation6

11th - 12th c. 14th - 17th c. Present

Standard Russian Non-Standard Russian

ne +V ne +V ne +V ne +V ne +V
Pre- and postverbal Pre- and postverbal Pre- and postverbal Pre- and postverbal Preverbal
n-words + ne +V n-words + ne +V n-words + ne +V n-words + ne +V n-words
(frequent) without ne
Preverbal n-words Preverbal n-words Ne +V + minimiz-
without ne without ne (less ers ni kapli/ni čut’6
frequent)

(51) … Ničavo iz laxmotkaf v lafkax n’a brali

nothing from rags at stores neg take
‘We didn’t take any rags from the stores.’ (Ryazan region)
However, certain North Russian dialects (including the ones yielding the aforementioned
NC examples) still use the single negative marker strategy, i.e. they use n-words without
the mandatory preverbal ne (examples from Gorškova and Xmelevskaja 1986):
(52) Za vsju žys’ mne nikudy prixodilos’ xodit’
for whole life to-me nowhere had to go
‘I didn’t have to go anywhere all my life.’
(53) Mne ništo zdilajetsja
to-me nothing happen
‘Nothing will happen to me.’
(54) Nikto tut bol’še xoronenyj, kromja etix voinof
nobody here more buried except these soldiers
‘Nobody is buried here except these soldiers.’
The strategies for expressing sentential negation in the history of Russian are summa-
rized in Table 1 above.

4. Negative/ NC cycle in Russian

4.1 Feature interpretation in NC structures in the history of Russian

The data from the Russian texts of the 11th-16th cc. show several patterns in express-
ing sentential negation. The first pattern is the use of the preverbal negative marker ne
without any n-words accompanying it. The second pattern involves the use of the

6. See the discussion on the use of minimizers in Russian in 4.2 below.

 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

preverbal n-words, functioning as subjects and objects, and the absence of the prever-
bal ne. Finally, the last pattern is the use of both preverbal ne together with preverbal
and postverbal n-words.
The aforementioned patterns mirror different strategies employed by Negative
Concord (NC) languages. On the one hand, Early Russian resembles Italian and thus
appears to employ the Non-Strict NC strategies. On the other hand, however, there are
examples of sentences, though not very frequent, such as (27)–(29) and (33)–(35), that
look like the Modern Russian Strict NC.
Early Russian appears to be patterning the varieties of Catalan described in Zeijl-
stra (2004, 2008), in a way that it allows the preverbal n-words to be either sole mark-
ers of the sentential negation (like Catalan II) or be happily co-existing with the pre-
verbal negative marker ne to render one instance of sentential negation (Catalan I).
Brown (2003) has looked at the negation strategies in Old Church Slavonic texts
and Modern Russian and analyzed sentential negation in those languages within the
Minimalist framework. Brown claims that all NC languages differ with respect to
which features n-words possess. She argues that all n-words need to check some sort
of a feature, and in some languages this uninterpretable feature is [u pol] and in oth-
ers, [uneg]. [neg] feature in the Brown’s analysis is an abstract feature that expresses
sentential negation (the head of the NegP has this feature that is interpretable); [upol]
feature is also something that the head of the NegP has, and it is a feature that “ensures
that a negated clause contain some overt expression of negation” (2003: 169). There-
fore, “which of these two features [[u pol] or [u neg]] occurs in the sub-label of n-
words in a given language, in conjunction with the requirements of NegP, will deter-
mine whether or not a sentential negation marker is obligatory, optional, or disallowed
with preverbal n-words” (2003: 170). Brown further argues that, in Italian, n-words are
not inherently negative, and they have [u pol] in their sublable. The negative marker
non also has the same feature, while Neg has the interpretable [neg] feature. Either the
n-word or non move overtly to the NegP to check off the [upol] feature of the head
and also check their own [upol] feature by the interpretable [neg] feature of the NegP.
If the n-word is preverbal, it checks the [upol] feature of the head, making it unneces-
sary to have non in the sentence. In sentences with no n-words or postverbal n-words,
non is inserted into the head position of NegP to check off the [upol] feature, and the
postverbal n-words check their [upol] features covertly (Brown 2003).
Modern Russian n-words, according to Brown (2003), are inherently negative, i.e.
they have an unintepretable negative feature [uneg] instead of [upol]. The sentential
marker ne, however, has a [upol] feature, thus only ne and not n-words can check the
[upol] feature of the NegP. In languages, like Catalan and Old Church Slavonic, the
two NC patterns coexist rendering different negative sentences. Brown points out that
the NC system in Old Church Slavonic was in the “state of flux”, which was a result of
the on-going shift from the Italian-type to the Modern Russian-type NC. “This shift
involves a change in the uninterpretable feature in the label of n-words from [u pol]
 Olena Tsurska

to [u neg]” (Brown 2003: 177). Brown notes that the Catalan-type NC appears to be
an intermediate stage in such a shift.
Brown’s account raises several questions. First, she does not completely explain
the motivation for the introduction of the [u pol] feature into the NC configuration.
Second, the checking process is also very vague and does not seem to correspond to
the feature checking procedures described in the Minimalist program. For example, it
is not clear why the [u pol] feature of Neg is checked off by the [upol] feature of the
n-word or negative marker, and how the [upol] feature of the latter negative elements
is checked by the [neg] feature of Neg.
Zeijlstra’s (2004, 2008) analysis of the negative concord as syntactic agreement
seems more plausible because it is simpler in a sense that it does not require the intro-
duction of an additional feature for the analysis of the changes in the Russian NC
structures, and it is more consistent with the current Minimalist account of feature
checking and interpretation. Therefore, I use this analysis in my examination of the
changes in Russian negative structures.
In Modern Standard Russian, both n-words and the negative marker ne have [uneg]
that is checked by the negative operator with the [ineg] feature via Multiple Agree:
(55) [TP On [NegP Op¬[iNEG] [Neg° ne[uNEG] videl [VP nikogo[uNEG] ]]]]
Early Russian exhibits the signs of change in the negative concord structures, and most
examples indicate that the feature checking process was similar to that in modern Italian
NC structures. The following Italian examples are repeated here (Zeijlstra 2008):
(56) Gianni non telefona a nessuno Italian
Gianni neg calls to n-body
‘Gianni doesn’t call anybody.’
(57) [TP Gianni [NegP non[iNEG] telefona [vP a nessuno[uNEG]]]]
(58) Ieri nessuno ha telefonato a nessuno Italian
Yesterday n-body has called to n-body
‘Yesterday nobody called anybody.’
(59) [Ieri Op¬[iNEG] [TP nessuno ha telefonato a nessuno]]
The feature checking in NC sentences in Early Russian is illustrated below. Examples
(31) and (34) are repeated here as (60) and (62):
(60) I nikto že prixodil k nim…
and no-one part came to them
‘And nobody came to them...’
(61) [NegP Op¬[iNEG] [Neg° nikto že[uNEG] [VP prixodil k nim]]]
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

(62) Slugi že mimo xodašče ne daša jemu ničto že

servants part by passed neg gave to-him nothing part
‘The servants that passed by didn’t give him anything.’
(63) [TP Slugi [NegP ne[iNEG] daša [vP jemu ničto[uNEG]]]]
The data from the Early Russian texts indicate that the n-words are able to be sole
markers of the sentential negation in the preverbal positions (when they function as
subjects or objects). It is possible that at some point they were both formally and se-
mantically negative, i.e. they had an interpretable negative feature [iNeg], just like the
negative marker ne. Earlier n-words used to be followed by the particle že: nikto že,
nichego zhe, and this form was often used in the texts from which the examples in Sec-
tion 3.2 were taken. It is hard to determine precisely when the feature loss occurred
since the earliest Russian texts available to us already show a transition period in the
use of negation strategies, i.e. two competing forms of NC are used, and according to
my analysis, n-words already had [uneg] feature.
In later Russian texts, the instances of the n-words being the sole markers of the
sentential negation (features of a Non-Strict NC) become less and less frequent, and in
fact, it has been mentioned in the literature on the history of Russian that by the 16th
c. such use of n-words is found primarily in written literary texts, while the structures
with Strict NC become widely used in colloquial, informal speech (Borkovskij 1978).
This colloquial use was taken into consideration during the first language reforms by
Peter the Great; therefore, it is safe to assume that NC patterns in the Russian texts of
17th – 18th cc. truly reflected the state of the language at that time.
Modern Standard and Non-Standard Russian dialects exhibit the Strict NC behav-
ior. But a few words need to be said with respect to the use of n-words as sole markers
of negation in some of the non-standard dialects of Russian. Two scenarios are possi-
ble. On the one hand, one may assume that the preverbal negative marker has weak-
ened so much that it wasn’t able to express sentential negation anymore and the n-
words regained their semantic negative features and became new markers of negation.
On the other hand, a more plausible explanation is that certain regions of Russia pre-
served the two types of the NC, Strict and Non-Strict, prevalent in Early Russian, and
thus they continue to pattern NC structures that exist in Modern Catalan.
In summary, the examples from the Early and Modern Russian discussed above show
that Russian has undergone a change from a Non-Strict NC to a Strict NC language.

4.2 Emphatic negation in Modern Standard Russian

An additional piece of evidence for the weak status of the negative marker in Modern
Russian comes from the frequent use of minimizers in negative sentences. Minimizers
are markers of minimal quantity or extent (Vallduví 1994). When minimizers appear
in negative contexts, “the negation denotes the absence of a minimal quantity, and
hence the presence of no quantity at all” (Horn 1989: 400). Thus, in negative contexts,
 Olena Tsurska

minimizers add negative reinforcement. In English, examples of minimizers are a

word, an inch, a clue, etc:
(64) a. He didn’t say a word.
b. The car didn’t move an inch.
c. I don’t have a clue.
In Modern Standard Russian, several minimizers occur only in negative sentences,
namely ni kapli/ni kapel’ki (‘not a drop’) and ni čut’/ ni čutočki (‘not a bit’). Interest-
ingly, the use of these minimizers without ni is ungrammatical, as shown in (66):
(65) Mne etogo ni kapli ne xotelos’!
to-me this not drop neg wantpast
‘I didn’t want this one bit’ (Russian National Corpus)
(66) *Mne etogo kapli ne xotelos’!
(67) U nas net ni kapli somnen’ja…
with us neg-be not drop doubt
‘We don’t have a bit of doubt.’ (Russian Internet Corpus)
(68) Četyre tabletki analgina ni čut’ ne pomogli
four tablets analgesic not bit neg help
‘Four tablets of the analgesic didn’t help one bit.’ (Russian Internet Corpus)
(69) Ja tebe ni čutočki ne verju
I to-you not bit neg believe
‘I don’t believe you one little bit.’ (Russian Internet Corpus)
These examples suggest that, in Modern Standard Russian, ne is weak and requires
reinforcement from the minimizers. This claim is further supported by the example in
(70), in which the negative existential verb net is missing, and the negative meaning of
the second clause is rendered by the minimizer ni kapli:
(70) Postojanno odni i te že gnusnyje roži,
constantly one and same part disgusting faces
v glazax ni kapli intellekta.
in eyes not drop intelligence
‘Constantly, there are the same faces; there is not even a bit of intelligence in
their eyes.’ (Russian Internet Corpus)
Changes in negative constructions in Russian not only show the shift in the NC pat-
terns, but might also predict the future disappearance or reanalysis of the main nega-
tive marker ne in Russian.
 Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian 

5. Conclusions

In this paper, I have provided evidence that sentential negation in Russian has under-
gone major changes with respect to the NC patterns. I have shown that Russian has
changed from a Non-Strict NC to a Strict NC language. Zeijlstra’s analysis of NC as a
case of syntactic agreement allowed me to argue that the changes of the NC type in
Russian involved changes in the feature interpretability of Russian negative elements,
i.e. the loss of the [ineg] feature of the preverbal negative marker. The examples of
negative sentences in Modern Russian listed above have also shown that [uneg] fea-
ture of the preverbal negative marker continues to weaken, which might lead to a po-
tential reanalysis, if not disappearance, of ne. This study shows that the history of Rus-
sian sentential negation deserves attention and provides interesting data for further
studies of the NC changes in other languages.

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 chapter 5

Jespersen off course?

The case of contemporary Afrikaans negation*1

Theresa Biberauer
University of Cambridge and Stellenbosch University

This paper takes a closer look at how the properties of the Negative Concord
(NC) system in contemporary Afrikaans, both the standard and colloquial
varieties, relate to Jespersen’s Cycle (JC). It shows that Afrikaans differs from
familiar NC systems in respect of the source of its concord item (clause-final nie)
and that this difference has various important consequences as far as further JC
developments are concerned. Specifically, it is proposed that structural height
and deficient featural properties can disqualify a concord element from being
reanalysed as a “real” negator. In essence, then, “grammaticalisation beyond
the Cycle” is possible. The paper also considers JC-like developments in the
domain of quantifier negation, seeking to highlight how these may interact with
developments in the domain of sentential/predicate negation.

1. Introduction

This paper focuses on the cyclic developments that can be observed in the domain of
Afrikaans negation. Afrikaans is standardly cited as an example of an obligatory

* Grateful thanks to the audience at the Conference on Cycles held at Arizona State Univer-
sity (25–26 April 2008), particularly Johan van der Auwera, Elly van Gelderen, Jack Hoeksema,
Terje Lohndal and Clifton Pye; to Anne Breitbarth, Chris Lucas and Sonia Cyrino for their
stimulating questions following presentation of similar material at the Cambridge SyntaxLab
(29 April 2008); to the CGSW23 audience (Edinburgh, 11 June 2008), particularly Doris Penka
and Hedde Zeijlstra; and to the audience at DiGSX (Cornell, 8 August 2008), particularly Montse
Batllori, Tony Kroch and John Whitman; to Liliane Haegeman and Anne Breitbarth for con-
structive comments on an earlier version of this text; and, finally, to an anonymous reviewer for
an exceptionally helpful review. Thanks too to Elly van Gelderen for her lenient interpretation
of the notion ‘deadline’. This work-in-progress is supported by AHRC Grant No. AH/E009239/1
(“Structure and Linearisation in Disharmonic Word Orders”).
 Theresa Biberauer

Negative Concord (NC)1 language which differs from its Germanic parent, non-NC
Dutch, in requiring not only a negation element (e.g. a sentential negator or some
negative quantifier2), but also, necessarily, a clause-final concord element, nie. The rel-
evant difference is illustrated in (1–2):
(1) a. Ik ben niet rijk Dutch
I am not rich
‘I am not rich.’
b. Ek is nie1 ryk nie2 Afrikaans
I is not rich neg
‘I am not rich.’ (≠ ‘I am not not rich)
(2) a. Zij hebben nooit een auto gehad Dutch
they have never a car had
‘They never had a car.’
b. Hulle het nooit ‘n motor gehad nie2 Afrikaans
they have never a car had not
‘They never had a car.’
If we – rather simplistically, as will become clear below – divide up Jespersen’s Cycle
(JC; cf. Jespersen 1917) as indicated in (3), Afrikaans would, then, seem to be a Stage III
language, while its parent is synchronically stage I, i.e. a Double Negation language:3
(3) I. neg1 … II. neg1 … (neg2) III. neg1 … neg2 IV. neg3
dn Optional nc Obligatory nc dn
What this paper aims to show is, first, that the characterisation of Afrikaans as a Stage
III language is only partially correct; secondly, that modern Afrikaans does not, as is
sometimes assumed, appear to be undergoing the “next step” in JC by developing into
a Stage IV language, but that also does not mean that it is “inert” in the context of this
cycle; and finally, that there appear to be good syntactic reasons why Afrikaans is be-
having as it is. Our central contention, then, is that Afrikaans, for readily identifiable

1. Abbreviations used in this chapter are the following:

NC = Negative Concord; DN = Double Negation (i.e. non-NC); JC = Jespersen’s Cycle; NEG =
negative concord element; SA = Standard Afrikaans; CA = Colloquial Afrikaans; NPI = negative
polarity item;
2. We avoid the term n-word, which is very commonly used to refer to negative quantifiers in
the context of NC languages (cf. Laka 1990/1994, Giannakidou 2000, 2005, Herburger 2001 and
Zeijlstra 2004). The reasons for this will become clear in Section 4.
3. Roberge (2000) shows that the varieties of 17th century Dutch spoken by settlers at the
Cape were also Stage II varieties, lacking the NC possibilities available in earlier Dutch (cf. also
Ponelis 1993 and Zeijlstra 2004). As such, it does not seem plausible to assume that Afrikaans’s
NC property, which only emerged strongly during the late 19th century, in fact originated in one
of the 17th century dialects introduced to the Cape. We return to this point in Section 4.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

reasons, differs in JC terms from better-studied languages and that its future progres-
sion in respect of the (simplified) schema in (3) can be schematised in the manner
given below:
(4) a. “Traditional” JC expectation for Afrikaans:
Stage III → Stage IV, i.e. nie1 will become optional, ultimately to be replaced by
nie2
Cf. French: ne … pas → (ne) … pas → pas
Std French Colloquial French
English: ne …(noht) → (ne) … no(h)t → not
Old English Modern English
*Afrikaans: nie1 … nie2 → (nie1) … nie2 → nie2
Modern Future Afrikaans
Afrikaans
b. Actual JC development in Afrikaans:
nie1 → nie1 … (nie2) → nie1 … nie2
Dutch Early Afrikaans Modern Afrikaans
The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 outlines the relevant background on Afri-
kaans negation; Section 3 focuses on current developments affecting the language’s
concord element (nie2 in (1) and (2) above), while Section 4 considers developments
affecting other negative elements; Section 5 then suggests a (partial) generative analy-
sis of what appear to be the core developments, with Section 6 concluding by spelling
out some predictions and extensions of the account offered here.

2. Afrikaans negation: The basic facts

Arguably the most well-known fact about Afrikaans negation is the fact that it requires
two identical negators in the absence of specific negative quantifiers/indefinites – cf.
(1) above, which clearly illustrates this property. These two nies are, however, rather
different, a fact that has also frequently been observed in both the generative and the
descriptive literature (cf. Waher 1978, Robbers 1992, 1997, Ponelis 1993, Donaldson
1993, Oosthuizen 1998, Bell 2004a, and Biberauer 2007, 2008a; see, however, Mol-
nárfi 2002 for a contrary view in terms of which these elements are viewed as “multiple
spellouts” of a single lexical item). Specifically, the difference is that while nie1 is a
“real” negator, contributing negative semantics to structures in which it appears, nie2 is
a concord element, which does not contribute its own negative meaning (we will re-
turn to the matter of the features associated with Afrikaans negation elements in
 Theresa Biberauer

Section 5.1 below).4 The difference between the two elements emerges clearly when we
consider their behaviour in respect of:
a. omissibility
b. modifiability
c. reinforcement; and
d. stressability (cf. Biberauer 2007 and 2008a for more detailed discussion)
Taking omissibility first, we see that omitting nie1 results in ungrammaticality (5),
whereas omission of nie2 just sounds as if it is was forgotten (6a), being a particularly
common feature of L2 Afrikaans, but also surfacing in colloquial L1 Afrikaans; fur-
ther, it is also an obligatory feature of “headlinese” (6b):5
(5) a. Hy kom nie1 in nie2
he come not in not
‘He doesn’t come in/He isn’t coming in.’
b. *Hy kom in nie2
he come in not
(6) a. Hy kom nie1 in
he come not in
‘He doesn’t come in/He isn’t coming in.’

4. Worth noting here is that the syntactic properties of the two nies in Afrikaans may be dis-
tinct, but that this need not be true of their semantic properties. Thus Biberauer & Zeijlstra (2009),
for example, argue that both nies in standard Afrikaans are in fact semantically non-negative in
the way that negative markers in strict NC languages more generally are (cf. Zeijlstra 2004 and
following). The syntactic and phonological differences between the two nies then follow from the
fact that these semantically identical elements are inserted into different syntactic slots (a lower
vP-related adjunct slot in the case of nie1 and a left-peripheral head slot in the case of nie2).
5. The extent to which nie2 is an entrenched feature of L1 Afrikaans generally, irrespective of
the variety concerned, is clearly illustrated by the fact that this element still features promi-
nently even in the matrilectal variety that has undoubtedly been most affected by English, so-
called Kaaps spoken in the Cape by people of mixed-race origin (cf. Roberge 2002 and McCor-
mick 2002). This is clearly illustrated in the following attested utterance:
(i) Õs praatie yntlik regte Afrikaans nie; Õs praat Kaapse Afrikaans,
us speak-not actually real Afrikaans neg us speak Cape Afrikaans,
Engels en Afrikaans deu’mekaar.
English and Afrikaans mixed-up
‘We don’t actually speak real Afrikaans; we speak Kaaps, English and Afrikaans all
mixed up’
[source: Dyers, C. 2007. An investigation into the role of the Afrikaans language in indexing the in-
dividual and collective self among some township youth in South Africa. Uluslararası Sosyal
Aratırmalar Dergisi The Journal Of International Social Research 1(1): 83–101]
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

b. See ‘is nie verkoop’

Sea is not sold
‘Sea wasn’t sold.’ (Die Burger – 26/08/2008)
Comparison of the modification possibilities exhibited by the two nies reveals that nie1
can be modified in various ways (7); this is not possible with nie2.
(7) a. Jy let glad/ hoegenaamd/ absoluut/ geheel en al nie1
you attend altogether/ at-all/ absolutely/ whole and all not
op nie2
up neg
‘You aren’t remotely paying attention’
b. *Jy let nie1 op glad/hoegenaamd/absoluut/geheel en al nie2
Further, nie1 can also be replaced by a more emphatic negator, in contrast to nie2. (8)
illustrates the type of reinforcement one might encounter in formal registers, while (9)
is typical of spoken registers (we return to structures of this type in Section 4 below):
(8) a. Ons is nie1 beïndruk nie2
us is not impressed not
‘We are not impressed.’
b. Ons is geensins beïndruk nie2
us is not-remotely impressed not
‘We are not remotely impressed.’
c. *Ons is nie1 beïndruk geensins
(9) a. Hy wil nie1 luister nie2
he will not listen not
‘He won’t listen.’
b. Hy wil g’n niks luister nie2
he will no(ne) nothing listen not
‘He won’t listen at all.’
c. *Hy wil nie1 luister g’n niks
Finally, as (10) shows, nie1 differs from nie2 in terms of stressability:
(10) a. Ek weet nooit/nie1 wat hy doen nie2
I know never not what he do neg
‘I never know what he’s doing/I don’t know what he’s doing/he does.’
b. *Ek weet nooit/nie1 wat hy doen nie2
The differences between the two nies are summarised in Table 1:
 Theresa Biberauer

Table 1. Summary comparison of the properties of nie1 and nie2 in Afrikaans

Property nie1 nie2

1. Omission → ungrammaticality Yes No

2. Modifiability Yes No
3. Substitution by emphatic negator Yes No
4. Stressability Yes No

What we see, then, is that nie1 and the position associated with the “real” negator can
be strengthened in various ways, whereas nie2 cannot. In the context of JC, this is par-
ticularly significant as it unambiguously indicates that the “real” negator in Afrikaans,
i.e. neg1 in (3), is not a weak element (cf. Cardinaletti & Starke 1999 for discussion of
strong vs weak elements). The significance of this fact becomes clear if we consider
Jespersen’s own description of the Cycle that now bears his name:
(11) “The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us witness
the following curious fluctuation: the original negative adverb is first weak-
ened [my emphasis – TB], then found insufficient and therefore strengthened,
generally through some additional word, and in its turn may be felt as the
negative proper and may then in course of time be subject to the same devel-
opment as the original word.” (Jespersen 1917: 4)
According to Jespersen, then, introduction of nie2 should have been preceded by weak-
ening of nie1, whereafter nie1 should remain weak, with nie2 progressively assuming
the role of “real” negator. In reality, however, it appears to be nie2 that is weak, with nie1
behaving in a way that resembles the single sentential negators in other languages.
Consider the comparison with English given in (12):
(12) a. Omission: leads to a change in meaning – cf. I will (not) give up running
b. Modifiability: possible in both formal – cf. I will absolutely/definitely not
give up running – and informal registers – cf. I will so not give up running
c. Substitution by emphatic negator: once again possibly in both registers –
cf. I will not remotely/never/not on your life/no ways give up running!
d. Stressability – I will not give up running
Taking this into account, we see that Afrikaans is not a typical Stage III language in
Jespersonian terms: functionally, nie2 is clearly the new negator, just as English noht,
French pas and Dutch niet were at one stage in the history of those languages; for-
mally, however, nie2 more closely resembles the original negators in the other lan-
guages – i.e. ne in earlier English and Modern French, and ne/en in Middle Dutch – all
of which undeniably underwent weakening during the course of their history (al-
though see Kiparsky & Condoravdi 2006 on the question of cause-and-effect here).
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

Given that Afrikaans is clearly different in respect of the formal properties associ-
ated with its negators, it is justified to ask whether this language will proceed to the
next stage of JC in the way that familiar Western European languages have. If phono-
logical weakening of the original negator is a necessary prerequisite for this progres-
sion, the answer would appear to be no: even if – and there is no evidence to suggest
this – nie1 had at some point in its prior history undergone phonological weakening so
as to create the appropriate conditions for the introduction of nie2, it is clear that nie1
is synchronically strong, while nie2 is currently weak. From a phonological perspec-
tive, then, there would appear to be no motivation for progression to Stage IV.
Alternatively, it may be the case that semantico-pragmatic rather than phonologi-
cal considerations drive the weakening of the initial negator, leading to the possibility
of its ultimate replacement by an originally reinforcing negation element (cf. Dahl
2001, Schwenter 2002, 2005, 2006, Kiparsky & Condoravdi 2006 and Condoravdi 2007
for discussion of this possibility). On this view, then, semantic bleaching is a crucial
ingredient in the move from Stage II to III. For Kiparsky & Condoravdi, an originally
emphatic optional NC negation pattern at Stage II becomes the neutral (i.e. obligatory)
one at Stage III, with the functional consideration that languages must supply their
users with a means to express the distinction between neutral and emphatic negation
then triggering further developments, which may include the loss of the original nega-
tion and the rise of a new reinforcer; the possibility of retaining the original negation
and adding a further reinforcer is, however, not excluded (cf. also van der Auwera this
volume, 2009). Schwenter (2002, 2005, 2006), in turn, points out that the function of
the originally reinforcing negator can also be to distinguish negated clauses on the
basis of their discourse status (e.g. those expressing discourse-old or inferable proposi-
tions vs those which do not). Once again, subsequent bleaching, leading from Stage II
to Stage III, is a possibility on this view, although it need not occur: the newly intro-
duced concord element may simply retain its specific semantic/pragmatic function,
enabling the language in question to systematically distinguish different negation
functions that are not explicitly encoded in all languages (cf. Miestamo 2005 and van
der Auwera 2009 for overview typological discussion). Importantly, then, semantico-
pragmatic accounts of the course of JC highlight various points at which the cycle may
“stall”: continuation to Stages III and IV depends on speakers’ lexical choices in re-
spect of the elements they employ in neutral vs emphatic contexts.
Looking at standard Afrikaans from this type of perspective, it would seem that
nie2, as an obligatory element6, and moreover a phonologically weak one, is ill-suited
for reanalysis as an element serving emphatic or discourse-sensitive functions. The
reality is, however, somewhat different. As we shall see below, nie2 is not as uninvolved
in emphatic structures as one might naturally suppose. At the same time, it is, however,

6. Cf. Reinhart (2006), Fox (2000), Dahl (2001), Kiparsky & Condoravdi (2006) and Biber-
auer & Richards (2006) for discussion of the inverse relationship between obligatoriness and
“extra/special interpretations”.
 Theresa Biberauer

clear that nie1’s phonological strength has not rendered it immune to the kind of
strengthening that JC leads us to expect in respect of “real” negators; strikingly, how-
ever, the observed strengthening does not involve nie2, i.e. Afrikaans shows no signs of
progressing to Stage IV.
In the following sections, we will consider two types of synchronic variation in the
domain of Afrikaans negation in order to establish more precisely what course this
language appears to be on in the context of JC. Section 3 specifically considers nie2-
related developments, whereas Section 4 focuses on developments in the domain of
negative quantifiers.

3. Current developments I: The distribution of nie2

In the preceding section, we characterised nie2 as an element which obligatorily sur-

faces in all negation structures in standard Afrikaans, thereby underlining Afrikaans’s
status as a Stage III language. Before we consider the behaviour of this element in more
detail, it is worth noting an important context in which nie2 consistently fails to sur-
face. Consider (13):
(13) a. Hy kom waarskynlik nie1 (*nie2)
he come probably not neg
‘He probably isn’t coming’
b. Sy ken hom nie1 (*nie2)
she know him not neg
‘She doesn’t know him’
c. Wie ken sy nie1 (*nie2)?
who know she not neg
‘Who doesn’t she know?’
In each of these structures, then, nie2 is barred. That it is indeed nie1 which occupies
clause-final position in these examples is clear from the properties of this final nie: as
(14) shows, it cannot be omitted without resulting in meaning change (i.e. polarity
reversal) and it can be modified, reinforced and stressed:
(14) a. Hy kom waarskynlik
he come probably
‘He is probably coming’
b. Hy kom beslis nie1
he come definitely not
‘He is definitely not coming’
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

c. Hy kom geensins nie2

he come not-remotely neg
‘He is not remotely coming’
d. Hy kom nie1
he come not
‘He is not coming.’
The question that now arises is whether examples such as those in (14) compromise
Afrikaans’s status as a Stage III NC language? Biberauer (2007, 2008a) argues that they
do not. If we consider the embedded clauses corresponding to the structures in (14),
we see that these each contain the expected two nies:
(15) a. Ek dink dat hy waarskynlik nie1 kom nie2
I think that he probably not come neg
‘I think that he probably isn’t coming.’
b. Ek dink dat sy hom nie1 ken nie2
I think that she him not know neg
‘I think that she doesn’t know him.’
c. Ek weet wie sy nie1 ken nie2
I know who she not know neg
‘I know who she doesn’t know.’
Against this background, Biberauer (op. cit.) follows den Besten (1986) and Robbers
(1992) in proposing that (14)-type structures do not differ from their embedded coun-
terparts in featuring two nies; they simply differ from the latter structures in involving
a configuration which leads to deletion of the second nie (nie2). Den Besten (1986: 202)
specifically postulates the filter in (16):
(16) Doubly Filled Neg Filter (cf. den Besten 1986: 202; cf. also Robbers 1992):
* nie nie
For den Besten, then, the second in a sequence of two nies will necessarily be deleted.
This is, however, too strong, as the following data show:
(17) a. Hy kom nie1 nie1 nie2
he come not not neg
‘He’s not not coming’, i.e. he is coming
b. Ek sien nie1 die tweede ‘nie’ nie2
I see not the second nie not
‘I don’t/can’t see the second nie.’
 Theresa Biberauer

In light of (17), Biberauer (2007, 2008a) proposes a haplology mechanism in terms of

which the configuration in (18) is ruled out, while that in (19) is ruled in:
(18) [φ… nie nie2] → nie nie2
(19) [φ… nie ] [nie2 …]
In terms of Biberauer’s system, then, nie2 will undergo deletion at PF wherever it is
spelled out adjacent to another nie located in the same phonological phrase, whereas it
will survive deletion wherever adjacent nies are not assigned to the same phonological
phrase. The generally accepted view that Afrikaans is a Stage III language is therefore
not undermined by examples in which nie2 fails to surface: this element is always
present during the syntactic derivation of the structures in question, its ultimate ab-
sence being a consequence of post-syntactic deletion at PF.
With this much in place, we can now compare the distribution of nie2 in standard
and colloquial Afrikaans (henceforth SA and CA respectively). As established above,
clause-final nie2 is obligatory in SA clauses containing a negated element, regardless of
whether this is the sentential negator nie1 or a specific negative quantifier. This is also
true in CA, although native-speakers do occasionally “leave out” the final nie, a phe-
nomenon which appears to be a consequence of performance factors as it tends to
occur at the ends of particularly long sentences and/or where speakers are evidently
rushed in their delivery. Final nie is, however, undoubtedly mostly present in CA and
speakers are certainly not consistent about always leaving nie2 out in specific clausal
contexts; therefore it seems justified to conclude that this variety does not differ from
the standard in respect of the realisation of nie2 in clausal domains. In non-clausal
domains, i.e. where negation has narrow scope (so-called constituent negation), the
picture is strikingly different, however. There only appear to be two non-clausal con-
texts in which SA systematically requires two nies, and these are illustrated in (20) (see
note 4 for an apparently idiosyncratic double-nie-containing form):
(20) a. Nie1 die geld nie2, maar die tyd pla hom
not the money neg but the time worry him
‘Not the money, but the time worries him.’
b. A: Wie het my boek gesien?
who have my book seen
‘Who has seen my book?’
B. Niemand nie2
no-one neg
‘No-one.’
In (20a), a clearly non-clausal focused constituent which has been negated surfaces
with two nies and in (20b), we see that negative quantifiers in fragment answers also
prescriptively require nie2. Leaving aside the possibility that negative fragment an-
swers in fact entail elided full clauses (pace Giannakidou 2000, 2005; cf. Watanabe
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

2004 and Zeijlstra 2008 for discussion of the non-trivial problems associated with this
type of analysis), it is clear that nie2 in SA is available in restricted constituent negation
contexts. Generally, however, negated constituents are not independently associated
with their own nie2. Thus the structures in (21) are both impossible in SA:
(21) a. *Dit moet nie1 langer nie2 as 10 000 woorde wees nie2
it must not longer neg than 10 000 words be neg
‘It mustn’t be any longer than 10 000 words.’
[correct: Dit moet nie/nie langer as 10 000 woorde wees nie2]
b. *Sy skryf nooit nie2 so baie nie2
she write never neg so much neg
‘She never writes so much.’
[correct: Sy skryf nóóit so baie nie2]
As the prescriptively correct forms given beneath each example show, SA places addi-
tional emphasis on the required negation element rather than employing an “extra”
nie2. In CA, by contrast, nie2 is productively used in these contexts, with both examples
in (21) constituting well-formed CA structures.7 Ponelis (1993: 454) suggests that
structures like (21b) only occur “very infrequently” and only in “highly informal style”,
but this does not appear to be the case in CA today as all the informants I consulted

7. Native-speakers I consulted concur that clause-final nie2 may readily be dropped in struc-
tures of the type illustrated in (21a) and some (including myself) even feel that the structure
lacking final nie2 sounds more natural than the alternative. The same informants did not have
the same judgements about (21b), though: here final nie2 was universally regarded as the form
that speakers would ordinarily use. This difference, the details of which we leave aside for future
research, is interesting, particularly in view of the fact that there appears to be an idiosyncratic
comparative-containing form that informants view as “perfectly standard” which requires nie2 to
surface clause-internally: as (ii) shows, nie minder nie appears to be a fixed emphatic compara-
tive which is somehow “sealed off ” from the rest of the clause, thereby precluding the need for
the otherwise prescriptively obligatory clause-final nie2:
(i) Moeder Natuur het vir nie1 minder nie2 as drie beskermende lae
Mother Nature have for no less neg than three protective layers
gesorg
cared
‘Mother Nature provided no less than three protective layers’.
(cf. Donaldson 1993: 410)
(ii) *Moeder Natuur het vir nie1 minder as drie beskermende lae gesorg nie2
As noted by an anonymous reviewer, the fact that a particular comparative structure ((i) above)
should already be readily accepted by some native-speakers and that clause-internal nie2 is more
generally a feature of negative comparatives in CA is also interesting if we look beyond Afrikaans
since comparative contexts also seem to be a good host for so-called expletive negation (cf. Horn
1989, Espinal 1992, 2000, 2007 and Rooryck 2008). Worth noting in this connection is that pos-
itive comparatives do not permit “expletive” nie2 – cf. (iii) – although exceptive clauses and those
containing approximative adverbs in CA, for example, appear to do so optionally– cf. (iv-v):
 Theresa Biberauer

readily accepted a wide range of examples featuring this “extra” nie2. Some of the avail-
able possibilities are illustrated in (22):8
(22) a. Ek sou nooit nie2 so iets doen nie2
I would never not such something do neg
‘I would never do that kind of thing.’
b. Sy het nêrens nie2 tuis gevoel nie2
she have nowhere neg home felt neg
‘There was nowhere she felt at home, i.e. she didn’t feel at home anywhere.’

(iii) Hy is langer as ek (*nie2)

he is taller than I neg
‘He is taller than I am.’
(iv) Hy vertrek sonder dat ek agterkom (nie2)
he leaves without that I realise neg
‘He leaves without me realising it.’
(v) Hy kon nouliks staan (nie2)
he could barely stand neg
‘He could barely stand.’
Whether (iv-v), or, in fact, the comparative-containing examples cited above actually represent
instances of expletive negation (assuming this to be a coherent notion) must, however, be open
to doubt. This is because core expletive negation contexts identified by earlier researchers fea-
ture not only an expletive nie2, but also an extraneous nie1 in Afrikaans (cf. also Weiss 2002: 323ff
on Bavarian ned). Consider (vi):
(vi) Hoe gelukkig was ons nie1 gewees nie2!
how lucky was us not been neg
‘How lucky we were!’
(vii) Totdat jy nie1 klaar is nie2, bly jy sit!
until you not finished are neg stay you sit
‘You stay sitting until you’ve finished!’
(viii) Voordat jy nie1 ophou huil nie2, kry jy nie1 kos nie2
before you not stop cry neg get you not food neg
‘Until you stop crying, you won’t get any food.’
 e leave to future research the question of how “extra” nie2-containing structures like (i) and (iv-
W
v) relate to those, which, like (vi), feature both an “extra” concord element and an “extra” nie1.
8. Note that application of the differentiating criteria discussed in Section 2 make it clear in
each case that we are dealing with an additional nie2 and not an extra nie1. Thus each of the nies
under consideration cannot be modified, replaced by stronger forms or stressed, whereas they
can – and standardly are – omitted.
Also worth noting in connection with these structures is that they appear to be of the same type
found in certain Dutch dialects, notably Aarschots, which has often been viewed as the source
for Afrikaans nie2 (cf. Pauwels 1958, but see den Besten 1986 and Roberge 2000 for discussion of
the problems associated with this hypothesis). See also Aelbrecht (2006) for recent discussion of
what appears to be the same phenomenon in Asse Dutch.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

c. Hy het niks nie2 geld nie2

he have nothing not money not
‘He has absolutely no money.’
d. Hulle gee niemand nie2 ‘n kans nie2
they give no-one neg a chance neg
‘They don’t give anyone a chance.’
e. Geen mens nie2 kan dit verstaan nie2
no person neg can it understand neg
‘Not a soul can understand that.’
f. Hy het niks anders nie2 as ‘n Mercedes gery nie29
he have nothing other neg than a Mercedes driven neg
‘He drove nothing other than a Mercedes.’
As the examples show, both simple and complex expressions containing a negative
quantifier can be rendered emphatic by the presence of an extra nie2. (22f) is particu-
larly interesting as native-speakers agree that this example is considerably less infor-
mal than the other examples in (22), a matter which we leave aside here (although see
also note 7 – it seems that comparative(-like) forms involving negatives are particu-
larly compatible with “extra” nie2). At the opposite end of the spectrum, it is also worth
noting that negative quantifier subjects – aside from geen mens nie2 as in (22e), which
may be an idiosyncratic lexicalisation (cf. also nie minder nie, niks anders nie) – appear

9. Note that Donaldson (1993: 410) cites this example without clause-final nie2. Consultation
with native-speakers, however, confirms my own judgement that nie2 is possible here. This
judgement is further reinforced by a google search which produced structures such as the fol-
lowing, both, strikingly, drawn from academic texts:
(i) Die vermeerdering van kennis is niks anders nie2 as die
the increase of knowledge is nothing other neg than the
natuurlike seleksie van hipoteses nie2
natural selection of hypotheses neg
‘Increasing knowledge is nothing other than the natural selection of hypotheses.’
[source: Snyman, B. 1995. Wetenskapbeelde in die Geesteswetenskappe. Pretoria:
hsrc Press, p.42]
(ii) Streng etimologies beteken ‘metodologie’ niks anders nie2 as die
strictly etymologically mean ‘methodology’ nothing other neg than the
logika onderliggend aan die implementering van wetenskaplike metodes in die
logic underlying to the implementation of scientific methods in the
bestudering van die werklikheid
study of the reality
‘Strictly etymologically, ‘methodology’ means nothing other than the logic underlying
the implementation of scientifc methods in the study of reality’
[source: Mouton, J. and H. Marais 1988. Basiese Begrippe. Pretoria: HSRC Press, p16]
 Theresa Biberauer

to be maximally incompatible with “extra” nie2, regardless of register. This fact, which
we once again leave aside here10, is illustrated in (23):
(23) *Niemand nie2 ken die antwoord nie2
no-one neg know the answer neg
≠ ‘No-one knows the answer.’
To summarise, then: CA makes systematic use of nie2 in a non-clausal context that is
not generally available in SA, namely that in which specific negated constituents are
emphasised. The use of nie2 in emphatic contexts contrasts with its absence in neutral
contexts: wherever clause-internal nie2 is deleted in (22), a less emphatic interpretation
results. Strikingly, nie2 is also generally dropped in negative fragment answers in CA
(cf. also Donaldson 1993: 409–410), with the equivalent of (20b) in the spoken lan-
guage being viewed by many speakers as an emphatic fragment answer. To generalise,
then, whereas nie2 is obligatory in the clausal domain in both CA and SA, it is, to
varying degrees optional in the non-clausal domain (cf. Biberauer 2008b for further
discussion of the diachronic aspects of this difference). For both SA and CA, an across-
the-board characterisation of the system in question in JC terms therefore seems im-
possible: while the clausal domain has ostensibly reached Stage III (at least insofar as
this stage entails the obligatory presence of two negation elements delivering NC
structures), the non-clausal domain is very evidently at Stage II (optional NC, with the
optional negator therefore delivering an “extra” interpretive effect in accordance with
our expectations regarding optionality).
This hybrid state of affairs has not, to the best of my knowledge, been explicitly
noted before. It is clearly not compatible with the idealised JC schema in (3), and even
more articulated divisions of JC than that presented in (3) (cf. Jespersen 1917 and also
recent discussion in Zeijlstra 2004 and Willis 2008) do not, also as far as I am aware,
accommodate a language exhibiting the properties of either SA or CA. Partially, this is
unsurprising as JC focuses on sentential/predicate negation and the developments dis-
cussed in this section are clearly affecting quantifier negation. Quantifier-negation de-

10. The disparity between pre- and postverbal negative quantifiers and, specifically, the fact
that subjects – which, at least in subject-initial V2 clauses, differ from non-subjects in being
preverbal – behave differently from negative quantifiers located postverbally immediately calls
to mind the very well-known discrepancies between pre- and postverbal negative quantifiers in
so-called non-strict NC languages (cf. Giannakidou 2000, 2005, Herburger 2001, and Zeijlstra
2004, 2008 for recent discussion). Linear notions are, however, clearly irrelevant in the Afri-
kaans case, as the following example shows:
(i) Gister het niemand (*nie2) my gehelp nie2
yesterday have no-one neg me helped neg
‘Yesterday no-one helped me’
Regardless of whether a negatively quantified subject surfaces pre- or postverbally, then, it seems
to be more resistant to reinforcement via an “extra” nie2 (cf. Biberauer 2008b for further discus-
sion of the potentially misleading nature of linear considerations in discussions of JC).
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

velopments are not, however, unconnected to those in the domain of predicate nega-
tion: firstly, negative quantifiers are a common source for reinforcing negators (cf.
English noht and Dutch niet) and further, there is also a sense in which quantifier ne-
gation can undergo a “shortened JC” (cf. van der Auwera & Neuckermans 2004: 458ff
and van der Auwera et al. 2006: 461; in (24), we abstract away from the precise mean-
ing of the negation-related elements at Stage II/III ):
(24) a. Sentential/predicate negation
I. je ne dis → II/III. je ne dis pas → IV. je dis pas
I not speak I not speak not I speak not
b. Quantifier negation
I. --- → II/III. je ne dis rien → IV. je dis rien
I not speak nothing I speak nothing
As (24) clearly shows, changes in the sentential negation system – specifically, the loss
of NC that occurs when a language moves from Stage III to Stage IV – can correlate
with changes in the quantifier negation system – here, reanalysis of a negative polarity
item (NPI) requiring licensing by a concord element as an inherently negative quanti-
fier. SA and CA, however, highlight what appear to be independent changes in sentential
and quantifier negation, resulting in a “mix of stages” of the type that at the very least
suggests that it might be useful to think not just of related JCs of the kind illustrated in
(24), but of genuinely independent or multiple JCs which are simultaneously underway.
Further, the SA and CA “mix of stages” also highlights another potentially very
significant point that we have already touched on in the course of our discussion of the
properties of neg1 and neg2 in Afrikaans (cf. Section 2 above), namely that all Stage III
languages may not be formally identical; just as we have seen in generative investiga-
tions of other areas – e.g. word order, where, for example, distinguishing between the
different types of SVO structures found in English, French and German facilitates an
otherwise unavailable understanding of other, superficially unrelated and non-over-
lapping properties in these languages – it may prove productive to consider whether
the superficially very similar properties observed in Stage III languages actually follow
from underlyingly identical systems. The following section considers further evidence
that suggests that SA and CA are rather different Stage III systems from those instanti-
ated by the best-studied Western European languages.

4. Current developments II: Non-nie2-related reinforcement patterns

Having considered nie2-related reinforcement developments in the previous section, the

focus of this section will be on two major types of non-nie2-related reinforcement patterns,
one relating to lexical substitution possibilities and the other to negative quantifiers.
 Theresa Biberauer

4.1 Negative quantifier-related developments

Before we consider the quantifier-related development, it is important to clarify the

behaviour of negative quantifiers in SA. The standard expectation for NC languages is
that negative quantifiers will differ from those in non-NC languages in exhibiting the
behaviour standardly ascribed to so-called n-words (cf. Laka 1990, 1994). Giannaki-
dou (2005) characterises an n-word as follows:
(25) N-word: An expression α is an n-word iff:
a. α can be used in structures containing sentential negation or another
α-expression yielding a reading equivalent to one logical negation; and
b. α can provide a negative fragment answer.
We have already seen that negative quantifiers in SA do not satisfy (25b) (cf. (20b)
above), although those in CA do, to the extent that the presence of nie2 necessarily
brings with it an emphatic (i.e. additional negative) interpretation. Crucially, however,
neither SA nor CA satisfy (25a). This is illustrated for sentential negation involving
nie1 in (26) and for co-occurring negative quantifiers in (27):
(26) a. Niemand is nie1 hier nie2
no-one is not here neg
‘No-one isn’t here’, i.e. everyone is here.
b. Sy het nie1 niks gelees nie2
she have not nothing read neg
‘She didn’t read nothing’, i.e. she read something.
c. Sy het niks nie1 gelees nie2
she have nothing not read neg
‘There is nothing she did not read.’
(27) a. Niemand sien niks nie2
no-one see nothing neg
‘No-one sees nothing’, i.e. everyone sees something.
versus [Niemand sien enige iets nie2 = lit: ‘No-one sees anything’]
b. Hy sien nêrens geen probleme nie2
he see nowhere no problems neg
‘Nowhere does he see no problems’, i.e. he sees problems everywhere.
versus [Hy sien nêrens enige probleme nie2 = lit. ‘He sees nowhere any
problems neg’, i.e. he doesn’t see any problems anywhere]
c. Hy gee nooit niks nie2
he give never nothing neg
‘He never gives nothing’, i.e. he always gives something.
versus [Hy gee nooit iets nie2 = lit. ‘He gives never (some)thing neg’, i.e. he
never gives anything]
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

As the above examples show, then, negative quantifiers in SA do not exhibit NC rela-
tions either with sentential negators or with each other; each negative element word
contributes its own negative semantics, just as negative quantifiers/indefinites do in
standard Germanic more generally (cf. also van der Wouden 1994). This is in stark
contrast to other NC varieties, where negative quantifiers do generally (with the excep-
tion of negative subjects in non-strict NCs – cf. note 10) behave in the manner out-
lined in (25):
(28) a. I don’t owe no-one nothing Variety of English
= I don’t owe anyone anything
b. Nobody saw nothing
= no-one saw anything
(contrast Afrikaans (27a))
c. Personne (n’) a rien fait French
no-one neg has nothing done
‘No-one has done anything’
d. Sun na ka pô fe nadaxi fa Santome
He not asp can do nothing neg
‘He couldn’t do anything’ (cf. Hagemeijer 2007: 192)
Given this SA behaviour, I will continue to avoid the label n-word (cf. note 2 above),
referring to negative quantifiers instead.
While negative quantifiers in SA seem to behave like genuinely negative elements
rather than like NPIs, the way n-words do, the picture for CA is a little different: in
addition to the DN structures in (27), this variety also permits negative quantifiers to
surface in NC structures, a phenomenon known as negative spread in the literature (cf.
Molnárfi 2004, van Gass 2007 for recent discussion of Afrikaans; cf. also Haegeman &
Lohndal 2008 on West Flemish):
(29) a. Niemand sien niks nie2
no-one see nothing neg
‘No-one sees anything.’
[=sa ‘No-one sees nothing’, i.e. everyone sees something; cf. (27a) above]
b. Jy vertel my ook nooit niks nie2
you tell me also never nothing neg
‘You also never tell me anything.’
[=sa ‘You also never tell me nothing’, i.e. you’re always telling me some-
thing; cf. (27c) above]
(30) a. Ons is nog nooit nêrens betrap nie2
us is still never nowhere trapped neg
‘We have never been trapped anywhere.’ (Volksblad 2002–01–19)
 Theresa Biberauer

b. En bowe-al futiel omdat dit niemand nêrens bring nie2

and above-all futile because it nobody nowhere brings neg
‘And above-all futile, because it gets nobody anywhere.’
(Beeld 1997–02–07)
Ek het nog niks
c. nêrens geteken nie2, maar my kontrak met
I have still nothing nowhere signed neg but my contract with
Natal verstryk begin Januarie
Natal expire beginning January
‘I haven’t signed anything anywhere yet, but my contract with Natal ends
at the beginning of January.’ (Rapport 1999–01–03)
(all examples in (30) drawn from van Gass 2007)
Some speakers judge structures like (29–30) to have an emphatic flavour, although
there is disagreement on this point and it is certainly clear that these structures do not
require specific phonological marking (cf. Schwenter 2002, 2005, 2006 on the opacity
surrounding what is meant by emphasis in cases of this type).11 CA does, however,
feature double negative quantifier-containing structures that all speakers agree to be
emphatic (in the sense of “stronger than the corresponding SA form”) – see (31):12
(31) a. Hy wil (g’n) niks luister nie2
he want no nothing listen neg
‘He won’t listen at all.’
[cf. Colloquial English: He won’t do no nothing]
b. Jy gaan met hierdie ding (g’n) nêrens kom nie2
you go with this thing no nowhere come neg
‘You won’t get anywhere at all with this thing.’
c. “Teen aanstaande Mei gaan min groot Amerikaanse maatskappye
against next May go few large American companies
teenwoordig wees in Suid-Afrika en oor twee jaar gaan geen
present be in South Africa and over two year go no
niemand meer daar wees nie2,” het mnr. Patrick McVeigh
nobody more there be nie has Mr Patrick McVeigh

11. Impressionistically, it seems that double negative quantifier expressions are so entrenched
in Kaaps, a variety of Afrikaans spoken in the Cape (cf. McCormick 2002), that they are inter-
preted neutrally, with the prescriptively correct NPI-containing forms only being employed
rather rarely. This is, however, a matter requiring more detailed investigation.
12. Crucially, these examples indicate that so-called Emphatic Negation – where one negative
element reinforces another negative element, resulting in a negative interpretation that is strong-
er than it would have been in the absence of the second negative element (cf. Zeijlstra 2004: 58)
– is in fact available in NC languages (pace Zeijlstra 2004, 2006).
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

gister gesê
yesterday said
‘“By the end of next May there will be very few large American companies
present in South Africa, and in two years time there will be no-one at all
there anymore,” said Mr Patrick McVeigh yesterday.’
(Die Burger 1986–10–24)
The above examples show clearly that g’n and, less commonly, geen can combine with
a range of negative quantifiers, i.e. double negative-containing structures of this type
are productive, with g’n niks being particularly so (cf. van Gass 2007 for corpus-based
comparative figures).13 The origins of g’n can fairly clearly be related to usages of the
type illustrated in (32), which are common in CA:
(32) Ek het geen stokperdjies, geen meisies, geen niks nie2
I have no hobbies no girlfriends no nothing neg
‘I have no hobbies, no girlfriends, nothing.’ (Die Burger 1998–05–11)
As the orthographic representations in (31a,b) and elsewhere indicate, g’n in double
negative quantifier structures is in fact a phonologically reduced version of the basic
negative quantifier geen (“no”). The indications that grammaticalisation has taken
place are therefore there, a matter to which we return in Section 5.

4.2 Nie1-related developments: Lexical substitution

G’n is also a core ingredient in the nie1-related developments evident in CA. Firstly, as
the examples in (31a,b) show, g’n is not obligatory; clauses containing just niks (“noth-
ing”) can also successfully express negation. Importantly, however, such clauses are
not interpreted neutrally: hy wil niks luister nie2 necessarily bears an emphatic inter-
pretation, the nature of which we return to below. Secondly, g’n in (31a) may also
surface independently of niks, i.e. it does not just serve a modifying function, being
able to act on its own to express negation. As (33) indicates, structures containing just
g’n resemble their niks-containing counterparts in expressing non-neutral negation:
(33) a. Ek is g’n jou vriend nie2!
I is no your friend neg
‘I am not your friend.’
[sa = Ek is nie1 jou vriend nie2!]

13. As such, these structures seem very different to Zeijlstra’s (2006) so-called Emphatic Multi-
ple Negative Expressions/emnes, which he argues to be non-productive lexicalised expressions.
 Theresa Biberauer

b. Hy skryf g’n goeie stories nie2!

he write no good stories neg
‘He does not write good stories!’
[sa = Hy skryf nie1 goeie stories nie2!]14
c. Dit is g’n/G’N so moeilik nie2
it is no so difficult neg
‘It’s not so difficult at all!’
An important aspect of the use of the structures in (33) is that they must be a response
to a prior assertion, a state of affairs which calls to mind Schwenter’s (2005, 2006) in-
formation-structural considerations determining the use of non-standard negation
structures (cf. Section 2). The examples in (34) illustrate the type of linguistic context
that can felicitously precede the g’n-containing structures in (33):
(34) a. Kom nou, my vriend!
come now my friend
‘Come now, my friend!’
b. Jan skryf regtig goeie stories
Jan write really good stories
‘Jan writes really good stories’
c. Ek sukkel, want dis moeilik
I struggle because it’s difficult
‘I’m struggling because it’s difficult’
G’n also serves metalinguistically, as illustrated in (35):
(35) Dit is g’n wonderlik nie2; dis fantasties!
it is no wonderful neg; it’s fantastic
‘It’s not wonderful; it’s fantastic!’
Based on the above facts, we can conclude that g’n substitutes for nie1, reinforcing it, in
what we may broadly think of as presuppositional negation contexts (but cf. Schwent-
er 2005 for more fine-grained discussion). In Horn’s (1989: 270) terms, g’n expresses
contradictory (polar) negation.
When nie1 is reinforced via substitution by niks (“nothing”), by contrast, it is not
limited to presuppositional contexts; it does, however, always express what Horn
(1989: 27) designates contrary (scalar) negation. This is illustrated in (36):

14. The fact that (33b) is not equivalent to Hy skryf geen goeie stories nie2, i.e. the full negative
quantifier-containing form, which means “He writes no good stories (only bad ones)” once
again underlines the synchronic distinction between this full negative quantifier form and
grammaticalised g’n.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

(36) a. Sy is niks tevrede nie2

she is nothing satisfied neg
She isn’t remotely satisfied’, i.e. she isn’t satisfied at all
b. Ons doen niks sulke dinge nie215
us do nothing such things neg
‘We don’t do any of those sorts of things’
[≠ Ons doen niks nie2 – niks isn’t an object here]
A final interesting aspect of the developments affecting predicate negation in CA is
that many speakers permit both g’n and niks to be further reinforced by optional nie2
(cf. Section 3 above). This is shown in (37):
(37) a. Dit is g’n nie2 so moeilik nie2!
it is no neg so difficult neg
‘It’s not so difficult at all.’
b. Sy is niks nie2 tevrede nie2
she is nothing neg satisfied neg
‘She isn’t remotely satisfied.’

4.3 Summary

What we see, then, is that the non-neutral “real negators” available in CA already ap-
pear to be so integrated into the system that they have reached what we might think of
as Stage II (optional NC with concomitant interpretive effects) in the domain of quan-
tifier negation. Furthermore, it is clear that quantifier-related developments in CA are
affecting the manner in which negation can be realised, with CA in effect developing a
system which facilitates a more transparent indication of the various types of negation
usually expressed by nie1. Thus while SA does not distinguish between the neutral
negator in predicate or wide-focus and “constituent” or narrow-focus negation – nie1
serving both functions – CA does: as consideration of the examples in the preceding
section will show, niks and g’n niks serve exclusively as narrow-scope negation mark-
ers; g’n may mark either wide or narrow scope depending on the nature of the dis-
course-old information being negated. These developments therefore also indicate
how important it is to consider how quantifier and sentential negation interact (cf.
Section 3 above). Additionally, they suggest that “short-cycle” JC developments are not
limited to Stage II/III – Stage IV developments of the type illustrated in (24); a Stage I
– Stage II “short cycle” also seems to be possible. Finally, the fact that the quantifier
negation-internal “short” JC development targets strong nie1 rather than weak nie2

15. The fact that (36b) permits niks to co-occur with an object clearly signals that it is compat-
ible with direct objects and must therefore have lost its argument status. This is not a necessary
development where the negative quantifier meaning “nothing” is harnessed as part of the nega-
tion system (cf. Poletto 2008 and Bayer 2009 for discussion).
 Theresa Biberauer

unambiguously indicates that phonological considerations are not conclusive in deter-

mining “next steps” in JC. In the Afrikaans case, the motivation for the introduction of
new sentential negators is clearly semantico-pragmatic, with weak nie2 continuing to
function as before. As also suggested by van der Auwera (this volume), it would there-
fore seem that there are at least two “next steps” for a language that has reached Stage
III of JC: further weakening of a by now weakened original negator, i.e. progression to
Stage IV, or the opposite development, namely further amplification of the existing
Stage III structure via the introduction of new means of expressing the distinction
between emphatic and neutral negation in a particular domain and/or facilitating a
finer-grained distinction between the different functions filled by neg1.
The following section will now attempt to offer a generative account of why Afrikaans
has taken the particular route it has, focusing in particular on the question of why the at
first sight very plausible “traditional” expectation for nie2 – cf. (38a) – is not borne out:
(38) a. “Traditional” jc expectation for Afrikaans:
Stage III → Stage IV, i.e. nie1 will become optional, ultimately to be replaced by
nie2
Cf. French: ne … pas → (ne) … pas → pas
Std French Colloquial French
English: ne …(noht) → (ne) … no(h)t → not
Old English Present-Day English
*Afrikaans: nie1 … nie2 → (nie1) … nie2 → nie2
sa/ca Future Afrikaans
Actual jc development in Afrikaans (cf. ca):
nie1 → nie1 … (nie2) → nie1 … nie2
Dutch Early Afrikaans sa/ca
i.e. stable Stage III, with a “short-cycle” development affecting nie1, i.e. the
original negator being reinforced in different ways (lexical substitution/op-
tional nie2)

5. Analysis

As noted at the end of the previous section, this section will concentrate primarily on
the fact that nie2 has not followed the same path of development as the concord ele-
ments in well-studied Western European languages. Section 5.2 will, however, also
briefly consider the quantifier negation-related developments discussed in Section 4.2
above (cf. Biberauer 2008c for more detailed discussion of these developments).
5.1. Concord element-related developments
At the core of our proposal is the idea that Afrikaans crucially differs from the lan-
guages which have undergone progression from Stage III to Stage IV in respect of the
syntactic nature of its reinforcing element. If we consider the concord elements that
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

were introduced into French, English, German and Dutch, for example, we observe
that these elements (pas, no(h)t, niht, niet) all originated within the VP/vP domain, i.e.
low on the clausal spine. Thus pas is a minimiser (cf. Kiparsky & Condoravdi 2006,
Condoravdi 2008, Poletto 2008) with argumental (V-complement) origins, while the
other forms are negative quantifiers which have frequently been argued to be V/vP-
related (cf. Weiss 1998, Roberts & Roussou 2003, Zeijlstra 2004, Jäger 2006, 2008 and
Poletto 2008). In Afrikaans, by contrast, there is no indication that nie2 originated as a
minimiser of any kind; instead, there is a strong argument that nie2 originated as a CP-
related discourse marker, which might originally have been a resumptive or emphatic
tag negator (cf. Roberge 2000 for details of this proposal).16 If this is correct, (spoken-
language) structures such as the following would have served as input for the obliga-
tory NC pattern that ultimately became standardised in SA:
(39) a. Het kan niet waar zijn, nee!
it can not true be no
‘It can’t be true, no!’ (Roberge 2000: 147)
b. Jij komt niet mee, ne?
you come not with hey
‘You aren’t coming, hey/right?’ [expectation = negative answer]
Diachronic considerations aside, there is a range of synchronic evidence that nie2, unlike
its European counterparts, is a “high” concord element (pace Bell 2004a,b; cf. Biberauer
2007, 2008a for more detailed, and see also Oosthuizen 1998). Firstly, we observe a dif-
ference in the negation possibilities available to sentential complements of verbs that
take both full and restructuring complements (cf. Wurmbrand 2001 for detailed discus-
sion). Consider (40–41) in this connection:
(40) a. Ek probeer nie1 [om die boek te lees] nie2 (al lyk dit vir
I try not inf-c the book to read neg even-if looks it for
jou so)
you so
‘I am not trying to read the book, even if it looks like it (i.e. as if I’m trying
to) to you.’ (i.e. matrix negation)
b. Ek probeer [om nie1 die boek te lees nie2] (maar dis moeilik)
I try inf-c not the book to read neg but it’s difficult
‘I am trying not to read the book, but it’s difficult (to resist doing so).’ (i.e.
embedded negation)

16. Van Gelderen (2008) discusses a further potential source of concord elements, namely ver-
bal heads (cf. also van der Auwera, this volume, 2009). Evidently, then, NEG2 can be drawn from
a range of different stocks, which might lead us to expect that all concord elements will not be-
have identically, either synchronically or over time.
 Theresa Biberauer

(41) a. Ek probeer nie1 [die boek lees] nie2 (al lyk dit vir jou so)
I try not the book read neg even-if look it for you so
‘I am not trying to read the book.’ (i.e. matrix negation)
b. *Ek probeer [ nie1 die boek lees nie2 ] (maar dis moeilik)
I try not the book read neg but it’s difficult
(i.e. embedded negation unavailable)
(40) features a full infinitival complement, introduced by the infinitival C-element om
(cf. German um), whereas probeer in (41) takes a reduced complement, lacking not
only an overtly realised C, but also the infinitival marker te, which might be analysable
as a T-element in Afrikaans (cf. Biberauer & Roberts 2005).17 In the case of (40), both
the matrix and the embedded clause may be negated. More specifically, it is possible
for the matrix and the embedded clause to be negated as a whole (i.e. whole-clause
negation) and, under the right discourse conditions (e.g. denials), it is also possible for
sub-components of these clauses to be negated. This is illustrated in (42–43):
(42) Matrix negation options:
a. Ek probeer nie1 [om die boek te lees] nie2; net die tydskrif
I try not inf-c the book to read neg just the magazine
‘I am not trying to read the book; just the magazine.’
b. Ek probeer nie1 [om die boek te lees] nie2; ek probeer hom
I try not inf-c the book to read neg I try him
vertaal
translate
‘I am not trying to read the book; I’m trying to translate it.’
(43) Embedded negation options
a. Ek probeer [om nie1 die boek te lees nie2]; van tydskrifte
I try inf-c not the book to read neg of magazines
het ek niks gesê nie2
have I nothing said neg
‘It’s the book I’m trying not to read; I didn’t say anything about magazines
(which I might consider going through).’
b. Ek probeer [om nie1 die boek te lees nie2], maar ek sal hom
I try inf-c not the book to read neg but I will him
dalk bietjie deurblaai
maybe a-bit through-page
‘I am trying not to read the book, but I might page through it a bit.’
In the case of (41), things are rather different. In this case, whole-clause negation is
only possible in matrix clauses (cf. (41a)); the only negation possibility available in

17. Infinitives featuring just te are rare in Afrikaans (cf. Ponelis 1993: 292ff).
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

embedded clauses is the focused constituent negation option highlighted in (42–43)

above. Thus (41a) can be used as a translation equivalent of (40a), but (41b) cannot be
used in this manner; it can only surface, with the right intonation, as a counterpart of
either (42a) or (42b). These facts are illustrated in (44) and (45) respectively:
(44) a. Ek probeer nie1 [die boek lees ] nie2; net die tydskrif [cf. (42a)]
I try not the book read neg just the magazine
‘I am not trying to read the book; just the magazine.’
b. Ek probeer nie1 [die boek lees] nie2; ek probeer hom
I try not the book read neg I try him
vertaal [cf. (42b)]
translate
‘I am not trying to read the book; I’m trying to translate it’
(45) a. * Ek probeer nie1 [die boek lees] nie2; van tydskrifte het ek
* I try not the book read neg of magazines have I
niks gesê nie2 [cf. (43a)]
nothing said neg
b. * Ek probeer nie1 [die boek lees] nie2; maar ek sal hom dalk
I try inf-c not the book to read neg but I will him
bietjie deurblaai
maybe a-bit through-page [cf. (43b)]
What we see, then, is that reduced infinitivals lacking both om and te do not appear to
be able to license negation. Building on proposals by Wurmbrand (2001) and others,
we propose that non-reduced (non-restructuring) structures like (40) and (42–43) fea-
ture a complete/non-defective clause structure, whereas restructuring complements
like (41) and (44–45) are defective in featuring less clausal structure and, in particular,
in lacking C-structure. If this is correct, we can understand the negation patterns dis-
cussed above as following from the fact that C-structure needs to be present in order
to license nie2, without which negation more generally cannot be licensed.
Further evidence that nie2 is a “high” element comes from ‘headlinese’. As (6b) il-
lustrated, headlines obligatorily lack nie2. Numerous researchers (cf. Stowell 1991, Vi-
net 1993, Paesani 2006, Paul 2007) have previously proposed that headlinese features
reduced structures. Once again, if nie2 is a “high” element, its obligatory absence in
Afrikaans headlinese follows straightforwardly: the relevant left-peripheral structure
is simply absent. Strikingly, however, the C-domain cannot be entirely lacking in Afri-
kaans headlinese as verb-containing structures seem to feature verb second (V2)
structures. Consider (46):
(46) a. Een uit elke drie loer lewensmaat se sms’e af
one out every three peep life-partner gen smses down
‘One in three spy on partner’s text-messages.’ (Die Burger 2008–09–29)
 Theresa Biberauer

b. Wie anders het Lotz vermoor, wil regter weet

who else have Lotz murdered want judge know
‘Who else murdered Lotz, judge asks.’ (Beeld 2007–11–02)
The separated verb and particle in (46a) clearly indicate that verb movement has taken
place; since Afrikaans lacks V-to-T movement (cf. Biberauer 2003, Vikner 2001), this
must either be “short movement” to v18 or V-to-C movement. The fact that interroga-
tives like (46b) are also possible, however, suggests that the superficially V2 headline
structures are best analysed as CPs, with the finite verb in C (cf. den Besten 1977/1983).
Given that we already have evidence that nie2 is only licensed where CP-structure is
present, the fact that nie2 ordinarily surfaces in negated V2 clauses (cf. (1b), (2b), etc.)
suggests that it must be an extremely high element, occupying the higher reaches of the
left periphery. In particular, if we assume an articulated CP of the type proposed in
Rizzi (1997) and in much recent work, we might think of V2 clauses as either FinP,
FocusP or TopicP structures, with the nature of the initial XP determining the type of
CP; nie2 then occupies the highest head, Force, and attracts the V2-containing CP
structure to its specifier (see below for a refinement of this proposal). This is outlined
for different types of V2 clauses in (47):19
(47) a. [ForceP [FinP Subj Vf [TP … ]] nie2] -- neutral subject-initial V2 clause
b. [ForceP [FocP Wh Vf [TP … ]] nie2] -- wh-initial V2 clause
c. [ForceP [TopP Obj Vf [TP … ]] nie2] -- topical object-initial V2 clause

18. Alternatively, movement may be to a “low” position within the vP-domain, but we abstract
away from the precise structure of the lower clausal domains, referring only to VP, vP and TP, i.e. the
“cover terms” Chomsky has employed since 1995. For further discussion, see the following note.
19. As indicated in the outline diagrams, I do not assume the entire articulated CP-structure to
be projected in the case of V2 clauses; the idea is, instead, that C represents a functional catego-
ry whose internal feature structure reflects the hierarchical structure of the articulated CP, with
only the features relevant to a given derivation being activated as probes. Thus, if we view fea-
tures as [Attribute: Value] pairs, we can distinguish a probing/unvalued feature – [Person: __]
– from a valued one – [Person: 3] – and attribute to C partial structures such as the following
(outline font indicates non-activated features; * indicates a movement-triggering diacritic asso-
ciated with the verbal “spine” [cf. Brody 1998] which C extends; and EF signals the “edge fea-
ture” ensuring XP-movement [cf. Chomsky 2008]):
(i) C in a neutral V2 clause: : __
: __
: __
* : __ , EF
(ii) C in a wh-question: : __
* : __ , EF
: __
: __
See e.g. Poletto (2000), Roberts (2005), Mohr (2005) and van Craenenbroeck & Haegeman
(2007) for a range of different accounts of V2 couched in terms of an articulated CP.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

Main-clause negated structures in Afrikaans therefore have the partial structure in (48):
(48) ForceP

Force’
Foc/Top/FinP

Force Foc/Top/FinP

nie2
...

On this analysis, nie2 therefore behaves in the same manner as force-related clause-fi-
nal particles that have been observed in a range of other languages (cf. Biberauer 2007,
Poletto 2008 for references).
To summarise, then, there seem to be good indications that concord elements in
well-studied European languages are structurally “low”, whereas Afrikaans nie2, which
occupies what stringwise appears to be “the same” position as these other reinforcers,
seems to be structurally “high”.
Another important difference between Afrikaans and the languages which have
come full circle on JC is that the concord elements in the latter clearly “became nega-
tive” in the relevant sense20, with the result that they are generally analysed as Neg-el-
ements in the literature (cf. Haegeman 1995, Zanuttini 1997, Rowlett 1998, van Keme-
nade 2000, Roberts & Roussou 2003, Wallage 2005; Jäger 2006, 2008; see, however,
Rooryck 2008 for an opposing view). Thus Haegeman (1995) and Haegeman & Zanut-
tini (1996) propose the Neg Criterion in (49), in terms of which NC languages simply

20. For ease of exposition, we abstract away from the much-disputed question of the precise
locus/representation of the negative semantics in negative structures; hence the vague formula-
tion here. See Zeijlstra (2004, 2008), Penka (2007), Rooryck (2008) and Biberauer & Zeijlstra
(2009) for recent discussion suggesting that matters may not be this straightforward.
 Theresa Biberauer

differ from their non-NC counterparts in consistently lexicalising both the Neg-head
(usually via a concord element) and its specifier:
(49) Neg-Criterion:
a. A neg-operator must be in a Spec-head configuration with an X0 [NEG];
b. An X0 [NEG] must be in a Spec-head configuration with a NEG-operator
NegP
3
Spec Neg’
3
Neg …
[+Neg]
On this view, there may be parametric variation in respect of the height of NegP, with
Germanic having a low, vP-related NegP and Romance a slightly higher, TP-related
NegP (cf. references cited above). As first pointed out by Oosthuizen (1998), the Neg-
element analysis does not, however, seem satisfactory for Afrikaans as nie2’s distribu-
tion is not limited to negative contexts. Thus, as (50) illustrates, a currently ill-under-
stood class of non-veridical operators (cf. Giannakidou 2005) seems to be able to
license nie2 (cf. also note 7):
(50) a. Ek kan tog (* onmoontlik) alleen die werk doen (nie2)!
I can surely impossibly alone the work do neg
‘Surely I can’t possibly be expected to do the work on my own!’
(Oosthuizen 1998: 79)
b. Jy sal my (*nouliks) daarvan oortuig kry (nie2)!
you will me hardly there-from convinced get neg
‘You will hardly convince me of that!’
c. Ek weier om saam te kom (nie2)
I refuse inf-c together to come neg
‘I refuse to come along.’
Given data such as (50), Oosthuizen (1998) suggests that nie2 is in fact a high polarity
head, dominating CP, whose presence is not dependent on the projection of NegP (cf.
also note 7). Biberauer (2007, 2008a) develops this idea further, pointing to nie2’s pos-
sible origins as a polarity-reinforcing element (cf. (39) above) and highlighting data
that suggest that nie1 is best viewed as a member of the class of vP-related adverbials
rather than as specifically the head of a positionally fixed NegP. In this paper, we have
additionally seen that nie2 synchronically still seems to serve a very strongly polarity-
related function in CA: wherever it is optionally present – i.e. in non-clausal structures
– its presence brings about a more emphatically negative interpretation. Where it is
present in the absence of negation, it is likewise clear that its presence is determined by
the presence of what we can imprecisely identify as a polarity-related element.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

Given these facts, then, it seems justified to view nie2 as the realisation of a CP-
related Pol-head (cf. Laka 1990, 1994 on parametric variation in respect of TP- vs CP-
relatedness of Pol-heads21). At first sight it might seem plausible to suggest that CP-
related Pol is simply an instantiation of the highest clausal functional head, Force (cf.
(48)). If Force, however, instantiates the highest projection of the “verbal spine” com-
prising the clause (cf. Brody 1998 and the discussion in note 19), this cannot be the
case: as the discussion in Section 4.1 has clearly shown, nie2 cannot be analysed as a
specifically clausal domain-related element since it is also able to surface finally in non-
clausal structures.
As such, I propose that nie2 in fact spells out a functional head that has undergone
not only semantic bleaching, but also categorial bleaching. The fact that it is no longer re-
stricted to negative contexts signals the former type of bleaching, while the fact that this
element appears to have grammaticalised into a generalised polarity head, available both
in clausal and non-clausal domains, points to additional categorial bleaching: unlike
West Flemish en, which is restricted to the clausal domain and which Breitbarth &
Haegeman (2008) consequently accord the value [+finite] as part of its feature specifica-
tion (cf. note 21), Afrikaans nie2 cannot encode any specifically clause-related features. I
therefore propose that it is a categorially deficient element which does not extend either
“verbal” or “nominal” spines (cf. also Biberauer 2008d and Biberauer & Sheehan 2008)
and, as such, lacks the [+V] or [+N] specification we would expect to find on non-defi-

21. Strikingly, en, the original neg1 in West Flemish, which is generally analysed as serving a
concord function in the modern language (cf. Haegeman 1995 and much other work), also
seems in fact to be a polarity head. Thus Breitbarth & Haegeman (2008) show that en in Flemish
tussentaal (“in-between language”) and certain West Flemish dialects may in fact surface in both
negative and positive contexts:
(i) Background: Salary scales are under discussion …
Da kan toch niet? Da en kan toch niet?!
That can mod.p. not that pol can mod.p not
‘That can’t be right? Surely that can’t be right?!’
(ii). A: Valère verkuopt da nie
Valère sell that not
‘Valère doesn’t sell that.’
. B: J’ en doet Je verkoopt da wel. K’een der gisteren gekocht.
He pol does He sells that indeed I have some yesterday bought
‘He does. He does sell that. I bought some yesterday.’
(Lapscheure dialect, cf. Haegeman 1995: 160; cf. also van Craenenbroeck 2004)
For Breitbarth & Haegeman (2008: 14), then, en is the spellout of Pol [+affective, +emphatic], i.e.
a feature-bundle which does not include a negative value. Its positioning suggests that it may, in
Laka’s terms, be a CP-related Pol-head, like nie2 in Afrikaans. Cf. van Gelderen (2008) for fur-
ther discussion of some languages that appear to resemble Afrikaans in featuring a CP-related
Pol head. Biberauer (2008b, c) and Biberauer & Roberts (2008), in turn, argue that do–support
in Modern English may instantiate a TP-Pol phenomenon.
 Theresa Biberauer

cient elements. As such, we might think of nie2 as an element which has been radically
grammaticalised, having undergone not only the upward reanalysis that Roberts &
Roussou (2003) and van Gelderen (2004) assume to underlie grammaticalisation proc-
esses more generally, but also, additionally, a categorial bleaching process which renders
this grammaticalised element particularly “light” from a formal (featural) perspective.
Afrikaans nie2, then, differs from the originally reinforcing concord (neg2) elements
in better-studied European languages in a number of respects. Firstly, as we saw in Sec-
tion 2 above, it is a weak element which clearly lacks the strengthening possibilities avail-
able to nie1 (neg1). Secondly, it lacks the negative specification clearly retained by the
languages that proceeded to Stage IV and can, as such, be viewed as semantically defi-
cient relative to these elements. Thirdly, it is evidently an element that occupies a much
higher structural position than the other neg2 elements which eventually became “real”
negators (neg1). Finally, it appears to be severely categorially deficient. This combina-
tion, I argue, makes nie2 unsuited as a possible candidate for “real” negator status, with
the result that a Stage III → Stage IV development along the lines of what has been ob-
served in the other languages considered here is not to be expected: nie2 has, as it were,
“grammaticalised beyond the Cycle”. Cyclic developments are not, however, more gener-
ally ruled out, and various distinct JC developments, rather clearly motivated by seman-
tico-pragmatic considerations, do indeed appear to be underway in Afrikaans.

5.2 Negative quantifier-related developments

Before concluding, we will briefly consider the quantifier negation-related develop-

ments discussed in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 above. We will firstly offer a few thoughts on
the nie1 replacement strategies before doing the same for the multiple negative quanti-
fier-containing structures.

5.2.1 N-words replacing nie1: Niks and g’n

On the matter of the choice of the lexical items that serve as reinforcing negators in
place of nie1, we note only that g’n (> geen – ‘no’) and niks (‘nothing’) correspond to the
smallest elements on the quantification scale (cf. Horn’s 1989: 237 Boethian Square of
Oppositions) and, as such, constitute relatively unsurprising reinforcement choices.
Poletto (2008) furthermore observes that niente (‘nothing’) appears to be one of the
four etymological sources from which all the sentential negators that have been identi-
fied in Italian dialects originate (the others being minimiser, polarity head of the type
assumed by Laka and, finally, the anaphoric negator). The reason she proposes for the
fact that nothing so commonly serves as a source for sentential negation is that it “is
always the semantically (and syntactically) barest operator, in the sense that it has the
smallest set of features because its lexical restrictor is virtually non-existent”. In other
words, it can be viewed as the negation equivalent of what in the wh-domain and that
in the complementiser-domain (cf. also Kayne 2008 for recent discussion along par-
tially similar lines).
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

An additional factor that appears to be relevant in the choice of niks in particular

is that it is a negative quantifier that quantifies over entities, amounts, etc. In employ-
ing lexical substitutions to reinforce negation of different types, we might expect lan-
guages to draw on alternative negatively specified resources from the domain being
negated, and Afrikaans certainly appears to do so in harnessing niks and g’n (which
appears to have undergone reanalysis from a specifier element to a head – cf. van Gel-
deren’s 2004 Head Preference Principle – possibly because of the semantics of its re-
strictor (niks)). Similarly, various species of non-standard English also appear to draw
on a negative quantifier quantifying over the same domain as the negative element
they replace. Consider the examples in (51) in this connection:
(51) a. I didn’t do that
b. I never did that
Here never, a temporal quantifier, replaces didn’t, an element that is generally agreed to
be a T-element (cf. Biberauer & Roberts 2008 for recent discussion; cf. also Breitbarth,
Lucas & Willis 2008 for recent discussion of English never; and Ramchand 2004 for more
general discussion of the differences between vP- and TP-related negation elements).
In certain respects, then, the developments involving niks and g’n in CA can read-
ily be understood. More work is, however, required to understand, for instance, how
the narrow-scope (“constituent negation”) use of these elements is similar and differ-
ent to the wide-scope (“sentential negation”) use of the same element (i.e. niente-type
negation elements) found in other languages, and whether and, if so, how the presup-
positional associations of g’n might be captured formally. These are all matters which
are left for future research.
5.2.2 The availability of NC and DN readings
As we saw in Section 4.1, there are circumstances under which co-occurring negative
quantifiers in CA can give rise to either an NC or a DN reading. From a theoretical
perspective, this possibility is problematic, particularly for theories which assume the
grammars of NC languages to differ in some fundamental (possibly, parametric) respect
from non-NC languages (cf. Haegeman & Lohndal 2008 and Zeijlstra 2008 for recent
discussions). The aim here is not to try to resolve this matter; instead, I simply wish to
highlight a previously unnoted point about the availability of NC as opposed to DN
readings in CA that may prove important in determining what the correct analysis of
this phenomenon may be (cf. also Biberauer & Zeijlstra 2009 for further discussion).
A striking fact about NC and DN interpretations in CA is that the ordering and pro-
sodic properties of the negative quantifiers in the structure matter. Consider (52) to (53):
(52) a. Jy vertel my ook nooit niks nie2
you tell me also never nothing neg
‘You also never tell me anything.’ [nc]
 Theresa Biberauer

b. Jy vertel my ook nooit niks nie2

you tell me also never nothing neg
‘You also never tell me nothing’, i.e. you’re always telling me something
[dn, cf. (27c) above]
c. Jy vertel my ook niks nooit nie2
you tell me also nothing never neg
‘You also never tell me nothing’, i.e. you’re always telling me something
≠ ‘You also never tell me anything.’ [only dn with scrambled order]
(53) a. Ek het nog niks nêrens geteken nie2, maar my kontrak met
I have still nothing nowhere signed neg but my contract with
Natal verstryk begin Januarie
Natal end beginning January
‘I haven’t signed anything yet, but my contract with Natal ends at the be-
ginning of January.’ (Rapport 1999–01–03) [nc]
b. Ek het nêrens niks geteken nie2 …
I have nowhere nothing signed neg
‘There is nowhere that I signed nothing’, i.e. for each place, I signed something
≠ ‘I haven’t signed anything …’ [dn]
In each case, we see that neutral intonation delivers an NC reading22 and that pro-
sodic marking of a particular type produces DN (cf. also Falaus 2007 on Romanian,
which appears to show similar behaviour). More specifically, the required prosodic
marking strongly resembles that which is necessarily required in structures like (52c),
i.e. in structures where an object (regardless of its negative/non-negative status) has
clearly scrambled over an appropriate adverb; where the object and the adverb in ques-
tion are negative, the only possible reading is a DN one, as shown above. This observa-
tion suggests that the generalisation about NC and DN readings may be that NC read-
ings are only available in structures featuring an unraised negative quantifier.
Further evidence that this generalisation may be important comes from a com-
parison of the intonation patterns associated with double negative quantifier-containing

22. This suggests that NC structures do not need to start off as emphatic, a view that is some-
times extrapolated from JC schematisations like (3). See also Giannakidou (2005) and Zeijlstra
(2006), who propose that NC readings in non-NC languages require emphatic intonation, and
van Gelderen (2008), who proposes that this may also extend to certain varieties of Mainland
Scandinavian. For Oevdalian, a Scandinavian variety which today seems to exhibit NC quite
systematically, though not obligatorily, Garbacz (2008), however, explicitly notes that NC is not
connected to emphasis. It may therefore be the case that special intonation is required to signal
negative readings that depart from the neutral “norm” associated with a given system – NC
readings in non-NC systems and DN readings in NC-systems like Afrikaans, or it may be the
case that non-NC (i.e. DN) readings are universally intonationally marked, regardless of the
type of system involved. Evidently, further research is required to pin down the exact relation
between negative interpretations and prosodic considerations.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

structures and those in which the so-called Diesing Effects (cf. Diesing 1992) are ob-
servable. As (54) illustrates, the prosodic properties associated with DN structures is
the same as that associated with structures in which bare indefinites receive a specific
reading, i.e. that associated with movement out of the domain of existential closure
(for Diesing, the VP):
(54) a. Niemand gee my niks nie2
no-one give me nothing neg
‘No-one gives me anything.’ – nc reading; no special intonation required
b. Niemand gee my niks nie2
no-one give me nothing neg
‘No-one gives me nothing.’ – dn reading; special intonation required
c. Niemand gee my boeke nie2
no-one give me books neg
‘No-one gives me books (specifically).’
– specific (i.e. non-in situ) reading; special intonation required
Strikingly, Rooryck (2008: 9) makes what appears to be a parallel observation for
French, noting that “negative interpretations of [n-words in NC languages like French–
TB] behave like universal quantifiers, while the nonnegative interpretations behave as
existential quantifiers”. Translated into the terms of Diesing’s Mapping Hypothesis, n-
words in French receive negative interpretations where they are located outside VP,
whereas they are interpreted as non-negatives whenever they are located within this
domain. Furthermore, Rooryck (2008: 25) also cites French data from Corblin et al.
(2004) which indicates that “stress takes the stressed n-word out of the scope of the
scope domain of negation:23
(55) a. personne ne dit rien à personne
nobody neg says nothing to nobody
‘Nobody says nothing to nobody.’ (dn reading)
b. Personne ne dit rien à personne
nobody neg says nothing to nobody
‘Nobody say nothing to nobody.’ (dn reading)

23. This function of stress may also be relevant in completely unrelated contexts, such as struc-
tures like (i) where Condition C appears to be violated:
(i) A: No-one likes John anyway!
B: JOHN likes John!
 Theresa Biberauer

Further evidence that movement is a crucial ingredient in the understanding of the

availability of DN vs NC readings comes from fronting:
(56) a. Jy vertel my ook nooit niks nie2
you tell me also never nothing neg
‘You also never tell me anything.’ (cf. (52a)), dn/nc readings)
b. Nooit vertel jy my niks nie2
never tell you me nothing neg
‘You never tell me nothing’, i.e. obligatory dn reading.
c. Niks vertel jy my nooit nie2
nothing tell you me never neg
‘There is nothing that you never tell me’, i.e. obligatory dn reading.
As the examples show, NC readings are never possible, regardless of ordering, when
one of the negative quantifiers has undergone fronting.
What the CA data suggest, then, is that it is not just the featural make-up of nega-
tive quantifiers or of negation-related functional projections or the presence vs ab-
sence of negative operators of various kinds which determine how negation is inter-
preted in a particular language; in NC languages at least, movement and,
consequently, syntax-PF mapping may also play a crucial role in determining the avail-
ability of NC vis-à-vis DN readings.24

6. Conclusion

Consideration of negation-related developments in contemporary Afrikaans clearly

show that this language is in a number of respects an atypical Stage III language. Al-
though it superficially appears to have reached the same NC stage that English, Ger-
man, Dutch and French previously reached, it is quite clear that the components cor-
responding to neg1 and neg2 in Afrikaans are rather different to those in its
Indo-European relatives: whereas neg1 in the latter became a weak element allowing
neg2 to take over its sentential-negation role, Afrikaans nie1 has remained strong,
while nie2 appears to be both semantically and grammatically bleached. Given this, the
fact that Colloquial Afrikaans (CA) and less conservative varieties of Afrikaans like
Kaaps are not taking the “next step” in JC – loss of neg1 in favour of neg2 – emerges as
readily understandable: the system underlying Afrikaans NC is in fact rather different
to that which underlay the Western European languages which did progress to Stage
IV of the Cycle. In particular, it seems that nie2 has “grammaticalised beyond the

24. Cf. Błaszczak & Gärtner (2005) for discussion of another context in which syntax-PF map-
ping and, consequently, prosodic considerations appear to determine the manner in which ne-
gation is interpreted.
 Chapter 5. Jespersen off course 

Cycle”, lacking the semantic and grammatical properties neg2 requires if it is to take
over as the “real” negator. The case of contemporary Afrikaans thus highlights the
importance of not approaching JC solely in string-wise terms; apparently, non-surface
considerations such as the structural height of the concord element and the features it
encodes are also crucial considerations in determining whether and if so, how, the
Cycle will continue.
Based on the facts considered here, then, the general hypothesis in (57) sug-
gests itself:
(57) Hypothesis concerning progression from Stage III to Stage IV
Concord elements will only become “real” negators (i.e. undergo the change
from Stage III to Stage IV) where these elements are (a) located suitably “low”
within the clausal domain, and (b) bear appropriate substantive and catego-
rial content.
This hypothesis makes some clear, testable predictions. Firstly, we would in general
expect concord elements drawn from the vP and TP domains to be available for rean-
alysis as potential “real” negators, whereas those drawn from the CP-domain would
not be. Note that this statement does not compromise the availability of CP as the
domain in which sentential negation is neutrally expressed in non-NC languages. As
noted in the main text, languages differ in respect of the structural height of their sen-
tential negators – Germanic having “low”, vP-related negation, Romance “higher” TP-
related negation and Celtic, for example, licensing negative particles in CP (cf. Duffield
1995, Roberts 2005 and Willis 2008 for discussion). (57), then, does not preclude the
possibility of “real” negation being expressed in CP; only of a CP-related concord ele-
ment being reanalysed as a “real” negator. The prediction, then, is that the “real” nega-
tors in languages with CP negation will not at some earlier stage of their development
have been CP-related concord elements. Northern rural varieties of Brazilian Portu-
guese, which have been argued to feature a very high CP-related concord element (cf.
Cavalcante 2007), represent a relevant test case here, as do Italian dialects featuring
clause-final concord elements that appear to be drawn from the discourse domain (cf.
Poletto 2008) and, to the extent that their final concord elements are likewise CP-relat-
ed, the so-called Bipartite Final Negation languages discussed in Bell (2004a). See Bib-
erauer (2008b) for consideration of these cases.
Secondly, (57) also predicts that concord elements which derive from bleached
“real” negators, but which have been retained, possibly optionally – cf. West Flemish
en and possibly also Colloquial French ne – will not come full circle to reclaim the role
of neg1: although they might be located “low” enough to be reanalysed, these elements
lack the substantive and possibly also categorial content to serve as viable negators. For
West Flemish, this seems correct (cf. Breitbarth & Haegeman 2008).
(57), then, predicts at least two scenarios where concord elements will not displace
an existing “real” negator. As the investigation of CA has shown, however, this does not
necessarily mean that the “real” negator in such systems is immune to JC developments
 Theresa Biberauer

involving other elements. To the extent that JC is a wider phenomenon that extends
beyond the domain of negation, the proposals and predictions made here should obvi-
ously also carry over to other domains in which Cycles have been observed.

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part 2

Pronouns, agreement, and topic markers

 chapter 6

Weak pronouns in Italian

Instances of a broken cycle?*†

Diana Vedovato
University of Padova

In Modern Italian, a small number of personal pronouns show the typical

characteristics of weak elements in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999):
the third person subject pronouns egli, esso, essa, essi, esse and the third
person plural dative loro. These elements belong to a formal language register,
whereas in spoken Italian speakers tend to avoid them and prefer null or clitic
forms instead. The presence of these elements in a pronominal paradigm like
the Italian one seems to go against predictions made by certain Economy
Principles. We will account for this peculiar situation following Vanelli’s (2003)
analysis, i.e. we will look at weak subject pronouns as instances of a broken
grammaticalization cycle. Prescriptive rules will be shown to be responsible for
the persistence of weak pronouns in standard Italian.

Introduction

Pronouns are often involved in grammaticalization processes, in which free forms

weaken and then cliticize. The further stage of this cline is a change in functional

* I had the opportunity to spend the spring semester of 2008 at Arizona State University. I
would like to thank Elly van Gelderen and the participants of the Wednesday ASU reading group
for enriching discussions. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer and to Cecilia Poletto for
helpful comments on a first version of this paper. All the remaining errors are obviously mine.
† Abbreviations: AGR=agreement; C=complementizer; COLL=Colloquial register,
DP=determiner phrase; LIP=Lessico di Frequenza dell’Italiano Parlato; SubjP=Subject of the
Predication phrase; OVI=Opera del Vocabolario Italiano; TLIO=Tesoro della Lingua Italiana
delle Origini; TP=Tense phrase; V=verb. Italian pronouns will be glossed reporting the Italian
form and indicating the syntactic category (C=clitic; S=strong; W=weak); gender, number and
case have been reported only on clitic forms. Italian null pronominal subject are glossed putting
the corresponding English pronoun in round brackets. In all those cases, the person feature is
distinctly realized by the verbal morphology, which I will not report.
 Diana Vedovato

category, i.e. clitics becoming agreement markers. When such a process starts, new
elements often enter the paradigm to fill the gap left by the previous, now weakened,
forms1. As has already been noticed, cycles do not take place in a random way, rather
“there is a universal tendency for pronouns to be diachronically reanalyzed in a given
order: strong>weak>clitic” (Egerland 2005: 1106).
Studies on grammaticalization have pointed out that the mechanisms responsible
for change are to be found in language acquisition2: children acquire the setting pa-
rameters of a language on the base of the linguistic input they are exposed to; when-
ever the input they receive is ambiguous, the interpretation will be driven by compu-
tational principles of Economy, such as the Head Preference principle: without clear
counterevidence, full XPs will be reinterpreted as heads. As a consequence, new full
phrases will replace the gap. In this “tug-of-war between economy (Spec to Head) and
innovation (reintroduction of specifiers)” (van Gelderen 2004: 12), prescriptive rules,
which are usually conservative, play a crucial role in modifying the changes.
What I would like to show in this article, starting from Vanelli’s (2003) analysis, is
that the few weak subject pronouns found in Standard Italian are hints of a broken
grammaticalization cycle which involved subject pronouns in Romance varieties that
were losing V-to-C movement. Prescriptive forces had a great role in keeping these
elements in the paradigm, along with the plural dative loro. The result is that weak
pronouns are used only in written and formal varieties of Italian and speakers do not
always handle them with ease.
In Section 1, I will start with a brief presentation of the theoretical framework that
is adopted. Section 2 provides a quick overview of the Italian pronominal system. In
Section 3, I will introduce two Economy principles that are relevant to linguistic cycles
and, in Sections 4 and 5, I will show that Italian weak pronouns are instances of a bro-
ken cycle, emphasizing the role of prescriptive grammar in the matter. In Section 6, I
will conclude with some data from an experiment carried out in a secondary school.
These data show that children acquire weak pronouns quite late through education.
The same data show that there is evidence of new cycles taking place in the language,
but, once again, we do not know if and how these changes will be modified or stopped
by standard rules.

1. Although very common, it is not always the case: sometimes the free form remains, while a
homophonous one weakens. For example, in Friulan, a dialect spoken in the North-East of Italy,
1st and 2nd person singular subject clitic pronouns morphologically derive from the strong forms,
which, in turn, have been maintained (indeed, both derive from the Latin nominative forms).
2. As Roberts & Roussou explain, “the goal of acquisition is to fix parameter values on the
basis of experience – all parameters values must be fixed, but there is no requirement for con-
vergence with the adult grammar (although this happens most of the time).” (Roberts & Rous-
sou 2003: 13).
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

1. The Italian pronominal system and the theoretical framework

The category of personal pronouns includes syntactically different elements: some of

them move in the structure as full DPs (although with some differences with respect to
lexical DPs), others can surface only in few specific positions while they are banned
from others (such as topic, focus, etc.). These elements are identified either as weak
pronouns or clitics (Kayne 1975; Holmberg 1991). In the late 1990s, Cardinaletti and
Starke (1999) proposed a hierarchical tripartite classification which could explain the
different behavior of pronominal elements and capture the structural relation between
weak and clitic elements. This hierarchical relation is sketched in (1):
(1) a. Strong pronouns > deficient pronouns (= weak + clitic)
b. Strong (S) > weak (W) > clitic (C)
This classification is visible at all grammatical levels, across which strong, weak and
clitic pronouns display different properties.
Italian personal pronouns mainly fit in two of the three classes identified in (1),
namely the strong class and the clitic one. They preserve case distinctions and oppose
subject to complement forms, with clitics bearing case distinctions as well (accusative
and dative). Null pro is commonly classified as a weak pronoun.

1.1 The Italian pronominal system

Italian is a consistent Null Subject language3. The realization of the null subject (pro) is
regulated by pragmatic and syntactic factors: if its antecedent is ‘expected’ or promi-
nent in the discourse4, and the pronoun surfaces in an unmarked syntactic position, it
will receive a null spell-out. Otherwise a strong pronoun will be used.
In sentence (2) with an unmarked reading, in order to have co-reference between the
subject of the main clause [Marco] and the subject of the subordinate clause, the pronoun
must be null, otherwise the overt pronoun can only refer to the direct object [Luca]:
(2) Marcoi ha colpito Lucaj perché luij/Øi voleva rubargli i soldi.
`Marcoi hit Lucaj, because hej/Øi wanted to steal his money.’
Being intrinsically thematic (see e.g. Sigurðsson 2008), first and second person pro-
nouns have a slightly different distribution than third person with respect to strong

3. There is only one case in which the 2nd person singular is obligatory, namely in the present
subjunctive, where there is no verbal morphology that differentiates the singular persons. Tu in
that case displays the properties of weak pronouns. (see also Cardinaletti 2004: 126)
4. The notion of pragmatic relevance in the discourse has not been satisfactorily formalized,
yet. Nonetheless, it is clear that the distribution of strong/deficient pronouns is the result of the
interaction of pragmatic and syntactic factors. I direct the reader to Calabrese (1980, 1985) and
subsequent works and Frascarelli (2007).
 Diana Vedovato

and deficient forms. This paper primarily deals with third person pronouns, hence I
will not investigate this aspect of the question.
In general, in all syntactic positions where deficient pronouns are not allowed,
only the strong counterpart is allowed, and this is true for all persons:
(3) a. Ho chiamato io la polizia, non Luca (contrastive focus)
have called I the police, not Luca
‘It was me who called the police, not Luca.’
b. *Ho chiamato la polizia, non Luca.
have called the police, not Luca.
‘I called the police, not Luca.’
The ungrammaticality of (3b) only concerns the interpretation. If the pronoun is not
phonetically realized, the only possible interpretation for (3b) is a contrastive focus on
the object [la polizia]: ‘I called THE POLICE, not Luca’.
Italian complement pronouns also fall into two distinct classes: strong pronouns
and clitics. Strong pronouns syntactically behave as full DPs and can be used in PPs.
Clitics are always adjacent to the verb and cannot occur in isolation, coordination or
in syntactically marked structures, such as Cleft sentences, Focalizations, Clitic Left
Dislocation (see Kayne (1975) for tests of clitichood). As in all other Romance lan-
guages, Italian complement clitics include an accusative and a dative series, both com-
plete for all persons. Table 1 reports the forms of the paradigm:

Table 1. The Italian pronominal paradigm

Subject Complement

Strong Strong Object clitics Dative clitics

1st sing. io me mi mi
2nd sing. tu te ti ti
3rd sing. lui lui (m; + human) lo (m) gli (m; coll.m/f)
(m; + human) lei (f; +human) la (f) le (f)
lei
(f; +human)
1st pl. noi noi ci ci
2nd pl. voi voi vi vi
3rd pl. loro (m/f; + human) loro (m/f; + human) li (m.) gli (coll.; m/f)
le (f.)
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

2. Out of the paradigm: weak pronouns

As we have seen, the Italian pronominal paradigm is made up of two complete series
of strong and deficient pronouns, both for subjects and complements. Nonetheless,
there are some elements which do not belong to any of those classes, namely egli,
which is used in subject position to refer to a third singular masculine [+ human]
referent; essa, third singular feminine pronoun, which can refer to [+/– human] refer-
ents; esso, third singular masculine [– human]; esse third plural feminine [+/– human];
essi, third plural masculine [+/– human] and the third plural dative loro. These ele-
ments display the typical properties of weak elements. Even if disyllabic, weak pro-
nouns cannot be used in all the syntactic contexts in which strong pronouns can be
used. For example, they cannot be isolated (4a) or coordinated (4b).
(4) a. Chi ha rotto il vaso? -*Egli vs -Lui
`Who broke the jar?’ - *egliW vs -LuiS
b. *Egli e suo fratello giocavano spesso con noi. vs Lui e suo
*egliw and his brother played often with us. luiS and his
fratello…
brother…
Moreover, they cannot be used in a marked position such as cleft sentences (5), nor
can they be modified (6):5
(5) *Sono essi che mi hanno detto di venire vs Sono loro che mi hanno
Are essiW that told me to come vs Are loroS that told
detto di venire.
me to come.
‘It was them that told me to come.’
(6) *Essi due non verranno vs Loro due non verranno.
EssiW two will not come. vs LoroS will not come.
`The two of them will not come.’
The weak dative loro, on the other side, can refer both to human and nonhuman ante-
cedents, a typical semantic property of deficient elements, whereas its strong counter-
part a loro is limited to a [+ human] reference.
(7) a. Ho dato loro da bere (loro= to the children; to the flowers)
have given loroW to drink
‘I gave them something to drink.’

5. The only two elements that can modify a weak pronoun (but not the dative loro) are anch’
(also) and stesso (-self).
 Diana Vedovato

b. Ho dato da bere a loro (a loro= to the children; *to the flowers)

have given to drink to themS
‘I gave them something to drink.’
Nevertheless, weak pronouns pattern in some respects with the strong series, for ex-
ample they are not forced to be adjacent to the verb:
(8) Essi, sapendo che il capitano li aveva traditi, lasciarono il paese.
EssiW, knowing that their leader had betrayed them, left the country.
‘Knowing that their leader had betrayed them, they left the country.’
Weak pronouns do not form a complete series, rather they are isolated elements that
create an asymmetry in the paradigm. We will provide data that can show two facts,
among others: on the one hand, the use of these pronouns is limited to some formal
language registers, on the other hand, in colloquial Italian, speakers reorganize the
paradigm in a different way.

2.1 Written Italian

Egli/esso/essa/essi/esse and the dative loro are mainly used in written and formal Italian.
Here are some examples from two national newspapers with the antecedents underlined:
(9) Tra le tante dichiarazioni di queste settimane rilasciate dal presidente della Re-
gione una ci è sembrata particolarmente interessante. Egli, parlando col gov-
ernatore del Veneto, ha riconosciuto che nell’ Isola «non sempre è stato fatto un
uso virtuoso dell’ autonomia.
Among the several statements made in these weeks by the president of the
Region, one seemed to us really interesting. He, talking with the governor of
the Veneto region, recognized that… (from La Repubblica.it, 08/24/08)
(10) In un angolo sperduto al confine tra la Svezia e la Norvegia semi di pecci, una
conifera sempreverde, attecchivano tra le rocce. Da essi sarebbero nati rigogliosi
alberi che sono sopravissuti fino ai nostri giorni.
In a remote corner on the border between Sweden and Norway seeds of pecci,
an evergreen conifer, rooted among the rocks. From them, gorgeous trees
would have sprouted… (from La Repubblica.it, 04/14/08)
(11) ma certo ci induce a domandarci chi sono i nostri ragazzi. Li conosciamo vera-
mente? [...]
Non avremmo dovuto dare loro una forma di educazione per aiutarli almeno a
vivere meglio certe situazioni?
But certainly it leads ourselves to wonder who our guys are. Do we really
know them? […] Shouldn’t we have given them a sort of education to help
them to live some situations? (from Corriere della Sera.it, 04/13/08)
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

Looking carefully at the examples above, another consideration is due: in both (9) and
(10) the use of the weak pronoun is obligatory. In (9), egli could not be replaced by the
null subject. In (9)’ the sentence is rewritten omitting the pronoun:
(9)’ Tra le tante dichiarazioni di queste settimane rilasciate dal presidente della Re-
gione una ci è sembrata particolarmente interessante. Parlando col governatore
del Veneto, Ø ha riconosciuto che nell’Isola «non sempre è stato fatto un uso
virtuoso dell’ autonomia.
‘Among the several statements made in these weeks by the president of the
Region, one seemed to us really interesting. Taking with the governor of the
Veneto region, Ø recognized that…’
In (9)’, since [il presidente della regione] is not the subject of the previous sentence, and
consequently is not accessible by default as antecedent of the null pronoun, the realiza-
tion of the subject pronoun egli favors the reading. Moreover, the presence of another
possible antecedent, namely [il governatore del Veneto] requires egli to precede the
parenthetic sentence, otherwise a misunderstanding would arise.
Similarly, in (10), essi is the only personal pronoun allowed (otherwise a demon-
strative would have to be used), since the zero form is excluded from PPs, while the
strong third person plural pronoun loro cannot pronominalize the inanimate anteced-
ent [seeds of pecci]6.
As for the plural dative loro, its use is very frequent in controlled productions. Un-
like examples (9) and (10), loro in (11) has a possible substitute in colloquial, informal
Italian, namely the clitic gli (Non avremmo dovuto dargli una forma di educazione…):
the variant does not create any change in the semantics of the sentence, rather it pro-
duces a stylistic drop.

2.2 Spoken Italian

Searching a corpus of spoken Italian, the LIP (Lessico di frequenza dell’Italiano Par-
lato) corpus, out of around 490.000 words, 15 occurrences of esso, 11 of essa, 28 of esse
are found7.
Only 40 occurrences of egli were found. Interestingly, 33 of them were produced in
type D texts, i.e. “unidirectional exchange, with the addressee being present: school les-
sons (elementary and secondary school), university lectures, sermons, court pleadings”.
Although belonging to a spoken language production, these texts are very formal.

6. In colloquial Italian, lui/lei/loro are very often used to pronominalize inanimate anteced-
ents, too, but preferably if performing an agent theta-role (see § 6).
7. There are no significant differences in the typology of the texts.
 Diana Vedovato

The same uneasiness with egli has been expressed by a quite significant number of
informants who were asked to judge the following sentences:
(12) Venne anch’egli alla festa.
Came also egliW to-the party
‘He too came to the party.’
(13) Anch’egli ha partecipato alla preparazione della lotteria.
Also egliW participated to the preparation of-the lottery
‘He too participated in the preparations for the lottery.’
Out of 17 interviewees, 9 of them claimed for (12), and 8 of them for (13), that the
sentences are grammatical, but belong to the written register.
The dative loro is used by speakers only in very formal contexts, while in collo-
quial Italian the clitic gli is preferred. Example (14) has been collected from a per-
sonal conversation:
(14) (Talking about two musicians) Gli mando un messaggio con l’indirizzo.
gli-3pl.DatC send a message with the address
‘I will send them a message containing the address.’
The data provided so far reveal that, in spoken Italian, speakers reorganize the para-
digm as illustrated in Table 2.
In both cases, a structurally more deficient pronoun is preferred to the weak one.
In this paper, I will not consider the esso8 series referring to [-human] entities, be-
cause in this case a gap in the paradigm arises: since lui (strong) can refer only to

8. For a historical analysis of esso see Renzi (2000). As Cecilia Poletto points out to me, if we
assume Cardinaletti & Starke’s generalizations, the semantic specialization of egli and esso could
be a problem, because, being both weak, their distribution should not depend on the animate
feature of the antecedent. A possible answer to this apparent puzzle lies (once again) in the his-
tory of Italian: Boström’s (1972) study on Italian and Florentine third personal pronouns pro-
vides ample evidence that, up to the 19th century, both egli and esso could refer to a non human
antecedent. The first traces of a semantic specialization appear in Fornaciari (1881)’s grammar:
“I PPS nella forma assoluta [=non clitica] non si debbono regolarmente riferire ad altro che a
persona od a cosa personificata. Pure usano spesso gli scrittori antichi, e in qualche rara volta
sarà lecito anch’oggi, riferire quelli di terza persona anche a cosa” [Pronouns in the absolutive
form [i.e. not clitic] are to be referred to a person or personified elements. Ancient authors often
used these pronouns to refer to things; nowadays, this usage might be only exceptionally admit-
ted] (D.V.) (Fornaciari 1881 [1974: 59]). Esso could still be used to refer to [+ human] anteced-
ents: “Esso serve a richiamare una persona o cosa poco prima nominata” [Esso is used to refer
to a previously mentioned person or thing] (Fornaciari 1881 [1974: 84). Considering that in
standard Italian essa, essi and esse are not sensitive to the semantic features of their antecedents,
and that, except for egli, no other nominative outcome of the ille paradigm has survived in
standard Italian (ella is very rare, elli, elle, eglino, elleno completely disappeared), the semantic
specialization of the pair esso/egli is probably lexical, and does not lie in a structural difference.
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

Table 2. A comparison of standard and colloquial Italian

standard Italian colloquial Italian

3rd singular subject (male) ØW/egliW/luiS ØW/luiS

3rd plural dative loroW/a loroS gliC/a loroS

[+human] antecedents, there is no personal pronoun bearing a [–human] feature, as

(15a) shows, which can fill the syntactic positions reserved to strong elements: thus, the
demonstrative pronouns are used in (15b). In (15c), I provide an example illustrating
Left Dislocation, which is one of the contexts where only strong pronouns are allowed:
(15) a. *Esso non l’ho mai visto! (esso=a movie)
*ItW not lo-3s.m.Obj.C have never seen!
`I’ve never seen this.’
b. Questo non l’ho mai visto! (questo= a movie)
This not lo-3s.m.Obj.C have never seen!
`I have never seen this.’
c. Lui non l’ho mai visto! (Lui≠a movie; lui=the boy with the blue shirt)
HeS not 3s.m.Obj.C -have never seen!
`Him, I’ve never seen.’

3. Economy principles

In this section I present two principles that are helpful in understanding the grammaticali-
zation cycle that affected personal pronouns and the resettlement of the paradigm as illus-
trated in Table 2. In the next section, instead, I will look at the history of Italian, and I will
show which factors have influenced and modified the natural change of the paradigm.

3.1 Economy of Representation

The Economy of Representation principle, as presented in Cardinaletti & Starke (1999),

is stated as follows:
(16) Economy of Representations: Minimize Structure.
Only if the smaller structure [= the pronoun with the smaller structure, D.V.]
is independently ruled out, is the bigger alternative possible.
(Cardinaletti & Starke 1999: 47)
Being active in synchrony, ‘Minimize structure’ predicts that, wherever the syntactic
context allows it, a deficient pronoun will be selected (i.e. a pronoun with ‘lighter’
structure). Otherwise, a strong pronoun will be spelled out.
 Diana Vedovato

3.2 Head Preference principle

Looking at diachrony, many changes seem to obey to another cognitive principle,

which captures the tendency of speakers to reinterpret full or deficient XP as heads.
The Head Preference principle, as van Gelderen (2004: 11) names it, is found in (17):
(17) Head preference or Spec to Head Principle:
Be a head, rather than a phrase. (Van Gelderen 2004: 11)
It predicts that, whenever possible, a syntactic element will be analyzed as a head,
rather than a full phrase.
The application of this principle to personal pronouns is visualized in (18):
(18) strong pronoun > weak pronoun > clitic (> agreement markers9)
|_____Spec XP_______| |______ X° _____|
Pronouns can have the syntactic structure of full phrases (=strong pronouns) or of
heads (clitics)10; when a process of weakening is triggered, pronouns lose part of their
internal structure and change their syntactic category, most of the times showing a
morphological reduction, as well (although this is not always the case). Being structur-
ally related in a hierarchical way (Cardinaletti & Starke (1999)), it is plausible to expect
pronouns to grammaticalize passing through each level of the hierarchy. The last pos-
sible stage, namely the change in functional category, has also been included in (18).

3.3 Consequences

There are at least three consequences of the interaction between (16) and (17):
(19) a. In a paradigm with both weak and clitic pronouns, the latter are preferred;
b. Weak pronouns could be reinterpreted as clitics;
c. Since the shift of category implicates a different set of properties, restruc-
turing the distribution of the pronouns implies that a new pronominal XP
will enter the paradigm to fill the gap.
A survey of linguistic changes allows us to collect some explicative examples for each
point listed in (19). The best piece of evidence in favor of (19a) is the competition between
the weak dative loro and the clitic gli in Modern Italian: the clitic, rather than the weak

9. For the cycle involving subject pronouns see van Gelderen 2008.
10. In Cardinaletti & Starke’s analysis, clitics are X°, weak are deficient XP while strong are full
XP. In some recent literature, it has been proposed that clitics are not heads, rather remnant XPs.
As for now, I will not take this analysis into account, even if it offers good analyses for some
phenomena, such as Clitic Left Dislocation. Anyway, it does not invalidate our analysis, because
in any case, in an “empty XP with just an X” (van Gelderen 2004: 11), the clitic would be the X°.
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

form, fits in the paradigm of the spoken language. In the light of (19a), the persistence of
sporadic weak elements in the Italian paradigm is not immediately comprehensible.
The birth of Romance clitics is instead the result of the kind of process suggested
in (19b), since Romance clitics derive from Latin weak pronouns: “weak forms are the
source of Romance clitics and can explain most of their syntactic properties (e.g. their
position)” (Salvi 1997: 1). The shift from a weak to a clitic category is the process that
subject pronouns of old Northern Italian dialects underwent in the 16th century (see
e.g. Vanelli 1987 and Renzi 1992), which in turn have been reanalyzed as AGR11 heads
(“In the dialects the subject clitic is the strong AGR licensing pro in a Null Subject
Language” (Rizzi 1986: 402)12). Analogously, from the weak 3rd plural dative loro in
Old Senese a clitic lo’ originated (see Egerland 2005).
Needless to say, weakening processes do not necessarily reach the weakest point of
the path: there are languages that do not have clitics, rather they oppose a complete
series of weak pronouns to a strong one (see Germanic languages in general, where the
two series are sometimes homophonous, too). In this respect, the bizarre situation
found in the Italian paradigm does not concern the presence of weak pronouns op-
posed to their strong counterparts, rather, it has to do with the presence of pronouns
at different degrees of ‘structural deficiency’ which compete in the same context.
The phenomenon under (19c) is a very common one in grammaticalization cy-
cles; for instance, the Latin demonstrative ille has been the source of third person
pronouns and of the demonstrative article: this change implied a modification in mor-
phology and a shift in functional category. In order to fill the gap, a new reinforced
demonstrative appeared: lat. eccum illum> ita. quello, that. In some Romance varie-
ties the cline proceeded further, for example in Modern French the demonstrative has
been newly reinforced by the deictic adverbs -ci, -la (‘here’, ‘there’). The use of strong
complement forms as subject pronouns is to be understood as a process of that sort.

4. Subject cycle: Evidence from Old Romance

The weak status of egli and the esso series reveals that they come from a strong coun-
terpart. Indeed, in Old Italian, they were strong pronouns, i.e. they were allowed in all

11. Indeed in some dialects, a subject clitic and a quantifier can cooccur (Rizzi 1986: 396):
(i) Nessuno l’ha detto nulla (Florentine)
Nobody 3s.m.Subj.C -has said anything
‘Nobody said anything.’
Further evidence in Rizzi (1986) and therein references.
12. Recall also the verbal endings of some dialects, which derive from agglutinated personal
pronouns: for example, in the Lugano dialect (Swiss Lombard), the 2ndpl. pronoun is attached
to the verb vegnu-f, where the f derives from vos `you.pl’ and the 2ndsing. t in cante-t `you sing’
derives from the pronoun tu ` (Poletto 2000).
 Diana Vedovato

the contexts from which they are nowadays banned (compare the following exam-
ples13 with (4) and (6) in Section 2):
(20) a. ed egli ed ella furono trattatori della […] morte del detto re
and egliS and ellaS were cause of-the death of-the called king
Andreas
Andreas
‘And he and she have been the cause of the death of the so-called king Andreas.’
(G.Villani, Cronica, libro 13, cap.99, rr. 16–18 [1348])
comandarono che tutto il
b. mondo in pace vivesse: ed egli due14
they ordered that the whole world in peace lived: and egliS two
chiusero le porte del tempio […]
closed the doors of the temple
‘They ordered the entire world to live in peace: and the two of them closed
the doors of the temple.’
(Bono Giamboni, Orosio, libro 7, cap.7, p.449–450, rr. 20–22, 1)
Egli and the esso series had a weak (homophonous) counterpart, too, which was used when
the null subject was not licensed, namely when the verb didn’t move to a higher position in
the C domain: the subject could be dropped only from a position to the right of the verb15.
This condition didn’t involve only third person pronouns, but the system of all
persons. Egerland reports that “oltre agli usi evidentemente tonici dei pronomi sog-
getto, ci sono anche casi in cui i pronomi appaiono con valore di tema non marcato e
sono presumibilmente atoni: è il cosiddetto uso debole” [besides the cases where sub-
ject pronouns are clearly used as tonic, there are cases in which pronouns display the
value of unmarked theme and are presumably atonic] (D.V.) (Cardinaletti and Egeland
forthcoming: 9). The pronouns lui/lei/loro were used only as oblique, but they were
allowed (not obligatory, though) in some non-canonical subject positions, such as par-
ticipial and gerundive sentences or when the subject was far away from the verb.
A similar system is attested in most Old Romance languages, such as Old French,
Old Northern Italian Dialects, and Florentine16. In Old Italian, indeed, “non mancano

13. From Cardinaletti & Egerland (forthcoming).

14. In Old Italian, egli was the form for the third person plural, too.
15. “Quando abbiamo un contesto di inversione, sia in frase principale che subordinata, il sog-
getto pronominale può essere espresso […] o anche rimanere inespresso […]; in questo caso il
posto del soggetto non espresso sarebbe quello che segue immediatamente il verbo” [When we
have an inversion context, in the main clause as well as in the subordinate clause, the pronomi-
nal subject can be spelled out […], or it can remain unpronounced […]; in the latter case the
place of the unpronounced subject should be the one immediately following the verb] (D.V.)
(Benincà (forthcoming: 13).
16. See Renzi (1983, 1992) for Florentine, Vanelli-Renzi-Benincà (1985), Vanelli (1987), Po-
letto (1995) for Northern Italian dialects, Roberts (1993) for Old French, and Benincà (2006) for
all Romance varieties.
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

i casi in cui anche in questo contesto il soggetto, il cui posto sarebbe immediatamente
prima del verbo, non è espresso. In questo caso, abbiamo probabilmente a che fare con
un registro di lingua diverso, in cui vige il principio del soggetto nullo” [There are also
cases, in this context [=subordinate clauses with no V-to-C movement], in which the
subject, whose place would be immediately before the verb, is not spelled out. In this
case, we are probably dealing with a different language register, where the null subject
principle is active] (D.V.) (Benincà forthcoming: 13).
When V-to-C movement was lost, many Old Romance languages developed a se-
ries of subject clitics (passing through a ‘weak’ phase). In most cases, the oblique forms
became the new strong subject pronouns. We can visualize the process in this way17:
(Northern Italian Dialects and Florentine)
(21) i. 1st stage:
CP
wo
SubjP
wo
strong prns AgrSP*
(Nominative forms) 3
pro Agr’
3
TP
3
VP
ii. 2nd stage
CP
wo
SubjP
wo
strong prns AgrSP*
(Oblique forms) wo
weak prns Agr’
(Nominative forms) wo
TP
wo
VP

17. “AgrSP is the projection in which phi-features are checked on nominative DPs […] SubjP is
the projection in which the “subject-of-predication” feature is checked. […] in turn, AgrSP can
be split into discrete projections realizing different phi-features.” (Cardinaletti 2004: 121)
 Diana Vedovato

iii. 3rd stage

CP
wo
SubjP
wo
strong prns AgrSP*
(Oblique forms) wo
Agr’
wo
SubjCL TP
(Nom forms) wo
VP
Modern Italian has not developed a similar system: it is a perfect null subject language.
Nonetheless, as Vanelli (2003) points out, the fact that egli remained as a weak pro-
noun and that the oblique form lui is the only strong pronoun available is a clue that a
weakening process started, but never ended.
Italian shares the first two stages with Northern Italian Dialects and Florentine,
but departs from them in the last stage:
(22) i. 1st stage: = (21i) (Modern Italian)
ii. 2nd stage: = (21ii)
iii. 3rd stage:
CP
wo
SubjP
wo
strong prns/egli AgrSP*
(Oblique forms) 3
pro Agr’
3
TP
3
VP
The unsolved cycle illustrated in (22) is responsible for the spurious behaviour of egli.
There is syntactic evidence for hypothesizing that in pre-subject position egli occupies
the same syntactic position as lui, even though unlike lui, egli cannot further move up
to other positions. Egli in Spec,SubjP would also account for the fact that egli and pro
differ in some respects and are not completely interchangeable.
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

5. A broken cycle: The influence of prescriptive grammar

If the status of weak elements can be explained in terms of a broken cycle, their persist-
ence in the paradigm is understandable in the light of the influence of grammarians in
the development of standard Italian. Since the 16th century, grammarians have classi-
fied the use of lui/lei/loro in subject position as a ‘grammatical mistake’; the model they
conformed to was based on the language of the three great authors of the 14th century,
Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio. As we have documented, in that period egli and the
esso series belonged to a different category. But in the 16th century, when the stand-
ardization of the national language took place, the spoken language had already traces
of the weakening process of egli and esso, and lui/lei/loro were commonly used as sub-
jects18. The force of the authority did not change the situation in the spoken language,
but the written register conformed to the norm, which is still active.
Vanelli (2003: 1) reports two forceful quotations, one taken from a 17th century
grammar and the other from a more recent one:
(23) a. “Egli, ed Ella son sempre nel caso retto [= soggetto] […] E’ questo
grav’errore a non pochi molto frequente dir, Lui ha fatto.” [Egli and ella are
to be used in subject position. Saying Lui ha fatto is a frequent, serious
mistake. (DV translation)] (Buommattei, Della lingua toscana, 1643 )
b. “Volendoci attenere alla norma grammaticale, sarebbe opportuno evitare
l’impiego di lui, lei e loro al posto rispettivamente di egli (esso), ella (essa),
essi ed esse.”
[If we want to comply with the grammatical law, it would be necessary to
avoid the use of lui, lei and loro instead of egli (esso), ella (essa), essi and esse.
(DV translation)] (Battaglia / Pernicone, La grammatica italiana, 1951)
All ancient and modern grammars include a section on this querelle, even if they deal
with it simply from a stylistic point of view, without capturing the problematic status
of weak pronouns and their peculiar syntactic properties, e.g. that they cannot surface
in post-verbal position. In the last decades, the norm has relieved under the pressure
of the spoken language, but the debate is still open, in particular in school teaching.

18. “La nuova forma lui (col femminile lei) si divulga nel quattrocento (Pulci, Poliziano). I
grammatici del XVI secolo (per esempio il Varchi) condannavano un tal uso di lui. Ma nel XIX
secolo la vittoria di lui appar definitiva; nel rifacimento del suo romanzo, il Manzoni cambia egli
stesso in lui medesimo (Folli, 266). Nell’odierno toscano parlato egli appare ovunque sostituito
da lui (cfr. AIS, 651)” [The new form lui (along with the feminine lei) spreads out in the 15th
century (Pulci, Poliziano). The grammarians of the 16th century (for example Varchi) con-
demned such a use of lui. But in the 19th century lui definitely prevailed: in the review of his
novel, Manzoni changes egli medesimo into lui medesimo (Folli, 266). In modern spoken Tuscan,
egli is everywhere substituted by lui (see AIS, 651)] (D.V.) (Rohlfs 1967, II: 133). See also Bos-
tröm (1972) and D’Achille (1990, ch. 6) for a survey over the centuries.
 Diana Vedovato

5.1 At which point of the cycle is egli?

In Modern Italian, egli appears as a ‘frozen’ element. Speakers learn it only through
written and formal language (this means quite late, at least in elementary school) and
the paradigm is split as we have seen in Table 2, with two micro-grammars depending
on the linguistic register.
Another consequence of this prescriptive policy is that egli is not as weak as it
should be19. Although egli and pro are claimed to be both weak (Cardinaletti & Starke
1999: 47), some data suggest that the phonological reality of egli makes pro ‘the small-
est’ one. A short questionnaire was submitted to some native speakers of Italian,20
asking them to identify the referent of the pronoun contained in the sentences. I report
part of the results:
(24) Gianni partirà quando Ø avrà finito il lavoro. 17: Ø = Gianni
(25) Gianni partirà quando lui avrà finito il lavoro.
15: lui = other referent 2: lui = Gianni
(26) Gianni partirà quando egli avrà finito il lavoro
8: egli = Gianni 9: egli = other referent
‘Gianni will leave when Ø/egliW/luiS will have finished the work.’
In Cardinaletti & Starke (1999: 47), (27) is coindexed as follows:
(27) a. Giannii partirà quando proi avrà finito il lavoro. (Italian)
b. Giannii partirà quando eglii avrà finito il lavoro.
`John will leave when he will have finished the work.’
Our results show that a significant number of interviewees do not accept this coin-
dexation, and egli seems to pattern more with lui than with pro.

5.2 LoroDAT

In Modern Italian, 3rd plural dative pronominalization is expressed by the clitic gli
rather than the weak loro. Prescriptive grammar has not accepted it as a standard fea-
ture, although in modern grammars it is quite frequent to find the clitic as a (collo-
quial) variant for loro.

19. Adopting a split-DP hypothesis à la Giusti (1996), thus considering the DP structure ar-
ticulated in more that three layers, it would be possible to think that the weakening processes
‘peel’ small portions of structure each time, thus giving rise to structurally different deficient
pronouns. This would explain why egli is weak, but fails to fall in some of the relevant predic-
tions on its distribution. I thank Cecilia Poletto for suggesting this hypothesis to me. Unfortu-
nately, I cannot develop it here, but I will take it into account for my future research.
20. All informants were aged 22–28.
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

Unlike what observed for weak subject pronouns, loro is truly a weak pronoun in
the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) (see Cardinaletti 1991), and its status has
remained unchanged since the Old Italian period (Cardinaletti and Egerland forth-
coming), apart from the possibility to surface in preverbal position (29), which is lost
in Modern Italian (30)21:
(29) deono dare noi quello che lloro piacie
must give us that that loroW likes.
‘They must give us what they like.’
(Primo libricciolo di crediti di Bene Bencivenni, 7v, par 118)
(30) *Io loro ho consigliato di venire
I loroW have suggested to come.
‘I suggested for them to come.’
Looking at the Old Italian paradigm, two more weak dative pronouns are found, i.e. lei
(to-her) and lui (to-him):
(31) E io, rispondendo lei, dissi [… ]
And I, answering lei.W, said…
‘And I, answering her, said…’ (Dante, Vita Nuova, cap.33, par.3)22
(32) né agrada lui d’intendere le nostre parole [...]
nor likes luiW to-understand the our words
‘Nor does he want to understand our words.’
(Brunetto Latini, Rettorica, p.195, r.17)
The interestingly point is that 3rd singular weak pronouns completely left the pro-
nominal system, and only 3rd person singular clitics are used. As we already know loro
never disappeared: it shares the paradigm with the clitic gli and their distribution is
based on socio-linguistic factors23.

21. In Modern Italian loro can appear between the auxiliary and the past participle, a position
not accessible to other elements (the construction belongs to a literary style, though) :
(i) Io ho loro consigliato di venire.
I have loroW suggested to come
22. From Cardinaletti & Egerland (forthcoming).
23. From a semantic point of view, the dative loro is perfectly synonymous with gli (indeed,
35i=35ii), without any particular distribution depending on the coindexation with the anteced-
ent as we observed for the subjects.
 Diana Vedovato

A 3rd plural dative clitic i/li is found in Old Italian, too, and it occurred mainly in
clitic clusters (Cardinaletti and Egerland forthcoming 15):
(33) e credon che la gente / lili ponga i·llarghezza [metta in conto di prodigalità, li
consideri segni di prodigalità]...
and believe that the people/liCliC put in generosity
‘and they believe that people consider them signs of generosity.’
(Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, vv. 1478–1479)
It must to be said that no weakening process seems to have operated on the weak loro,
and therefore nothing similar to what happened to Old Senese lo’ is attested24 (Eger-
land 2005: 1120). The 3rd plural dative clitic form is the etymological outcome of the
original Latin plural dative illis25. The first explicit rejection of the clitic gli denoting
plural comes from Varchi (16th century), who forbids the form declaring that Dante
did not use it (Varchi 1571: 271). Since then, the standard paradigm has been the one
reported in the table below:
The problem with Table 3 is that loro is structurally asymmetrical with respect to
all other dative clitics. This asymmetry is particularly visible with clitic clustering:
(34) a. gli-3s.m.DatC+lo-3s.m.ObjC → glielo V
Ho comprato un libroi per Marioj e glielj+i’ho dato.
(I) have bought a booki for Marioj and glielCj+i have given
b. le-3s.f.DatC +lo-3s.m.ObjC → glielo V
Ho comprato un libroi per Luciaj e glielj+i’ho dato.
(I) have bought a booki for Luciaj and glielCj+i have given
‘I bought a book for Lucia and I gave it to him/her.’
(35) a. loro-3plDatW+lo-3s.m.ObjC → lo V loro
Ho comprato un libro per i bambini e l’ho dato loro
(I) have bought a booki for the childrenj and lCi’ have given themWj

Table 3. Italian dative pronouns

m. f.

3rd singular Gli le

3rd plural loro

24. According to Egerland (2005), the trigger for the grammaticalization of lo’ has been morpho-
phonological: the reduced form lo’ (<loroW) has been reinterpreted by L1 learners as a clitic.
25. “Al latino illis risale l’antico toscano li (anche lli). Il plurale è dunque venuto a coincidere
col singolare” [From Latin illis derives the Old Tuscan li (also lli). Thus the plural and the sin-
gular forms happened to coincide] (D.V.) (Rohlfs 1967: 163)
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

b. gli-3plDatC +lo-3s.m.ObjC → glielo V

Ho comprato un libro per i bambini e gliel’ho dato.
(I) have bought a booki for the childrenj and glielCj+i have given
‘I bought a book for the children and I gave it to them.’
A dative and an accusative clitic form a cluster which behaves like a clitic. If the weak
loro is selected, no cluster is possible: the accusative clitic will precede the verb, while
loro will follow it (35a). Since loro is the only weak dative pronoun, an asymmetry
arises at this point of the paradigm, whereas for all other persons the clitic cluster is
possible. Substituting loro for the clitic gli, the symmetry is preserved.
In Fornaciari’s (1881) grammar we found a ‘concession’ to the use of gli with plural
meaning precisely in clitic clustering:
(36) “Peggio starebbe loro unito ad un altro pronome (come lo, la, le); p.es. accos-
tatomi ai fanciulli, presi delle frutta e le diedi loro. In quest’ultimo caso gli sarà
da preferirsi anche pel plurale […]. Negli altri casi gli per a loro si userà come
eccezione.” (Fornaciari 1881 [1974: 60])
[It would be worse to put ‘loro’ next to another pronoun (such as ‘lo’, ‘la’, ‘le’);
for example:[…] and le-3.s.fObj.C gave loroW. In this last case gli has to be
preferred in the plural, as well. […] In the other cases ‘gli’ meaning ‘a loro’ (=
to them) will be used exceptionally]. (dv translation)

6. New cycles

Languages keep changing, despite socio-cultural interferences. Two new phenomena

are emerging in Italian: a) the strong forms lui/lei/loro are becoming weak, pronomi-
nalizing [-human] referents; b) a gender distinction is emerging for the third dative
plural, starting from hypercorrectness.
Evidence for (a) is provided by the examples below:
(37) Prendo il mio dischettoi […] e lo infilo in un computer nuovoj, anche luij con il
“fritz chip” dentro. Il PC della redazione me lo rifiuta con la scusa che quel disco
è stato creato da un sistema differente da luii.
`I’ll grab the floppy diski […] and I put it in my new laptopj, also himj with the
‘fritz chip’ inside. The PC at the editorial office rejects it with the justification
that that disk has been created by a system different from himi.’ (from Il mat-
tino di Padova, 07/05/06)
(38) La ruspai laj sistemerà leii, la stradaj.
The bulldozeri (f.) laj-3f.s.C level.will leii, the roadj
‘The bulldozer itself will level the road.’
 Diana Vedovato

The occurrences of lui/lei/loro referred to [-human] entities are very frequent when the
subject has an agent theta role and in structures like those in (38), with a strong pro-
noun doubling construction (Belletti 2005: 6). What we expect is that, whenever this
stage becomes stabilized, weak lui/lei/loro will fit with the properties of deficient pro-
nouns, in a way similar to Spanish26.
As for (b), I present some data collected during an experiment carried out in Oc-
tober 2008 in a Secondary School in Veneto (students ranging from 11–14 years old)27.
Students were asked to pronominalize the underlined constituents in the sentences
presented to them, e.g. in (39) to (41). Here are some of the sentences and the results
concerning the pronominalization of third plural dative constituents.
(39) Quando arrivano i bambini, daremo ai bambini il gelato che abbiamo comprato
When come the children, (we) will give to the children the ice-cream that
(we) have bought
‘When the children come, we will give to the children the ice-cream we have bought.’
Target:
Quando arrivano i bambini, daremo loro il gelato che abbiamo comprato.
When come the children, (we) will give them the ice-cream that (we) have bought
‘When the children come, we will give them the ice-cream we have bought.’

Table 4. Results for (39)

loro ‘themW’ a loro ‘to themS’ gli ‘to-him3C’ le‘to-her3C’ Other answers

14 3 6 7 1

26. In Spanish, the subject pronouns have “la particularidad de que deben referirse obligatoria-
mente a personas” [they refer only to [+ human] antecedents] (D.V.)
(Fernández Soriano 1999: 1220)
But they can be used to refer to objects where a null pronoun or a clitic are ruled out (see
Luján 1999: 1295):
(i) Conocen la propuesta y piensan bregar por ella/*Ø (prepositional phrase)
(They) know the suggestion and (they) think to fend for ellaW/*Ø
Interestingly, even in a prepositional phrase, they still resist coordination and modification:
(ii) Està dispuesto a pagar mil dólares por ella y las otras (*ella= una Ferrari)
(He) is capable of paying a thousand dollars for ella and the others (ella= a Ferrari)
(iii) He comprado una mochila y una maleta, y he viajado siempre con ella dos (*ellas= mi
mochila y mi maleta)
(I) bought a rucksack and a suitcase, and (I) have always travelled with ellas two
(*ellas=my rucksack and my suitcase)
27. See Vedovato (to appear).
 Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian 

(40) La nonna ha promesso alle nipotine di comprare alle nipotine il gelato.

The grandmother has promised to-the nieces to buy to the nieces an ice-cream.
‘The grandmother has promised her nieces that she would have bought to her
nieces an ice-cream.’
Target
La nonna ha promesso alle nipotine di comprare loro il gelato
The grandmother has promised to-the nieces to buy them an ice-cream.
‘The grandmother has promised her nieces that she would have bought them
an ice-cream.’
(41) Quest’estate ho lasciato le piante a mio figlio, ma si è dimenticato di dare alle
piante da bere
Last summer (I) left my plants to my son, but (he) forgot to give to my plants
to drink.
‘Last summer, (I) left my plants to my son, but he forgot to water my plants.’
Target
Quest’estate ho lasciato le piante a mio figlio, ma si è dimenticato di dare loro da bere
Last summer (I) left my plants to my son, but (he) forgot to give them to drink.
‘Last summer, (I) left my plants to my son, but he forgot to water them.’
In all the contexts, the expected target was the weak pronoun loro, but we knew that
children could produce a loro28 and gli, as well. Among the answers, we found a sur-
prising element: the clitic le referring to a plural feminine antecedent.
The hypothesis is that some students recreate the gender distinction of the singu-
lar in the plural as a hypercorrection effect. The rule they extend regards the third
person singular dative. Standard Italian has gli for the masculine and le for the femi-
nine. In colloquial Italian, instead, even in the third singular, there is no gender
Table 5. Results for (40)
loro ‘themW’ a loro ‘to themS’ gli ‘to-him3C’ le‘to-her3C’ Other answers

6 8 5 0 3

Table 6. Results for (41)

loro ‘themW’ a loro ‘to themS’ gli ‘to-him3C’ le ‘to-her3C’ Other answers

6 3 8 6 1

28. In this type of exercises, students do not always understand the given context of the sen-
tence and they sometimes select a strong pronoun when a deficient is required. Usually, after the
experimental activity, the number of the `correct’ answers increases.
 Diana Vedovato

distinction. One of the very first rules that children learn is that gli referring to a femi-
nine antecedent is a serious mistake. A crucial fact is that they do not reinvent another
weak pronoun: they either oppose loro to le or gli to le. No active change is found in the
frozen pronoun: the resettlement of the paradigm is made with the most deficient
material, i.e. the clitics.
Ending this section, I would like to remind the reader of another widespread phe-
nomenon, i.e. the use of the 2nd singular oblique pronoun te as a strong subject form.
The substitution of te for tu (the standard strong form) is generalized, but it remains to
be understood whether there are some ‘preferential’ contexts (the starting point of the
innovation) and whether tu is weakening or not. Moreover, the same substitution is
not found with the first person, and this fact also needs to be accounted for. Benincà
(2005: 81) remarks that standard Italian seems to pattern exactly with the Florentine
system, where in the second person, but not in the first person, the complement pro-
noun took the place of the nominative form. I will keep this topic for future research.

7. Conclusions

It has been shown that Italian weak subject pronouns are fragments of a broken gram-
maticalization cycle and that their persistence in the paradigm, as well as the presence
of a weak dative pronoun, is due to prescriptive rules.
Taking the language of the 14th century as a model, grammarians included in the
paradigm elements that were not part of the spoken paradigm. A few centuries later, the
situation has not changed much: egli, esso/essa/essi/esse, and the plural dative loro are learnt
through the written language and mainly at school but not all speakers master them.
The general principles that are responsible for the weakening of pronouns are still
operating in the language, so that traces of new cycles are visible. But we cannot really
tell if Italian will be free to follow its natural course or if external factors will modify it.

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 chapter 7

The subject cycle of pronominal

auxiliaries in Old North Russian

Kyongjoon Kwon
Harvard University

The present paper examines the reanalysis patterns of BE-auxiliaries in the

history of the Russian language. I attempt to demonstrate that BE was reanalyzed
as a pronoun in Old North Russian, whereas it remained an auxiliary in
the remaining areas. My proposal crucially identifies Old North Russian as
transitional in changing the null subject property setting. The theoretical import
of the article is to show that pronouns and auxiliaries are similar enough in their
feature specifications for one to turn into the other when certain conditions are
met. Once BE-auxiliaries are reanalyzed as pronouns, they readily participate
in van Gelderen’s Subject Cycle, which I propose here to be modified to
accommodate the bi-directional nature of the changes.

Introduction

Late Common Slavic had a highly intricate tense system, consisting of absolute tenses
(present, aorist, imperfect and future) and parallel retrospective tenses (Isačenko 1940;
Andersen 2006c:10–11). There are several idiosyncratic features to note in this elabo-
rate system; absolute vs. retrospective distinctions and subsequent extensive use of
BE-auxiliaries, aspectual distinctions instantiated by aorist vs. imperfect, lack of verbal
inflection for future tense but instead periphrastic expressions (Andersen 2006abc).
Another important aspect of the Late Common Slavic verb system is its relatively com-
plicated past tense, composed of aorist, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect distinctions.
The aorist marks an action in the past with its initial and terminal point included
but without any reference to the present situation. The imperfect also denotes a past
action which lasted in the past, but without any reference to its beginning or end.
There was also a perfect, which is not tense but aspect in the strict sense in that it refers
to a state resulting from a previous event. The restructuring of the East Slavic tense
system is characterized by its substantial curtailment of such complex past tense mark-
ings (Borkovskij and Kuznecov 1965: 292–320). The decline of semantic distinctions
 Kyongjoon Kwon

made by various combinations of verbal inflections was presumably compensated for

by the rise of a more refined aspect system.1
What is relevant to the discussion is the fate of BE.2 BE served as a tense
marker, forming compound retrospective tenses (e.g., ‘has given’, ‘had given’), as op-
posed to the simple tenses (e.g., ‘gives’, ‘gave’), as shown in (1) (Andersen 1987: 23).
(1) a. ja budu dalŭ future perfect
I:Nom.Sg be:fut.1Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
‘I will have given …’
b. ja jesmĭ dalŭ present perfect
I:Nom.Sg be:pres.1Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
‘I have given …’
c. ja bylŭ dalŭ pluperfect
I:Nom.Sg be:pst-mscSg give-pst-msc.Sg
‘I had given …’
My discussion starts from the demise of the Late Common Slavic tense system, where-
by present perfect became a general preterit tense with the loss of imperfect and aorist.
It will focus on the development of Old Russian (also called as Rusian, drevnerusskij),
the language spoken in the Russian territory from the earliest attested date (ca. tenth
century) to the fifteenth century. Its dialectal variant, spoken in the north(-western)
region, most notably Novgorod and Pskov, will be given extensive attention. Its

1. This paper began as a presentation at Linguistic Cycles Workshop (April 25–26, 2008 Ari-
zona State University). I extend my warm thanks to Elly van Gelderen who was instrumental in
the formation of this work. This work was presented with further modification at other venues,
such as the 3rd Slavic Linguistics Society Meeting (June 10–12, 2008, Ohio State University) and
the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (No-
vember, 20–23, 2008, Philadelphia). I would like to thank Henning Andersen, John Bailyn, Sung-
ho Choi, Michael Flier, Aleksej Gippius, Matthew Herrington, Brian Joseph, Andrew Nevins,
Gilbert Rappaport and Andrej Zaliznjak for comments and useful discussion on various earlier
versions of this work. All remaining errors are, of course, my own
There have been debates about (i) when the grammatical system of aspect came into being and
(ii) what factors played a key role in the formation of aspect. For an overview of the polemics,
refer to Petruxin 2002. Abbreviations are as follows: birch bark letter (BBL: numbers in parenthe-
sis refers to the numerical number given by the editions of Novgorodskie gramoty na bereste and
the attested date, e.g., 111/2 and 124/4 are read as the second half of the eleventh and the last quar-
ter of the twelfth centuries, respectively); masculine as grammatical gender (msc); singular and
plural as grammatical number (Sg, Pl); nominative (Nom); accusative (Acc); genitive (Gen); loc-
ative (Loc); instrumental (Instr); past (pst), aorist (aor), prs (present), imperative (imp), infinitive
(inf), past passive participle (ppp), prep (preposition), particle (part), conjunction (conj).
2. Unless noted, BE refers to BE-auxiliaries. Other uses of BE verbs such as copulas, as rele-
vant they may be, will not be considered in this work.
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

linguistic features are mostly deduced from birch bark letter documents (hereafter,
BBL), which are comprehensively compiled in Zaliznjak (2004).
This paper is organized as follows. In the first section, drawing upon the distribu-
tional differences of BE in Old North and non-north Russian, I will advance a hypoth-
esis following Xaburgaev (1978) and Zaliznjak (2004) that BE in Old North Russian
was reanalyzed as a pronoun, making a pair with a ‘real’ pronoun. Although the fact
that BE occasionally functioned as a pronoun is sometimes acknowledged, it has not
been subject to a systematic approach. For instance, Ševeleva (2002) traces dialectal
differences with a pertinent division of Novgorod (i.e. North Russian) dialect and non-
Novgorod, but her exposition does not go beyond a detailed description of diachronic
facts, leaving much to be done.3 I aim to fill in blanks in the study of verbal pronouns
in the history of the Russian language, providing comparative (i.e. dialectal) and theo-
retical (i.e. explanatory) perspectives.
I will go on to provide crosslinguistic and language internal data as evidence for
the BE=pronoun analysis in the hope that these Russian data will shed light on the
understanding of relevant changes, i.e. from copulas to pronouns and vice versa.4 In
section three, a theoretical account of how such reanalysis could take place is pre-
sented within current syntactic frameworks. In the second half of this chapter, one
puzzling verbal form in Old North Russian is applied to my proposed analysis and
then recast in terms of the Subject Cycle (à la van Gelderen 2008). In the last section,
conditioning factors for the emergence of dialectal divergence will be introduced with
a proposal that Old North Russian occupies a transitional stage in changing from Old
Russian to Modern Russian in terms of null subject parameter setting. Finally the last
section concludes the discussion.

1. The pronominalization of BE

Old Russian is a pro-drop language, as is Late Common Slavic, from which it devel-
oped (cf. Choo 2004).5 For instance, it allows silent referential pronominal subjects of

3. Similarly, in the remainder of the paper, I will also make a distinction between Old North
Russian and Old non-North Russian, which will be termed for ease of reference as Old North
Russian (ONR) and Old Central Russian (OCR), respectively. As to the latter notation, I do not
intend to express any geographical notion other than it being non-North.
4. For this particular claim, I will use the following terms interchangeably, BE=pronoun, ver-
bal pronoun, pronominalization of BE.
5. There are ongoing debates whether contemporary Russian is pro-drop or not. Though it is
not our concern here, contemporary Russian is most probably not a pro-drop language. Its ap-
parent pro-drop nature, such as frequent subject gaps, is best analyzed as instances of ellipsis
determined by discourse (cf. Lindseth and Franks 1996).
 Kyongjoon Kwon

finite clauses, a hallmark of pro-drop languages, such as most Romance languages. Put
differently, overt pronominal subjects are stylistically marked.
(2) Napisaxŭ že evangelie se
write-aor.1Sg part gospel this:Acc.Sg
‘I wrote this Gospel.’ (Old Russian, Ostromir Gospel, 1056–1057)
The pro-drop property of Old Russian became subject to drastic reanalysis, when the
language faced the restructuring of its tense system. A crucial development was the
curtailment of old aspectual distinctions realized by imperfect and aorist, concomitant
with or immediately followed by the reanalysis of perfect. That is, the previous resulta-
tive l-participle, dubbed after a morpheme for past –l in da-l-ŭ ‘gave’, became a general
past tense. In other words, the participle came to be used independently, dispensing
with the auxiliary as a tense marker. Displaced from its designated position and func-
tion, BE as a head of TP became subject to change, either to become lost or to be reas-
signed a new function. Both of these outcomes were indeed realized in the history of
the Russian language.
Let us look closely at the relative frequency values allotted to possible variants of
the first and second persons in l-perfect/past tenses in history from Late Common
Slavic (LCS) to Modern Russian (MR) with special attention to the contrast between
Old Central Russian and Old North Russian.6
(3) Relative frequency of the first and second persons in diachronic stages
(cf. Zaliznjak 2008)
1st and 2nd person lcs ocr onr mr
a. BE only dal-ŭ jesmĭ 1 1 1 *
gave-msc.Sg be.1Sg
b. Pronoun only ja dal-ŭ * 3 2 1
I:Nom.Sg gave-msc.Sg
c. be+Pronoun ja jesmĭ dal-ŭ 2 2 * *
I:Nom.Sg be:1Sg gave-msc.Sg
(1=most frequent, 3=least frequent, *=not attested)

In terms of the provided distribution, Old Central Russian is very similar to Late Com-
mon Slavic, with the only difference being the introduction of (3b); the inherited com-
mon form (3a) is a sentence with pro-drop, whereas a pronoun overtly appears in
emphatic cases, giving (3c). This is exactly what is expected from a typical pro-drop
language, in which a referential pronominal subject is rendered as null in neutral con-
text while overt realization is employed in an emphatic context. Given the gradual

6. Third person behaves in a different and distinct way, as will be presented in detail in the
section four.
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

nature of syntactic change, a choice with BE-loss did not yet find a stable status. There-
fore, an innovating (3b) remains the least used variant.
Turning now to the Old North Russian case, a stark contrast is noted in the lack of
(3c). This disparity is not trivial or accidental but boils down to important dialect spe-
cific developments. As noted earlier, after the innovation in the tense system, an un-
motivated BE could have evolved in two directions. The loss of BE was the eventual
outcome, rendering only (3b) possible in Modern Russian, but what happened first in
the history of Old North Russian was to assign BE a new functional load.
The erstwhile tense marker BE was no longer able to mark tense but was reana-
lyzed as a person (and number) marker (cf. Xaburgaev 1978; Ševeleva 2002; Le Feuvre
2004). Briefly put, BE was reanalyzed as a pronoun. This is not a necessary, but a high-
ly conceivable change, considering what would have followed otherwise. Assuming
that (3a) is the most common form due to pro-drop, a loss of BE as an auxiliary right
upon the restructuring of the Late Common Slavic tense system would have resulted
in jeopardy, i.e. no means of specifying person features: ja jesmĭ dalŭ … > (pro-drop)
> ja jesmĭ dalŭ … > (BE-loss) > jesmĭ dalŭ … The unavailability of (3c) in Old North
Russian syntax (Zaliznjak 2004: 178 et passim; Zaliznjak 2008: 248) can be attributed
to pragmatic or syntactic restrictions, namely prohibited probably due to a ban on
pronoun doubling.
Old North Russian (and Old Russian, as well, but to a more limited extent) pos-
sesses two sets of pronouns, differentiated by prosody and function (Zaliznjak
2004: 178). Table 1 shows contrasting behaviors between pronominal and verbal pro-
nouns in this dialect.
One may well question (i) whether such reanalysis proceeded in a monolithic way
within the language, at the same speed and without any variation among dialects, and
if not, (ii) what might have conditioned such disparity.
As to question (i), as already suggested, I admit that Old Central Russian also real-
ized the BE pronoun interpretations in a restricted manner whereas the northern dia-
lect has completely reanalyzed BE as a pronoun. Evidence for these uneven develop-
ments comes from the way variants (3b) and (3c) are distributed. In Old Central
Russian, a personal pronoun appears in emphatic cases, (3c). That is, the distinction is
made between zero versus personal pronouns, whereas Old North Russian has a con-
trast between personal pronouns (weak) and verbal pronouns (strong), as outlined in

Table 1. Two kinds of pronouns in Old Russian (mainly in the North)

Prosody Full Clitic

Origin Pronominal Verbal
Function Emphatic Neutral
Examples ja, ty –jesmĭ, –jesi
 Kyongjoon Kwon

Table 2. BE in Old Central Russian and Old North Russian

Old Central Russian Old North Russian

Most common type Ø jesmĭ dalŭ jesmĭ Dalŭ

Second common type ja jesmĭ dalŭ vs. ja Dalŭ
Contrast Ø vs. pronoun weak vs. strong pronoun
Analysis pro-drop BE=pronoun // no pro-drop for ½

Table 2 (cf. Cardinaletti and Starke 1999). What this table shows is that Old Central
Russian still resorted to analytic (periphrastic) forms for past tense marking, while Old
North Russian completely switched to a new system, in which l-participles are used as
independent past tense marking, as is also evidenced by the rare use of aorist in birch
bark letter documents.
In other words, the lack of (3c) in Old North Russian and its higher frequency in
(3b) in Old Central Russian combined suggest that the BE-pronominalization reanaly-
sis was in full force in the north in contrast to its weak manifestation in the remaining
areas. In what follows, I will disregard the marginal status of (3b) in Old Central Rus-
sian only with the purpose of emphasizing contrastive behaviors between these dia-
lects for expository convenience.
In the next section, it will be shown that the reanalysis in Old North Russian is
truly the pronominalization of BE, not simply the case in which a null subject would be
retrieved by verb morphology including BE. Language internal evidence is drawn first,
and then typologically relevant examples are presented with a diachronic account.

2. Evidence

2.1 Language internal evidence

First, there are many cases where BE is used in an unexpected manner. In (4), for in-
stance, a second person singular BE form jesi occurs even in the presence of another BE,
i.e. a second person singular perfective budešĭ. The former BE jesi is a pronoun, func-
tioning as the subject of a predicate. And budešĭ, being an auxiliary in future perfect
budešĭ vidělŭ, agrees with it (cf. Zaliznjak 2004: 179). The discontinuity of verbal inflec-
tion follows from the fact that the clitic pronoun is placed immediately after the verb. A
more evident example is given in (5), where the first person singular present form of a
verb is preceded by BE. These examples strongly support the hypothesis that the erst-
while BE is grammaticalized as a full fledged pronoun for all intents and purposes. The
pronominal use of BE is much more frequently observed in texts of northwest origin.
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

(4) A ženy ne vidělŭ jesi budešĭ vŭ sně

and wife:Gen.Sg not see:pst.msc.sg [be:2Sg]pron will:2Sg in dream:Loc.Sg
‘And you will not have seen a woman in a dream.’
(Old North Russian, Kirik’s Queries, mid-12C)
(5) kupilŭ jesmi na torgu, a togo žŭ jesmi ne
buy:pst.msc.Sg be:1Sg at market but that:Gen.Sg part [be:1Sg]pron not
znaju, u kogo kupilŭ
know:prs.1Sg from whom:Gen buy:pst.msc.Sg
‘I bought (it) at the market, but from whom I bought, that I do not know.’
(Old North Russian, Pskov judicial charter, 1467)
A second argument is based on chronology. As noted by Ševeleva (2002: 63), in the
northern dialects BE was in use until the fifteenth to sixteenth century. Reanalyzing BE
as a pronoun in full force, Old North Russian had a more stable system than Old Cen-
tral Russian. In Old Central Russian, BE=pronoun analysis was minimal, thus very
likely to undergo another change, i.e. its loss, when faced with the generalization of l-
participles for a preterit. Sentences (5) and (6) are from the fifteenth century, with BE
used as a pronoun.
(6) jesmĭ nyně na dorogu jexati xoščü
[be:1sg]pron now on road:Acc.Sg go:inf want:prs.1sg
‘I will hit the road now.’ (Old North Russian, III Pskovian chronicle, 1473)
Lastly, the negative particle ne as a rule comes after the verbal pronoun and before the
l-participle, since the “verbal” subject would be negated instead if the particle came
before the BE-verb *něsi (cf. Xaburgaev 1978: 46). The same goes for (5), in which a
subject jesmi (read jesmĭ) scopes over the negated verb projection. The position of jesi
in (7) and jesmi in (5) support their subject status, which is possible only through its
(pro)nominal property.
(7) jesi ne vzjalŭ
[be: 2Sg]pron not take:pst.msc.Sg
‘you did not take….’ (Old North Russian, BBL 109, 115/5-121/5)
Given the evidence presented above, it becomes clear that BE verbs in these contexts
were clearly pronouns in Old Russian to varying degrees: the reanalysis of BE into a
pronoun was observed in the north with much greater intensity.

2.2 Crosslinguistic evidence

In this section, I will present crosslinguistic data regarding the change from copulas to
pronouns, though a discussion of the BE-copula lies beyond the scope of the examina-
tion. To the best of my knowledge, an exact parallel to the Old North Russian reanaly-
sis of BE into pronoun is not represented in the literature.
 Kyongjoon Kwon

The first set of data concerning the change from copula to pronoun is the so-called
pronominal copula, which is exactly a mirror image of pronominalized BE in its develop-
mental path. This near-typological correspondence is well attested in several languages,
such as Arabic, Hebrew, Polish and Scottish Gaelic (see references in Citko 2008). Polish,
for instance, has three kinds of copula sentences without substantial semantic change.
Note that the pronominal copula to is glossed as TO for the sake of convenience.
(8) Polish: ‘Jan is my best friend’
a. Jan jest moim najlepszym przyjacielem verbal copula
Jan be.3Sg [my best friend]:Instr.Sg
b. Jan to mój najlepszy przyjaciel pronominal copula
Jan to [my best friend]:Nom.Sg
c. Jan to jest mój najlepszy przyjaciel dual copula
Jan to be.3Sg [my best friend]:Nom.Sg (Citko 2008: 262–263)
Based on typological data similar to Polish, Li and Thompson (1976) argued convinc-
ingly that copular elements may evolve from anaphoric pronouns through the reanaly-
sis of topic-comment structure into a subject-predicate construction, (9). I assume
that the Polish case followed this path, i.e. topicalization of the subject followed by a
resumptive pronoun (Diessel 1999: 33–34, Rutkowski 2006; for a different proposal,
Citko 2008: 263).7
(9) [topic NP1] [comment Pronoun NP2]
→ [subject NP1] [predicate Copula NP2]
More direct parallels are found in Katz (1996). She reports on two cases of copula-to-
pronoun innovation, one in Turkish and the other in Hebrew (pre-proto-Semitic to
Biblical).8 To take an example, a Turkish word equivalent to BE is olmak, the semantics
of which is roughly ‘to be, to become, to happen, to mature’. Through semantic attri-
tion, its third person singular form ol came to function as a pronoun of the same
number. To take her paradigmatic example, a question like ‘Who is Turkish?’ can be
very conceivably answered as ol ‘he is’. Katz sees two possibilities of interpreting this
surface form, from which a proposed change is derived.
(10) Surface form: Turkish Ol
a. [ol-Ø3 sg]v : intended original parsing
b. [ol3 sg]pron + [Øbe:3sg]v : innovative parsing
(Katz 1997: 130, with modification in representation)

7. It is worth noting that two copulas can co-occur as in (8c) and a verbal copula only dictates
the instrumental case for complements as in (8a). But to account for them is beyond the scope
of this paper.
8. Frajzyngier (1987) shows a similar change in Mupun, a West Chadic language, from a verb
(‘to come’) into an anaphoric demonstrative (in this case, a proximate deictic).
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

This reanalysis was made possible, as Katz notes, by two factors. First of all, the null
subject property for a third person singular form allowed a single word to make a sen-
tence in the language, (10a). Second, another parsing could be possible due to the
presence of a null copula, [Øbe:3sg] v. What results from this reanalysis is a change from
a bi-morphemic word into a two-word sentence. What is implied in this reanalysis is
that a change of any direction, from (10a) to (10b) or vice versa, would be possible,
since (10b) can also potentially be parsed as (10a).
The pronominalization of BE in Old North Russian and the like in Turkish challenge
a widely-assumed but hotly disputed uni-directionality hypothesis of grammaticalization
theory. To take an instance, Diessel (1999), who has extensively investigated how demon-
strative pronouns develop into grammatical markers based on typological work, does not
spare a sentence for the change in reverse order. The only hint that can be extracted from
Diessel’s data pertaining to grammaticalization is that the pronominalization of BE may
be seen as a mirror image phenomenon of exceptions to his grammaticalization data,
which are variously called degrammaticalization (Norde 2008), degrammation (An-
dersen 2006a, 2008), anti-grammaticalization (Haspelmath 2004), and so on.
Since pronouns and tense markers are essentially functional categories, it is not
easy to determine to what kind of change the Old North Russian case belongs by a
traditional notion of grammaticalization. Moreover, an auxiliary is no less grammati-
cal (or functional) than a pronoun, nor is a pronoun less grammatical than an auxil-
iary. Therefore, instead of searching for a best fit in the massive realm of grammati-
calization study, I will just mention a few contributions which may be interpolated to
understand the Old North Russian example better.
First, Andersen (2006a, 2008) projects grammaticalization into a broad context of
language change and provides a series of reanalysis patterns, grammation, regrammation
and degrammation, analogous to Roman Jakobson’s (1931) phonologization, rephonol-
ogization and dephonologization. And he specifically treated the BE=pronoun as in-
volving two changes: while the reanalysis of present perfect as general past is considered
as regrammation, the change from auxiliary to personal pronoun is seen as an instance
of degrammation, that is, as a change by which an expression loses a part of its gram-
matical content through reanalysis (Andersen 2008). It is undoubtedly true that the
auxiliaries “retain their content as person and number markers and become allomorphs
of personal pronouns”, but it does not tell why such reanalysis could have happened.
Katz’s (1996) proposal is interesting in this respect, in that she strives to find a
cognitive ground common to pronouns and copulas. Capitalizing on the obvious fact
that a third person pronoun is distinct from a first or a second person by requiring a
greater level of abstraction and a presupposed existence of a participant, Katz claims
that third person pronouns are cognitively related to predication of existence. She fur-
thermore claims that copulas and third person pronouns code the same concept, ‘ex-
istence in time and space’, under different grammatical guises, one nominal and the
other verbal. This might be essentially true but the purported cognitive contiguity of
deixis and predication does not seem to be crucial to triggering the reanalysis in Old
 Kyongjoon Kwon

North Russian. In the following section, I will instead propose a formal analysis, in
which the syntactic contiguity reflected in the linearization of elements and feature
specifications of these two categories are the keys or triggers to condition the
BE=pronoun analysis.
In order to account for the earlier adduced Turkish and Hebrew examples, Katz
proposed a term cyclical grammaticalization to account for the bi-directional nature of
changes between pronouns and copulas. Taking only the first portion of this terminol-
ogy seriously, I will give a full account of the cyclic nature of phenomena involving the
BE=pronoun analysis in Section 3.2. I will not endorse any specific stand on the rela-
tionship of this specific analysis to the study of grammaticalization theory. Through-
out the paper, I will adhere instead to a more general, not specific hypothesis-laden
term reanalysis, which is assumed to be both fundamental cognitive ground and a
major source of language innovations (Timberlake 1977; Andersen 2001, 2008).

3. Reanalysis in a syntactic framework

3.1 Pro Taraldsen’s generalization

In this section, I will provide a syntactic analysis of the mechanism by which Old
North Russian and Old Central Russian diverged in the treatment of BE. In Late Com-
mon Slavic and Old Russian, verbal paradigms were rich enough to indicate what they
are predicated of. In other words, the phi-features of verbs were sufficient to identify
an unspecified pronoun pro, thus revealing a well-established correlation between rich
verbal agreement and a null subject parameter. This correlation is known as Tarald-
sen’s generalization, the intuition of which has enjoyed large acceptance in scholarship
(Taraldsen 1978). For instance, Rizzi (1986) reformulated it as “pro-module” by which
pro must be licensed and identified by. Despite its descriptive elegance, there are rea-
sons to question its validity as generalization. First of all, one may well wonder how
rich is `rich enough’ to condition a null subject parameter setting.9 Secondly, there are
a group of languages that allow pro-drop not on morphological grounds but by dis-
course (topic drop, or radical pro-drop by Huang 1984). Moreover, Holmberg (2005)
recently pointed out that Rizzi’s “pro-module” is untenable in current Minimalist syn-
tax, stating that by definition, uninterpretable phi-features in T cannot identify pro,
which itself is an unspecified pronoun.
My solution to this impasse is to assume that in null-subject languages the phi-
features of T are interpretable, thus pro Alexiadou and Anagnostoupoulou 1998, Bar-
bosa 2007, but contra Holmberg 2005 and Roberts 2007. If pro is parameterized in-
stead, so that in null subject languages pro has interpretable features, the null subject

9. Some proposals are advanced to measure the “richness” of verbal agreement to rescue
Taraldsen’s generalization, for instance, Vikner (1997), Müller (2005), and Tamburelli (2006).
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

parameter will be reduced to the stipulation of pro, divorced from verbal inflection.
The T-parameterization hypothesis adopted here is based on the following assump-
tion: in consistent null subject languages morphological verb agreement is
“pro(nominal)” to the extent that it has a D/N feature capable of checking the EPP via
V raising to T (cf. Borer 1989, Alexiadou and Anagnostoupoulou 1998, Platzack 2003,
and Barbosa 2007). In other words, the EPP is not checked by A-movement of subjects
to [Spec, TP], as seen empty in (11).
(11) Derivation of Old Central Russian perfect dalŭ jesmĭ
TP

T’

T Asp

dalŭ jesmĭ
Asp vP

da- -l
v’

v …




The most common variant of the Old Central Russian perfect, (3a) dalŭ jesmĭ, is de-
rived from the cyclic movement of a verb head (for a similar clausal structure for the
Early English perfect, see McFadden and Alexiadou 2008). The first movement to
AspP, , is motivated to obtain participial morphology –l (cf. Embick 2004). By the
second movement, , the tense marker BE becomes cliticized to a verb head, yielding
dalŭ jesmĭ. When a phonological word is present adjacently, in the [Spec, TP] or in C
positions, however, an enclitic jesmĭ moves out of the phrase and cliticizes to its host, a
prepositional phrase vŭ tomĭ in (12a) and a wh-noun cto (should read as čto) in (12b).
(12) a. A vŭ tomĭ esmĭ ostalŭ
but in that:Loc.Sg [be:1sg]pron remain:pst.msc.Sg
‘But therefore I remained.’ (Old North Russian, bbl 724, 124/5)
b. upomni cto jesmĭ platilŭ …
remember:imp what:Acc [be:1Sg]pron pay:pst.msc.Sg
‘Remember what (=how much) I paid …’
(Old North Russian, bbl 140, 142/5)
 Kyongjoon Kwon

My assumption that phi-features of T in null-subject languages are interpretable is based

upon the rich information provided by the phrase merged with T position, i.e. dalŭ [i
Number], [i Gender], jesmĭ [T], [i Number], [i Person]. In addition, I assume that number
and gender features on l-form are checked upon the merger of AspP with T position,
along with the person and number features on BE, which is evidently located in T.
Turning to Old North Russian, the reanalysis of the perfect participle as past tense
restructures the position of dalŭ into T, displacing jesmĭ. This reanalysis eliminates
AspP from the structure. I submit that BE is clitic-adjoined to T, which is now occu-
pied by an erstwhile l-participle, hence (13a) verbal clitic analysis. A crucial difference
from the Old Central Russian case is the categorical status of BE, which I claim to be a
pronoun in Old North Russian but an auxiliary in Old Central Russian. With the cliti-
cization of BE=pronoun T’s uninterpretable phi-features are valued (for the idea of T
serving as a host of clitics, see Terzi 1999). This assumption is also compatible with my
efforts to preserve Taraldsen’s generalization, in that Old North Russian verb morphol-
ogy becomes enriched to contain the required features for dispensing with the need of
an overt subject.
(13) Pronominalization of be in Old North Russian
TP

T’

T vP

T CL v’
dalŭ jesmĭ
[T] [i Person] v …
[u Number] [i Number]
[u Gender]

b. pronominalization

What this cliticization ultimately implies is the emergence of a pronominal agreement
pattern (cf. Jelinek 1984). In other words, verbal agreement in Old North Russian
bears phi-features as [person] to dispense with the phonetic realization of subject in
[Spec, TP]. This claim bears on Platzack’s (2003) account of why languages with rich
verb morphology do not always have null subject parameter settings. According to
him, languages with anaphoric agreement (e.g., German, Icelandic) have visible sub-
jects, whereas those with pronominal agreement do not. In this respect, one may well
claim that Old North Russian has pronominal agreement at least for some verbal
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

paradigms, such as past tense. This claim will be supported by the dialect specific verb
formation in 3.2.
As a dotted arrow indicates in (14), the reanalysis could go further to the extent
that BE achieves the status of a full word, becoming a full fledged pronoun (14b) (re-
call that there are two kinds of pronouns in this dialect, see Table 1). This independent
(non-clitic) use of BE was presented in examples like (4) and (5).
(14) Feature transfer of be
i. Old (Central) Russian i number i number
i gender i person
Asp T D

ii. Old North Russian u number i number

u gender i person
T D

Once the aorist and imperfect were removed from the inventory of the Old Russian
tense system, T became more naturally associated with an l-participle than with BE.
This innovation is economical and natural, since languages are not likely to have per-
fects without past tense. Generalization of the l-perfect as the general past tense mark-
ing had the direct consequence of the displacement of BE-auxiliary. One cannot free
BE from l-participle, unless the latter achieves an independent status. The transfer of T
from BE to the l-form, as indicated by an arrow in (14), renders BE subject to reanaly-
sis. The Old Central Russian tense system is slow on the reception of this innovation,
as is represented as still preserving the inherited structure (i.e. with AspP in (11)) from
Late Common Slavic. This will become obvious in Section 4.1, where I discuss the dia-
lectal differences in terms of dealing with BE.
What is crucial now is that BE ended up carrying a set of phi-features without
tense information. From the assumption that pronouns are no more than a Spell-Out
of phi-features, there is good reason to conceive of reanalysis of BE into pronouns.
This reanalysis is a result of collective operations; first, an uninterpretable number
feature can be valued with an interpretable one on BE. Feature valuation in this case
takes place under Spec-Head relationship, i.e. BE in [Spec,TP] and an l-form in T°.
Second, the D feature in BE may have helped its reanalysis into pronoun. This will be
given a detailed account toward the end of this section. Third, I propose that the pres-
ence of an interpretable phi-feature [person] makes jesmĭ eligible for occupying [Spec,
TP] position under the assumption that [person] is the most prominent feature in
reference to humans (cf. for a similar feature analysis on case, McFadden 2004,
Sigurđsson 2008).
 Kyongjoon Kwon

Once freed from participles, the BE=pronoun can be used not in adjacency to l-
forms, but in combination with present tense. The second half of example (5), repro-
duced here as (15) has a verb in present tense, which specifies person and number in
its affixal morphology. The occurrence of jesmi (read as jesmĭ) is nothing else than a
subject of the predicate.
(15) kupilŭ jesmi na torgu, a togo žŭ jesmi ne
buy:pst.msc.Sg be:1Sg at market but that:Gen.Sg part [be:1Sg]pron not
znaju, u kogo kupilŭ
know:prs.1Sg from whom:Gen buy:pst.msc.Sg
‘I bought (it) at the market, but from whom I bought (it), that I do not know.’
Another crucial consequence of the BE=pronoun reanalysis is its relation to the null
subject parameter setting. As pointed out earlier, Late Common Slavic and Early Old
Russian had null subject property due to the presence of a D feature in verb morphol-
ogy, following Alexiadou and Anagnostoupoulou’s (1998) argument. In this hypothe-
sis, EPP feature on T is optionally valued by V-to-T raising, by which an uninterpret-
able D feature of verbs is checked at T position. I propose that this D feature resides in
BE, since V-to-T raising as a way of realizing EPP is most obvious in formation of per-
fect tenses where BE is indispensable at the position of T. The presence of D feature in
BE may have triggered its reanalysis as a pronoun, which is inherently a D-element.
The innovation in the tense system, especially the generalization of the l-participle
as a past tense, led to the change in the null subject parameter setting and subsequent-
ly to the loss of V-to-T raising.10 If my reasoning is right so far, then the lack of V-to-T
raising in contemporary Russian receives a straightforward explanation. It is widely
assumed that verbs raise only as high as an intermediate functional category, not high
up to T position, as the position of an adverb indicates in (16) (cf. Pollock 1989; Bailyn
1995). This property in the contemporary language should be ascribed ultimately to
the change in the pro-drop parameter.
(16) Ja dumaju, čto Ivan často celuet (*často) Mašu Russian
I think that Ivan:Nom often kisses Maša:Acc
‘I know that Ivan often kisses Mary.’ (Bailyn 1995: 58)

3.2 A solution to the so-called ‘l-less perfect’: The subject cycle

Old North Russian has a unique verb form, the so-called “l-less perfect (bezèlevyj
perfekt).” On the surface it consists of two evident parts, a bare-stem verb plus a present
form of BE. Since their semantics in context undoubtedly refers to past events, they are
accordingly given “perfect” as their denomination. However, it has not been well

10. I assume that V-to-T raising did not instantaneously disappear, as is still reflected in the
syntactic structure, (13).
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

accounted for why a bare stem was used to refer to past events and whether BE here is
an exact analogue to the BE-auxiliary used in various types of perfect constructions.
(17) l-less perfects in birch bark documents
a. vzę jesme (should read jesmĭ)
take:bare stem be:1Sg
‘I took.’ bbl 482 (135/5)
b. a ni posla jesi
but not send:bare stem be:2Sg
‘But you did not send…’ bbl 99 (142/5)
c. jesi ododa (should read otŭda)
be:2Sg give:bare stem
‘You gave …’ bbl 311 (151/5)
(Old North Russian, Zaliznjak 2004: 144)
With regard to the “abnormal” formation, Zaliznjak once conceived of this form as a
combination of aorist and BE, but then withdrew his earlier position (Zaliznjak
1986: 146, followed by Nørgård-Sørensen 1997: 5) to assume the current view, which
states that this is perfect tense/aspect but without –l. Zaliznjak’s initial view on this
form relies on the surface shape of the verbal stem. Old Church Slavonic and its Rus-
sian successor had the aorist, whose second- and third-person singular forms have a
zero ending, when a verb stem ends in a vowel, (18) (Borkovskij and Kuznecov
1965: 269–272; Lunt 2001: 104–107). Moreover, this claim has a great advantage of
very naturally accounting for why l-less perfect occurs only with the first- and second-
person singular forms.
(18) Aorist formation in Old Church Slavonic
vŭzę-ti ‘to take’
1sg vŭzę-s-ŭ 1pl vŭzę-s-omŭ
2sg vŭzę 2pl vŭzę-s-te
3sg vŭzę 3pl vŭzę-s-ę

The term “l-less perfect”, however, does not tell us about anything more than its surface
form, disregarding the mechanism of the verb formation. If it is truly a “perfect”, any
explanatory account should address the immanent question of why the past (or per-
fect) tense morpheme –l is omitted in this specific case.
My analysis of this verb formation relies on the main claim of this paper that BE is
a pronoun in Old North Russian. In this context, I claim that the bare stem constitutes
a verb stem and the following (though sometimes fleeting) BE is a verbal inflection.
This claim fits nicely with a pronominal agreement pattern (as represented in (13b)
and recast in (19) with an attested example).
 Kyongjoon Kwon

(19) TP

T’

T vP

T CL v’
posla– jesi
[iT] [i Person] v
[i Number]

The bare stem for the past tense is well motivated by its approximation to that of in-
finitive stems. This claim requires some comment on the Russian verb conjugation.
The presence of two stems for Russian verb conjugation has been convincingly pre-
sented from various perspectives, such as language acquisition, language development,
dialectology and so on (cf. Flier 1978; Andersen 1980). According to Flier (1978), for
instance, past and infinitive are grouped together, distinct from present and impera-
tive, by the [participation] feature, the semantic corollary of which can be translated
into the presence/absence of person marking in verbal forms in the current syntactic
terms. In past and infinitive, the [person] feature can be expressed only by syntactic
means, i.e. with an overt pronoun, whereas [person] can be easily recoverable from
verbal inflection in present and imperative. More than anything else, these two types
of verbal stems are visibly distinct in many cases. I will demonstrate this with some
self-evident examples.
(20) Verbs with prevocalic stem in Contemporary Russian (Andersen 1980: 287, (1a))
‘to know’ ‘to become’ ‘to live’
Infinitive zna-t’ sta-t’ ži-t’
Past msc sg zna-l sta-l ži-l
Present 3pl znaj-ut stan-ut živ-ut
Imperative znaj-ø stan’-ø živ’-i
In descriptive terms, instead of following the standard formation of perfect, Old North
Russian used a default form of the past (with {Ø} instead of {l}) and a BE verb. In
other words, the bare stem in l-less perfect is indexical of the past tense and followed
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

by a zero morpheme, which is comparable to the regular past morpheme, {-l}.11 The
person/number maker BE is a verbal clitic, whose fleeting nature is similar to that of
reflexive particle sja/s’, which later find its fixed place after verbal stems.
It is here worth introducing van Gelderen’s Subject Cycle (or Subject Agreement
Cycle), which I believe can well account for the cyclic nature of my data. Subsumed in
a larger framework, Linguistic Cycles, the Subject Cycle is motivated by special refer-
ence to the principle of efficient computation which is crucial in language acquisition
(cf. van Gelderen 2004, 2008, Chomsky 2005). At stage (a), nouns whether pronomi-
nal or nominal appear in [Spec, TP] position, as in English. In (b), the pronoun moves
to the head position, namely T position. This is notably evidenced by colloquial French
data. When verbs are coordinated, pronouns cannot be omitted, but should appear as
dependent on the verb. In (21), the second conjunct écris must be preceded by a sub-
ject pronoun for its grammaticality.
(21) a. Je lis et j’écris Colloquial French
I read and I-write
`I read and write.’
b. *Je lis et écris
(from van Gelderen 2008: 19)
In the last stage (c), the pronoun is reanalyzed as agreement in T and this change sub-
sequently requires [Spec,TP] position to be lexically filled. These three stages of chang-
es are structurally represented as follows.

11. Michael Flier suggests another parsing possibility, namely {posla-Øpast-Øphi-feature}, con-
sidering l-perfect forms as morpho-phonemically novel but akin to the perfect forms of verbs
with unsuffixed stems, i.e. Old Russian nesŭ ‘carried’, vezŭ ‘transported’, mogŭ ‘could’, tekŭ
‘flowed’, and so on. This seems not at odds with our analysis, i.e. (13a). However, the current
analysis based on parsing {posla-Øpast-} can better account for an obligatory BE as a person
marker without further stipulation. Moreover, Old North Russian, at least in birch bark docu-
ments, does not have a nesŭ-type perfect, but instead had a nesle-type for verbs with an unsuf-
fixed stem: svezti ‘to take out’ (svezle 359); priteči ‘to hurry in’ (pritĭklĭ 752); reči ‘to say’ (rekle 748,
reklŭ 3); izmęsti ‘to cause harm, mess up’ (izmakle Psk. 6); poběči ‘to run’ (poběglĭ 510); pogyb-
nuti ‘to perish’ (pogiblo 445); ureči ‘to announce’ (uroklŭ 724).
 Kyongjoon Kwon

(22) Stages of the Subject Cycle (ibid.,8, Figure 2.1.)

a. TP b. TP

DP T’  DP T’
pron
T VP pron-T VP

 
c. TP

[DP] T’
[pron]

agr-T VP

([…] indicates an optional phrase)
One may wonder whether the changes between subject and agreement make a real
circle, i.e. whether a change from (c) to (a) is attested, as proposed by van Gelderen.
Givón’s (1984) proposed cline, expanded by van Gelderen (2008) as in (23), does not
seem to make a closed cycle. If changes are all geared toward a zero as in (23), there is
nothing from which a new cycle can start.
(23) a. demonstrative > third person pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero
b. oblique > emphatic > first/second person pronoun > clitic > agreement > zero
It is not easy to find a change from (c) to (a), at least in the realm of subject/agreement.
In van Gelderen (2008) and Lohndal (in this volume) alike, there is no such change
reported. This may be connected to some sort of economy principle. In this respect, it
is presumably not a coincidence that van Gelderen’s well-known principles of efficient
computation, Head Preference Principle and Late Merge Principle, can account for
changes only from (a) to (b) and (b) to (c) respectively, leaving the change from (c) to
(a) less motivated in terms of economy.
I submit that the Old North Russian data can contribute to a better understanding
of the Subject Cycle in two respects. First of all, I propose that the cycle can be repeated,
thereby making a complete circle or spiral. Second, the direction of change can be in
the opposite direction.
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

(24) Old North Russian in Subject Cycle

a. BE=pron, full pronoun b. BE=clitic: pron-T
[TP [DP jesmĭ] [T poslalŭ [VP …]]] [TPø [T poslalŭ jesmĭ [VP …]]]

b2. BE=clitic c1. BE=affix: agreement

[TP ø [T posla-jesmĭ [VP …]]] [TP ø [T poslalŭ-jesmĭ [VP …]]]

c2. BE=agreement
[TP ø [T poslasmĭ [VP …]]]

(Small letters correspond to van Gelderen’s stages, as in (22))
First, the start of change is c1, in which BE is both a Tense and an Agreement, i.e. hav-
ing phi-feature checking property. After the innovation in the tense system that has the
consequence of removing BE from the past tense inflection, BE became reanalyzed (or
re-cycled) as a pronoun. The first stage is proposed to be like (b), in which BE is a
clitic adjoined to T (‘verbal clitic’ analysis, (13a)). Further down the road of change, BE
may achieve pronoun status (‘pronominalization’ analysis, (13b)).12 The order of re-
analyzing BE, (c) > (b) > (a), is exactly the reversed one of the developmental stages in
the Subject Cycle.
This does not preclude the possibility of the originally proposed and typologically
more common order for treating BE in Old North Russian. With respect to the forma-
tion of l-less perfects, the analogical base would be the stage at which BE is a pronoun,

12. Analogous developments of the Polish tense systems present similarities and differences
which need to be considered in evaluating the Old Russian facts. Due to the lack of space, I will
just mention some differences in passing. First of all, BE is a clitic adjoined to virtually any pre-
verbal constituent, as seen below.
a. Nigdyśmy tego nie myśleli
b. Nigdy tegośmy nie myśleli
c. Nigdy tego nie myśleliśmy
never that neg thought-be
‘We never thought that.’ (Andersen 1987: 31, (6))
S econd, our proposal of a bare stem for [past] distinguishes Old North Russian from the Polish
case, where BE verbs are incorporated into the past forms but with a full l-participle (cf. Andersen
1987, Zaliznjak et al 2005). Polish developed a verbal clitic analysis, (13a) but BE did not develop
into a pronoun. I further suggest that the dual nature – whether a clitic in (a) and (b) or an affix
in (c) – of the Polish BE should be ascribed to the presence of two competing analyses, which can
be readily represented as (b) and (c) in Subject Cycle, (23) (cf. Franks and Bański 1999).
 Kyongjoon Kwon

i.e. (a). Then, BE=pronoun is either cliticized to T position to render verbal inflection
complete, hence (a) to (b), or BE=pronoun can be further reanalyzed as an Agreement,
hence (b) to (c), possibly via (b). Whether BE in this case is an affix or a clitic is in fact
hard to determine. This, however, does not undermine my analysis since the distinc-
tion between affixes and clitics is generally assumed to be scalar rather than discrete
(Zwicky and Pullum 1983; Siewierska 2003: 340). As the cohesion between a verbal
stem and BE becomes stronger, the latter can be fully reanalyzed as an agreement (cf.
“pronominal incorporation’, Jelinek 1984), as evidenced by a morphologically fused
but hitherto questionable form poslasmĭ ‘I sent’ (BBL Staraja Russa 39, 144/4). I assume
that this is evidently an instance of (c), in which a pronoun becomes an Agreement.
If this proposal is on the mark, the Subject Cycle should be either modified to ac-
commodate the bi-directional nature of the changes or to be provided with an excep-
tional clauses.

4. The loss of null subject

4.1 Third person BE as a modal

In this section, I will first demonstrate how the third person form of BE behaves in
comparison with other person forms. Second, I will suggest a hypothesis on why Old
North Russian behaved so differently in treatments of BE. This leads to my final claim
that this dialect is transitional in changing the null subject parameter, the setting of
which changed from positive to negative in the history of the Russian language.
First, with l-past forms, third person singular form of BE was evidently not used
as an auxiliary, as seen from the two examples in (25a). In the right column, the only
licit form is dalŭ without an auxiliary or a pronoun. This contrasts with how first and
second person forms of past tense are formed in Old North Russian (see (3)). If third
person behaved the same as the other persons, two predictions could be made; (a) dalŭ
jestĭ and onŭ dalŭ should be two possible variants, with the former favored, (b) onŭ
jestĭ dalŭ should be disallowed as is with *ja jesmĭ dalŭ. The second prediction is borne
out as seen in (26.b.ii) but the first one (a) is not.
(25) 3rd person singular in Old North Russian past tense
a. Lexical noun
i. Ivanŭ da-l-ŭ
Ivan:Nom.Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
ii. *Ivanŭ jestĭ dalŭ
Ivan:Nom.Sg be:3Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
b. Pronoun
i. (*onŭ) da-l-ŭ
he:Nom.Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

ii. *onŭ jestĭ da-l-ŭ

he:Nom.Sg be:3Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
iii. *da-l-ŭ jestĭ
give-pst-msc.Sg be:3Sg
If we assume that the third person BE jestĭ is also a pronoun, a straightforward expla-
nation seems possible; obligatory pro-drop in the third person. We would have a very
consistent picture in every person; Old North Russian has two sets of pronouns in
every person but has obligatory pro-drop in third person.
However, this is not true. First, the third person singular form jestĭ never surfaces
in other tenses of verbal inflections, which denies it a pronoun status. Second, it has
another function not observed in other dialects. That is, jestĭ in Old North Russian
exhibited modal usage as early as the first half of the twelfth century (Zaliznjak
2004: 179–180). For instance, (26) is interpreted as “whether it is how the matter stands
that / whether it is true that / he paid all the interest by himself ”. In other words, jestĭ
is neither an agreement nor a pronoun, but a modal, which takes the whole proposi-
tion under its scope, challenging verifiability of the proposition.
(26) ci jestĭ same vĭxu lixvu vŭdale
whether:conj be.3Sg self.emphatic [all debt]:Acc.Sg give-pst-msc.Sg
‘… whether it is true that he himself paid all the interest.’
(Old North Russian, bbl 736, 121/2)
Therefore it is safe to say that for third person, Old North Russian has only one option,
which is a pronominal one, onŭ. This is of course the same as in the remaining parts of
the Russian territory. Both in Old North Russian and Old Central Russian, a referen-
tial third person pronoun is dropped, thus the picture in (25) is applicable to Old Rus-
sian in general.
There are two ways to relate in time the modal use of BE to the third person only
pro-drop, i.e. to determine which one comes before the other. Though it is hard to
prove one option over the other, I propose that this be considered as a case of exapta-
tion, whereby the original distinction has been discarded but the morphological ex-
pression has been pressed into service to encode something else (Lass 1990; Smith
2006). That is, the early loss of BE in the third person is presumed to have conditioned
the development of modal meaning.
This leads to a more fundamental question why only the third person developed
such idiosyncratic usage, while defying pronominalization reanalysis. It is a well-
known axiom that first and second persons are different from third person by being
participants in speech acts, thus they are highly salient and easily recoverable com-
pared to third person (cf. Vainikka and Levy 1999). For this reason, third person is
often considered as not a true person referent (cf. Benveniste 1966). This contrast be-
comes manifest in various grammatical processes, some representative examples of
which are Person-Case Constraint (Bonet 2007) and Romance auxiliary selection
 Kyongjoon Kwon

(Kayne 1993). Old North Russian demonstrates a similar effect, namely the lack of
pronominalization in third person.
In addition, I suggest that BE as an auxiliary was lost very early in Old North Rus-
sian, which may be due to language contact with non-Slavic languages or to the geo-
graphical isolation of the northwestern part of Russia from the remaining parts. Past
passive participles, by being participles, require an auxiliary. In (26), however, the par-
ticiple here is used as an independent predicate. In contrast, the use of BE is not to-
tally excluded in Old Central Russian, (27).
(26) Žiznobude pogublene u Syčevicĭ
Žiznobud:Nom.Sg killed:ppp.msc.Sg at:prep Syčevicĭ:Gen.Sg
‘Žiznobud was killed at Syčevicĭ’s.’ (Old North Russian, BBL 607/562, 112/2)
(27) a uže jestĭ všelŭ v našě vętičě
and already be:3Sg come in:pst.msc.Sg in:prep our Vjatič
‘He already invaded our Vjatič tribe.’ (Old Central Russian, Zaliznjak 2004: 179)

4.2 Der dritte Weg: How to lose null subjects

Contemporary Russian is not a pro-drop language (see fn. 3). In this subsection I will
consider how the pro-drop parameter setting can be altered in the history of the Rus-
sian language. Since pro-drop is assumed to be parameterized along the possibility of
V-to-T raising, its change should be ascribed to changes in verbal morphology. This is
exactly what is generally considered to be a trigger for the loss of null subjects for Bra-
zilian Portuguese.
The loss – more precisely restriction in distribution – of null subjects in Brazilian
Portuguese has a morphological foundation. In the history of this language, there was
impoverishment of the overt pronoun and agreement inventory, which ultimately al-
tered the distribution of pro. As Roberts (2007) notes, the syncretism created between
2sg, 3sg and 1pl, and between 2pl and 3pl due to the loss of 2sg, 2pl, 1pl pronouns and
associated verbs forms prevented null subjects from occurring. In (28), (copied from
Roberts (2007: (23)), pronominal paradigms and corresponding inflections for the
1st-conjugation verb falar (‘to speak’) in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portu-
guese are listed. Considering that the European Portuguese paradigm reflects what
Brazilian Portuguese used to be, it is not difficult to see the following facts, i) in Euro-
pean Portuguese stage, verbal inflections are distinct for each person and number,
whereas Brazilian Portuguese has only three forms for expressing six possibilities, ii)
Brazilian Portuguese has a reanalyzed pronominal system, such as você- for the second
person and a gente for the first person plural ‘we’ (cf. Rodrigues 2004; Roberts 2007;
Martins and Nunes, forthcoming).
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

(28) European Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese

Sg Pl Sg Pl
1 (eu) falo (nos) falamos eu falo a gente fala
2 (tu) falas (vos) falais / (vocês) falam você fala vocês falam
3 (ele/ela) fala (eles) falam ele/ela fala eles falam
In other words, merger of personal forms in Brazilian Portuguese led to the loss of a
D-feature in T, consequently preventing the application of pro-drop. Morphological
impoverishment, which has as its consequence a phi-feature neutralizing effect, is the
most conceivable motivation for the loss of pro-drop property (cf. Müller 2005: 10).
Another possibility is duly given more emphasis by Roberts (2007) who treats null
subjects as weak pronouns. While demonstrating how languages can lose the null sub-
ject property, he introduced the French case to show that a change can occur in [Spec,
TP] rather than in T position. In Old French, null subjects appeared only in verb-sec-
ond (V2) contexts as in (29), thus a partial pro-drop language.
(29) Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne Old French
[until the sea] conquered:3sg [the land high]
‘He conquered the high land all the way to the sea.’ (Roberts 2007: 18a)
Briefly put, the V2 property was lost through the reanalysis of the CP-TP boundary
and as its crucial consequence the licensing environment for null subjects was removed
from Old French syntax. Then, the rise of overt weak pronoun of the je-series is claimed
by Roberts to ultimately take over pro. Given the gradual nature of syntactic change,
there must be a period of overlap, i.e. the coexistence of partial null subject and weak
pronouns. Supposedly, this transitional period, which began in the Early Middle
French period (ca. mid-fifteenth century), came to an end by the seventeenth century.
Though I do not agree with Roberts in treating pro as a weak pronoun which under-
goes syntactic deletion, it is worth noting that French developed a double series of
subject pronouns and its weak (atonic) ones replaced pro.
As Roberts (2007: 2) puts it, if Taraldsen’s generalization is valid, any language
change that affects the “rich” agreement morphology may lead to the loss of consistent
null subjects. This prediction is borne out by two exemplary cases; one whose verbal
morphology underwent significant erosion as in Portuguese and the other which de-
veloped overt pronouns to take up [Spec, TP] position as in French.
My data also support this prediction. Interestingly, Old North Russian exhibits
both developments observed in the French and Brazilian Portuguese cases. On one
hand, like Brazilian Portuguese, Old Russian verbal paradigms, especially with refer-
ence to past events, became impoverished to the extent that person distinctions ceased
to be overtly expressed. This is the main trigger to the loss of null subjects in Old Rus-
sian in general.
On the other hand, Old North Russian developed a weak series of pronouns from
BE, making atonic pairs for tonic pronouns. I have shown that these verbal pronouns
 Kyongjoon Kwon

may contribute to maintaining the null subject property setting of the dialect. In other
words, the Old North Russian verbal paradigms became rich, i.e. interpretable again in
phi-feature specification, via cliticization of verbal pronouns to T, (12a). This reanaly-
sis consequently eliminated the necessity of referential pronominal subjects. However,
these atonic verbal pronouns could occupy [Spec, TP], as is the case with Middle
French, through pronominalization as in (12b). This specific property places Old
North Russian into a transitional stage in the development of null subject parameter,
in that this dialect came to be a partial pro-drop, i.e. only in third person.
Before concluding, let us tackle a fundamental question: why Old Central Russian
and Old North Russian show different treatments of BE in every person. In terms of
past tense marking related to l-participle forms, Old Central Russian exhibits two
grammars; an old grammar composed of dalŭ jesmĭ and ja jesmĭ dalŭ with and without
pro-drop and an innovative grammar with ja dalŭ. This situation does not come as a
surprise, for syntactic change typically entails coexistence of competing grammars be-
fore complete transition (Kroch 1989). There is another reason for the competing
grammars in Old Central Russian. As noted earlier, the loss of the BE-auxiliary, when
coupled with pro-drop, would have jeopardized the syntactic structure, leaving only
predicates in all three persons. A way to express persons had to be maintained and it
was by adhering to an old way.
In contrast, Old North Russian was quick to accept the innovation in tense system
such that a defunct BE was put to a different use than as an auxiliary. And this recy-
cling could not have been better, since it conveyed the person feature. As expected
from the previous discussion, Old North Russian does not have two conflicting gram-
mars, but instead a single new grammar, in which past tense is marked only with l-
forms and its subject can be expressed in two distinct ways.

5. Conclusion

I have argued that different distributional facts pertaining to erstwhile l-participle

forms result from different reanalysis patterns between Old Central Russian and Old
North Russian. The pronominalization reanalysis, suggested by a few scholars in de-
scriptive terms, has been recast in the current syntactic framework, in the hope that
the specific reanalysis is provided with motivation within and without the linguistic
system of the Old North Russian dialect. In doing so, I have suggested that the pro-
nominalization of BE as such presents a change counter to the direction proposed in
van Gelderen’s Subject Cycle.
I have also looked at the null subject parameter setting in Old Russian for its de-
velopments in history among dialects and suggested that Old North Russian occupies
a transitional stage between Old Russian and Modern Russian. The history of Old Rus-
sian pro-drop parameter should be investigated (i) in tandem with related issues, such
as BE-loss in general – either as auxiliary or as copula –, clitic ordering, developments
 Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian 

of the past tense or the conditional form of be-verbs into modal usage, etc., and (ii)
based on data considering dialectal differences, stylistic variations, discourse func-
tions, etc. This work is just one step towards that larger project.

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 chapter 8

Two instances of a broken cycle

Sentential particles in Old Italian

Cecilia Poletto
University of Venice Ca’ Foscari

I analyze two cases of Old Italian sentential particles whose usage has changed
in unexpected ways. I claim that this process has not occurred because the
particles have undergone a reanalysis of their categorial properties but because
a major change, the loss of V2, came about. Given that the CP is not obligatorily
activated in Modern Italian, the two particles have restricted their usage to cases
where the relevant CP projection is still available. If the analysis is correct, it
shows that reanalysis of single functional items does not depend on the item
itself, but can be the consequence of major syntactic changes to which the item
readjusts. Once again, linguistic change is confirmed to derive from the complex
interplay of various factors.

1. Introduction1

In this chapter, I intend to examine two examples of reduction of a diachronic cycle in

Old Italian adopting the framework of diachronic cycles outlined in van Gelderen
(2004). The first case is the particle e, which is a topic marker whose distribution has
been radically reduced in Modern Italian (where it still plays the role of a topic marker
only in very restricted contexts). The second case is the one of the marker sì, which,
contrary to what several people have claimed (including myself), is not a real expletive
for the SpecFocus position but an anaphor referring to the previous context which sets
the sentence inside the context as a continuation of what has been just mentioned. In
other words, sì marks the fact that there is no correction in the common assumptions

1. I thank the whole Paduan group for the common fruitful work during these last years, with-
out Paola Benincà,Davide Bertocci, Federico Damonte, Jacopo Garzonio, Nicoletta Penello Di-
ego Pescarini and Laura Vanelli my research life would have been much less interesting and ex-
citing and my personal life much less rich. I also thank Lorenzo Renzi for pointing out to me the
etymology the particle sì, which put me on the right track in the analysis of the modern particle.
The abbreviations I use here are the standard ones used in the OVI project (see below footnote)
 Cecilia Poletto

between speaker and addressee, but simply that the sentence has to be added to the
previous scenario. Modern Italian sì has lost this usage acquiring a new one, still re-
lated to Focus, but indicating contrast to the aforementioned context by correction. I
claim that in both cases the reduction/change of the particle is due to a very major
change in sentence structure, namely the loss of the Verb Second (henceforth, V2)
property, i.e. movement of the inflected verb to a Focus projection in the CP layer. I
adopt here the view on Old Italian proposed by Adams (1987), Vanelli et al. (1985),
and Benincà (1984). The CP layer contains the following projections in the most re-
cent version proposed by Benincà (2006):
(1) [HT [SceneSett. [Leftdisl....[ListP [ [contr. cp1 adv/obj, [contr.cp2 circ.adv. [Inform. cp]]]
frame theme focus
In Old Italian, the verb is forced to move to one of the projections located in the Focus
field (i.e. at least to Information Focus; if an XP is located higher, then the verb moves
to the respective head as well). The projections above Focus occurring in the theme
and frame fields can be filled and give rise to Verb third, Verb fourth orders. If only the
Focus layer is realized, the linear order is V2. Therefore, although Old Italian does not
respect the linear restriction of V2, it is nonetheless a `hidden’ V2 language, where the
inflected verb moves to the CP domain (more precisely at least to the Information
Focus projection). The two particles examined are located at the two extremes of the
CP layer, e is a particle in the Frame field, while sì is located in the Focus field.
It is well known that Italian lost the V2 property after the medieval period: this
means that every main declarative clause does not necessarily have to be a whole CP;
main clauses can be simple IPs. Furthermore, the inflected verb does not need to raise
to the Information Focus head but can stay in the IP domain. Modern Italian even
goes further in the loss of access to the CP domain, as the Information Focus position
is blocked and only the Contrastive Focus projection remains available.2 Given this
change, we could wonder what happens then of elements which originally marked the
CP layer: they could either disappear or change into a marker of something else. The
particle sì, which was originally an Information Focus marker, is reanalyzed as a Con-
trastive Focus marker, which is the closest projection still available in Modern Italian.
Therefore, the particle has only undergone a minimal change, which is not due to its
reanalysis as something new, but is forced onto the particle by the unavailability of the
Information Focus projection. The development of the particle e is somewhat differ-
ent: in Modern Italian it can still be used as a Continuation Topic marker, but only in
those contexts in which the clause is an entire CP (for instance, interrogatives or ex-
clamatives). In a way, the particle has not changed at all, it is the linguistic environment
around the particle that has changed.

2. As I discuss in Section 4, not all languages that have lost V2 have also lost access to the In-
formation Focus projection. This is a further development whose origin still remains obscure.
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

More generally, the analysis of these two sentential particles I examine shows that
elements which are already functional in the structure can cease to mark a given pro-
jection in the CP layer because of independent reasons. This means that at least some
of the cases of an interruption of a grammaticalization cycle do not crucially depend
on the properties of the element itself but on general properties of the language, name-
ly the loss of the V2 property, as I will argue. This work can be read as a confirmation
of the idea that it is the whole system that changes, not a single item or construction.
The chapter is organized as follows: in Section 2, I analyze the particle e and propose
an analysis which links the behavior of the particle to the fact that it is the coordination
head and more specifically to the property that it takes a specifier and a complement
of the same category. In Section 3, I show what the distribution of the second particle
sì is, and analyze it as a marker linking the sentence to the previous context. In Section
4, I discuss the reason why Modern Italian has drastically reduced the usage of the two
particles and derive it from the fact that the CP layer is “less active” in a sense which
will be made more precise. Section 5 concludes the article and briefly hints at some
research perspectives.

2. E as a topic marker

As in Modern Italian, in Old Italian, the particle e is the conjunction head, which can
conjoin sentences or phrases. However, it occurs in a number of contexts where it is
clearly does not have this function:3
(2) e quando avea forbiti i piedi ed elli tornava fuori e
and when had cleaned the feet and he came.back outside and
rinfangavalisi vie più e tornava a ricalpitare il letto. (F.F. 124)
got.mudded more and came.back to step.on the bed
`When he had cleaned his feet, he went back outside, covered them with mud,
came back and went up onto the bed.’
A case like (3) cannot be interpreted as a conjunction, as the first sentence is an adver-
bial embedded clause, while the second is the main clause. The occurrence of e in these
cases must be due to some other reason. If e were the conjunction particle, Old Italian

3. All examples are taken from the online OVI (Opera del Vocabolario Italiano) data base of
the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche ‘National Research Council’) available at the fol-
lowing website http://www.ovi.cnr.it/index.php?page=banchedati which contains all Old Italian
texts from 1215 to 1350. Under Old Italian I mean the language of the Florentine texts from
1200 to 1315 approximately, following the standard usage. I use here the standard abbreviation
of the Old Italian grammar (to appear): F.F. means Fiori di Filosafi and Nov. Novellino. The
sources are indicated in the references.
 Cecilia Poletto

would have the peculiar property of conjoining embedded with main clauses, which is
in general not an option in the most well studied Romance and Germanic languages:
(3) Stando lo ‘mperadore Federigo e facea dare l’ acqua alle mani
Being the emperor Federigo and let give the water to.the hands
`While the emperor F. was standing there, he commanded to bring water for
the people to clean their hands.’ (Nov. 177)
Although punctuation is not a very reliable test in older stages of languages, it is inter-
esting to note that e can occur at the very beginning of a sentence preceded by a full
stop, as (4) shows:
(4) a. Plauto fue uno grande savio, cortese in parlare. E scrisse queste
P. was a great wise, kind in talking. And wrote these
sentenze
sayings
‘P. was a great wise man, who spoke very kindly. He wrote these sayings.’
(F.F. 104)
b. Scipio Africano fue consolo di Roma e fue tagliato di
Scipio Africano was console of Rome and was cut of
corpo a la madre e per ciò fue chiamato Cesare.
body from the mother and therefore was called C.
E dice uno filosafo che quelli che nascono in quel
And says a philosopher that those that are.born in that
modo son più aventurati
way are more lucky
`S. A. was console in Rome, he was born through a caesarean and for this
reason he was named Caesar. Philosophers say that people who are born
like this are luckier.’ (F.F. 140)
A further argument showing that in the cases above e is not a conjunction but a differ-
ent sort of marker is its translation into Modern Italian: the first e in (5) is perfectly
grammatical also in Modern Italian, while the second is completely excluded:
(5) e poi, quando tutto ebbe dato, et elli si fece vendere,
and then, when all had given, and he himself made sell
`And then when he had given everything he let himself be sold.’ (Nov. 162)
If e is not a conjunction here, what is it then? In Poletto (2006), I proposed that it is a
topic marker. Here I would like to further refine this idea and claim that it is a marker
located in the head of the Hanging Topic projection and licensing a null Hanging
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

Topic, and more precisely the one referring back to the whole previous context.4 The
effect of this null Hanging Topic is a sort of `continuation of the same discourse con-
figuration’ (henceforth CDC). To put it bluntly, we can say that e is a continuity mark-
er signalling the fact that the sentence has to be added to the established universe of
discourse without further modifications of the scenario.
This hypothesis explains why in these cases it always occurs sentence initially. Al-
though Old Italian tolerates several Topic Phrases in front of FocusP, nonetheless, e is
always the first element, which can be followed by Topics, but never be preceded by
them. If it is a particle licensing a null Hanging Topic, this is exactly what we expect, as
Hanging Topics are the highest type of Topic there can be (see Benincà and Poletto
2004 for arguments distinguishing Hanging Topics and Scene Setting elements which
occupy a `Frame field’ on top of Left Dislocated Topics).
The second phenomenon this analysis explains is the fact that e always triggers
enclisis (if it is immediately followed by the verb).
(6) a. e tenerlo (F.F. 135)
and keep.it
b e bevenne (F.F. 134)
and drank.of.it
In old and recent work, Benincà observes that that enclisis is not only found when the
inflected verb is in first position (according to the well known Tobler-Mussafia law)
but more generally when the Focus position is empty, even if there are one or more
Topic positions. She analyzes enclisis as a result of verb movement to a Topic position,
probably a position in the Theme field (crucially, notice that e is located further up in
the Frame field). However enclisis is to be analyzed, the empirical observation (known
as Tobler Mussafia law to traditional philologists) remains that the marker e behaves
like other types of Topics.
The idea that e can be a Hanging Topic marker of the CDC type also explains the
fact noted above, namely that e can occur in front of both main and embedded clauses
(giving the impression of a strange coordination structure between a main and an
embedded infinitival or gerundive clause as in (7)):
(7) quando entrò nella chiesa, et uno parlò e disse:
when got into.the church, and one spoke and said:
‘when he entered the church, one of them spoke and said…’ (Nov. 189)

4. Notice that there are other languages where sentential particles mark exactly the continua-
tion of a Topic. This is for instance the case of Chinese, where the particle ne indicates the con-
tinuation of the same discourse configuration (as in Li Boya 2006).
 Cecilia Poletto

Moreover, the CDC particle e can cooccur with the conjunction head e (thus giving the
impression of “conjunction doubling”):
(8) e, innebriato il pane dell’ odore che n’ uscia, del mangiare,
and, putting the bread in.the smoke that of.it.came.out of.the food,
e quelli lo mordea, e così, il consumò di mangiare, ricevendo il
and he it bit and so, it finished of eating, getting the
fumo e mordendolo.
smoke and biting.it
`He was putting the bread close to the smell which came out of the meat and
then he ate the bread up biting it.’ (Nov. 177)
In the example above, the first e is the conjunction element followed by an embedded
clause, while the second is the Hanging Topic marker.
We can conclude that e is not only the conjunction marker, but can also serve as a
particle marking a Continuity (CDC) Topic. However, it is a striking fact that the ele-
ment is one and the same for both cases. Obviously, I would not like to add to the
complexity of the lexical entries of Old Italian and postulate that there are two ho-
mophonous e elements in the lexicon, but I will rather put forth the idea that there is a
link between the two in the sense that there is only one lexical item e, which can be
used either as a conjunction or as a CDC marker due to its categorial properties. The
structure I assume for coordination is the one proposed by Kayne (1994) which has by
now become standard:
(9) [CoordP XP [coord° e [XP]]
The conjunction head has two properties: a) its specifier and its complement must be
of the same category and b) it can take whole CPs as specifier and complement. What
I propose for the particle is the following structure in (10):
(10) [TopicP ContextCP [Topic° e [[CP ]]]
The topic marker e has a specifier and a complement of the same type: in the specifier
there is the whole previous context, which is a CP, ad in the complement position there
is also a whole CP.
From the structural point of view, the only difference between (9) and (10) is in the
labels. Thus, e maintains the property of taking a specifier and a complement which are
of the same category in all its usages. From this point of view, the fact that the coordi-
nation head is used also as CDC Topic marker is not surprising at all. Some authors
have already proposed that Hanging Topics can be a whole independent clause with
partial deletion of the lexical material inside it (see Garzonio 2005 on this). According
to this analysis, the fact that e can function as a topic marker is not a mere coincidence
but depends on its original formal property, namely the necessity of taking a specifier
and a complement which must have the same categorial status, not only on its seman-
tics or on some other independent mechanism which “creates” new particles.
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

The proposal crucially relies on the existence of null topics in Old Italian, and
indeed we have evidence of other types of null topics in verb initial constructions as
the following:
(11) Uno cavaliere pregava un giorno una donna d’ amore e diceale
A knight was.praying one day a woman of.love and told.her
intra l’intra l’altre parole com’ elli era gentile e ricco e bello
among the other things how he was kind and rich and handsome
a dismisura, “e ‘l vostro marito è così laido come voi sapete”;
beyond measure “and the your husband is so ugly as you know”
e quel cotal marito era dopo la parete della camera. ø Parlò e
and that such husband was behind the wall of.the room Spoke and
disse: “Eh, messer, per cortesia: acconciate li fatti vostri e non
said: “Eh, sir, please, mind the facts yours and do.not
isconciate li altrui”. (Nov. 231)
spoil the others
`One day a knight was begging a woman for love and told her among other
things that he was kind, rich and very handsome, while her husband was ugly.
The husband, who was behind the wall, spoke and said `please mind your
own business and not that of others.”’
(12) “Iscrivi” disse quel re cortese “ch’ io obligo l’ anima mia a perpetua
Write, said that king kind “that I oblige the soul mine to eternal
pregione infino che voi pagati siate”. ø Morìo. Questi, dopo la morte,
prison until that you paid are. Died. They, after the death,
andaro al padre suo e domandaro la moneta. (Nov. 171)
went to.the father his and asked the money
‘“Write”, said the kind king, “I oblige my soul to eternal prison until my debt
is paid”. The king died. After his death they went to his father and asked for
their money back.’
The whole context preceding the clause starting with the null topic has been added
here to show that the V-initial clause indeed has a null element which must be recov-
ered from the previous context. These sentences are not interpretable to contemporary
Italian ears. Therefore, although both cases are subjects, the pro drop property is not
enough to explain these cases. In cases like the above, there must be a lexically realized
tonic pronoun in Modern Italian, which means that Modern Italian does not have null
topics (at least not of this type). This fact can in turn explain why the topic marker e is
not found in the Modern Italian counterpart of sentences as the ones illustrated in (2)
to (8). However, it would be empirically false to assume that Modern Italian has no
case of null topics of the CDC type at all. As a matter of fact, e can still be a topic
marker in Modern Italian but only in interrogative elliptical clauses and in exclamative
clauses. An interrogative is shown in (13). More generally, e acts as a topic marker in
 Cecilia Poletto

cases of special questions (in the sense of Obenauer (2004), where the presence of e
can (but need not) licence wh-element in situ, as in (14):
(13) a. E io?
And I?
‘What about me?’
b. E adesso?
And now?
‘Now what?’
(14) a. E cosa potrebbe fare in un frangente simile? rq interpretation
And what could do in a case similar?
‘What the hell could he do in such a situation?’
b. E viene quando, allora? Non echo wh in situ
And come when, then?
‘When on earth is he coming then?’
An exclamative example is given in (15):
(15) E che vestito che ti sei comprato!
And what dress that yourself are bought
`What a dress you bought!’
A special construction known as anaphoric anteposition also tolerates e as a topic
marker (see Benincà 1988):
(16) A: Gianni voleva comprarsi un castello
Gianni wanted to.buy.himself a castle
B: E un castello si è comprato!
And a castle himself is bought
‘He bought a castle indeed!’
This distribution seems to indicate that the topic marker is parasitic on some sort of
operator construction. However, this is not entirely correct, because the topic marker
is excluded in contrastive focalizations, which are also analyzed as involving an Op-
erator projection in the CP layer:
(17)?? E IL vestito ha comprato, non il cappello
And the dress has bought, not the hat
Therefore, the usage of e as a Hanging Topic marker cannot directly depend on any
element being located in the CP layer, nor on any sort of Operator in Focus, but must
be restricted to those cases where the context must be relevant and present. The three
constructions where e is still used all imply reference to the previous discourse, and at
least in the cases of special questions and exclamatives occupy positions in the CP
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

which are higher than Focus (see Portner and Zanuttini 2003 for exclamatives and
Obenauer 2004 for special interrogatives).
We can conclude that there are two conditions which must be met in order for e to
function as a topic marker in Modern Italian: (a) its presence must be justified by ref-
erence to the immediate context, and (b) projections higher than Focus must be acti-
vated in the CP layer. In Section 4, I will come back on this second condition and try
to make sense of it in terms of diachronic change.

3. The element sì

The element sì meaning ‘so’ has several usages in Old Italian, some of which overlap
with the adverbial form così, also meaning ‘so’.5 In what follows, I will describe the
distribution of sì and compare this with the one of così, showing that they partially
overlap, and then concentrate on the CP usage which I intend to analyze in detail.
In a similar way to così ‘so’, sì can modify an adjective, an adverb, or a noun:
(18) a. fue sì giusto e guardò sì le mani da.. (F.F. 110)
was so right and looked so the hands that…
`he was so right, and looked down at his hands so that...’
b. cominciò a tremare sì fortemente …
began to tremble so strongly…
`He began to tremble so strongly.’ (Vita nuova 6)
(19) a. quando io vi dissi del cavallo cosa così maravigliosa,
when I you told of.the horse thing so marvelous
`when I told you such an incredible thing about the horse.’ (Nov. 129)
b. onde picciolo guiderdone diedi a llui di così ricco insegnamento
so small reward gave to him of so rich teaching
`I gave him such a poor reward for such a precious advice.’ (Nov. 145)
However, differently from sì, così can be a manner adverb, sì cannot:
(20) Allora il lapidaro si rallegrò e prese l’ una pietra e miselasi in
Then the stone-worker cheered up and took the one stone and put.it in
mano e disse così:
hand and said so
`Then the stone worker cheered up, took a stone in his hand and said:’
(Nov. 124)

5. I do not know whether there is an etymological link between the two forms. Although sì
looks like a short form of così, it is usually said to be derived from ‘sic’. Anyhow, sì has to be
distinguished from the reflexive clitic si, which has a different etymological source. I will not
pursue this question here.
 Cecilia Poletto

On the other hand, sì can occur in the CP before elements like come ‘as’ forming the
sequence ‘so as’:
(21) a. sì come appare a chi lo intende
so how appears to whom it understands
`So as it appears to whom can understand it.’ (Vita nuova 23)
b. Sì come elli parlava tra lloro di sì grande maraviglia
so how he spoke to them of so great wonder
`So as he spoke to them about such a wonder.’
It can also occur in front of the complementizer che:
(22) a. sì che quasi dal principio del suo anno non apparve a me
so that almost from.the beginning of the year not appeared to me
`So that it appeared to me only at the beginning of the year.’ (Vita nuova 6)
b. sì che li chiovi pareano 16 lettere
so that the nails looked 16 letters
`so that the nails looked like 16 letters.’ (Nov. 337)
When used as a CP operator, it can even climb into the main clause to a position lo-
cated in front of the past participle, which is presumably an operator position:
(23) a. e ho sì saputo fare che li sudditi miei m’ hanno
and have so been-able to.do that the subjects my me have
cacciato
chased.away
`I have been so skilled that my subjects sent me away.’ (Nov. 143)
b. a chi mi sa sì pregare che io lo diparta
to whom me knows so pray that I him take.away
dagli altri
from.the others
`who can pray to me in such a way that I take him away from the others.’
(Nov. 167)
The manner adverb così can also climb to the left of the inflected verb in V2 contexts,
as any other adverb, but it never occurs in front of come or che:
(24) E Guiglielmo, vedendo che così era sorpreso, parlò e disse
And Guglielmo, seeing that so was surprised, spoke and said
`And G., seeing him so surprised, spoke and told him...’ (Nov. 225)
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

We can conclude that sì has access to the CP layer in various contexts, while così can
only be contrastively focalized, as low adverbs. The structure which is relevant to the
present work is the following one:
(25) a. traendomi fuori de la veduta di queste donne sì mi domandò...
taking.me out of the sight of these women so me asked
`getting me out of those women’s sight, he asked me...’ (Vita nuova 58)
b. E parlandomi così, sì mi cessò la forte fantasia
And talking.me so, so me stopped the strong phantasy
`(while he was) talking to me like that, I stopped dreaming.’
(Vita nuova 98)
c. Poi che detta fue questa canzone, sì venne a me uno, …
Then that said was this song, so came to me one, …
`After this song was sung, a man came to me...’ (Vita nuova 133)
d. La volpe andando per un bosco sì trovò un mulo: e il
The fox going through a wood so found a mule: and the
mulo sì li Mostrò il piede dritto,
mule so her showed the foot right
`while the fox was going through the wood, she met a mule, who showed
her his right foot.’
In all these cases, sì does not seem to mean ‘in this way’. In Poletto (2005), following
Benincà’s (1995) intuition, I analyzed sì as an expletive located in SpecFocus. The
structural arguments showing that sì is in SpecFocus are still valid (and will be pre-
sented below). However, I would like to propose the idea that sì is not an expletive, but
has a meaning, though not exactly the one of ‘so’. It is an element indicating the relation
between the clause and the context. Put it roughly, sì signals that the sentence is new
information but has to be set against the preceding context. In a sense it is similar to e,
though e licenses a Hanging topic which is linked to the preceding context though
does not highlight the sentence as new information. Both elements are prosecutive,
though sì adds something more: it adds the sentence to the context signaling its rele-
vance. As e, sì is never found to the very beginning of a whole text, where there is no
context yet to make reference to. This shows that the element is in itself not an exple-
tive pronoun (contra Poletto 2005 and Ledgeway 2007). If it were a pure expletive, we
would not expect this to be case, as expletive es in German can occur at the very begin-
ning of a whole text.
The second argument in favor of this idea is that other elements with a similar
function (like for instance or ‘now’ in Old French in addition to sì) can be found, while
there can only be one expletive per language. Therefore, it seems that the interpreta-
tion of sì as a marker which defines the relation between the proposition and the con-
text is more adequate. Moreover, if sì were a real expletive, no V1 would be allowed in
Old Italian, (except those cases in which there is a null operator in SpecFocus), as it is
 Cecilia Poletto

the case in Modern German, and the verb would never be in first position with encli-
sis. The last piece of evidence that sì is not a CP expletive is the fact that it can occur in
embedded clauses:
(26) a. che l ferro, se l’ aopere, sì si logora, se no l’aopere
that the iron, if it use, so it wears.out, if not it use
la ruggine il consuma
the rust it destroys
`that the iron wears out if you use it, if you do not, it gets rusty.’ (F. F. 146)
b. Leggesi del re Currado, del padre di Curradino, che,
Reads-one of.the king Currado of.the father of Curradino, that,
quando era garzone, sì avea in compagnia dodici garzoni di sua
when was boy, so had in company twelve boys of his
etade,
age,
`Here you can read about King Currado, Curradino’s father, who had
twelve boys with him when he was a boy.’ (Nov. 232)
This is expected if we assume with Benincà (2006) that the CP layer can be activated in
embedded clauses as well, but it is not if we consider sì as an expletive, as CP expletives
like German es never occur in embedded contexts.
Sì is clearly located in the Focus field in Old Italian, as it always occurs at the im-
mediate left of the inflected verb:
(27) a. sì s’ abacinò degli occhi
so himself burnt his eyes
`His eyes were dazzled.’ (F. F. 105)
b. e, parlando spezialmente alli spiriti del viso, sì disse queste
and, speaking particularly to.the spirits of.the face, so said these
parole
words
‘And talking to him in the face, he said no.’ (Vita nuova 8)
In the Old Italian data base of the OVI enterprise, there are no cases of sì separated by
the inflected verb by elements other than clitics or negation, which shows that sì is very
low in the structure of the CP.
Moreover, sì very often occurs after an embedded temporal clause indicating ei-
ther anteriority or simultaneity or after a TopicXP or the subject (which is probably a
special type of topic). This is expected under this analysis, given that topic and embed-
ded clauses are higher than Focus in the CP layer.
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

It also often occurs in combination with e and the combination is always e

preceding sì:
(28) a. E, che avrà cuore nobile et intelligenzia sottile, sì li
And, that will.have heart noble and intelligence subtle, so him
potrà simigliare per lo tempo che verrà
can look.alike for the time that will.come
`and who will have a noble heart and a sutble intelligence, and will look
like him in the future.’ (Nov. 118)
b. in questo Pittagora sì cominciò...
in this Pittagora so began
`Precisely then, P. started...’ (F. F. 104)
The strongest piece of evidence that sì is located in the Focus field is the fact that it oc-
curs only with proclisis.
(29) e di ciò sì ne fue
and of this so of.it was
`and so it was of this.’ (F. F. 106)
(30) sì si ne diede questa penitenza
so himself of.it gave this penance
`He gave himself this penance.’ (F. F. 108)
Similarly to what has been proposed for e, which only occurs with enclisis, when it is
immediately followed by the inflected verb, we can exploit the Tobler Mussafia law as
a test to determine the position of sì, which behaves as foci, and not as higher topic
elements. Summing up: the hypothesis that sì is a prosecutive operator setting the
clause against the context explains:
a. Why it can occur in embedded clauses
b. Why it can be substituted by other similar elements
c. Why it is never found at the beginning of a whole text
The fact that sì is an Operator located in the Focus field explains:
a. Its adjacency to the inflected verb,
b. The fact that it occurs after topics, scene setting temporal elements, and hanging
topics, and
c. The fact that it only triggers proclisis.
As a last point concerning sì, I would like to mention that the element has not disap-
peared from the language. Modern Italian has indeed cases of sì in the CP layer, as
shown in (31), where (31abc) have the same meaning:
(31) a. Gianni sì che lo fa
G. sì that it does
 Cecilia Poletto

b. Sì che Gianni lo fa
SÌ that Gianni it does
c. Gianni lo fa sì
Gianni it does sì
‘Gianni surely does it.’
Nevertheless this is not the type of sì found in Old Italian, as sì here is the assertive
pro-sentence, not the adverb ‘so’. Though they are related, Modern Italian sì has evolved
into a contrastive Focus marker which sets the sentence as a correction of the context,
it is a marker which signals the denial of (part of) a previous utterance. In work related
to the left periphery Benincà and Poletto (2004) show that the left periphery of Ro-
mance languages contains at least two distinct types of Foci, contrastive Focus and
what is dubbed Information Focus. Some Romance languages or dialects, notably
Modern Sicilian (see Cruschina 2006 for a detailed discussion on Information Focus
in Sicilian), and crucially Old Italian make use of both types of Foci, so a sentence can
either have contrastive or information focus located in the CP layer. In Modern Italian
this is not so; the only possible Focus position independently available is the contras-
tive Focus position, for reasons which are not clear yet. In Modern Italian, Information
Focus is only available in a parasitic way to Contrastive Focus namely when the Con-
trastive Focus position is already activated and contains a lexical XP. I will elaborate on
this in the next section where I discuss the loss of V2. For the moment, let us take this
observation as a fact and analyze how sì has changed from Old Italian to Modern Ital-
ian. If the position of Information Focus is not independently available in Modern
Italian, then the change that occurred in the syntax of the particle sì is expected. A
priori, there are two possibilities when Information Focus is blocked by the loss of V2:
the particle could have disappeared from the language, or it could turn into something
else. As seen above, the sentential marker sì has not disappeared from the language,
but given that the Information position is blocked in Modern Italian, it has turned into
a marker of Contrastive Focus, which is still freely available in Modern Italian. I pro-
pose that Modern Italian sì is a contrastive Focus marker signaling that the whole
sentence is in contrast to the previous context (as shown in (31b)). One argument in
favor of the idea that sì has turned from an information Focus to a contrastive Focus is
provided by the fact that it has developed a negative counterpart, which did not existed
in Old Italian, namely no, found in contexts like the following:
(32) no che Gianni non lo fa
no that Gianni not it does
`Gianni won’t surely do it.’
Contrastive Focus with respect to the context can be either assertive or negative, infor-
mation Focus cannot be negative. This explains the absence of the negative counter-
part of sì, no, in Old Italian.
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

In addition to this, Modern Italian also displays cases such as (33):

(33) Gianni sì che lo fa
Gianni sì that it does
`Gianni surely does it.’
Here the sentence starts out with a topic located in front of the Focus marker (as in
(31a)). In this case, the sentence is set as a contrast to the discourse only with respect
to the Topic Phrase. Notice that, while there can be more than one topic in Modern
Italian (as in all Romance languages), there can only be one topic of this type. I call this
Ground and it restricts the domain of the contrast, as the ungrammaticality of the fol-
lowing sentence shows:
(34) *Maria, Gianni sì che lo fa
Maria Gianni sì that it does
‘As for Maria, Gianni surely does it.’
Other types of topics are not in principle excluded, showing that not all Topic Phrases
are blocked, but that there can be only one per type:
(35) Per Maria, Gianni sì che lo fa
For Maria, Gianni sì that it does
‘Gianni surely does it to please Mary.’
Sì can also unexpectedly occur at the end of the clause, as in (31c). There are two pos-
sible ways to analyze the sentence final position found in Modern Italian: we either
assume that the sentence initial and the sentence final positions are different, and sì
can appear close to the VP (in fact lower than all VP elements, as it is sentence final)
or we can hypothesize that the sentence final and sentence initial position are one and
the same. The sentence final effect would then be due to movement of the whole clause
to a GroundP (a type of Topic) position in front of the Focus marker. As I show in
detail in Poletto (2008), there is empirical evidence that the second hypothesis is cor-
rect.6 The structure of the two sentences with sentence initial and sentence final sì are
represented below:
(36) a. [ GroundP [CPFocus SI [FinP [Fin° che …[IP Gianni lo fa]]]
b. [SpecGroundP [IPGianni lo fa] [Ground° [CPFocus SI] [FinP [IP Gianni lo fa]]] [Fin°
[IP Gianni lo fa]]]]
In the first case, sì is sentence initial followed by the whole clause, with a low comple-
mentizer in Fin head.7 In the second, the whole IP has moved to the Spec of a GroundP

6. I briefly sum up here what I assume for Modern Italian sì. The reader is referred to Poletto (2008)
for a detailed discussion of the empirical arguments and of the technical details of the analysis.
7. These structures are also an argument in favour of the idea that the complementizer in
these constructions is in Fin. See also Belletti (2008).
 Cecilia Poletto

moving through the Spec of the FinP and thereby preventing the realization of the
complementizer because of the doubly filled comp filter (see Poletto 2000 for a discus-
sion on the notion of the doubly filled comp filter in a cartographic approach). I report
here some of the arguments in favor of this hypothesis developed in Poletto (2008): the
first is that NO occurs in sentence final position and only right dislocated items can
occur after it. Those elements which cannot be right dislocated, as negative quantifiers
or verbal particles are ungrammatical:
(37) Ci sono andata si, al cinema
there am gone yes, to.the cinema
`I really went to the cinema.’
(38) *Ci sono andata si, da nessuna parte
there am gone yes, to no place
‘I really did not go anywhere.’
(39) *Non mi ha detto no su
Not me has told no off
`He did not tell me off.’
According to the hypothesis illustrated above, this is due to the fact that the whole IP
has to be moved, hence all IP-internal material has to occur before sì, and only ele-
ments which can be right dislocated (like definite PPs, but unlike Quantified PPs or
verbal particles) can be found to the right of the negative marker. If sì were in IP, we
would expect it to be followed by some non dislocated XPs.
The second argument is that sì is incompatible with elements whose position is
typically associated to the lower portion of the CP layer, like wh-items:
(40) *Dove sei andato sì?
Where are gone yes?
‘Where did you really go?’
(41) *Il ragazzo a cui ho telefonato sì, è Gianni
The boy to whom have phoned yes, is John
‘The boy I really phoned is John.’
Sentence final sì is both incompatible with interrogative wh-items and with relative
pronouns. This is expected if the two types of elements are banned by a minimality
effect. On this basis I will assume that sì is always a contrastive Focus marker in Italian,
so its position is still in the Focus layer, but has readjusted to the new grammar, which
does not allow information focus. As for the more general reason why an element like
sì has been selected for marking Focus (either Information or Contrastive) I propose
that, as in the case of the particle e, it must be related to its intrinsic nature. In this case
I think that it is its status as an operator which makes sì the ideal candidate to mark
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

Focus. That sì is an operator is shown by the cases in Old Italian in which sì is in

SpecCP followed by a complementizer:
(42) a. sì che quasi dal principio del suo anno non apparve a me
so that almost from-the beginning of his year not appeared to me
`so that almost at the beginning of the year it appeared to me...’
(Vita nuova 6)
b. sì che li chiovi pareano 16 lettere
so that the nails looked-like 16 letters
`so that the nails looked like 16 letters.’ (Nov. 337)
Here the meaning of sì is not “in this way” but “in such a way that”. In other words in
this usage the adverb already connects the previous utterance to the following one. We
can conclude that the particle sì in Old Italian and Modern Italian can be used as a
Focus marker due to its operator nature. In Old Italian, it marks Information Focus,
and it has been reanalyzed as a marker of contrastive Focus in Modern Italian. In the
next section, I will try to provide an explanation for this change based on the loss of
the general V2 property.

4. A broken cycle

Both sentential particles examined here have undergone a change from Old Italian to
Modern Italian: the case of the particle e has been reduced to contexts which have the
common property of having an active CP (due to the presence of a Wh-item or an
operator), sì has been reinterpreted as a contrastive focus marker instead of an infor-
mation focus marker.
It is well known that the syntax of Italian underwent a major change after the me-
dieval period. It lost V2 and this had consequences for the licensing of null subjects
and the distribution of pronouns (see Benincà 1984). It also was important for the
availability of a low left periphery located on top of the low phase vP (see Poletto 2006)
thereby banning DP objects located in between the auxiliary and the past particle. I
would like to propose that the change in the particle distribution also depends on the
loss of V2 though in two different ways. I adopt here the standard assumption that
“loss of V2” means in technical terms that the inflected verb does not obligatorily raise
to the CP domain in main declarative clauses. More precisely, the relevant projection
inside the split CP domain to which the inflected verb moves in Old Italian is Informa-
tion Focus, the lowest projection inside the Focus field. Therefore, after the medieval
period the inflected verb can remain in IP in declarative main clauses, as the feature in
Information Focus forcing verb movement is not there anymore. Notice however, that
Modern Italian does not represent the immediate stage expected after this change. This
is represented by languages like Modern Sicilian, where, though the verb is not forced
 Cecilia Poletto

to move to the Information Focus head, this projection is still available to an XP, as the
grammaticality of sentences like the following in a question-answer pair show (see
Benincà and Poletto 2004 and Cruschina 2006 on this):
(43) A: Chi è?
Who is?
`Who is it?’
B: Montalbano sono
Montalbano am
‘It is M.’
Modern Italian has evolved further from a stage where the Specifier of Information
Focus is still available: this projection can only be occupied when the specifier of Con-
trastive Focus already contains an XP. There are other Romance languages which have
evolved even further, losing movement to Information and Contrastive Focus alto-
gether, for instance, standard French. At this point I do not know why Modern Italian
is different both from Modern Sicilian and Modern French. One can speculate that the
unavailability of the Information Focus position must be in line with some property of
the low left periphery on top of vP, but I will not take a stand with respect to the moti-
vation of the loss of V2, which has been under discussion for years in the diachronic
literature. What can be observed from the texts is exactly what Roberts (1993) ob-
serves in the case of Old French: on the one hand subject inversion becomes rarer and
rarer while cases of preverbal subjects increase, on the other there is a restriction on
the elements which can be moved to Information Focus. I analyzed the first ten chap-
ters and chapter twenty to twenty-three of Machiavelli’s “Il Principe”, written in the
early part of the 16th century, and only found very few clear cases of subject inversion
(i.e. a nominal subject located in between the auxiliary and the past participle). In the
whole sample (over 100 pages) there are only three cases of subject inversion with an
auxiliary verb (cf. (44)) and eight cases with modals (six with potere ‘can’ and two with
dovere ‘must’). Cases with modal verbs are illustrated in (45):
(44) a. Spenti adunque questi capi, e ridotti i partigiani loro
blown.off then these bosses and reduced the friends their
amici suoi, aveva il duca gittato assai buoni fondamenti
friends his had the duke thrown very good foundations
alla potenza sua
to.the power his
‘when he had killed those chiefs and captured their friends, the duke had
laid solid foundations to his power.’ (p.221)
b. Aveva adunque Luigi fatto questi cinque errori
had then Luigi made these five mistakes
‘So Luigi had made these five mistakes.’ (p.197)
 Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle 

c. Mentre che durò la memoria, sempre furono i Romani

while that lasted.3sg the memory always were the Romans
incerti di quella possessione
unsure of that possession
‘as long as this story is remembered, the Romans never completely pos-
sessed that land.’ (p.203)
(45) a. E deve soprattutto uno principe vivere con i suoi sudditi
And must.3sg overall a prince live with the his subjects
in modo che …
in way that…
‘and above all a prince should live with his subjects so that...’ (p.237)
b. E con più facilità se le può un principe guadagnare
and with more ease for-himself them can.3sg a prince gain
`and a prince can gain them more easily.‘ (p.205)
The second fact is that the class of elements which can be placed in front of the in-
flected verb without being left dislocations or contrastive focus is dramatically reduced:
in Machiavelli’s text the vast majority of cases are represented by the adverbs sempre
‘always’ and its negative counterpart, mai ‘never’. This clearly shows that Information
Focus is not as readily available (both to the inflected verb and to XPs) as it was in the
medieval period. The fact that Information Focus is blocked evidently produces an
effect on the particle sì, which is then reanalyzed as contained in the closest projection,
namely Contrastive Focus. As a consequence, the particle takes over also the proper-
ties of the new projection where it is located, not only because it indicates a contrast
with the previous discourse, but also because it has the same properties as other types
of CP elements in Modern Italian in allowing remnant IP movement and thereby trig-
gering sentence final position of the particle.
The case of the particle e is more difficult to explain, as the particle has not changed
its status, but only reduced the number of contexts where it can be used as such.
In order to function as a topic marking the continuation of the context, the parti-
cle e exploits a structure which is the same as the one used when it represents a con-
junction. Given that the context, which is located in SpecConjunctionP, is represented
as a whole CP starting with a TopP, it is necessary that the following clause is also syn-
tactically a whole CP starting with some Topic (hence higher than Focus). This is by no
means a problem in Old Italian, where in all main clauses the inflected verb has to
reach the Focus field and there are null topics available. However, in Modern Italian
this is not the case. Therefore, using the conjunction as a topic marker becomes impos-
sible in Modern Italian unless the sentence is already a whole CP starting with some
projection higher than FocusP. Precisely in these cases (namely when also the second
condition is met), it is indeed still possible to use the conjunction particle as a topic
marker. This means that the particle itself has undergone no real reanalysis from Old
Italian to Modern Italian, but that it is rather the structure of the language that has
 Cecilia Poletto

changed, preventing an extensive use of the conjunction marker as a topic marking

prosecution of the context.
More generally, we can conclude that these two cases show that what looks like the
reanalysis of an isolated item is strictly related to the whole system. This might prove
to be a more general pattern which applies to reanalysis throughout: no lexical item
can be reanalyzed by itself and reanalysis must always be the effect of a more general
restructuring of the whole system. If this is correct, any time we deal with some ele-
ment changing (even just the development of a new modal auxiliary, as bisogna from
Old Italian to Modern Italian, or of the class of adverbs changing from manner to
speaker oriented adverbs), which seem unrelated to the general structure of the lan-
guage, we should seek the general structural change which drives the smaller ones of
single items.

5. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have examined the distribution of two sentential markers from Old
Italian to Modern Italian and have reached a number of conclusions: first of all, follow-
ing Kaiser (2006ab), I concluded that neither of the two elements is an expletive in the
left periphery. The second conclusion is that the change of the two items is driven by a
very major change in the V2 system of the language and that the two elements have
only “readjusted” to the general context they are in. Moreover, the usage as topic or
focus markers of these items seems to be related to their invariant categorial proper-
ties. This ensures that, when the right context is provided, these elements can still be-
have as they did in the old system (e still is a topic marker when CP is active). The
general conclusion we can draw from this case study is that we should not only con-
sider the change of lexical elements per se, as specifiers becoming heads, or lower ele-
ments climbling to higher functional projections, but also the general picture of the
language which requires the change to be activated. In some cases, we might find that
the element per se has not changed at all, and that its categorical and/or semantic in-
variant features just adapt to the context it is in.

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part 3

Copulas, auxiliaries, and adpositions

 chapter 9

The copula cycle

Terje Lohndal
University of Maryland

It is well-known that copulas often emerged historically from demonstratives

and pronouns. The present paper argues that copulas change cyclically. This
claim is substantiated through a rich number of examples from various
languages. Besides the change from demonstratives and pronouns to copulas,
it is shown that copulas further may develop into affixes. Interestingly, there
are also languages like Hebrew where the copula first disappears and then
redevelops at a later stage. This paper describes the stages of the copula cycle,
and argues that there also are changes that do not fit directly into the major
stages. The cycle is understood through a formal theory of grammaticalization,
where there are cognitive principles that help the child to acquire a language.

1. Introduction*1

It is a well-known fact that “demonstratives may develop […] into personal pronouns,
which themselves may give rise to copulas.” (Heine and Kuteva 2002: 109). In the ty-
pological literature, this process is known as copularization: “the grammaticalization
process which turns full verbs or other non-copular elements into copulas” (Hengeveld
1992: 237–256, Stassen 1997: 94–99; though see Pustet 2003 for a slightly different
terminology). The aim of this paper is to argue that there is a systematic cycle where
copulas emerge from demonstratives and pronouns or from verbs and might then
develop further into auxiliaries and grammatical markers like affixes. Demonstratives
and pronouns may even reappear from copulas. In addition to providing a typology of
these patterns of change, I also aim at giving a theoretical analysis of these data within
the Minimalist Program. Specifically I will approach the data from the perspective of
a formalist understanding of grammaticalization as in Roberts and Roussou (2003)

* Parts of this paper have been presented at the Linguistic Cycles workshop at Arizona State
University in April 2008. I am grateful to the audience for valuable comments. Thanks also to
Werner Abraham, Brian Dillon, Jan Terje Faarlund, Elly van Gelderen, David Ingram, and David
Lightfoot for their useful remarks.
 Terje Lohndal

and van Gelderen (2004ab). This framework, I claim, provides a useful way both to
classify the changes and to understand the changes in question.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses an approach to the syntax of
copulas. Section 3 discusses grammaticalization and economy, adopting the framework
in van Gelderen (2004ab). The copula cycle is introduced in Section 4, and step by step
data are introduced that motivate the copula cycle. Section 5 concludes the paper.

2. The syntax of copulas

How to analyze copulas is a problematic and somewhat controversial question. I will

not provide an overview here, but simply present and briefly motivate the framework
I am adopting.
A common assumption about copulas is articulated by Baker (2003: 40):
This range of data implies that the copula in English is not involved primarily in
the dynamics of theta-role assignment, but rather appears when the lexical head
of the clause cannot bear finite tense and agreement morphology.

This has been the traditional approach. As has been argued elsewhere, there are many
reasons to think that this view is wrong (Rothstein 1999, 2001, Lohndal 2006, Lohndal,
Åfarli and Nygård 2008). However, the issue is not directly important for the present
paper, and what I will say in the remainder is largely tangential to this issue. What is
important, however, is the phrase structure we assume for copulas. In the next section,
I will outline an analysis where copulas are heads of a predication phrase.
In a seminal paper, Bowers (1993) proposes a predication phrase, PrP. Pr is a func-
tional category where the external argument (the subject) sits in the specifier of Pr. The
predicate is the complement, and can consist of either a VP, NP, PP or an AP. This can
be illustrated by way of the following tree structure.
(1) PrP
wo
subject Pr’
wo
Pr predicate/xp
This structure accommodates small clauses as well as main clauses. The structure for a
small clause like (2) is provided in (3).
(2) Lisa considers Mary crazy.
(3) [IP Lisa considers [PrP Mary [Pr’ Pr [AP crazy]]]]
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Above the PrP in the clause is the inflectional phrase, IP. To illustrate a more complete
structure, (4) represents a typical sentence (I have omitted the higher layers).1
(4) PrP
wo
subject Pr’
wo
Pr VP
wo
V’
wo
V
Eide and Åfarli (1999), based on Eide (1996), have argued, pace Bowers (1993), Baker
(2003) and Mikkelsen (2005), that copulas can lexicalize the head of PrP (see also
Adger and Ramchand 2003: 336). This has further been corroborated by Lohndal, Ny-
gård and Åfarli (2008), although their overall conclusion is slightly different. It is not
possible to repeat all the arguments in favor of this conclusion, but let us just look at
one important one from Eide and Åfarli (1999).
Eide and Åfarli (1999) note that there is an interesting symmetry between the par-
ticle som in Norwegian and the copula. First, they argue that the particle som can lexi-
calize the predication operator. A few examples supporting this are provided in (5)-(7).
(5) Vi fant [Marit [(*som) naken/ *(som) nervevrak]].
we found Marit as naked / as nervous wreck
‘We found Marit nude/as a nervous wreck.’
(6) Vi så [Jon [(*som) rasende/ *(som) spøkelse]].
we saw John as furious / as ghost
‘We saw John being furious/as a ghost.’
(7) Vi returnerte [pakken [(*som) uåpnet / *(som) flypost]].
we returned parcel.def as unopened / as air mail
‘We returned the parcel unopened/as air mail.’ (Eide and Åfarli 1999: 160)
An adjectival predicate does not permit the occurrence of the particle som, whereas a
nominal small clause predicate forces the presence of som. The structures in (5)-(7) all
have in common that you can always paraphrase them as a matrix sentence, in which
case you evidently will have to replace som with the copula. This is illustrated in (8)-(9).

1. As Bowers (1993: 599–600) argues, a main verb moves from V to Pr. Later on many people
have used vP as a notation for more or less the same thing as PrP (Chomsky 1995, Kratzer 1996),
and some people use PredP instead of PrP (Adger and Ramchand 2003, Baker 2003). Some have
generalized this approach even further such that a variety of heads can lexicalize what has been
called a relator phrase (den Dikken 2006). There are differences between these two approaches,
but I will set them aside in this paper as they are not directly relevant for what follows.
 Terje Lohndal

(8) Vi fant [Marit [som nervevrak]] → Vi fant Marit og [Marit

we found Marit as a nervous wreck → we found Marit and Marit
[var nervevrak]].
was a nervous wreck
(9) Vi ser [dette [som faktum]] → [Dette [er et faktum]]
we see this as a fact → this is a fact (Eide and Åfarli 1999: 165)
As Eide and Åfarli (1999) note, the bracketed parts of the two structures in each exam-
ple are very similar both semantically and syntactically, and the most striking differ-
ence seems to be the head of the PrP, viz. the copula or som. The difference in lexicali-
zation is related to the selecting matrix element. Eide and Åfarli hypothesize that the
selecting matrix element is a verb not selecting for a verbal category when som occurs
and a tense element when the copula occurs. This predicts that som and the copula are
in complementary distribution, except when the head optionally selects a verbal cate-
gory or a non-verbal category. The latter is precisely the case with Norwegian percep-
tion verbs. Eide and Åfarli point to (10) and (11) as evidence that in such a case, there
is no complementary distribution, which is a strong argument in favor of treating both
som and the copula as lexicalizations of the predication operator.
(10) Jeg så [naboen [som spøkelse]].
I saw neighbor.def som a ghost
‘I saw the neighbor as a ghost.’
(11) Jeg så [naboen [være spøkelse]].
I saw neighbor.def be a ghost (Eide and Åfarli 1999: 167)
‘I saw the neighbor be a ghost.’
In sum, it seems to be valid to assume the copula to be the head of PrP. This will be
important for what follows, thus I have taken some space to argue in favor of this posi-
tion. In the next section, I will turn to the specific diachronic framework that I will be
using throughout the paper.

3. Economy and grammaticalization

In recent years, grammaticalization has become an important research topic within

generative grammar, cf. Longobardi (2001), Roberts and Roussou (2003) and van Gel-
deren (2004ab, 2007, 2008ab). Within the functionalist paradigm, grammaticalization
has been a crucial topic for decades, see e.g. Lehmann (1985), Heine, Claudi and Hün-
nemeyer (1993), Hopper and Traugott (2003) and Heine and Kuteva (2002, 2007). The
present paper will mainly be using the specific proposal laid out by Elly van Gelderen.
Although several aspects between her theory and Roberts and Roussou’s are similar,
there are also important differences, which I cannot deal with here for reasons of space.
However, van Gelderen has in recent work integrated grammaticalization and the
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

linguistic cycle, and since the topic of this paper bears on both issues, I think her
framework is especially well-suited for analyzing the diachronic source and develop-
ment of copulas. In the present subsection, I will present the main aspects of van Gel-
deren’s theory. First I will say something about economy and its role in our internal
grammar, and then I will discuss van Gelderen’s specific implementation of grammat-
icalization as feature economy.

3.1 Economy, grammaticalization and features

Economy has played a pervasive role within the history of generative grammar. Here I
am primarily interested in the economy relating to grammatical derivations, not in the
kind of economy related to Ockham’s razor. With the introduction of the minimalist
program in linguistic theory in the late 1980s (see Chomsky 1995 for a collection of the
most central papers), economy became one of the core principles of the program. One
crucial aspect of economy is that derivations have to be as cheap as possible, that is, the
grammar always chooses the least costly derivation. Another aspect is that children’s
acquisition of language is arguably driven by principles of economy (van Gelderen
2004ab, 2007, 2008ab, Faarlund 2008). Van Gelderen (2004ab) proposes two specific
principles of grammaticalization, namely (12) and (13).
(12) Head Preference Principle (hpp)
Be a head, rather than a phrase
(13) Late Merge Principle (lmp)
Merge as late as possible
These principles are argued to guide the child during acquisition, which also means
that they rely on the input. That is, the principles can only work when the input is
ambiguous such that there is more than one way to analyze the input data.2 This relies
on the assumption that it is more economical to be a head than a phrase as heads are
less complex, and the fact that late Merge means that movement is avoided. Move-
ment, even if seen as another species of Merge (internal Merge, cf. Chomsky 2004), is
more costly because it involves a process of copying and remerging a lexical item dur-
ing the derivation. External Merge does not involve copying, which makes it cheaper
(van Gelderen 2008b). Concretely, HPP means that a speaker will prefer to build struc-
tures such as (14) rather than (15). I have followed van Gelderen in labeling the projec-
tion FP and pro stands for a pronoun.

2. Obviously, this claim is in need of further substantiation which goes beyond the scope
of this paper.
 Terje Lohndal

(14) FP
3
pro …
(15) FP
3
pro F’
3
F ….
Importantly, the HPP is a very specific and non-variant principle, as opposed to e.g.
Hawkins’ (2004) efficiency principle ‘Minimize Forms’ or ‘Stay’ within Optimality
Theory (van Gelderen 2008b). The LMP implies that Internal Merge (‘Move’) is less
economical than External Merge (pace Chomsky 2004), but I will refrain from dis-
cussing this further at this point. As van Gelderen convincingly has shown, there are
real empirical LMP effects, which would be problematic to account for if Merge and
Move were equally economical.
The second principle of economy, the LMP, works most clearly in the case of heads.
Some common examples of LMP at work are listed in (16) (van Gelderen 2008b).
(16) Preposition to complementizer (e.g. for)
(17) modals: v > Asp > T
(18) preposition to aspect (e.g. on)
(19) vP adverbials to TP/CP adverbials
(20) Negative objects to negative markers
One very common change that could be explained by reference to this principle is the
well known change in lexical verbs becoming modals in English (e.g. Traugott 1972,
Lightfoot 1974, 1979, 1999, 2006, Plank 1984, Roberts 1985, 1993, Kroch 1989, Warn-
er 1993, Abraham 2002). In Middle English verbs like can, could, may, might, will,
would, shall were full verbs. Lightfoot (2006: 90) summarizes the main differences by
way of the following data in (21)-(30).
(21) *He has could understand Chapter 4.
(22) He has understood Chapter 4.
(23) *Canning understand Chapter 4, …
(24) Understanding Chapter 4, …
(25) *He wanted to can understand.
(26) He wanted to understand.
(27) *He will can understand.
(28) He will try to understand.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

(29) *He can music.

(30) He understands music.
(21)-(30) show that modal auxiliaries differ from ordinary verbs in their distribution.
A modal does not occur with a perfective (21) or past participle (23), it does not occur
in the infinitival complement of another verb (25), nor as the complement of another
modal (27), and no modal may occur with a direct object (29). However, when modals
were main verbs, these structures were generally possible. Under the LMP, this change
is straightforward.3 (31) would be preferred compared to (32) because the modal aux-
iliary is based generated higher in the former than in the latter.
(31) TP
3
T vP
might 3
v’
3
v …
(32) TP
3
T vP
3
v’
3
v …
might

Generally the LMP accounts for changes where a lexical head becomes a functional
head, or where a functional head becomes a higher functional head, both frequently
described in the literature on grammaticalization (see e.g. Heine & Kuteva 2002).
However, the LMP can also account for changes in the position of lexical phrases
whereby lexical phrases become base generated in the functional domain. Consider
the examples in (33)-(34) (van Gelderen 2009).
(33) Those who offend actually, are most grievously punished.
(34) Actually, it is kind of an interesting problem.
When actually was first introduced into the English language from French, it was an
adjective. In the 15th century it is used as a vP adverb (33). It may have been topicalized

3. Notice, though, that the LMP does not say anything about when this change occurred.
Obviously, the LMP is a principle that interacts with the external data, and unless the external
data is such that the principle can kick in, it won’t.
 Terje Lohndal

frequently, leading to a change to a CP adverb (34). This change also shows that the
LMP works for both phrases and heads.
Recently, van Gelderen (2007, 2008b, 2009) has reanalyzed the HPP and LMP,
collapsing them into one overall and more general principle, namely (35).
(35) Principle of Feature Economy
Minimize the semantic/interpretable features in the derivation
Adjunct Specifier Head > affix
Semantic > [iF] > [uF] > --
This is among others based on Radford’s (2000) argument that interpretable features
are acquired before uninterpretable features, and the latter ones trigger the gram-
matical system.
Assuming that only heads are Probes (Chomsky 2008), (35) means that whenever
the HPP is at work, we get a (new) Probe. Interestingly, (35) also provides us with a
formal definition of what grammaticalization really is. It is a change whereby some-
thing becomes more economical, i.e. where semantic features are reduced (on the as-
sumption that uninterpretable features are more economical than interpretable ones).
This change in turn has syntactic consequences, and the remained of the paper will be
dealing with syntactic consequences relating to copulas diachronically.

4. The copula cycle and features

In this section I will present various stages of what I take to be a copula cycle. First I will
present the cycle based on general theoretical considerations within the framework laid
out in Section 3. This will function as a guiding heuristic when working our way through
the examples in the following sections. In Section 4.2 I will describe changes where a
specifier develops into a head, viz. mainly demonstratives or pronouns that become
copulas. Section 4.3 deals with the stage where a full verb has developed to a copula,
that is, a head-to-head change. This will be shown to be a prime example that the major
cycle also has smaller sub-stages. Section 4.4 discusses changes where the copula devel-
ops into a grammatical marker, viz. a suffix. In Section 4.5 I sum up the data and argue
that the cycle proposed in 4.1 accounts straightforwardly for the change.

4.1 The copula cycle

In the previous section I adopted a principle of feature economy that favors uninter-
pretable features over interpretable features. This predicts that functional elements will
start from lexical elements, a prediction borne out by a wealth of attested examples in
the literature. This is also true for copulas, and Pustet (2003: 54) says that “the main
source for copulas seems to be verbs and pronouns”. Stassen (1997: 92–99) argues that
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

there are three major diachronic sources for (verbal) copulas. The first source is dy-
namic verbs “covering the whole or parts of the semantic domain which includes no-
tions such as ‘do/make/build, ‘happen/occur’ ‘go/turn into/come/become’ and
‘act(like)’” (Stassen 1997: 92–93). Examples of languages mentioned by Stassen that
employ this strategy are the Berber languages Tamazight and Shilha, various Tibeto-
Burman languages, Lahu, Lisu and Cambodian. The second source is what Stassen
calls copularization. This is a process where “one of the members of the set of loca-
tional support verbs becomes specialized as the support item for nominal predicates”
(Stassen 1997: 94). Commonly it is the semantically most neutral verb that undergoes
this change. One further step in this process is the gradual loss of locative meaning of
the copular verb, thus the language shifts towards a lexical differentiation of nominal
and locational support items. The Tanoan language Kiowa appears to be such a lan-
guage, Stassen argues. The only examples in which the item do: can act as a locative
support where are sentences where it is accompanied by the particle he ‘away, gone’
(37). Other locational contexts require the use of a set of different posture verbs (38)-
(39).4
(36) Te: Koy-gu ba-do: Kiowa
all Kiowa-und 2pl.und-cop
‘You are all Kiowas.’
(37) P’o: he: gya-do:
moon away pl-cop
‘There was (temporarily) no moon.’
(38) Guy-te Ø-t’o:
other 3sg-stay
‘There is someone else here.’
(39) E:go yi: ol e-cel kicoy-ka
here two hair 3dual-cop in.soup-in
‘There are two hairs in the soup.’ (Stassen 1997: 94)
Other languages where copularization happens are the Yuman languages (Mojave, Co-
copa, Yavapai) and in North Carolina Cherokee (Stassen 1997: 94). The third source is

4. The abbreviations used in the glosses are as follows: 1, 2, 3 = person; anim = animate; ant
= anterior; aux = auxiliary; c = noun class; class = classifier; comp = comparative case; cop =
copula; dcl = declarative; def = definite; dem = demonstrative; detr = detransitivizer; dist =
distal; dual = dual; erg = ergative case; ess = essive case; ex = existential; fem = feminine; fin
= finite; fm = focus-marker; focus = focus/topic particle; fut = future; gen = genitive case; hab
= habitual; imp = imperative; inan = inanimate; instr = instrument; loc = locative case; masc
= masculine; nm = nominalizer; nom = nominative; npl = nonplural marker; npst = non-past;
pat = patient; perf = perfective; pl = plural; prog = progressive; prox = proximal; prs = present;
pst = past; px = proximity marker; rel = relative marker; s = part of verb stem; sbj = subject;
seq = sequential converb; sg = singular; super = superessive case; und = undergoer-marker.
 Terje Lohndal

the process of verbalization, which can be “viewed as the final stage of the
grammaticalization process by which pronouns and discourse particles are reanalysed
as abstract linking morphemes in predicate nominal sentences” (Stassen 1997: 95).
This process is especially frequent in many African languages, e.g. Temne, Gola, Zande,
Gbeya, Zulu and Shona, to mention but a few (see Stassen 1997: 96 for a more compre-
hensive overview).
In the present paper, I will offer a different suggestion. I will propose a typology
based on structural positions. On the basis of the framework presented in Section 3, I
will try to explain the cyclic nature of the changes in terms of feature economy. Note,
though, that my proposal is not incompatible with Stassen’s; it is another way of look-
ing at the issues, and, hopefully also a way to contribute with some different and fur-
ther insights. Basically, I will argue that there is a general copula cycle which looks like
(40). Both the structural positions and the feature contents of the lexical items are
present (cf. Chomsky 2000 et seq.).
(40) demonstrative/pronoun > copula > grammatical marker
specifier > head > affix
iF > uF > --
Several interesting questions emerge from (40). What kind of specifier position do
demonstratives occupy? How do prepositions that develop into copulas fit into (40)?
Are there sub-changes internal to the cycle in (40)? Below I will address all of these
questions. Section 4.2 discusses specifiers becoming heads, and I will argue that in
most cases the relevant specifier is the specifier of a predication phrase. This specifier
then turns into the head of the predication phrase (cf. the discussion in Section 2). In
Section 4.3 I discuss the stage where the copula is a head, and argues that changes take
place within this stage of the cycle. Section 4.4 discusses heads becoming affixes, that
is, grammatical markers. Section 5 provides a short summary.

4.2 Specifier to head

This section will discuss a number of examples showing that specifiers may develop
into copulas. The main part of the section will be devoted to demonstratives and pro-
nouns becoming copulas, but I will also somewhat briefly discuss existentials and
prepositions undergoing the same change.

4.2.1. Demonstratives and pronouns

There are several cases where a demonstrative or a pronoun has developed into a copu-
la.5 The most famous case is the one described in Li and Thompson (1977), and their
paper will also play an important role in this section. However, towards the end I will

5. In some cases, it may be hard to determine whether a lexical item is a copula or a nominal
element (cf. Déprez 2003). However, I will not discuss any such cases in this paper.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

also show that there are several other attested cases of this change. I also think that the
theoretical framework adopted in this paper is a good alternative compared to func-
tional theories of grammaticalization when it comes to analyzing this change. As Devitt
(1994: 143–144) points out, the change from demonstratives and pronouns to copulas
“is somewhat problematic for grammaticization theory if semantic generalization is
assumed to be the key process in the development of grammatical morphology”. As will
hopefully become evident, I think an advantage of the formal theory of grammaticali-
zation adopted here is that it is able to deal straightforwardly with this change.
The most widely know case of a pronoun becoming a copula is the Mandarin shì,
discussed in Li and Thompson’s (1977) seminal paper on the development of copula
morphemes.6 In Archaic Chinese (11th -3rd B.C.), equational sentences did generally
not have a copula. This is shown in (41).
(41) Wáng-Tái wù zhě yě Archaic Chinese
Wang-Tai outstanding person dcl
‘Wang-Tai is an outstanding person.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 421)
In Modern Mandarin, the copula shì regularly occurs in equational sentences.
(42) nèi-ge rén shì xuéshēng Modern Mandarin
that-class man cop student
‘That man is a student.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 422)
This modern copula was a demonstrative in Archaic Chinese, as shown in the follow-
ing example.
(43) fū-zĭ zhì yù shì bāng yě Archaic Chinese
Confucius arrive at this nation dcl
‘Confucius arrived at this nation.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 423)
However, shì also occurred in equational sentences in Archaic Chinese as an anaphor-
ic demonstrative pronoun.
(44) jì yù qí shēng yoù yù qí sĭ shí huò yě Archaic Chinese
already wish him live also wish him die this indecision dcl
‘wishing him to live while wishing him to die, that is indecision.’
(Li and Thompson 1977: 424)

6. Diessel (1999: 143–147) argues against Li and Thompson’s (1977) analysis. He claims that
the developments of nonverbal copulas from third person pronouns and from demonstratives
follow two different pathways. However, I will argue that in both cases we are dealing with a case
where a specifier becomes a head, which justifies subsuming the possible different pathways in
the present paper. Possibly there might though be two separate sub-stages here.
 Terje Lohndal

Li and Thompson say that it seems fairly clear that the use of shì as a copula was pro-
ductive by the late Han period (1st -2nd century A.D.). In the vernacular literature,
one finds sentences such as (45) showing shì as a copula.
(45) cĭ bái wù shì hé děng?
this white thing cop what kind
‘What kind of stuff is this white thing?’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 425)
The important thing, however, is that it is the use of shì as an anaphoric demonstrative
pronoun that gave rise to the modern copula construction: “These topic-comment
constructions, then, set the stage for reanalysis: the topic-comment construction with-
out a copula became a subject predicate construction with the anaphoric demonstra-
tive pronoun shì being reanalyzed as a copula” (Li and Thompson 1977: 425). Impor-
tantly, Li and Thompson argue that there are some ambiguous data that favor this
analysis. The data in (46)-(47) could in fact well be interpreted as subject-predicate
equational sentences. They are given a topic-comment interpretation because there is
no sentence in Archaic Chinese where shì functions solely as a copula verb.
(46) zhī ér shĭ zhĭ, shì bù rèn yě Archaic Chinese
know then use him, this not kind decl
‘To use him knowing (that he would rebel), that was unkind.’
(47) jì yù qí shēng yoù yù qí sĭ, shì huò yě
already wish him live also wish him die, this indecision dcl
‘Wishing him to live while wishing him to die, that is indecision.’
(Li and Thompson 1977: 424)
Since (46)-(47) are open to multiple analyses, this made it very likely that children
analyzed these strings differently at a later stage, given that there is sufficient represen-
tation of the structures in the input (Lightfoot 1999). Ambiguity in the input (the pri-
mary linguistic data) is a common source for language change (and often very little
input is required; see Westergaard 2008), thus it is not incidental that the demonstra-
tive pronoun develops into a copula when we assume the principles of economy given
in Section 2. Let me now show how this can be analyzed formally.
We have seen that a demonstrative can develop into a copula in Chinese. I will
suggest that the demonstrative is in SpecPrP, and that through the HPP it is analyzed
as head of the PrP. Using the sentences in (48) and (49) (repeated from above for ex-
pository convenience), there is a change from (50) to (51).
(48) Wáng-Tái wù zhě yě
Wang-Tai outstanding person dcl
‘Wang-Tai is an outstanding person.’ (=(41))
(49) nèi-ge rén shì xuéshēng
that-class man cop student
‘That man is a student.’ (=(42))
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

(50) PrP
wo
Wáng-Tái Pr’
wo
Pr wù zhě
(51) PrP
wo
nèige rén Pr’
wo
Pr xuéshēng
shì
In order to see this change even clearer, consider the part in bold in (52) (=(46)).
(52) zhī ér shĭ zhĭ, shì bù rèn yě Archaic Chinese
know then use him, this not kind decl
‘To use him knowing (that he would rebel), that was unkind.’
The stage where shì was a demonstrative is given in (53), and the new stage where it is
analyzed as a copula is given in (54). The structures are simplified by not showing any
of the higher functional projections.
(53) PrP
wo
shì Pr’
wo
Pr bù rèn
(54) PrP
wo
6 Pr’
zhī ér shĭ zhĭ ei 3
Pr bù rèn
shì
These examples show how a formal theory can be used to explain the changes in ques-
tion. However, I would like to point out an important issue at this point. Van Gelderen
(2004b: 73 ff.) has invoked exactly this specifier-to-head change to explain how demon-
stratives may develop into complementizers. I think the fact that demonstratives become
both complementizers and copulas show a crucial point: it is of utmost importance in
which specifier an element is. If an element is in SpecCP, it may become a complemen-
tizer; if it is in SpecPrP, it may become a copula. Consequently, an element in SpecCP is
predicted not to develop into a copula. The latter change has to the best of my knowledge
not been attested. Notice that this is not a novel proposal about the framework I am
 Terje Lohndal

adopting, but I think the data that have been discussed underline this fact even further.
Let us now look at more cases of this change across various languages.
Li and Thompson claim that analogous processes like the Chinese one have taken
place in Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic and Wappo. What is particularly interesting for
our purposes is that they argue that there are traits of full cycles in both Hebrew and
Palestinian Arabic. I will use the former language to illustrate the process.
In Hebrew, the triliteral verbal copula, h-y-y is not used in the present tense. In-
stead, one finds that equational sentences contain a demonstrative pronoun or a per-
sonal pronoun (if the subject is non-sentential).
(55) [še nitnaged lo] ze mәguxax Hebrew
that we.will.oppose.to him “this” absurd
‘It would be absurd for us to oppose him.’
(56) moše (ze) student šeli
Moshe that student my
‘Moshe is a student of mine’
(57) ata (hu) ha-ganav
you “he” def-thief
‘You are the thief.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 427)
For most speakers, according to Berman and Grosu (1976), the hu morpheme is op-
tional in sentences containing pronominal subjects but obligatory in sentences with
full DP subjects.
(58) David hu ha-ganav Hebrew
David “he” def-thief
‘David is the thief.’
(59) *David ha-ganav
David the-thief (Li and Thompson 1977: 428)
There are several other restrictions on where hu appears (Li and Thompson 1977: 428–
429). These suggest, Li and Thompson argue, that pronouns are being reanalyzed as
copulas in Modern Hebrew. Recent research has also supported this view: “Colloquial
Hebrew uses the overt copula with ever increasing frequency” (Katz 1996: 87). Two
arguments are advanced in favor of this claim. First, the morphemes ze and hu are also
able to function as pronouns.
(60) ze mešune Hebrew
‘That’s strange.’
(61) hu ohev et-Rivka
he loves acc-Rivka
‘He loves Rivka.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 429)
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Sentences such as (62) have completed the transition from topic-comment to subject-
predicate equational sentences according to Li and Thompson (1977: 429–431).
(62) David hu ha-ganav Hebrew
David “he” def-thief
‘David is the thief.’ (Li and Thompson 1977: 429)
I will not present the arguments in favor of this view. Instead I will direct attention to
another phenomenon, discussed by Katz (1996). The following example shows that the
copula does not agree in Person with its subject. The subject is second person, but the
form of the copula is nevertheless the invariant hu.
(63) ‘Ata hu ha-‘iš Hebrew
thou.masc cop def-man
‘You are the man.’ (Katz 1996: 90)
Katz argues that this mismatch in persons shows that hu is a copula and not merely a
deictic marker: “The loss of the category of person is one property which leads us to
conclude that the erstwhile pronouns have grammaticalized in such utterances, and are
for all intents and purposes full fledged copulas” (Katz 1996: 90; cf. Devitt 1994: 140).
An interesting important point is nevertheless that we have seen a development
where a copula disappears (h-y-y) and a new copula hu develops from a pronoun. As
Li and Thompson (1977: 438) say, “Thus, it seems that the emergence and decline of
the copula may be seen as a diachronic cycle. The cycle is clearly very complex”. This is
further supported by data in Katz (1996) who presents evidence that copulas may be-
come pronouns.
Katz (1996: 118–133) argues that the Turkish third person singular pronoun o(n)
developed from the third person singular present of the copula verb. In pre-nineteenth
century texts, the usual form of the third person absolutive was ol, and not o as it is
today. The ol root is also found in another instance, namely in the verb olmak ‘to exist’.
Katz says that ol was also used as the equivalent of the copula in the early period. As
evidence for the directionality ol > o, she points towards the fact that in earlier texts,
both were used interchangeably. In modern texts, o is the only form. Regarding the
verb olmak ‘to exist’, it is clear that this verb shares the common root with the demon-
strative pronoun ol since -mak is the infinitival ending. Katz (1996: 122–123) also
presents two main arguments for why the pronoun developed from the copula and not
the other way around. First, it is only in the very earliest texts that the pronoun has a
copula function. This seems to indicate that the copula function emerged earlier, and
that the pronoun is the new form. Second, early Turkish oral texts used independent
pronouns sparsely whereas Modern Turkish uses them amply. Here too, the pronoun
form seems to be the innovative one. Based on this, it seems clear that the verbal form
ol developed into the pronoun o(n) (see Katz 1996: 120 on the nasal).
Going back to demonstratives becoming copulas, another interesting case is Pan-
are. Panare has three different copulas, as shown in (64)-(66).
 Terje Lohndal

(64) maestro këj e’ñapa Panare

teacher cop.anim.prox Panare
‘The Panare is (prox) a.teacher.’
(65) maestro nëj e’ñapa
teacher cop.anim.dist a.teacher
‘The Panare is (dist) a teacher.’
(66) e’chipen mën manko
fruit inan mango
‘Mango is a fruit.’ (Gildea 1993: 55)
These examples show that the different copula depends on whether the third person
subject is animate or inanimate and whether they are inside or outside the speaker’s
sphere of perception. First and second person subjects in Panare have no copula.
(67) maestro yu/amen Panare
teacher 1sg/2sg
‘I am/You are a teacher.’ (Gildea 1993: 54)
Gildea (1993: 56) says that: “It is clear on morphological grounds that the copulas këj,
nëj and mën are derived from nonverbal elements in that verbs take tense/aspect suf-
fixes and prefixes which agree with the subject for person, while these copulas take no
affixes and they vary suppletively to agree with the subject for animacy”. The nonverbal
forms which most resemble these copulas are the pronouns kën ‘anim.invisible’, nëj
‘who?’ and mën ‘inan.invisible’. Gildea argues that the nonverbal copulas and these
pronouns are derived from the same historical set of pronouns, viz. demonstratives.
There are two reasons for this claim. First, demonstrative pronouns are not used with
first or second persons, which fits well with the fact that nonverbal copulas are not used
either with these persons. Second, the deictic opposition is common for demonstrative
pronouns, cf. English this and that. As Gildea (1993: 58) points out, there is one differ-
ence between Panare and the examples discussed by Li and Thompson (1977). In the
latter case, all word orders are subject-predicate, whereas in Panare the order is predi-
cate-subject. He proposes that in Panare we have left dislocation (instead of right dis-
location as in Chinese): A teacher [is] he, John. Thus the demonstrative was required as
the subject, and a new analysis happened. It seems likely that left dislocation has worked
as a kind of trigger in Panare, just as right dislocation has in Chinese. That is, both
types of dislocations provided a natural domain for the emergence of the copula.7
What happens further, and which shows that the demonstrative has separated
from the subject semantically is that the deixis expressed by the copula may differ from
that expressed by the subject. An example is shown in (68).

7. It may be that prosody plays a role in these changes, but that question goes beyond the
scope of this study.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

(68) maestro nëj mëj Panare

teacher anim.dist anim.visible
‘This (here) guy was a teacher.’
[he (prox) is (dist) a teacher] (Gildea 1993: 61)
The subject in (68) is mëj ‘anim.visible’, so the spatial dexis is proximal (i.e. the per-
son is right here); the copula is nëj ‘anim.dist’, so the temporal deixis is distal (i.e. not
right now). Distal temporal deixis is most commonly interpreted as past. Based on
this, Gildea argues that the historical demonstrative pronouns have become synchron-
ic tense markers. In the final step, these copulas develop into auxiliaries. The following
examples show how këj and nëj are used as verbal auxiliaries for aspect-marked verbs
(ë is a non-agreeing intransitive prefix).
(69) ë’púmanëpëj këj Toman
a.detr.hit.imperf.i anim.prox Toman
‘Tom is falling (and landing with an impact).’
(70) ?ë’púmanëpëj nëj Toman
a.detr.hit.imperf.i anim.dist Toman
‘Tom is falling (dist).’ (Gildea 1993: 65)
The only difference between these clauses is the choice of auxiliary. In (69), the auxil-
iary is këj, and as the translation shows, the clause is in the present tense. (70) has the
auxiliary nëj, and although the clause is translated into present tense, it is understood
“to be occurring at a spatially distal location” (Gildea 1993: 65). Gildea (1993: 67–68)
then shows that these auxiliaries share syntactic properties with prototypical tense
markers in Panare; see his work for discussion.
As Pustet (2003: 56) discusses, in the language Kenya Luo, the third person pronoun
can optionally be used as a copula, as shown in (71).
(71) dhákó ėn bé ˆr Kenya Luo
woman cop goodness
‘woman she is goodness.’ (Tucker 1993: 308)
(72) dhákó beˆr
woman goodness
‘woman she is goodness.’ (Tucker 1993: 308)
In Lango, a language closely related to Kenya Luo, Pustet argues that the grammati-
calization has moved further. The original pronominal function is not transparent any
more, and the copula εn occurs not only with third person singular subjects.
(73) án εn àdáktâl Lango
1sg cop 1sg.doctor.hab
‘I am the doctor.’ (Noonan 1992: 146)
 Terje Lohndal

Again we see a process where pronouns develop into copulas. This is also the case in
Lakota. In this language the copula hécha is etymologically based on the demonstrative
pronoun hé ‘this’ and the element cha ‘such’. Neither hé nor cha are compatible with
verbal inflectional categories: hécha, however, can be inflected like a stative intransitive
verb” (Pustet 2003: 56).
(74) wašícu he-má-cha Lakota
white.man s-1sg.pat-cop
‘I am a white man.’ (Pustet 2003: 68)
(75) Phaláni he-má-cha
Pawnee.Indian s-1sg.pat.cop
‘I am a Pawnee Indian.’ (Pustet 2003: 69)
Lastly, let us have a look at one more case study. McWhorter (1997) (see also McWhort-
er 1995) discusses whether copulas in English-based Atlantic creoles emerged due to
influence from West African copula systems or whether copulas are the result of inde-
pendent developments. Some data relevant to this issue are provided in (76)-(77).
(76)-(77) show that Ewe uses one copula in an equative context and another copula in
a locative context.
(76) Ló é-nye tọmelã Ewe
crocodile he-cop aquatic.animal
‘The crocodile is an animal that lives in the water.’
(77) É-lè xọ me
he-cop house in
‘He is in the house.’ (McWhorter 1997: 243)
The Sranan creole has a similar pattern, as shown in (78)-(79).
(78) Mi na datra Sranan
I cop doctor
‘I am a doctor.’
(79) A de na ini Sranan Kondre
he cop loc inside Surinam
’He is in Surinam.’ (McWhorter 1997: 243)
McWhorther argues against the hypothesis that the copula systems in creoles are the
result of influence from the West African languages (though see Migge 2002 for a
critical discussion). On the basis of data from Arends (1989), he shows that a zero
copula is possible in the oldest Sranan documents (the example is from 1770).
(80) Mi blibi joe wan bon mattie fo dem. Sranan
I believe you a good friend for them
‘I believe you’re a good friend of theirs.’ (McWhorter 1997: 244)
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Arends argues that the copula evolved from the demonstrative da ‘that’.
(81) ‘Adjabre’, da Djutongo Sranan
‘adjabre’ that ‘Jews’ language’
‘”Adjabre” is Saramaccan.’ (McWhorter 1997: 244)
The modern copula emerged when what McWhorter calls a resumptive to a preced-
ing topic is analyzed as a copula. That is, the demonstrative da is analyzed as a copula
at a later stage.
McWhorter also discusses the development of the locative copula de. He discusses
several ways of analyzing this issue (1997: 247–250), which I will not go into here. In-
stead, I will just give his suggestion as to how this copula emerged. In contemporary
Saramaccan, the deictic adverb de is often optionally inserted into sentences in order
to lend deictic emphasis. Thus using de shows that the utterance is expressive.
(82) Nóiti fa mi de a Winikíi dẹ, nóiti mi jéi táa… Saramaccan
never since I cop loc Winikii there never I hear talk
‘Never since I’ve been there at Winikii have I heard that …’
(83) Dí Gaamá dí Kófi gó lúku dẹ dẹ ku suwáki dẹ
the chief rel Kofi go see there cop with sickness there
‘The chief who Kofi went to look at is sick.’ (McWhorter 1997: 250)
McWhorter argues that it is from this usage that de in Modern Saramaccan is derived.
At first there was no expression of the locative copula, just as we have seen for the
equative copula.
(84) Dí wómi a wósu Saramaccan
the man loc house
‘The man is at home.’ (McWhorter 1997: 250)
McWhorter says that “however, it would have been a common expressive strategy to
insert an expressive deictic de between subject and the predicate, similar to today’s us-
age” (1997: 250).
(85) Dí wómi de a wósu Saramaccan
the man there loc house
‘The man is there at home.’ (McWhorter 1997: 250)
This deictic marker was now ripe to be analyzed differently by new speakers as these
speakers already had heard a number of Ewe sentences where the copula was obligatory.
(86) É lè xọ me Ewe
he cop house in
‘He is in the house.’ (McWhorter 1997: 251)
Thus, de is no longer an adverbial but a copula.
 Terje Lohndal

(87) Dí wómi dé a wósu Saramaccan

the man cop loc house
‘The man is at home.’ (McWhorter 1997: 251)
Hence, the transition to a copula is complete.
In sum, we have seen a number of examples where demonstratives and/or pro-
nouns develop into copulas. I have claimed that this is an instance of a preference in
acquisition for analyzing elements as heads instead of specifiers, following van Gel-
deren (2004ab). In the next section I show another case of this change, namely copulas
emerging from existentials.

4.2.2. Existentials
Another pathway where copulas emerge is from existentials. This is not a widely at-
tested change, but data from Chalcatongo Mixtec show that it exists: “Mixtec also al-
lows a construction in which the existential is used with an adjective. This construc-
tion […] apparently has the same meaning as the normal copula + adjective
construction” (Macaulay 1996: 87). To see this clearly, observe that the normal copula
in Mixtec is ka.
(88) xwã ka lúlí Chalcatongo Mixtec
Juan cop small
‘Jus is small/short.’ (Macaulay 1996: 130)
The existential marker in the language is žoo ‘there is’.
(89) inì kaxá waA žoo tenànà Chalcatongo Mixtec
insides box def ex tomato
‘in the box there are tomatoes.’ (Macaulay 1996: 129)
The existentiale can also be used as a copula, which arguably is the new function.
(90) kGsG žóó xáá Chalcatongo Mixtec
pot cop new
‘the pot is new/there is a new pot.’ (literally ‘as for the pot, it exists new.’)
(Macaulay 1996: 130)
These two cases show that existentials may develop into copulas. I will argue that this
change is just another specifier to head change. That is, simplified structures of (89)
and (90) would look like (91) and (92).
(91) PrP
wo
žoo Pr’
wo
Pr tenànà
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

(92) PrP
wo
kGsG Pr’
wo
Pr xáá
žóó
This presupposes a certain view on existentials. It seems reasonable to analyze these
existentials on a par with expletives like English there, which means that they are
phrases. I will assume, following the argumentation in Richards (2004), Richards and
Biberauer (2005) and Biberauer and Richards (2006) that expletives are merged in
what corresponds to SpecPrP in my framework (cf. also Åfarli 2005 within a some-
what different perspective). Given that, the analysis should be straightforward.

4.2.3. Summary
In this section I have discussed a number of examples of what I have analyzed as a
change from an element being a specifier to an element becoming a head. The main
cases have been demonstratives and pronouns that develop into copulas, but we have
also seen that existentials may undergo a similar change. In the next section, I will
discuss cases where a head develops into a different head.

4.3 Head-to-head

There are a number of cases where full verbs develop into copulas. However, there are
also cases where copulas develop into auxiliaries. Both of these changes do not involve
change of projection type – both are heads – but I will argue that the nature of the
heads change. In this section I will provide examples of these changes and an analysis.

4.3.1 Full verbs

It is well-attested in the literature that full verbs may develop into functional elements.
A famous case is the development of English full verbs into modals (see the references
in Section 3). A similar change is where full verbs become copulas. This has even hap-
pened in English; the past tense forms of be come from wes meaning ‘to stay, to remain’
(Devitt 1994: 128). In this section I will give some further examples and an analysis.
In Alyawarra, copula constructions either use the verb anima ‘to sit’ or ayntima ‘to
lie’. These verbs have still retained their basic postural sense. This is shown in (93)-(94).
(93) an-il-ayant-a nhilantiya Alyawarra
sit-lig-aux-imp here.still
‘Sit here for a while; stay here.’
 Terje Lohndal

(94) ayinga alingkarr-a an-ina

I.nom tired-nom sit-past.cont
‘I was tired; I sat feeling tired.’ (Devitt 1994: 129)
Similar cases are found in other languages. The simplex verb ci- in Chantyal has ex-
tended it meaning beyond the expression of a basic posture sense. The original use is
shown in (95), and the new copula meaning in (96)-(97).
(95) Ram kurci-phyaraŋ ci-I Chantyal
Ram chair-super sit-perf
‘Ram sat on the chair.’ (Noonan and Grunow-Hårsta 2002: 82)
(96) cater nә kBi nә mastәr ci-wa pәri-m bBi-i
then focus you focus teacher sit-nm happen-npst say-perf
‘”Your have to be the teacher,” they said from that time on.’
(97) mәỹa kBi-ye Bәnuwar lu-̃i ci-si-m
love you-gen appearance shine-ant sit-ant-npst
‘(My) love, your appearance seems to shine.’
(Noonan and Grunow-Hårsta 2002: 87)
There is also a copula, mu (with the allomorphs –m and –mu), which derives histori-
cally from a verb meaning ‘sit/stay’. This copula has developed into an auxiliary verb
and a non-past suffix on verbs (cf. Turunen 2006 for a similar change in Erzya). (98)-
(99) show the auxiliary and (100)-(101) show the affix.
(98) na kam-ri tBo-wa-bBәnda pәyle, Ram kam la-wa mu Chantyal
I work-loc arrive-nm-comp before Ram work do-nm cop.npst
‘Even before I get to work, Ram will be working.’
(99) cә din nә bәnnu nә bBәrә-ysi-wa mu-wa Bin-si-m
that day focus gun focus fill-ant-nom cop-nm cop-ant-npst
‘That day, it turned out that the gun was loaded.’
(Noonan and Grunow-Hårsta 2002: 89)
(100) na-sә sar-mu
I-erg kill-npst
‘I’ll kill it.’
(101) әmrika-ne-ma-thõy la-si-rә ci-m
America-person-pl-ess do-ant-seq sit-npst
‘He sits down like an American.’ (Noonan and Grunow-Hårsta 2002: 88)
Interestingly, we see almost a full cycle here. First we have a full verb, then a copula,
then an auxiliary and finally an affix. Below we will see further instances of these sepa-
rate stages, but it is noticeable that we seem to find all of them gathered in one lan-
guage. This also speaks in favor of the present theory as we would expect such cycles
to emerge in individual languages.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Munro (1977) argues on the basis of data from Mojave that existential construc-
tions also should be included in the possible sources for copulas (see also Hengeveld
1992: 254–255; and see e.g. Devitt 1994: 138 for a dissenting view on the direction of
the change). The discussion centers around sentences like (102).
(102) John kwab‘ide:-č Ø-ido-pč Mojave
John doctor-sbj 3sg-cop-perf
‘John is a doctor.’ (Munro 1977: 445)
It is problematic to analyze a sentence like (102). The subject is John, although kwab‘de:
‘doctor’ is grammatically marked as the subject. Munro (1977: 450) proposes that the
subject actually is John kwab‘ide: ‘John (is) doctor’, i.e a predication embedded by the
verb ido. That is, the paraphrase is better given as (103).
(103) There is [John (is) doctor]
Under this analysis, the subject is the embedded non-verbal predication, and the exis-
tential verb may be expected to show agreement with this (inherently third person
singular). The following examples show that this prediction is borne out.
(104) Many ‘nye-č Ø-ido-pč Mojave
2sg 1sg-sbj 3sg-cop-pf
‘You’re me.’
(105) ‘inyep kwab?ide:-č Ø-ido-pč
1sg doctor-sbj 3sg-cop-pf
‘I’m a doctor.’ (Munro 1977: 452–453)
However, if the verb in (102) were a regular copula, we expect that it would agree with
the subject of the embedded non-verbal predication. This is indeed found.
(106) ‘inyep kwab?ide:-č ?-ido-pč Mojave
1sg doctor-sbj 1sg-cop-pf
‘I’m a doctor.’ (Munro 1977: 452)
As Hengeveld (1992: 255) argues: “The fact that [(102)] and [(106)] exist side by side may
be taken as a sign of copularization of the existential verb used in a reality construction”.
Regarding the analysis of these cases, I claim that this change is fully compatible
with the perspective adopted in this paper. Whereas full verbs project a VP and moves
from V to Pr (copies indicated by strikethrough below), the copula is merged directly
in Pr. In other words, instead of the structure in (107), we have the structure in (108).
 Terje Lohndal

(107) PrP
wo
subject Pr’
wo
Pr VP
verb wo
V’
wo
V
verb
(108) PrP
wo
subject Pr’
wo
Pr predicate
copula
In (108) the copula is directly merged in the PrP, thus there is no VP below it. Alterna-
tively, there might be a VP, but then this VP is lexicalized by a full verb (see Pustet 2003
for languages where this is the case), and there is no movement from V to Pr. In other
words, this change is a consequence of the Late Merge Principle. The verb goes from a
lexical element to a functional element. If argument structure is part of syntax through
features (Hornstein 1999, 2001), these features will be lost when a full verb changes into
a copula. In the next section, we will look at auxiliaries that develop from copulas.

4.3.2. Auxiliaries
Copulas that have developed from full verbs can also develop further. As Kuteva
(2001: 67) mentions, a copula derived from a bodily posture verb can develop further
into an auxiliary.8 The Latin postural verb stare ‘stand’ developed into the copula estar
in Spanish, meaning ‘to be (somewhere, or temporarily)’ (Comrie 1976: 102). In Mod-
ern Spanish, this verb has developed into a progressive auxiliary (109). We find the
same structure in Italian (110).
(109) estoy cantando Spanish
I.stand singing
‘I am singing.’
(110) sto cantando Italian
I.stand singing
‘I am singing.’ (Comrie 1976: 102)

8. This shows that semantic restrictions are important to the cycle as well. However, I will not
try to deal with the specific role of semantics in the present paper.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Similar developments are attested in Imonda (Kuteva 2001: 65):

(111) agõ-ianèi sabla ed-ia ekuk lõh-ual-fna Imonda
women-npl two px-loc distance stand-dual-prog
‘The two women were standing there in the distance.’
(112) pilin ed-ia fa-hõdõ-lõh-f.
plate px-loc class-put.up-cop-prs
‘The plate is up there.’ (Heine and Kuteva 2002: 282)
Though, as Kuteva points out, this is by no means a universal auxiliation process
(2001: 67). However, we see traits of it in English, cf. (113).
(113) The car is arriving.
Devitt (1994) argues that the directionality in these cases is one where copulas develop
into auxiliaries. He notes a strong tendency for forms that serve as auxiliaries for pro-
gressive or continuous aspect to also appear as copulas in locative complements. This
is shown for two languages in (114)-(117).
(114) amu e idu tani manji manamu Kui
1p(in) that house in cop.prs.prt cop.1p(in)
‘We are staying in that house.’
(115) anu lakai mai
1s sacrifice.prs.prt cop.1s
(116) nga di der al è Nung
1s come part cop pres
’I am (in the act of) coming.’
(117) magma hpe chum hka ma al è
chief masc house in neg cop pres
‘The chief is not in his house.’ (Devitt 1994: 174)
According to Devitt, in these cases the auxiliaries have developed from copulas. I will
now show how these cases can be analyzed.
An auxiliary is syntactically different compared to a copula in that the auxiliary is
commonly taken to be directly merged in the middle field, the IP domain. Once again,
this is a Late Merge effect. The change can be illustrated by comparing the somewhat
simplified trees in (118) and (119).
 Terje Lohndal

(118) IP
wo
I’
wo
I PrP
copula wo
Pr’
wo
P
copula
(119) IP
wo
I’
wo
I PrP
auxiliary wo
Pr’
wo
P VP
verb 6
verb
In (118) the copula is merged in PrP and moved to IP (in order to get inflected for
tense and other agreement properties). In (119), the auxiliary is directly merged in IP,
and there is a different verb in the argument domain of the clause. The next section
discusses a slightly different case where a head develops into a new head, namely ad-
positions becoming copulas.

4.3.3. Adpositions
Adpositions may be taken as another possible source of copulas. In Gbeya, the copula
nέ “resembles the preposition nέ in several respects” (Samarin 1966: 76). The copula nέ
is peculiar because it is used in combination with other copular elements, and “seems
to occur exclusively with the verbs f and ya, the singular and plural verbs ‘to be’” (Sa-
marin 1966: 77).
(120) wa yá nέ wéey Gbeya
3pl cop.pl cop man
‘they are men.’
(121) téa K nε búu
tree cop.sg. cop white
‘the tree is white.’ (Samarin 1966: 77)
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

Frajzyngier (1986) discusses Chadic languages and argues that a grammaticalization

from preposition to copula has happened in several of these languages. He calls the cop-
ulas in these languages “locative copulas”. A few examples are provided in (122)-(124).
(122) kòún à gá àmá Bolewa
buffalo cop in water
‘A buffalo is in the water.’
(123) kòún à gá àmá sà
buffalo cop in water not
‘The buffalo is not in the water.’
(124) sùãá-nò à kò réwè
shirt-1sg cop on tree
‘My shirt is on the tree.’ (Frajzyngier 1986: 372)
(122)-(124) are all ungrammatical if either à or the preposition following à is deleted.
These examples can be categorized as belonging to the type (125). There is another
type as well (126), which makes it possible to test whether we are dealing with a copu-
la in (122)-(124), or whether we are dealing with two prepositions in a row.
(125) X is in/at Y
(126) X verb Z in/at Y
If à is a preposition, we would expect it to occur in (125) as well as in (126). However,
if à is a copula, we would not expect it to occur in (126). The relevant data are pro-
vided in (127)-(129), which show that the copula disappears in this configuration.
(127) zéetì sùãá gà kó réwè Bolewa
put shirt in on tree
‘Put the shirt on a tree.’
(128) ísín zòu sùãá-nì gà gà ngírkì
3sg put shirt-3sg in in bag
‘He put his shirt into a bag.’ (Frajzyngier 1986: 372)
(129) mèmú ámà gà kólbà gà gà sàrá-nì
person dem with bottle in in hand-3masc
‘That man has a bottle in his hand.’ (Frajzyngier 1986: 373)
Frajzyngier also discusses the direction of the change: Did locative copulas emerge
from prepositions or did prepositions emerge from locative copulas? He discards the
latter option based on the fact that prepositions are far more frequent than copulas,
thus it makes more sense that in some languages a copula emerged than to say that
such a copula disappeared from most of the languages.
The question is now how we are to analyze this change within the current frame-
work. On standard assumptions, both prepositions and copulas are heads. Adopting
 Terje Lohndal

the proposal in Pesetsky and Torrego (2004: 518), we can assume that prepositions
have the following feature content (I have modified the notation slightly).
(130) PP
wo
P DP
uphi iphi
iCase uCase
In (130), uphi stands for unvalued phi-features whereas iphi stands for valued phi-
features. Pesetsky and Torrego (2001, 2004) argue that Case is best understood in
terms of a “displaced Tense feature”, but I have just put “Case” instead of T for exposi-
tory convenience. The unvalued phi-feature makes prepositions into a probe, which is
necessary given the Agree framework in Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2008). The
Case feature is a valued feature on P on this approach. Assuming the Economy of Fea-
tures principle, we can argue that the learner will try to get rid of this feature if possi-
ble. When this Case feature is removed, the feature content is identical to copulas. A
possible problem here is that the feature content also resembles complementizers, and
a very similar story has been invoked in order to explain how prepositions may be-
come complementizers (van Gelderen 2008b). At present it is not entirely clear what
the main difference is. Judging from the data above, it seems that those prepositions
that become copulas have a limited distribution. Specifically, they tend to occur in the
middle field, which is not the case for many of those prepositions that become comple-
mentizers, at least not in English (van Gelderen 2008b). This might provide the learn-
er with a cue, that is, there need to be a certain structural relationship in order for a
preposition to become a copula in order for the Head Preference Principle to be in-
volved in relation to the PredP. This is also related to the discussion regarding whether
a demonstrative develops into a complementizer or a copula, cf. Section 4.2.1. At
present I am not able to formulate very specific criteria for this relationship, but hope-
fully future research will elucidate this.
Heine and Kuteva (2002: 100) also quote a few cases of a locative copula develop-
ing into a locative preposition. One such example is le ‘be at’ in Ewe with becomes a
preposition meaning ‘at’.
(131) agbalέá le kplKá dzí. Ewe
Book.def be.at table.def on
‘The book is on the table.’
(132) me kpK lKri le mK dzí.
1sg see lorry at street top
‘I saw a lorry on the street.’ (Heine and Kuteva 2002: 100)
Heine (1993) and Heine and Kuteva (2002: 101) view this as an instance of grammati-
calization. In the present framework, I would view such examples as cases of renewal.
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

That is, a cycle starts over again, with the new preposition having a potential to rede-
velop into a copula, given the adequate external influence such that one of the econo-
my principles is able to work.
In this section we have seen a few examples of prepositions that change into copulas. In
the next main section, I discuss cases where a head develops into a grammatical marker.

4.4 Head to affix

So far we have seen changes where a specifier becomes a head and where a head be-
comes a different head. In this section, I will look at cases where heads develop into
affixes. Typologically, copulas as affixes are not very frequent: “In the majority of cases,
copulas are free morphemes” (Pustet 2003: 39).
The copula ni in Yoruba is homophonous with the general focus marker in the
language (Stassen 1997: 96):
(133) Oni‰òwo ni mi Yoruba
merchant cop 1sg
’I am a merchant.’ (Ashiwaju 1968: 28)
(134) Lálέ ni wKn dé
in.the.evening fm they arrived
‘It was in the evening that they arrived.’ (Bamgbọse 1966: 37)
Verbal copulas may evolve into affixes. Modern Turkish has two different copular af-
fixes, though they occur in a very restricted set of contexts. One of them is the palatal
glide y. Notice that it can only be used after non-consonants (135):
(135) (ben) satici-y-im Turkish
1sg seller-cop-1sg
‘I am a seller.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 77)
(136) (ben) öğretmen-im
1sg teacher-1sg
‘I am a teacher.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 78)
As Kornfilt argues, y is an insertion rule restricted to morpheme boundaries in copula
sentences. If it were a general phonological rule of y-insertion between vowels, even
restricted to morpheme boundaries, we would expect (137) to be grammatical.
(137) *kitab-i oku-du-y-um Turkish
book-acc read-past-y-1sg (Kornfilt 1997: 78)
There is a diachronic fact supporting y as a copula. Until the early years of the Repub-
lic (that is, in the early 20th century), tense and agreement markers in copula sen-
tences were attached to a free morpheme i in the past tenses (138)-(139).
 Terje Lohndal

(138) (ben) satici i-di-m Turkish

1sg seller cop-pst-1sg
‘I was a seller.’
(139) (ben) öğretmen i-di-m
1sg teacher cop-pst-1sg
‘I was a teacher.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 80)
These inflected copular forms then developed to postclitics, and during this change,
the copular i turned into the glide y. Still one does find the free inflected copula in
written Turkish, according to Kornfilt, which nicely illustrates that there was such a
previous stage and that the transition has not yet made it entirely into writing. Thus,
the reduced forms are:
(140) (ben) satici-y-di-m Turkish
1sg seller-cop-pst-1sg
‘I was a seller.’
(141) (ben) öğretmen-di-m
1sg teacher-pst-1sg
‘I was a teacher.’ (Kornfilt 1997: 79)
There are other analyses of y as a copula; Jansky (1954: 36) argues that y is a linking
consonant that appears in specific phonological contexts. However, I think Kornfilt
has provided convincing evidence that this is not an adequate analysis and that y in-
deed is a true copula.
The other copula element in Turkish is the suffix –DIr, a “suppletive form for the
copula” (Kornfilt 1997: 81). The historical source of –DIr is the verb ‘to stand’ (Devitt
1994: 128, Pustet 2003: 58). It is used in the third person present only, and it is always
optional, but this is the only place where it is optional (Kornfilt 1997: 82).
(142) bu cadde-dir Turkish
this road-cop.3prs
‘this is a road.’
(143) bu cadde
this road
‘this is a road.’ (Pustet 2003: 58)
Again, we see a copula emerging from a previous full verb.

4.5 Summary

In this section I have provided a number of examples in support of a copula cycle. The
cycle, I have argued, looks like (144).
 Chapter 9. The copula cycle 

(144) demonstrative/pronoun > copula > grammatical marker

specifier > head > affix
iF > uF > --
I have argued that the major transitions are those where a specifier becomes a head
and a head becomes an affix. However, I have also claimed that there are minor stages
within each main stage in (144). In particular, a verb may develop into a copula. Since
a verb is already a head, this is not a category change. Instead, I have argued that verbs
and copulas are merged in different positions, viz. the VP and the PrP.

5. Conclusion

The aim of this paper has been twofold. On the one hand, I have wanted to describe the
major patterns in which copulas emerge and disappear, what I have called the copula
cycle. On the other hand, I have tried to show that a formal theory of grammaticalization
is a good framework in order to account for and explain these changes. When demon-
stratives and pronouns become heads, this is a change from the specifier of a predication
phrase to a head of the same phrase. In terms of features, it means that interpretable
features are replaced by uninterpretable features. I have also shown how full verbs be-
come copulas, and subsequently how copulas may turn into auxiliaries or grammatical
markers. In sum, I have argued in favor of a copula cycle involving three major stages,
but also that these stages in many cases have a more fine-grained internal cartography.

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 chapter 10

Rather
On a modal cycle

Remus Gergel
University of Tübingen

The goal of this chapter is to contribute to the issues of the grammatical cycle
and economy in the context of grammar change through (A) focus on an
exponent of modalized meaning (which is distinct from the theoretically better-
studied modal auxiliaries); (B) the recognition of a corresponding type of change
as an essentially cyclic development from an original meaning including a
temporal component to its currently modalized semantics; (C) an initial analysis
of such cyclic developments in relationship to grammatical theory and centered
on logical forms.

1. Introduction12

The immediate aim of this chapter is to propose an account of the development of the
word rather which gave rise to resulting meanings such as the one illustrated in (1).

1. This paper has profited from presentations of related material at Arizona State University,
Cornell University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Tübingen, the audi-
ences and hosts of which are acknowledged. Special thanks are due to Sigrid Beck, Elly van
Gelderen and Tony Kroch for their comments. I also wish to thank Nicholas Asher, Jacqueline
Guéron, Mark Hale, Wayne Harbert, Jack Hoeksema, Sveta Krasikova, John Vanderelst and two
anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback. The usual disclaimers apply.
2. The following abbreviations are used: BNC: British National Corpus; CGEL: Cambridge
Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum 2002); GGL: web-search based on the
search engine Google; LF: logical form; QR: quantifier raising; RTS: rather-than structures. Ex-
amples retrieved from the Penn-Helsinki corpora of historical English are given with the stand-
ard token IDs used in the sources from which they have been extracted. Typically, Middle Eng-
lish examples are prefixed with the notation ‘CM’ in the sources; Old English examples are
prefixed as ‘co’. (Cf. Kroch & Taylor 2000; Kroch, Santorini & Delfs 2004; Taylor, Warner, Pint-
zuk & Beths 2003 for full notational conventions and further philological information regarding
the files included in the corpora).
 Remus Gergel

(1) She heard Spanish and Korean, Russian and Chinese, Arabic and Greek, Japa-
nese, German, and French, but rather [q than feel intimidated …], [p she ex-
ulted in this variety of human sound]. (P. Auster, The Brooklyn Follies)
While a somewhat larger overview of the distribution of rather will be given in Section
2 below, the non-finite complement of rather in (1) is modalized and compared with
an alternative on a scale, more specifically against a salient doxastic background. In
view of the facts given (e.g. hearing a variety of languages around her), the natural
expectation for the protagonist girl in Paul Auster’s piece of fiction cited above would
be to feel intimidated. But instead, what holds true in the same situation is that she
exulted in the context she was placed in. (We will discuss additional, frequently avail-
able modal backgrounds below).
The major concern of this paper will be the key historical and grammatical devel-
opments at the syntax-semantics interface. By assumption, I will make crucial use of
the level of logical form represented at all synchronic stages (LF; see, for example,
Heim & Kratzer 1998 for motivating discussion of this component in a version includ-
ing the notational variant of movement in the computation of meaning). The develop-
ments will be investigated by tracking down the semantically most relevant changes
that led from a transparent form-meaning correspondence involving temporality and
the comparative morpheme applied to a scale-sensitive item (for contrast, cf. the cur-
rently opaque -er obligatorily attached to rath-) towards a modalized meaning in
which alternatives are compared. Synchronically, today, rather appears less transparent
at least from a purely morphological point of view than in the original input structure
to the cycle. But in fact it still compares, if in a less direct way, namely by establishing
an ordering relationship between propositions. I will argue that the semantic develop-
ment is a crucial ingredient in capturing this change. At the same time, as we will see,
the linguistic change is only explained in grammar-theoretic terms if we let the seman-
tics operate compositionally in a structure-sensitive manner, i.e. ultimately on tree
structures – in our present case, those that are fit for interpretation. Expanding on
these ideas, the immediate empirical focus of the chapter is the cyclic development of
rather, which will be illustrated from a number of perspectives. Somewhat more spe-
cifically, the chapter is structured as follows. In Section 2, I sketch the inventory of
relevant forms, meanings and changes. Section 3 gives the analysis and illustrates the
developments from the perspective of the cycle. In Section 4, I discuss how this par-
ticular cycle may relate to economy and additional considerations on cycles. Finally,
Section 5 provides a conclusion.

2. Rather in current and earlier English

In this section, I introduce the main meanings and forms of rather in current English,
that is, the present explanandum. I then consider the relevant facts that become visible
 Chapter 10. Rather 

from the diachronic trajectory of the word together with its category, meaning, and
grammatical distribution.

2.1 Rather in current grammars

According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL; Huddleston &
Pullum 2002) rather can function as a less central governor in scalar inequality. There
are four major types of meaning-structure correspondence in present-day English
(PDE), cf. (2a-d).
(2) a. The idiom would rather
b. With bare infinitival and “in preference” meaning
c. Contrastive link, meaning “not, instead of ”
d. Pleonastic use, with rather than equivalent to than alone
The examples in (3) exemplify the four types given by the CGEL in correspond-
ence with (2).
(3) a. She would rather live in danger than die of loneliness and boredom.
b. Many of them went to jail rather than pay the fine.
c. Care rather than skill is all you need.
d. These people are more likely to be referred to courts rather than to aid panels.
My main focus lies on the type given in (2b) and exemplified in (3b), i.e. the independ-
ent modal meaning, which plays a key role in understanding the grammaticalization
process. Most typically, this meaning involved in bare-infinitives is indeed bouletic
(just as in (3b)), that is, expressing a preference, but other more subtly modalized nu-
ances can obtain as well (cf., e.g., (1) above). In terms of the form involved, we can
extend the observation. Such modal meanings can be expressed not only by a bare
infinitive, but also with further non-finite complementation; cf. the patterns with a
present-participle form constructed with a null subject, shown in (4), as well as the less
frequent distribution with an overt subject, as in (5).
(4) If you want to download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the
regular search system you may utilize the following addresses and just down-
load by the etext year. (ggl)
(5) In a way rather than us reading the parables, the parables end up reading us.
(ggl)
While this type of distribution is language-specific, it is interesting nonetheless in the
context of English syntax that when a subject appears at all in the nonfinite pattern, it gets
a default case (and not nominative). This suggests that the complement of such rather than
constructions is roughly speaking a reduced VP or vP. (But crucially not a TP; cf., e.g.,
Pesetsky & Torrego 2001 for an account of assignment of nominative case through T.)
 Remus Gergel

The type in (2a) is important both synchronically and diachronically, but in terms
of its meaning it falls under the same rubric, namely of (bouletic) modality. It may in
fact instantiate a modal harmony effect, from which the modal itself has later been
removed. One possibility, then, would be to say that the originally reinforcing adverb
rather has taken over the earlier modal function in the examples without the overt
modal would (or another equivalent modal element; cf. below).
The contrastive type mentioned in (3c) can be directly linked to metalinguistic
comparatives. In fact, metalinguistic comparatives are arguably modalized as well (cf.
also Giannakidou & Stavrou 2008 with a different focus). In terms of the distribution
of the two types in English, an interesting test can be noted between the rather-than
structures (RTSs) of primary interest here and the metalinguistic ones, drawing here
on Dieterich & Napoli (1982). Consider first (6a) vs. (6b).
(6) a. Harry walked to work rather than drive.
b. Harry walked to work rather than drove.
While a RTS such as (6a) is typically followed by a non-finite main-verb form (in Eng-
lish), the metalinguistic comparative in (6b) takes the finite form in the language.3 The
preference or bouletic reading for the non-finite form can be made to fail by leaving the
sentence without a logical subject, cf. the weather-verb expletive in (7a) and, by contrast,
the lack of such an effect with the metalinguistic placed in the same context in (7b).
(7) a. #It snowed rather than rain.
b. It snowed rather than rained.
Finally, the pleonastic type is marginally interesting from a descriptive take on gram-
maticalization since it seems to instantiate a bleached meaning. (I use this term de-
scriptively; see, for example, von Fintel 1995, Traugott & König 1991, on some pitfalls
and paradoxes related with the term ‘bleaching’ if taken to literally mean void of mean-
ing in the general case). While the pleonastic type is fully outside of the concerns about
modality addressed in this paper, we can offer an additional syntactic diagnostic that
confirms the classification by the CGEL as a separate item. The diagnostic relies on
comparative inversion, a relatively restricted possibility already by itself, optionally
arising in certain clausal comparatives in English (cf. Culicover & Winkler 2008,
Emonds 1970, Gergel 2008, Merchant 2003, among others). Comparative inversion
(independently of rather) is illustrated in (8).
(8) a. She hasn’t bought as many souvenirs as has her husband.
b. Harvard undergrads generally give the impression of being far more sup-
portive of their president than is the faculty.

3. An investigation of metalinguistic comparatives falls beyond the scope of this paper. Notice
that the contrastive or metalinguistic comparatives can also appear in reduced structures, as
visible in the examples given in the main text.
 Chapter 10. Rather 

Unlike other rather-constructions, the pleonastic type can also appear in conjunction with
inversion of the finite element with the subject, as the attested example in (9) shows.
(9) Defined as monopolies that could deliver goods and services more efficiently
rather than could a host of competing entities, natural monopoly utility
companies would win state sanction to operate in an environment that al-
lowed expansion and use of ever-larger generation technologies. (The Electric
Utility Industry in 1965: At the Pinnacle of Success before the Blackout, By
Richard F. Hirsh, Virginia Tech, online)
To summarize the subsection, we have seen some of the major types of rather in cur-
rent English. I will focus on RTSs, the structures followed by a non-finite form, such as
the bare infinitive. In the next section, I discuss the major uses (precursor forms of)
rather could have in Old and Middle English.

2.2 Rather in earlier English

This subsection offers a sample of the relevant uses of rather at earlier stages of the
language. Observing lexical change surrounding rather is certainly not new. The origin
of the word is well known in the literature on English and it has been noted in many
scholarly sources concerned with the history of the language; cf. Jespersen 1949; The
Oxford English Dictionary; Mitchell 1985; Rissanen 1999; Stern 1931, among others.
What is new to the best of my knowledge, however, is the investigation of the cyclic
nature of this change and its implementation as a systematic type of development in
language change related to the level of LF. The key meaning change revolves around an
adverb indicating temporally marked properties at the beginning which developed
systematically towards a modal element. We next turn to the crucial uses of rather.
The origin of rather lies in the comparative form of the adverb (h)ræþe (and its
numerous variants; cf. OED), derived from the adjective (h)ræþ, which could convey
several properties, among which we find ‘soon’ ‘quick’, ‘swift’. Some Old English uses of
(h)ræþe are illustrated in (10). (The sentences in (10), as most of the diachronic data
here, have been extracted from the Penn-Helsinki-York corpora of historical of Eng-
lish; see in particular Kroch & Taylor (2000); Kroch, Santorini & Delfs (2004); Taylor
et al. (2003). The data are given by way of reference to their standard corpus token
identifications.)
(10) a. On Sunnandæge mon sceal hraðor arisan to uhtsange.
‘On Sunday one shall earlier rise to morning song.’
(cobenrul, BenR:11.35.4.476)
b. Quirinus þa eode to ðam cwarterne hraðe,
‘Quirinus then went to the prison quickly.’
(coaelhom, æHom 24:78.3806)
 Remus Gergel

Forþon hi ne besceawiaþ no hu late hi on þysne

c.
therefore they not consider not how late they on this
middangeard acennede wurdon, & hu raþe hi him eft
world born were and how soon they him afterwards
of gewitan sceolan,...
of depart shall
‘Therefore they didn’t consider how late they were born on this world and
how soon they would depart from it.’
(coblick, HomS_17_[BlHom_5]:59.88.735)
Unsurprisingly, (h)ræþe could appear either in the positive or the comparative. Exam-
ple (11) additionally illustrates the contrast of raþe as ‘soon’ with ‘late’ and the extrac-
tion of a degree argument through the implicit question; cf. hu late/hu-raþe, i.e. ‘how
early/how late’. The wh-phrases orthogonally involve pied-piping, a language-specific
process in degree questions (cf. Corver 1997, Grosu 1994).
The temporal component is available in the entry of rathe in the Middle English
period as well, as we can see in (11), and it is still available, if decreasingly frequent, in
the comparative forms, as shown in (12) below.
(11) a. Why ryse ye so rathe, ey, benedicite!
‘Why do you rise so early…?’ (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale)
b. and al so raþe he was iwarisd of his maladie.
‘and all so soon he was cured of his sickness.’
(cmkentse, 218.108)
(12) a. for þat Sonday was of þe raþer Ȝere, and nouȜt of þe newe
‘because that Sunday was of the earlier year and not of the new
Ȝere þat...
year that…’(cmpolych, VI, 101.709)
b. þe kyng blamede hym for he warned hym nought raþer;
‘the king blamed him because he warned him not earlier.’
(cmpolych, VI, 437.3207)
The so-called contrastive link mentioned by the CGEL (cf. Section 2.1) is also observ-
able in Middle English texts, clearly with antonymic contrasts as in (13a) and (13b).
But the alternatives introduced can be more diverse as well, as illustrated in (13c).
While this reading may not be crucial for the development from temporal to modal
meanings, it illustrates the range of possibilities in terms of alternatives that rather
could compare. (The possibility of the contrastive link is certainly continued towards
the early modern period, as illustrated in (14) for EModE.)
(13) a. I rede thee, certes, that thou, Lord, werke in swich wise with thy cherles
that they rather love thee than drede. (cmctpars, 314.C1.1112)
b. for he wold raþer gon bakward þan forward. (cmkempe, 10.179)
 Chapter 10. Rather 

c. for aȜenst an hondred of Egbert his knyȜtes, þat were pale men and lene,
come a þowsand þat were rody and fat, and were raþer i-stuffed wiþ swoot
þan with blood (cmpolych, VI, 289.2128)
(14) a. ffor many Shippys and galyes towche ther rather thanne at Parence.
(torkingt-E1-P1, 16.234)
b. and rost him, basted often with Vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with
good store of salt mixt with it. (walton-E3-P1,218.19)
But turning to the Early Modern English period from the perspective of the inten-
sional readings, namely the temporal and modal ones, we can easily observe that the
overall availability of temporal interpretation of rath(er) virtually disappears. The oth-
er readings persist: the contrastive link, the modal readings joined by auxiliaries (for
example, had is frequently found with a modal meaning from this time on; cf. (15a)),
and also the bare infinitive with a distant selector (that is, not yet one that is necessar-
ily adjacent to the than-clause), cf. (15b). Example (15c) with a temporal interpreta-
tion seems to be already a relic by the early ModE times.
(15) a. he had rather be unknown and obscure (boethpr-E3-H,126.44)
b. and chuseth rather to withdraw from himself many natural Pleasures,
than run the hazard of losing that Money which he hath gathered.
(boethpr-E3-H, 126.45)
c. All the stocke thou cost of later or rather, From thy first fathers grandfa-
thers fathers father, Nor all that shall come of thee to the worldes ende,
Though to three score generations they descende, Can be able to make me
a iust recompense, For this trespasse of thine and this one offense.
(udall-E1-P2,L1209.382)
Moving, then, from a temporally meaningful element to a characteristically modalized
item, we need to answer the question what precisely happens in terms of the semantic
representation involved. The most important facts to be explained in the remainder of
this chapter are the following: (a) How did the change develop – Is there a systematic
characterization in this connection? (b) What motivated the change? (c) What is the
LF-role of the comparative morpheme –er?

3. The analysis

In this section, I present the analysis of the main developmental stages of rather
couched in terms of LF structure. In the first subsection, I discuss the formal tools re-
quired. In the second part, I illustrate how the change can be characterized in terms of
logical forms. While the section requires some minimal semantic formalism, all of the
tools introduced here are independently motivated.
 Remus Gergel

3.1 Introducing the semantics used

In this first subsection, I introduce the basic ingredients of the analysis that are neces-
sary for a formal account of RTSs. To achieve that, I briefly discuss the issue of compo-
sitionality in language change; then I present the essentials in the semantics of quanti-
fier raising (QR), comparatives and modality, respectively, that will be used further.
To begin, there is a first sense of compositionality involved in language change
which is usually formulated along the following lines. Developments in terms of mean-
ing change can only be fully understood if we consider them at the propositional level.
This first step is a departure from restrictions of the traditional research on semantic
(alias lexical) change and is adopted here. While it is one word, the change of which is
most conspicuously noticed when inspecting diachronic data, there are a series of
other factors that change in relationship with the visible culprit in many interesting
cases. Alongside potential morphological and phonological change, both the sur-
rounding tree geometry of the word (including LF for the purposes of interpretation)
and the way its lexical entry combines with the other nodes of the clause can thus
typically change; cf. Eckardt (2007) for a perspicuous illustration of the latter based on
going to. The idea that meaning change is more than lexical change or pragmatic con-
ventionalization of single items is not new, but its more systematic exploitation is rela-
tively recent (cf. Eckardt 2007 and Traugott & Dasher 2001, among others). What I
would like to add to the picture is how a semantically motivated (and realized) move-
ment such as the type observed in QR may effect a language change phenomenon.
Overall, I would like to adopt a Fregean version of compositionality here and apply it
to the diachronic case study at hand. This means in updated terms that a clear sense of
the structure on which the interpretation principles can apply at every node in an LF
tree needs to be addressed.
To achieve that, we can next introduce a prerequisite, namely the standard version
of QR based on movement (cf. May 1977; Heim & Kratzer 1998). Later in the chapter,
we will see that the changes involved in rather will make use of the same types of
mechanisms as QR transferred to degrees and times instead of individuals. But first
things first: A classical topic in semantic theory is the issue of quantifiers in object
position; cf. every park in (16).
(16) Sue liked every park.
Simply put, the issue arises through the following paradox. On the one hand, an object
needs to saturate the first of the individual slots in the logical type of the transitive
verb, namely <e, <e,t>>. So, the object must be of the type of the required individual
for functional application to apply, that is <e>. On the other hand, however, there is a
large body of evidence that quantifiers yield very distinct truth-conditional effects
from those obtaining with individual-denoting DPs (in tautologies, contradiction sce-
narios etc.; cf. Heim & Kratzer 1998 for an overview). A way to solve the dilemma
then, which we adopt here, is to move the quantifier phrase to a sister position of a
 Chapter 10. Rather 

truth-value denoting node (typically at the level of the IP/TP-adjunction), introduce a

movement index via the process of predicate abstraction and give the moved quanti-
fier phrase its rightful and independently expected logical type, namely <<e,t> t>,
which can now moreover combine with the rest of the clause. In the low position, from
which the quantifier started out the derivation, a trace of type <e> now saturates the
object slot of the transitive verb and is bound by the movement index. This solves the
paradox. The process is schematized in (17).
(17) [every park [1 [Sue [likes t ]]]]
It is possible to apply the same mechanics to other domains, in particular the com-
parative morpheme -er, which is the equivalent of a quantifier over degrees (see, for
example, Beck 2008 and Heim 2000). In logical terms, this morpheme takes the than-
phrase as an argument and is raised with it at LF, just like a quantifier with its first-ar-
gument sister NP. Notice that in its original (in outdated speech D-structure) position
a gradable adjective requires saturation by a degree argument. This is parallel to the
individual-type argument observed with a regular quantifier above. The comparative
-er thus ends up, in this case also via movement, operating on two sets of degrees,
paralleling the relation on sets of individuals that a run-of-the-mill generalized quan-
tifier operates on.
(18) Tempe is larger than Tübingen (is).
(19) a. [ [-er [1 [than Tübingen is t large] ] ] [1 [Tempe is t large ] ]
b. [[-er]] (λd ε Dd. Tübingen is d-large) (λd ε Dd.Tempe is d-large)
The degree d to which Tempe is large exceeds/is greater than (e.g. on the
population or surface scale) the degree d´ to which Tübingen is large.
Closely related to the degree semantics illustrated above comes the notion of temporal
comparison for which I draw on von Stechow’s (2006) approach to comparative ad-
verbs of the sooner/later type (and some of their German equivalents e.g. früher/
später). For a relevant sentence such as (20), von Stechow proposes the LF in (21).
(20) Alla came later than Caroline.
 Remus Gergel

(21) von Stechow’s Logical Form for temporal comparatives

While not all the details of this LF are relevant to the diachronic change, let me men-
tion its basic features. First, a temporal adverb such as late or early is originally merged
to a position adjoined to an AspP, which denotes a property of times, <i,t>, (equiva-
lently: a set of times, or a characteristic function of such a set). Following usual prac-
tice, the adverb then intersectively combines with the AspP yielding another AspP (of
the same logical type, but now restricted by the additional condition that the set of
times in question fulfill the condition imposed by late/early). Since the adverb comes
as a comparative, it behaves as a quantifier, and it undergoes QR. In fact, it does so with
its argument, the than-clause.
The final ingredient required is modality. The appropriate interpretable structure
for modality is closely tied to the research history of the conditional. While different
bracketing options for the conditional have been proposed, Kratzer (1981, 1991, et
seq.) has argued that a particularly suitable LF-structure is the one in which (semanti-
cally) the modal brackets with a restrictor first, and only then takes its nuclear scope,
i.e. the “modalized” proposition. The restrictor can be either just the implicit contex-
tual one providing the background (e.g. whether it is “deontic”, “bouletic”, “epistemic”
etc.) or it can be enriched by a conditional clause. This yields the schema in (23) below,
following von Fintel & Heim 2007, or in a more basic version the one in (22). I use the
usual type-theoretic conventions, in which s stands for the type of possible worlds, t
for truth values, v for events (and, largely equivalently, situations), i for times, e for
 Chapter 10. Rather 

individuals (or “entities” in the Montagovian tradition) and d for degrees. If a and b are
types, then <a, b> is also a type. In particular, it is useful to think of a denotation of
type <v,t> as a set of possible events/situations, <i,t> as a set of times (or, equivalently,
characteristic functions of such sets) etc.
(22) Main Scopal Relationships for Modals (cf., e.g., Kratzer 1981 et seq.)
[Modal [Restrictor]] [Proposition P]
(23) Logical Form for Modality (cf. von Fintel & Heim 2007)
<t>
wo
<<s, t>, t> <s, t>
3 6
Modal <s, t> ‘P’
3
<<s, t>, <s, t>> <s, t>
3 6
R w* ‘if Q’
Two notational amendments will be made to this. First, since I will not include contex-
tual information in the logical trees, a simpler version will suffice for my purposes. But
I will be explicit about the logical forms involved even in the simple versions since they
are important for the current argument. The simplification will consist in having the
restrictor (e.g. “if Q” in (23) above) directly as an argument of the modal, without R
and w*. A second amendment has to do with the types involved. Following Kratzer
(2007), among others, I will use possible situations/events to represent modality in-
stead of the classic possible worlds. Plainly put, this will amount to representing the
types of propositional sub-trees such as P and Q above as sets of situations/events
rather than sets of possible worlds, i.e. of type <v,t> instead of <s,t>, cf. the implemen-
tation in Section 3.2 below.

3.2 Change from temporal to modal meaning

By capitalizing on the research in semantics reviewed above, this subsection estab-

lishes the input and output grammars in the change of rather and offers an explanation
of its basic developments in terms of logical forms. A key role will thus be played by
the structural make-up of the interpretable clausal structure in which rather partici-
pates before and after the change. The starting point of the change is pragmatic.
We make the general inertia assumption of diachronic syntax, namely that gram-
matical systems and in particular phrase-structures are mapped from their predeces-
sors restrictively, if not perfectly (cf. e.g. Kroch et al. 2000, Roberts 2007). While the
present claim is that the tree-geometry in terms of LF is significant in the dynamics of
the change, notice that it can thus also hardly be expected to be an initiating factor of
 Remus Gergel

a semantic change. What is frequently the case, however, is that semantic change is
pragmatically induced (cf. Eckardt 2006 and references cited there). We will adopt this
motivation for the inception of the RTS change, too. But the question will be raised
whether the pragmatic factor also fully explains the change.
To place the discussion on a concrete footing, I next divide it into three parts tied
to specific developments affecting logical forms. In terms of the LF structure involved
then, the main stages were as follows:
Main stage 1: Borrowing time scales for comparisons
Earlier English rath(er) induced a temporally related scale, which could be ex-
ploited for degree constructions including comparatives, as seen in Section 3.1. This
step involves a minimal adaptation from tense to a standard degree scale. It is one that
can be accounted for synchronically (adopting von Stechow’s 2006 approach intro-
duced above). Under such a view, the LF that has incorporated times as degrees and
serves as the input to the change looks essentially as (24).
(24) Pre-Reanalysis main comparative-temporal structure
<t>

<it, t> <it>

-er <it> λt <t>

Past <i> AspP (<it>)

‘rath (Q)’ ‘rath (P)’

Main stage 2: Pragmatic Overload
Cross-linguistically, modalized situations which are preferred or more likely, are
frequently communicated through expressions originally meaning earlier, faster etc.
To implement the observation, we can use, for instance, Eckardt’s (2006) notion of
side-message. This is, in essence, nothing but an implicature at the beginning. The next
point of the change is the one at which a side-message incorporates to the next-gener-
ation semantic entry. The net result here is that (the characteristic function of) the set
of times in (24) denoted by the <i,t> denotations (“Asp-phrases”) are not sets of times
any longer, but sets of situations, now in a contextually given modal ordering (e.g. w.r.t.
desires). Regarding the latter, we draw on e.g. Heim’s 1992 possibilistic account for
desire predicates, but with two amendments: (i) the alternative to p is not necessarily
non-p; cf. Villalta 2006 for scenarios independent of rather which make this extension
plausible, and we note that RTSs are a cheap way to order distinct p and q; (ii) propo-
sitional subtrees denote sets of situations/events here.
 Chapter 10. Rather 

Main stage 3: Misguided interpretation function

The change from sets of times to situations in the AspP becomes fatal for compo-
sitionally interpreting a temporal structure. Without the set of times, Past can serve no
function, no interpretation principle can apply (a standard temporal reference, is in-
troduced structurally higher-up, to the newly formed structure, but it is irrelevant for
the node merging Past with AspP in post-change grammars). As a consequence, one is
then stuck with two sets of situations and the rather predicate in what was a depend-
ency originally created through movement. The latter is re-interpreted as being a first-
merged relation, rather than a moved generalized quantifier and, finally, the (syncate-
gorematic) movement index has no application either (no compositional rule can use
it) and is erased. The derivation of this output is schematized in (25) below.
(25) Post-Reanalysis Modal Structure
…
Past <t>

<vt, t> <it>

<t>
rather <vt> λt
‘(Q)’ Past<i> AspP (<vt>)
‘(P)’

The diachronic development is thus given a specific merge-over-move implementa-
tion that pertains to the semantic developments addressed here. This makes a good
prediction in that it correlates with the cyclical character and the unidirectionality of
the change. While changes of the rather-type are frequent cross-linguistically (perhaps
precisely due to the easy availability of the starting implicature), the reverse does not
seem to happen (even though an implicature that Jones does P faster because he utters
that he prefers to do it would not be, per se, unimaginable).

4. More on cyclicity and economy

In this section, I investigate how some additional considerations pertaining to linguis-

tic cycles and economy carry over to the semantic cycle induced by rather. The first
subsection gives some more details coming from diverse empirical areas (clause-type
and interaction with modality in particular). The second part notes similar develop-
ments to rather. The final subsection explores to what extent “narrow-syntactic” and
other economy constraints carry over to the LF-development.
 Remus Gergel

4.1 More towards modalizing rather

In this subsection, I address certain issues in the developmental stages of rather with
particular focus on the Middle English and the Modern periods, which I take to be the
crucial span for its grammaticalization. These issues include the transition towards
independent modal meanings and the clausal patterns that chronologically preceded
the bare-infinitve RTSs available in PDE.
A central role is played by the developments towards modalized meanings. While
this type of transition is observable at all attested stages of the language, it gains par-
ticular momentum in Middle English. (Only very few relics are left of the earlier tem-
poral meaning in ModE.)
Various modal constructions, including modal verbs or premodals, can be found
in particular in the rather-clauses of Middle English.4 This is illustrated in (26a-c) with
examples in which the modal is left-adjacent to rather, and in (26d) with the modal
taking scope over both main and rather-clause. The rather-clause in the latter case is
an infinitive, which is still selected by the modal, but due to the greater distance, it
gives the effect of a quite modern complementation pattern, namely the “bare-infini-
tive” one appearing in the rather clause. (We return to the types of clauses involved in
Middle English rather constructions below). Multiple modals used distributively over
matrix and subordinate as in (26e) are also quite possible.
(26) a. certes youre wyf oghte rather to be preised than yblamed.
‘Surely your wife ought rather to be praised than blamed.’
(cmctmeli,221.C1.153)
b. For peraventure the nature of som man is so overthrowynge to
for perhaps the nature of some man is so turned over to
yvel, and so uncovenable, that the nedy poverte of his houshold
evil and so inappropriate that the needy poverty of his household
myghte rather egren hym to don felonyes
might rather provoke him to commit misdeeds
(cmboeth,453.C2.541)
c. and wolde rather dye than lese þe right thereof.
‘and would rather die than lose the right thereof.’
(cmedmund,172.280)

4. Other means of introducing modal meanings and related LFs are possible, but are less
clearly detectable from what I have seen. For example, an important factor in the distribution of
non-temporal rather is the idiom þe raþer, available abundantly in Old English and still found in
Middle English. This includes an original instrumental that also gave rise to the so-called cor-
relative comparative of PDE (the more, the better). An analysis of such constructions views them
as conditionals (Beck 1997). Recalling that a modal LF is in essence the LF of a conditional (the
latter serving as restrictor), there is thus a possibility that the two developments have a common
origin and a related LF.
 Chapter 10. Rather 

d. And so sall gude dedis owtewarde noghte hyndire thi

and so shall good deeds on the outside not hinder your
deuocyone, bot raþer make it mare.
devotion but rather make it greater (cmrolltr,33.699)
e. but rather than I sholde be dishonoured, there wolde som good
but rather than I should be dishonored there would some good
man take my quarell.
man take my side (cmmalory,36.1144)
An additional comment is in order regarding the modals. While the originally voli-
tional would (together with variants) is particularly frequent, we can see from the
above examples that other premodals such as ought, might and in particular shall co-
occurred with rather as well.
In terms of distribution, we have already noted that the rather structures of earlier
English functioned distinctly from those of PDE, in that we do not find unselected
bare infinitives but rather tensed full-fledged clauses. This is not to say that we do not
find tensed clauses of various sorts in PDE as well (in particular the metalinguistic type
comes to mind in this connection). We could claim that the cases in which the comple-
ment of rather is phrasal on the surface (and hence not clausal) is a full clause underly-
ingly, with mechanisms of ellipsis including comparative deletion at work (cf. Lechner
2004 for such derivations of comparatives in general). But the point is a different one.
It seems that the grammaticalized patterns that are possible have changed, resulting in
the new possibility of having tighter syntactic structure as well, specifically the bare
forms. Infinitives at earlier stages were generally governed by an additional element
that required them on independent grounds, as shown with the modals above.
Without an independent governor (where the term is used in a descriptive sense
as a selector), the most productive pattern is the one with full-fledged tensed clauses,
and the possibility of having overt (and distinct) subjects in each of them.
(27) Yet seye I nat that ye shul rather pursue to youre adversaries for pees than
they shuln to yow. (cmctmeli, 235.C2.725)
The possibility illustrated in (27) cannot be blamed entirely on parallelism require-
ments that would have imposed an overt subject in the embedded clause because of
the overt subject in the matrix. It is possible to have non-overt subjects such as PRO in
a potential superordinate and overt subjects in a subordinate clause, as in (28).
Where is now so gret loue, zele, and fauour vn-to men of holy churche
(28)
where is now so great love, zeal, and favor toward men of holy church
and to þe pepull as had þe gret emperour Constantyne, þe wiche chose
and to the people as had the great emperor Constantine who chose
raþur [ pro all is liff tyme to be smytte with a leper] þan [he wold
rather all his life time to be smitten with leprosy than he would
 Remus Gergel

suffure þe innocentes blod to be shed to saue hym].

allow the innocents blood to be shed to save him? (cmroyal, 253.225)
Rather clauses have a clear propositional status. Their rich structure also becomes evi-
dent from an inspection of non-finite structures in ME. There are two immediate ar-
eas in which evidence can be gathered for this claim. First, for-to infinitives (that is, CP
structures), are available in the complement position of rather, cf. (29).
(29) and bade hym holde vppe the right of Holy Churche with alle hys myght
and asked him hold up the right of holy churche with all his might
and rather for to suffre dethe than lese the fredome of the Churche, ….
and rather for to suffer death than lose the freedom of the church
(cmedmund, 172.273)
Second, another non-finite structure that appears larger than expected, at least from
the chronologically backwards and grammaticalized perspective of the bare-infinitive
RTSs, is generated by the appearance of to in examples of the type in (30).
(30) & saide þat þai wolde neuer faile Kyng Arture, and raþere to
‘and said that they would never fail King Arthur and (would) rather
bene dede:
be dead.’ (cmbrut3, 82.2486)
All in all, historically there are then two corroborating facts: clause tightening in ModE
compared to the preceding period and the possibility of modalization which devel-
oped from overt modals joined by rather in an adverbial function towards the addi-
tional possibility of modalization through rather itself.
Turning to current grammar, we can, of course, still witness rather with modals in
the main clause, but it can appear as an independent modalizer as well, as mentioned.
Further, modal iteration is also possible internally to the structure modalized by rath-
er, another positive expectation for modality in general (cf. von Fintel & Heim 2007).
The modal rather of RTSs itself, as expected, cannot iterate with actual core modals
due to its non-finiteness requirement in English. But once we switch to periphrastic
modal expressions, it becomes possible to find some corresponding examples gener-
ated, as the following attested examples with participles and bare-infinitives illustrate.
(31) a. ‘Let’s try to be the first to create a network that opens a new window of
distribution for us rather than having to go hat in hand to a USA or a
Nick at Night or a TBS,’... (NY Times, Nov14, 2005)
b. Hospitals will receive a flat fee of $350 for a series of seven clinic visits rather
than being allowed to charge a fee for each visit. (NY Times, Dec 5, 1989)
c. Most of the key members of the Department... are resigning. In fact, just
about a week ago one resigned rather than come and have to testify un-
der oath. (ggl)
 Chapter 10. Rather 

d. Contrast this with 104, where I sit at a table with the students, and where dis-
cussions are much more organic, and I facilitate rather than need to direct.
(ggl)
The interaction with the classical overt modal restrictors (recall that these were if-
clauses) is harder to observe, but it is possible in some reduced cases:
(32) Feedback is more useful if given soon after an event rather than if delayed.
(UC Davis, Faculty Handbook, online)
Further relics of the comparative nature of rather can be observed in examples such as
(33) below; cf. modification by differentials of degree such as much and far.
(33) a. I’d much rather be with the boys. (Rolling Stones)
b. I’d far rather tell political jokes than be one. (The Independent 06/10, 1999)

4.2 Brief excursus into partially similar changes

A similar change in progress is also observable in English: cf. sooner and as soon in (34)
and (35) below.
(34) Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to harm;
(Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Street of Seven Stars, retrieved online)
(35) Not what one expected of the wife of the senior partner, Tim observed, think-
ing smugly of his own immaculately turned-out Patrice, who would refuse to
eat if she put on even an extra pound and who would as soon leave the house
naked as without make-up. (bnc, AB9–2413)
Besides the transparency of soon itself, the fact that this is a change less fully developed
from the perspective of the cycle can be quickly seen from two distributional require-
ments. First, it appears to express preference (to the detriment of temporality) prima-
rily only joined by a modal and, second, it has a wider (less fossilized) distribution in
terms of the comparative form, including the equative, as illustrated in (35) above.5
Other languages give rise to similar constructions, and I only mention German
here, because the modal flavor arising with eher (lit. ‘sooner’, ‘earlier’) comes close to
an epistemic, likelihood reading.
(36) a. [Context:] Die Perspektiven im Dienstleistungsbereich… werden in Berlin
als gut eingeschätzt. (fhtw university memo, economic forecast)
‘The prospects in the service branch in Berlin are considered to be positive.’
b. Der Industriesektor wird eher nicht wachsen.
the industry-branch will rather (lit.: sooner) not grow
‘For the industrial branch, it is more likely that it will not grow.’

5. Thanks to Jack Hoeksema for raising the issue of the equative at the workshop.
 Remus Gergel

Changes that led to elements similar to rather involving transformed comparatives

and/or temporal elements are not hard to come by in other languages either. (Gergel
in prep., for example, describes some of the apparently numerous cross-linguistic pat-
terns.) But there is a caveat. The claim is not that everything that develops a semantics
of modal ordering comes out of a movement or a comparative dependency. Such LF-
based movement dependencies are rather one source of the construction.
In some cases it may also be interesting to investigate changes that did not take
place. Elly van Gelderen (p.c.) presents a particularly striking type of example (with a
morphological twist): Alongside raþe, in Old English we find the form hrædlice, which
however never took off in the sense of the cycle presented here. A relevant example
(with a temporal meaning only) is (37):
(37) & syððon hrædlice wendon westweard on Oxnafordscire.
‘and then soon turned westwards to Oxfordshire.’
(Peterborough Chronicle 1010.15)
One possibility might perhaps be that this adverb is already born in the wrong place in
the syntax (i.e. merged too high) to be able to undergo the LF-movement from a low
position that is necessary for the change. There is a range of possibilities here for fur-
ther research.6 Another (non-disjunctive) possibility, is that this adverb did not get
into the stage of pragmatic overload (recall that this typically creates the potential to
trigger the type of change) because there were not enough instances of the two mean-
ings (in a comparative form of it, that is, which is infrequently attested) that would
have had to compete.

4.3 Cycle theory

In this subsection, I discuss to what extent regularities uncovered in the research on

cycles in general and in particular of the type conducted in narrow syntax carries over
to meaning-structural developments.
First, the development we have inspected in RTSs has the appearance of being
cyclic in a simple intuitive sense which is reminiscent of other cycles: rather, the cru-
cial ingredient in the change is added to certain intensional constructions and it comes
to express the modal ordering by itself in the course of the change.
Second, in a more theoretical sense, the change is characterized by upward move-
ment in the LF structure and the loss of a movement dependency to the detriment of
an option relying on (First)-Merge (or in essence synonymously: external Merge). It
should have become clear from the analysis above that Move dies and Merge is pre-
ferred. To name but one recent work, this is reminiscent, for example, of Roberts &

6. A somewhat different type of restriction may also be worth noting for potential contrasting
purposes: For one relatively well-known type of arguably high adverbs in German, namely a
class built with the ending –weise, a comparative form is lacking.
 Chapter 10. Rather 

Roussou’s (2003) observation on the rise of certain functional categories from former
movement dependencies. It in fact instantiates a general schema of a semantic coun-
terpart (based on the core of QR) to such syntactic considerations.
But there are also additional, specific considerations regarding the cycle to be ad-
dressed. We can investigate, for example, in which respects the change in RTSs turns
out to conform to cycle and economy principles observed for syntactic change. I will
illustrate this based on van Gelderen’s (2006) characteristics of cyclicity.
One way in which RTSs show an economy effect that has been observed in the
specialized literature concerned with linguistic cycle is by adhering to a version of Late
Merge. Consider van Gelderen’s Late Merge Principle given in (38) below:
(38) Late Merge Principle
Merge as late as possible.
A case in point to illustrate the syntactic development would be the history of an ad-
verb such as actually developing out of an adjective, first towards a low VP-adjoined
adverb that was synchronically perhaps moved and later, via (external) merge alone,
towards a sentential adverb. There can be little doubt that the case of rather reproduces
a somewhat similar trajectory. Since I focused on the semantic developments, let me
recapitulate the major steps: namely temporal interpretation with a semantically bound
trace low down and the step with a directly high-merged modal element after comple-
tion of the change, in which it was not possible to interpret the original element merged
low down any longer. The similarity on an abstract level is striking and it perhaps rais-
es the question of whether it would not be desirable to have just one explanation in-
stead of two. But the real question is whether we are dealing with entirely the same
phenomenon. Despite the abstract structural similarity, there are differences in the two
classes. I don’t see how a merger-site effect alone could derive the meaning change
witnessed in rather, which relies on interpretability (and other factors). Nor do I think,
conversely, that an explanation in terms of compositional applicability of principles of
interpretation alone can (or should) derive the large body of evidence gathered for ex-
ample from the research on adverbs. While there remains (also) syntactic work in the
area of rather and a better understanding of semantic effects might enrich our under-
standing in language change, including adverbs, a more crucial point emerges, namely
that alongside other better-known factors (pragmatics, morphological triggers etc.),
both the narrow-syntactic and the LF component indeed make reference to structure.
Two other syntactic principles for which we can raise the question what kinds of
correlates they yield in the realm of meaning change and in particular in the present case-
study of rather are given in (39) and (40) below, also drawn from van Gelderen’s work.
(39) Head Preference Principle (hpp)
Be a head, rather than a phrase.
(40) Specifier Incorporation Principle (sip)
When possible, be a specifier (rather than an adjunct).
 Remus Gergel

The two principles reproduced above make direct reference to specific assumptions in
the well-known X’-schema. Meaning per se is not sensitive to the particular shape of
the schema – for example either the node T’ or its sister, the subject-denoting DP, can
serve as a function taking the other constituent as an argument. The choice depends
on whether the subject is individual-denoting or a quantifier. So the notation of the
X´-schema does not affect meaning as such. But the computation of meaning is stand-
ardly calculated on the skeleton of a similar binary tree structure and I would like to
argue that something similar to the syntactic tendencies can be detected in the present
case study when we transfer the core insight of the observations to the LF context.
How does this then specifically relate to the aspects of the change of rather? One ob-
servation to be culled is this: while the pre-change LF had the temporal adverb merged
low and interpreted it intersectively as a modifier via its trace (recall von Stechow’s
proposal on this), in the reanalyzed LF, rather participated in core argument-taking
operations (functional application). The two arguments were the two propositions.
Thus while the LF may not be able to talk about specifiers and heads, it nonetheless can
talk about modifier vs. argument-structures, with rather developing towards the latter
and thus paralleling the syntactic tendency observed above on the level of meaning.
The fact that on the preference reading the than-clause must be right-adjacent to its
selector (namely rather) in PDE offers additional evidence on the surface for this de-
velopment toward argument-status from the perspective of functional application.
Whether the latter type of tendency holds more generally of LF changes is not easy
to predict and I leave the generalization for future work on structure-sensitive seman-
tic change, when more cases are studied from this perspective. All in all, the emerging
observation seems to be that the economy of derivation in the computation of LF fol-
lows directly from the way interpretation applies to the syntactic tree.

5. Conclusion

This chapter has investigated the connection between structure and meaning change
by focusing on the thus-far neglected level of logical form. I have argued that the
changes that took place in the history of rather instantiate a cyclic development that
led to a particular modal element expressing an ordering relationship between two
propositions. While the research reported here is in its beginning, I hope to have of-
fered an explanation at least to a part of the linguistic puzzle, namely why this particu-
lar type of change may be both frequent cross-linguistically and unidirectional. Clear-
ly, this requires further investigation both in other languages and in English.
 Chapter 10. Rather 

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 chapter 11

Cycles of complementation
in the Mayan languages*1

Clifton Pye
The University of Kansas

This paper describes the cycles of complementation evidenced in many Mayan

languages. The cycle introduces lexical items in a root clause to mark aspectual
distinctions. Over time these aspectual markers become grammaticalized and
eventually disappear, at which time new lexical items may be introduced to
renew the cycle. This cycle has significant implications for our understanding of
the Mayan verbal complex and the boundary between syntax and the lexicon.
Comparative data from the Mayan language family illustrates the variability in
time and direction of the Mayan complementation cycle.

Introduction

In this paper I present a cycle of complementation that is evidenced in many Mayan

languages. The Mayans are better known for their cycles of time rather than cycles of
complementation, nevertheless there is sufficient comparative and historical evidence
to support a cyclic introduction of clausal aspectual markers in Mayan languages. This
cycle has significant implications for our understanding of the Mayan verbal complex
and the boundary between syntax and the lexicon. Comparative data from the Mayan
language family illustrates the variability in time and direction of the Mayan comple-
mentation cycle.
Mayan languages have a verbal complex which contains inflectional elements for
aspect, agreement and status. Agreement generally follows an ergative paradigm in
which subjects of transitive verbs are cross-referenced by ergative prefixes while subjects

* This research would not be possible without the generous support of the K’iche’ commu-
nity and the assistance of Augustin Huix Huix and Pedro Quixtan Poz. I would also like to thank
my colleagues on the Comparative Mayan Acquisition Project—Barbara Pfeiller and Pedro
Mateo Pedro as well as the assistants in the Mayan language communities who keep the project
running. I take responsibility for any errors or misinterpretations. This research is funded in
part by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0613120 and BCS-0515120) as well
as a grant from the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas.
 Clifton Pye

of intransitive verbs and objects of transitive verbs are cross-referenced by absolutive

clitics. Mayan languages use prefixes to distinguish between incompletive, completive,
progressive and potential aspects. The aspectual distinctions coordinate with status suf-
fixes, which also mark modality and transitivity (Kaufman 1990). I provide a general-
ized inflectional template for intransitive and transitive verbs in (1). The examples in
(2) show how the verbal complex is realized in the Mayan language K’iche’1.
(1) Inflectional Templates for the Mayan Verbal Complex
a. Intransitive Template
Aspect=Absolutive Stem-StatusIV
b. Transitive Template
Aspect=Absolutive Ergative-Stem-StatusTV
(2) The Verbal Complex in K’iche’ Maya
a. Intransitive
k=at b’in-ik
inc=B2 travel-indIV
‘You travel.’
b. Transitive
k=at inw-il-oh
inc=B2 A1-see-indtv
‘I see you.’

1. K’iche’ is the official spelling adopted in Guatemala during the 1980s. The language name
was generally spelled Quiché before this change. I use the new spellings for the names of the
Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. All Mayan words are shown in the practical orthogra-
phy developed by the Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (Kaufman 1976) with a single
exception: I use <’> rather than <7> for the glottal stop. The other orthographic symbols have
their standard IPA values except: <tz> = /ts/, <ch> = /t∫/, <b’> = /'/, <tz’> = /ts’/, <ch’> =/t∫’/,
<x> = /∫/, <j> = /x/, <ä> = /G/. I use the following abbreviations throughout the article:
1 first person singular INC incompletive aspect
2 second person singular INCEP inceptive aspect
3 third person singular NOM nominalizing suffix
4 first person plural PAS passive suffix
6 third person plural PREP preposition
A ergative cross-reference PROG progressive verb
AP antipassive suffix REC recent past
B absolutive cross-reference REM remote past
CMP completive aspect RN relational noun
ENC person enclitic SUBJ subjunctive marker
DEP dependent status TERM terminative aspect
DIR directional VI intransitive verb
DUB dubitive marker VT transitive verb
IND indicative status
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

In this paper I use evidence from a number of Mayan languages to argue that the ver-
bal complex masks a structure of complementation. A complex clausal analysis ac-
counts for the structure of the verbal complex better than a monoclausal analysis. Ex-
amples of the verbal complex like those in (2) appear as simple inflected verbs with a
template like that in (1). I make the argument in this paper that a template which as-
sumes a structure of complementation like those in (3) provides a better understand-
ing of the synchronic and diachronic properties of the Mayan Verbal Complex.
(3) Complement Structure of the Mayan Verbal Complex
a. Intransitive
Matrix Complement
Aspect_Element=Absolutive [Stem-StatusIV]
b. Transitive
Matrix Complement
Aspect_Element=Absolutive [Ergative-Stem-StatusTV]
This complementation structure is the result of a historical cycle of aspectual reduc-
tion and renewal. The cycle of complementation begins when a lexical element is in-
troduced to mark an aspectual distinction that is not marked overtly. The lexical item
may be a verb or adverb. Both of these items select a complement clause that contains
the main verb stem. The second stage of the cycle is marked by the gradual grammati-
calization of the aspectual element. The meaning of the aspectual element becomes
broader while its phonetic structure is reduced. Aspectual verbs lose their own aspec-
tual and cross-referencing morphology, and gradually appear as bare roots. Eventually,
in the third stage, the aspectual prefix disappears completely at which point the lan-
guage contains an aspectual gap that may be filled by returning to Stage One with the
introduction of a new aspectual element and the beginning of a new cycle (4).
(4) Mayan Cycle of Complementation
matrix complement
Stage One Lexical Aspect [Verb Complement]
Stage Two Grammatical Aspect [Stative Argument]
Stage Three Zero Aspect [Aspectless Predicate]
The cycle of complementation focuses on changes in the matrix element, but these
changes have significant implications for the form of the complement. Complementa-
tion is a context of nominalization in Mayan languages, which can induce a mixed
ergative cross-reference system on intransitive verbs and antipassive marking on tran-
sitive verbs. In the remainder of this paper I will explore the evidence which supports
the cycle of complementation in Mayan languages. I will provide examples from vari-
ous Mayan languages that illustrate each stage in the cycle. I then discuss historical
evidence for the cycle within Yucatec.
 Clifton Pye

Proto-Mayan
wo
Huastecan Late Proto-Mayan
wo
Yucatecan Central Mayan
wo
Western Mayan Eastern Mayan
3 3
Greater Greater Greater Greater
Tzeltalan Q’anjob’alan Mamean K’iche’an
3
Ch’olan Tzeltalan
Figure 1. Genetic classification of Mayan languages (Kaufman 1976, 1990)

1. The Mayan language family

The Mayan data used in this study are the result of more than three decades of modern
linguistic description by native Mayan and non-native linguists alike. This outstanding da-
tabase provides a fantastic resource for reconstructing the history of the Mayan languages.
The Mayan language family contains some 30 separate languages with over seven million
living speakers. The languages fall into four main historical subdivisions (Figure 1).
Mayan languages have a largely agglutinative morphology with an ergative system
of verb cross-referencing (Kaufman 1990). The ergative inflections typically cross-
reference the subjects of transitive verbs and nominal possessors. The absolutive in-
flections cross-reference subjects of intransitive verbs, direct objects of transitive verbs
and subjects of non-verbal predicates. There are prevocalic and preconsonantal allo-
morphs of the ergative markers. Nominal arguments for subject, direct object and pos-
sessors are only used for emphasis or to disambiguate the reference of the pronominal
cross-reference markers on verbs and nouns. Verbal utterances usually contain obliga-
tory particles for aspect that coordinate with verbal status suffixes. The languages gen-
erally have a verb-initial underlying word order. Some languages have a verb, subject,
object word order while others have a verb, object, subject word order. The underlying
order varies with changes in definiteness and animacy (England 1994).

2. Stage one – lexical aspect

In this section of the paper I provide examples of constructions that use lexical ele-
ments to mark aspectual distinctions. These elements range between fully inflected
verbs, a special set of movement verbs, affect verbs that are not regularly inflected, and
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

adjectives and adverbs. These elements fall into two aspectual classes: stative and non-
stative. Verbs inflected for aspect are non-stative predicates, while the other lexical
classes are stative predicates. The stative predicates create an interesting ambiguity in
that their complement could be considered either an argument or a complement. Eng-
lish uses an expletive pronoun and overt copula to distinguish between these two types
of constructions (5). Mayan languages lack both expletive pronouns and copulas, so
the equivalent structure is ambiguous (6).
(5) English Stative Predicate Constructions
a. Verb Argument Construction
Travelling is hard.
b. Verb Adjunct Construction
It is hard to travel.
(6) K’iche’ Stative Predicate Construction
k’ax k=0 b’in-ik
hard inc=B3 travel-indiv
‘it is hard for one who travels.’
The complement verb b’in in (6) is inflected for aspect, agreement and status so neither
of the English expressions in (5) provide an exact translation. Indicative status co-oc-
curs with incompletive and completive aspect in K’iche’. The ambiguity between argu-
ment and complement has important consequences for the cycle of complementation
that I described in the introduction. As the aspectual verbs become grammaticalized,
they lose their own aspectual inflections and become stative predicates. The change to
a stative predicate then brings a change from verb complement to stative argument,
while promoting a change in the aspect marker from stative predicate to aspectual
prefix. The change from non-stative to stative aspect clause provides an essential link
between the first two stages of the cycle.

2.1 Verbal aspectual constructions

Mayan languages have two distinct classes of lexical verb constructions: aspectual
verbs and movement verbs. Both of these verb classes are inflected for aspect and
agreement, but they differ in the types of complements they select and argument ex-
pression. The movement verbs have been analyzed in the past as a type of verb incor-
poration, but a complement analysis provides a better account of their properties. I
provide examples of these constructions in the next two sections of the paper.

2.1.1. Aspectual verbs

Inceptive and Terminative aspects are commonly expressed by inflected matrix verbs
in Mayan languages and so provide canonical examples of a full complementation
 Clifton Pye

structure that is used to mark aspectual contrasts. I provide examples of inceptive

constructions in (7) and terminative constructions in (8).
(7) Inceptive Constructions
a. K’iche’ (Kaufman 1990: 85)
x=0 u-maji-j u-k’ayi-x-iik
cmp=B3 A3-begin A3-sell-pas-nomiv
‘S/he began its selling.’
b. Mam (England 1983: 300)
n=chi ku7 teen xjaal belaara-l t-e jun weech
inc=B6 dir be person watch-nomiv A3-rn one fox
‘The people began to watch the fox.’
c. Tojolab’al (Kaufman 1990: 87 from Robertson 1980)
och=on way-el
begin=B1 sleep-nomiv
‘I began to sleep.’
d. Tzeltal (Gilles Pollian, pc)
ya x-jajch-on ta way-el
inc-begin-B1 prep sleep-nomiv
‘I begin to sleep.’
e. Ch’ol
mi j-kejel tyi wäy-el
inc A1-begin prep sleep-nomiv
‘I begin to sleep.’
f. Colonial Yucatec (1784; from Bricker 1981)
k-u-hop’-ol k-meyah minan ven-el t-on
inc-A3-begin-nomiv A4-work there.isn’t sleep-nomiv to-us
‘We begin working without having slept.’
(8) Terminative Constructions
a. K’iche’ (Kaufman 1990: 85)
x=0 u-tanab’a’ wa’-iim
cmp=B3 A3-finish eat-nomiv
‘S/he finished eating.’
b. Tzeltal (Sántiz & Polian 2007)
ya j-lajin-0 s-jal-el
inc A1-finish-B3 A3-weave-nomiv
‘I finish weaving.’
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

c. Tojolabal (del Prado & Curiel 2007)

0-ch’ak j-tsil-0
cmp-finish A1-tortilla.making-B3
‘I finished making tortillas.’
The examples in (7) and (8) have in common a matrix clause which contains a fully
inflected verb that in turn selects a nominalized verb complement. Progressive con-
structions in Mayan languages illustrate the transition between Stage 1 and Stage 2 of
the complementation cycle. Languages like K’iche’ preserve a fully inflected progres-
sive verb that selects a complement. The progressive verbs in Poqomchi’ and Q’eqchi’
are inflected for person, but not aspect although the progressive in these two languag-
es maintains an indicative status suffix. I provide examples of inflected progressive
verb constructions in (9).
(9) Inflected Progressive Verb Constructions
a. K’iche’ (Kaufman 1990: 85)
k=at tajin k=0 a-tz’iib’a-aj
inc=B2 prog inc=B3 A2-write-inddtv
‘You are writing it.’
b. Western Poqomchi’ (Kaufman 1990: 89)
k’ahchi’-k=iin chi wir-ik
prog-indiv=B1 prep sleep-nomiv
‘I am sleeping.’
c. Q’eqchi’ (Dayley 1981: 21)
yoh-k=in chi aa-sak’-b’-al
prog-indiv=B1 prep A2-hit-PAS-nomiv
‘I am hitting you.’

2.1.2. Movement verbs

Movement verb constructions differ from the lexical verb constructions in their se-
mantic field and the type of complement they select. As in many other languages, the
movement verb ‘go’ in Mayan languages is often understood as denoting movement in
time as well as in space although these constructions are more spatially oriented than
their equivalents in English or Spanish. There are also significant differences in the
optionality of the movement constructions across the Mayan languages. Movement
constructions are purely optional in K’iche’ where their use is less frequent. They are
more frequent in Q’anjob’al and their use is obligatory with transitive verbs in Mam
(England 1994). A template for movement verb constructions is provided in (10).
(10) Movement Verb Template
Matrix Complement
Aspect Move=Absolutive [Verb-depstatus]
 Clifton Pye

Movement verb constructions are distinguished from other complement construc-

tions by the use of a verb of movement in the matrix clause. In K’iche’, Q’anjob’al and
Yucatec, the movement verb selects a verb complement with a dependent status. The
absolutive clitic appears with the movement verb in K’iche’ and Q’anjob’al, while it al-
ters between the matrix clause and complement clause in Tzeltal and Yucatec. I pro-
vide examples of movement verb constructions in (11–15). I class the Mam termina-
tive construction in (12b) under this heading since the Mam terminative verb behaves
as a movement verb rather than a matrix verb.
(11) K’iche’ Movement Verb Constructions
a. x-uj-e: war-oq
cmp-B4-go sleep-depiv
‘We went to sleep.’
b. x-0-e: qa-k’am-a’
cmp-B3-go A4-carry-depiv
‘We went to carry it.’
(12) Mam Movement Verb Constructions
a. ma 0-tzaj t-tzyu-7n Cheep ch’it (England 1983: 212)
rec B3-go A3-grab-ap José bird
‘José grabbed the bird.’
b. ma chin b’aj aq’naa-n-a (England 1983: 303)
rec B1 finish work-ap-enc1
‘I finished working.’
c. ma chin-x aaj-a b’eeta-l (England 1983: 299)
rec B1-go return-enc1 walk-nom
‘I went to walk.’
(13) Q’anjob’al Movement Verb Construction (Pedro Mateo Pedro, pc)
ch=in-‘ul b’ey-oq
inc=B1-come walk-depiv
‘I come to walk.’
(14) Tzeltal Movement Verb Constructions (Gilles Pollian, pc)
a. ya x-tal-on ta way-el
inc-come-B1 prep sleep-nomiv
‘I come to sleep’
b. ya x-tal way-uk-on
inc-come sleep-depiv-B1
‘I come to sleep.’
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

(15) Yucatec Movement Verb Construction (Barbara Pfeiler, pc)

bin lúub-uk-eč
go fall-depiv-B2
‘you are going to fall.’

2.2 Stative aspectual constructions

I analyze any predicate without overt aspect marking as stative. This analysis includes
adjectives, adverbs, affect verbs, negation and perfect verb forms within the class of
stative predicates. Such predicates frequently replace the overt aspect markers in the
Mayan languages. Bricker (1981: 95) shows that adverbs sometimes replace the aspec-
tual prefixes in Yucatec. A similar replacement occurs in Mam and Q’anjob’al. I pro-
vide examples of stative constructions which take verb complements in (16).
(16) Adverbial Predicates
a. K’iche’ (Kaufman 1990: 86)
k’ax k=at in-ch’ab’e-j
difficult inc=B2 A1-speak.to-dtv
‘It’s hard for me to speak to you.’
b. Mam (England 1983: 233)
jotx t-aaj-tz meeb’a
boom! A3-return-dir orphan
‘Boom! the orphan returned.’
c. Mam (Ana López Ramírez 2008, p.c.)
xwit’l-al t-xi’-a
jump-nom A2/3-go-enc1/2
‘you go along jumping.’ (lit. ‘jumping is how you go’)
d. Yucatec (Bricker 1981: 95)
sáamal u-k’uč-ul
tomorrow A3-arrive-nom
‘S/he arrives tomorrow.’ (lit. His/her arrival is tomorrow)
e. Q’anjob’al (Mateo Pedro 2008, p.c.)
amanq’an im-b’ey-i
quickly A1-walk-indiv
‘I am walking quickly (lit. quick is my walking).’
It is interesting to observe that these adverbial contexts are also contexts of split erga-
tivity/nominalization in Mam and Q’anjob’al. Their use as aspectual replacements
could explain how the nominalized complements were extended to incompletive con-
texts in the Ch’olan and Yucatecan branches. Adverbs provide another source that
Mayan languages can draw upon to mark aspectual contrasts.
 Clifton Pye

The literal translations of these sentences provide a better idea of their syntactic
structure. The adverb serves as a stative predicate which takes a nominalized predicate
as its subject. Q’anjob’al displays an interesting split between the ergative cross-refer-
ence marker and the indicative status suffix in these contexts. Q’anjob’al has extended
its indicative suffix to nominalizing contexts.
Bohnemeyer (1998: 338) makes a distinction between the bound and unbound
aspect markers in Yucatec, and argues that all of the unbound markers (such as the
inceptive and terminative markers discussed above) are stative predicates. He analyzed
the completive prefix t- and the incompletive prefix k- in Yucatec as bound prefixes.
Furbee-Losee (1976: 204) explicitly treats the aspect markers in Tojolab’al as stative
verbs which take verbal complements. As evidence, she cites the use of oh, the future
progressive tense, in affirmative replies to a question in the future tense. The redupli-
cated form oh-oh is a possible response to the question oh xa wahan (oh xa wah-an,
FUT now go-FUT, “Are you going now?”). Bohnemeyer shows that the unbound as-
pectual markers in Yucatec can be used in the same way.

3. Stage two – grammatical aspect

Once an aspectual distinction is marked, it becomes subject to grammaticalization.

The indicative aspectual proclitics in K’iche’, Q’anjob’al and Ch’ol provide examples of
this stage of the complementation cycle.
(17) K’iche’ Indicative Proclitics
a. Completive
x=at inw-il-oh
cmp-B2 A1-see-indtv
‘I saw you.’
b. Incompletive
k=at inw-il-oh
inc=B2 A1-see-indtv
‘I see you.’
(18) Q’anjob’al Indicative Proclitics
a. Completive
max=ach hin-kol-o’
cmp=B2 A1-help-indtv
‘I helped you.’
b. Incompletive
chi=ach hin-kol-o’
cmp=B2 A1-help-indtv
‘I help you.’
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

(19) Ch’ol Indicative Proclitics

a. Completive (Vázquez Alvarez 2002: 162)
tyi a-mos-oy-oñ
cmp A2-cover-indtv-B1
‘you covered me.’
b. Incompletive
mi a-mos-oñ
inc A2-cover-B1
‘you cover me.’
The K’iche’ dependent forms in (6b) demonstrate the attachment of the aspect prefixes
to the verb is incomplete in that K’iche’ allows a small set of movement verbs (e: ‘go’, ul
‘arrive’ and opan ‘pass’) to appear between the aspect marker and the verb stem. Ch’ol
expands the set of particles that intervene between the aspect marker and the verb stem.
The examples in (20) illustrate the use of Ch’ol adverbial and modal particles. These
examples provide evidence of the weak association between the aspect markers and the
verb stem. The weakness is due to the origin of the aspect markers as a separate clause.
(20) Ch’ol Adverbial and Modal Particles
a. Already (Vázquez Alvarez 2002: 151)
chonkol=ix k-wäy-el
prog=already A1-sleep-nomiv
‘I am already sleeping.’
b. Dubitive (Vázquez Alvarez 2002: 164)
muk’=ka a-wäy-el
inc=dub A2-sleep-nomiv
‘Are you asleep?’
c. Subjunctive (Vázquez Alvarez 2002: 162)
muk’=ik a-wäy-el
inc=subj A2-sleep-nomiv
‘if you would sleep.’
The progressive construction illustrates the incipient grammaticalization of aspect in a
number of Mayan languages. The Mayan progressive construction originates as an
independent verb which takes a complement clause as shown in the previous section.
Overtime, the progressive verb loses its inflections and even part of its root. In some
Mayan languages, the progressive may now be marked by a single consonant. The fol-
lowing examples show progressive constructions in different stages of reduction.
(21) K’iche’ Progressive
tajin k=e: pet-ik
prog inc=B6 come-indiv
‘they are coming.’
 Clifton Pye

(22) Ch’ol Progressive (Pye, field notes)

choñ a-wäy-el
prog A2-sleep-nomiv
‘you are sleeping.’
(23) Yucatec Progressive (Bricker et al. 1998: 400)
t in hóok’-ol
prog A1 go_out-nomiv
‘I am going out.’
In this section I provided examples of grammaticalized aspect markers in a variety of
Mayan languages. In these examples, aspect has the appearance of a verbal prefix, but
clues to the clausal origin of aspect marking can still be found. Several languages allow
movement verbs or adverbs to appear between the aspect marker and the verb stem.
The progressive construction provides further evidence of the grammaticalization
process in that the progressive originates as an inflected verb and is gradually reduced
to a single syllable or consonant. The variety of progressive markers across the Mayan
languages is the result of the cycle of complementation.

4. Stage three – null aspect

The last stage of the Mayan complementation cycle is reached when an overt aspect
marker is no longer required in certain contexts. The preceding sections provide evi-
dence from various Mayan languages of the weak association between the aspect
markers and the verb stem. The weakness is due to the origin of the aspect markers as
a separate clause. Overtime the aspect clause loses its specific semantic contribution
and becomes a more general marker of aspect. Since the status marker also expresses
similar aspectual contrasts, the aspectual prefix can become redundant. In this case,
the aspect marker is no longer required and some Mayan languages no longer require
overt aspect prefixes.
The incipient loss of aspect marking is seen in Mayan languages that display par-
tial gaps in their aspectual paradigms. Dayley (1985: 80) notes that the completive as-
pect marker may optionally be omitted in Tzutujil before a consonant (24).
(24) Tzutujil Optional Aspect Omission (Dayley 1985: 80)
(x)=0 war-i
(cmp)=B3 sleep-indiv
‘S/he slept.’
Malchic et al. (2000: 64) state that the second singular and plural incompletive prefixes
are zero in Poqomchi’ and Poqomam. Caz Cho (2007: 63) states that a few dialects of
Q’eqchi’ preserve the use of an oh- prefix that becomes zero in second singular transitive
forms and first and second singular intransitive forms in remote past contexts (25).
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

(25) Q’eqchi Intransitive Remote (Caz Cho 2007: 64)

0-in-war
rem-B1-sleep
‘I slept (some time ago).’
Tzeltal has a defective aspectual paradigm in that intransitive verbs do not have an
overt completive marker and transitive verbs lack an overt incompletive marker (26).
(26) Zero Completive Marking in Tzeltal
a. Tzeltal Completive Intransitive Verbs (Robertson 1992: 194)
0-muy-on
cmp-descend-B1
’I descended.’
b. Tzeltal Incompletive Transitive Verbs (Robertson 1992: 194)
0-k-il
inc-A1-see
‘I see it.’
The Cholan languages demonstrate the complete loss of overt aspect markers. Chontal
innovated a set of aspectual contrasts that rely on the status suffixes. Incompletive
transitive verbs in Chontal have the suffixes –e’ or –Vn, while completive transitive
verbs with third person objects have the suffix –i (27).
(27) Chontal Aspect Loss on Transitive Verbs
a. Incompletive (Keller & Plácido 1997: 447)
u pul-e’-0
A3 burn-indtv-B3
‘s/he burns it.’
b. Completive (Keller & Plácido 1997: 438)
u k’ux-i-0
A3 eat-indtv-B3
‘s/he ate it.’
Intransitive verbs in Chontal indicate the aspectual contrast through the use of split
ergative marking (28). Completive intransitive verbs only carry an absolutive person
marker while incompletive intransitive verbs have an ergative prefix as well as a status
suffix (-e, -o, -a, -an or -in).
(28) Chontal Aspect Loss on Intransitive Verbs
a. Incompletive (Keller & Plácido 1997: 458)
u jom-e
A3 climb-indtv
‘s/he climbs.’
 Clifton Pye

b. Completive (Keller & Plácido 1997: 459)

wäy-on
sleep-B1
‘I slept.’
Chontal shows one way in which Mayan languages may communicate without the use
of overt aspect marking. The Chorti’ language provides a related, but distinct example
of the loss of overt aspect marking. Robertson (1992: 174) states that transitive verbs
in Chorti’ have lost all distinctions between completive and incompletive aspect. The
intransitive verbs rely exclusively on the system of split ergative marking to mark the
completive/incompletive contrast (29).
(29) Chorti’ (Robertson 1992: 175)
a. Transitive completive and incompletive
in-xur-i-0
A1-cut-ind-B3
‘I cut it.’ (past, present and future)
b. Intransitive incompletive
in-wayan
A1-sleep
‘I sleep.’
c. Intransitive completive
wayan-en
sleep-B1
‘I slept.’
Huastec is another Mayan language that has lost its aspect marking. Robertson (1992)
provides the examples of incompletive verbs (30).
(30) Huastec (Robertson 1992: 213–214)
a. Intransitive incompletive
in-way-el
A1-sleep-nom
‘I sleep.’
b. Transitive incompletive
u-k’ap-al
A1-eat-nom
‘I eat it.’
Since the Cholan, Yukatekan, Tzeltalan and possibly the Huastecan languages have
been in contact over an extensive period, there is the possibility that the loss of aspect
marking in these languages spread from one of these languages to the others. We have
seen that aspect marking can be lost in the other Mayan languages. In this regard, it is
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

interesting to find that Hofling reconstructs Proto-Yukatekan without overt aspect

marking (2006). He provides the transitive reconstructions shown in (31) and the in-
transitive reconstructions shown in (32).
(31) Proto-Yukatekan Transitive Verbs (Hofling 2006)
a. Transitive incompletive
0 in-mach-ik-ech
inc A1-grab-nomtv-B2
‘I grab you.’
b. Transitive completive
0 in-mach-aj-ech
cmp A1-grab-indtv-B2
‘I grabbed you.’
(32) Proto-Yukatekan Intransitive Verbs (Hofling 2006)
a. Intransitive incompletive
0 in-wen-el
inc A1-sleep-nomiv
‘I sleep.’
b. Intransitive completive
0 wen-ih-ech
cmp sleep-indiv-B2
‘you slept.’
In sum, many Mayan languages provide evidence for the partial or complete loss of
aspect marking prefixes. These constructions illustrate the final stage of the cycle of
complementation. One consequence of aspect loss is the promotion of the verb from a
complement clause to a matrix clause. This promotion requires a radical reanalysis of
the verb’s inflectional morphology. The ergative possessive markers on nominalized
intransitive verbs become markers of person and aspect on the promoted intransitive
verb. However, there is reason to think that the verbs remain in a complement clause
even when aspect marking has been lost since this makes possible the reintroduction of
a new matrix clause marking aspect and a renewal of the cycle of complementation.

5. The cycle of complementation – Yucatec

My presentation to this point has relied upon evidence from different Mayan languag-
es to illustrate the stages of aspect marking. Yucatec provides historical evidence for all
three stages of the complementation cycle.
 Clifton Pye

Stage Three – Zero Marking

As noted in the previous section, Hofling reconstructs Proto-Yukatekan without overt
aspect markers on the basis that Mopan currently lacks such markers.
(33) Proto-Yukatekan Incompletive Verbs (Hofling 2006)
a. Transitive
0 in-mach-ik-ech
inc A1-grab-nomtv-B2
‘I grab you.’
b. Intransitive
0 in-wen-el
inc A1-sleep-nomiv
‘I sleep.’
Stage One – Lexical Aspect
Bricker (1981: 86) mentions that McQuown (1967: 243) thought that the source for
the incompletive prefix k- in modern Yucatec (1b) was the verb lik ‘accustomed to’
found in Colonial Yucatec. Robertson (1992: 204) suggests the verb kah ‘to do, make’
was its source. The modern Ch’olan languages Ch’ol and Chontal currently make ob-
ligatory use of their ‘make, do’ light verb in complex expressions with a class of verbal
nouns. Chontal further extends this construction to many transitive verb comple-
ments as a type of antipassive construction. The Ch’olan languages provide support for
Robertson’s suggestion, but Yucatec would have had to take a further step of limiting
the light verb’s use to incompletive contexts.
(34) Colonial Yucatec (McQuown 1967; Robertson 1992)
a. Transitive
kah in-mach-ik-ech
do A1-grab-nomtv-B2
‘I grab you.’
b. Intransitive
kah in-wen-el
do A1-sleep-nomiv
‘I sleep.’
Stage Two – Grammaticalized Aspect
The incompletive markers have become greatly reduced in Modern Yucatec, to the
point where some are beginning to disappear. Modern Yucatec uses k- to mark incom-
pletive aspect. The nominalizing suffixes on incompletive verbs in Yucatec betrays
their origin in nominalized complement clauses.
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

(35) Modern Yucatec (Bricker 1981)

a. Transitive
k in-mach-ik-ech
inc A1-grab-nomtv-B2
‘I grab you.’
b. Intransitive
k u wen-el
inc A3 sleep-nomiv
‘S/he sleeps.’
Stage Three – Zero Marking
Modern Yucatec uses the prefix h- as a completive marker on intransitive verbs. The
h- is lightly aspirated and disappears in colloquial speech (36a). The Yucatec progres-
sive marker is currently used as a full verb root táan, a prefix t- and is sometimes omit-
ted (36b). Completive intransitive verbs and progressive verbs provide potential con-
texts for a new cycle of complementation in Yucatec.
(36) Modern Yucatec
a. Completive Intransitive Verbs
(h)-wèen-en
cmp-sleep-B1
‘I slept.’
b. Progressive (after Bricker et al. 1998: 400)
(t) in hóok’-ol
prog A1 go_out-nomiv
‘I am going out.’

6. Conclusion

Complementation induces a suite of morphological changes on both intransitive and

transitive verbs in Mayan languages. These changes result in the use of ergative subject
marking on intransitive complements (mixed ergativity), and the intransitivization of
transitive complements (crazy antipassives). Mayanists usually discuss these phenom-
ena separately without attempting a unified account of these changes (c.f. Larsen &
Norman 1979), although Kaufman (1990) provides an integrated discussion. Fortu-
nately, complementation is currently the focus of many studies in Mayan linguistics so
much information is available for a wide range of Mayan languages (cf. Aissen 2007).
The recognition of a cycle of complementation provides a new perspective on comple-
mentation in the Mayan languages and integrates the analysis of complementation
with the agglutinative structure of the Mayan verbal complex.
 Clifton Pye

The Mayan cycle of complementation bears a certain similarity to the periphrastic

origin of inflectional tense-aspect forms in the Romance languages (Hopper and
Traugott 2003: 8–9). The Mayan languages provide several examples of this change in
progress where different forms of the construction are still in competition. Evidence of
the complementation origin of the aspect markers can be found in Mayan languages
with advanced grammaticalization of aspect. The Mayan verbal complex thus stands
halfway between a complex clause and a simple inflected verb. It demonstrates how far
the grammaticalization process may extend without becoming fully actualized. The
lack of actualization makes it possible in turn to renew the cycle of complementation.
The Mayan verbal complex is unusual in that there is evidence that the verbal
complex results from the grammaticalization of complement structures. The Cholan
and Yucatecan languages preserve evidence of this process in their incompletive verb
forms which have nominalized complements. The dependent construction may have
originally derived from a complement to verbs of movement. It was later extended to
irrealis contexts such as negation in Q’anjob’al and the subjunctive in Yucatec. The
process of complementation results in distinct verb suffixes which register the different
contexts of complementation. Adverb insertion and changes in absolutive placement
hint at the origin of the indicative form as a verbal complement. The indicative forms
are now grammaticalized as verbs rather than verbal complements.
I made use of comparative data from different Mayan languages as well as historical
data from Yucatec to argue that a complementation cycle is at work across the Mayan
language family. Once the cycle has been described we can compare the rates at which
the languages move through the cycle. Huastec, Yucatec and the Cholan languages have
progressed relatively quickly to the point where some of the languages have lost overt
aspect marking. The K’iche’an branch of the languages have preserved the aspect mark-
ers to a greater extent, but even in these languages aspect marking shows considerable
flux (Robertson 1992). The comparison across the Mayan languages also reveals differ-
ent pathways of complementation. The Yucatecan and Cholan languages have pursued
a path of nominalization while Mam followed a path of dependent complements to
movement verbs. K’iche’ has adhered closely to the indicative path.
The cycle of complementation in Mayan languages has affected aspect marking
disproportionately to the other parts of the Mayan verbal complex. The status and
cross-referencing affixes have changed much less than the aspect markers. Comple-
mentation has also played a crucial role in creating and maintaining the characteristic
agglutinative morphology in the Mayan verbal complex.
The complementation structure of the verbal complex suggests that Mayan lan-
guages are unusual in their preference for complex structures over single clauses. Fur-
ther evidence of this bias can be found in the light verb constructions of the Cholan
languages, the serial verb constructions of the Tzeltalan languages and the nearly ob-
ligatory use of movement verbs in the Mamean languages. The complementation pref-
erence also has radical implications for the acquisition of Mayan languages. Children
have to acquire Mayan languages from complex sentences only. Mayan children cannot
 Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages 

use the status suffixes correctly without understanding their distinctive contexts of
complementation.

References

Aissen, Judith. 2007. Handouts of the Workshop on Complementation. Taller sobre comple-
mentación en lenguas mesoamericanas. Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala: OKMA.
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen. 1998. Time Relations in Discourse: Evidence from a Comparative Approach
to Yukatek Maya. Wageningen: Ponsen & Looijen.
Bricker, Victoria R. 1981. The source of the ergative split in Yucatec Maya. Journal of Mayan
Linguistics 2(2): 83–127.
Bricker, Victoria, Po’ot Yah, Eleuterio & Dzul de Po’ot, Ofelia. 1998. A Dictionary of The Maya
Language As Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City UT: University of Utah Press.
Caz Cho, Sergio. 2007. Informe de Variación Dialectal en Q’eqchi’. Guatemala: Cholsamaj.
Dayley, Jon P. 1981. Voice and ergativity in Mayan languages. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 2(2): 3–82.
Dayley, Jon P. 1985. Tzutujil Grammar. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
England, Nora C. 1983. A Grammar of Mam, A Mayan Language. Austin TX: University of
Texas Press.
England, Nora C. 1994. Autonomia de los Idiomas Mayas: Historia e Identidad. Guatemala:
Cholsamaj.
Furbee-Losee, Louanna. 1976. The Correct Language: Tojolabal. A Grammar with Ethnographic
Notes. New York NY: Garland.
Hofling, Charles Andrew. 2006. A sketch of the history of the verbal complex in Yukatekan
Mayan languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 72(3): 367–396.
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Kaufman, Terrence. 1976. Proyecto de Alfabetos y Ortografias para Escribir las Lenguas May-
ances. Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion.
Kaufman, Terrence. 1990. Algunos rasgos estructurales de los idiomas Mayances con referencia
especial al K’iche’. In Lecturas Sobre la Lingüistica Maya, Nora C. England & Stephen R.
Elliott (eds), 59–114. Guatemala: CIRMA.
Keller, Kathryn C. & Luciano G. Plácido. 1997. Diccionario Chontal de Tabasco. Tucson AZ: SIL.
Larsen, Thomas W. & Norman, William M. 1979. Correlates of ergativity in Mayan Grammar. In
Ergativity: Towards a Theory of Grammatical Relations, Frans Plank (ed), 347–370. New
York NY: Academic Press.
Malchic Nicolás, Bernardo, Manuel, Mó Isém, Romelia & Tul Rax, Augusto. 2000. Variación
Dialectal en Poqom. Guatemala: Cholsamaj.
Mateo Pedro, Pedro. 2008. Nominalization in Q’anjob’al. Ms, The University of Kansas.
McQuown, Norman A. 1967. Classical Yucatec (Maya). In Handbook of Middle American Indi-
ans, Vol.5, Robert Wauchope & Norman A. McQuown (eds), 201–247. Austin TX: Univer-
sity of Texas Press.
del Prado, Ramírez & Alejandro Curiel. 2007. Everything you wanted to know about comple-
mentation in Tojolabal and more! Taller sobre Complementación en Lenguas Mesoameri-
canas. Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala: OKMA.
Robertson, John S. 1980. The Structure of Pronoun Incorporation in the Mayan Verbal Complex.
New York NY: Garland Press.
 Clifton Pye

Robertson, John S. 1992. The History of Tense/Aspect/Mood/Voice in the Mayan Verbal Complex.
Austin TX: University of Texas Press.
Sántiz, Roberto & Gilles Polian. 2007. Complementación en tseltal. Taller sobre complement-
ación en lenguas mesoamericanas. Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala: OKMA.
Vázquez Alvarez, Juan Jesús. 2002. Morfología del verbo de la lengua chol de Tila, Chiapas. MA
thesis. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Instituto
Nacional Indigenista.
 chapter 12

The preposition cycle in English

Cathleen Waters
University of Toronto

Historical facts on prepositions show a cycle in which semantic bleaching of spatial

meaning is followed by the addition of a new prepositional element. In this paper,
I outline a syntactic process to complement this semantic process by focusing on a
group of English prepositions that have similar semantic and syntactic properties:
above, behind, below, beyond, inside, outside, and in front. I show that, over time,
a structure with two adjacent heads, Loc and AxPart, is reanalyzed as the higher
Loc head followed by a null AxPart. This reanalysis sets the stage for the renewal
of the cycle with the addition of either a new AxPart element, or, the subsequent
reanalysis of nested prepositions as Loc and AxPart heads.

1. Introduction1

The etymologies of some English prepositions demonstrate a cycle in which spatial

meaning is reinforced by the periodic addition of a new spatial element. To comple-
ment this semantic process, I suggest a syntactic cycle involving the internal structure
of prepositional phrases. I focus on a small group of English prepositions that have
been posited by Svenonius (to appear) to form a class, and thus to have some commo-
nality of internal syntactic structure. This group is comprised of above, behind, below,
beyond, inside, outside, and in front. Focusing on only this group allows for a manage-
able scope, though the analysis is likely to apply to other spatial prepositions in English
and to spatial prepositions cross-linguistically.
In this first section, I outline the structure of the paper and I present some histori-
cal data for the group of prepositions under consideration. In addition, I review

1. Many thanks to the participants of the Linguistic Cycles workshop, especially Elly van Gel-
deren and the anonymous reviewer, and to Olena Tsurska, Derek Denis, and Annick Morin for
their feedback and ideas on this paper. Thanks also to Michela Ippolito, Elizabeth Cowper and
Diane Massam for comments on an earlier, related paper.
Citation abbreviations are as follows: (Corpus/Work) where the corpora are OED = Oxford
English Dictionary, PG = Project Gutenberg, G = Google search; a list of works and authors
cited is given in the Appendix.
 Cathleen Waters

generally observed tendencies of the grammaticalization process for prepositions. I

outline, in a pre-theoretical manner, the cycle suggested by the historical data, namely,
the periodic addition of new spatial elements to existing prepositions. In Section 2, I
summarize recent syntactic work by Svenonius on the classification of English preposi-
tions and the internal syntactic structure of prepositional phrases. Using these findings,
I demonstrate that variation in the behavior of different prepositions of the group is a
result of a difference in whether one of the heads (specifically, the AxPart head) is null.
In Section 3, I use this syntactic framework to describe a syntactic process that operates
in tandem with the cycle of semantic bleaching. The cycle consists of three stages. In
stage one, neither head is null. In stage two, the two non-null heads are reanalyzed as a
single, higher head, though there may be synchronic variation. In the final stage, the
variation disappears, and only the structure with the null lower head is possible. This
reanalysis to a structure with an obligatorily null head creates an environment where a
new, non-null head can be subsequently added in the lower position, renewing the
cycle. To illustrate how the renewal process progresses, I introduce additional historical
and present-day data which shows that while there is more than one mechanism to
trigger the renewal process, the ultimate result is the same, renewed structure.
To begin, I turn to previously observed tendencies in the grammaticalization of
prepositions. Adpositions, often classed as function words, are considered inherently
more grammaticalized than some other types of words, such as nouns (Hopper and
Traugott 2003: 4). As different prepositions show different degrees of grammaticaliza-
tion, a further distinction can be made between “functional” prepositions (e.g., for)
and “non-functional” prepositions (e.g., through) (Roberts and Roussou 2003: 227).
Prepositions are considered to be completely grammaticalized when they have lost all
spatial content (Roberts and Roussou 2003: 222).
Prepositional elements themselves frequently arise from grammaticalization of
other forms, usually along one of two paths, though both paths are possible in the same
language (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer 1991: 235–6). First, they may arise from
verbs, generally through an intermediate stage as co-verbs, and then, with the loss of
verbal marking such as agreement, prepositions (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer
1991: 2). Alternatively, prepositions may arise from nominals, frequently nouns refer-
ring to body parts (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer 1991: 125) or nouns that refer to a
part of an object (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 110), moving through a stage of adver-
bial use and then to a spatial prepositional use.2 Once established as spatial preposi-
tions, other prepositional uses, such as expressing temporal, causal, or benefactive re-
lationships may arise, the progression of which has been observed to involve increasing
abstractness (e.g., agentive uses involving human participants develop before causal
uses with non-humans) (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer 1991: 157). However, even
after more abstract meanings come into being, spatial meanings can persist, though the

2. Of course, prepositional use is not the obligatory next stage after adverbial use for nomi-
nals, see van Gelderen (2004: 82) for an example with negation.
 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

spatial meaning may be reinforced, as seen in “by the railway station > down by the
railway station” (Hopper and Traugott 2003: 110). Presumably, this reinforcement is
necessary as the spatial content has weakened, i.e. semantic bleaching has taken place.
This process of reinforcing the prepositional content can be seen clearly in the ety-
mologies of the prepositions seen in Figure 1; a new spatial element be- (and later a-)
or side is affixed to an existing directional/prepositional element.
The reinforcement seen in Figure 1 is now an inalienable element of each preposi-
tion. However, synchronically, we also see the optional addition of a second preposi-
tion-like element with a full prepositional phrase:
(1) a. up above our heads
b. down in the valley
c. over by the bus stop
This juxtaposition of two prepositional elements is crucial to the reanalysis process,
and I return to it in Section 3. Before discussing the cycle, however, I discuss some
syntactic proposals for the internal structure of prepositional phrases headed by the
prepositions under study here.

OED Etymologies

be + uf + an a + bufan above
by + up + case on + above

be + hind + ana behind

by + behind + from

be + 3eond + ana beyond

by + the farther side + from

be + lowe below
by + low

with + out without + side outside

with + in within + side inside

Figure 1. Preposition etymologies from the OED

 Cathleen Waters

2. The internal structure of phrases with projective prepositions

Using syntactic and semantic behaviors, Svenonius proposes a four-group classification

schema for a subset of English spatial prepositions: Projective, Bounded, Extended, and
Particle. Table 1 lists the current population for each type (Svenonius, to appear: 2).
While some further semantic differences exist between members of a single group,
the differences across groups distinguish the classes from each other and are reflected
in his proposed differences in syntactic structure; the facts relevant to my subsequent
description of the cycle are discussed here.
The most fundamental distinction made by Svenonius is a distinction between a
default reading expressing a location versus a path (to appear: 1). For instance, Sveno-
nius argues that the Projective class (the focus of this paper) is more naturally read as
expressing locative meanings; however, they can optionally have directional meanings,
as shown in (2):
(2) a. The plane flew behind the trees.
b. The rabbit jumped inside the cage.
c. The rabbit jumped outside the cage.
d. The submarine sailed below the ice.
e. The marathoners ran beyond the city limits.
f. The revelers danced in front of the palace.
g. The mountaineers climbed above the dam. (based on Svenonius, to ap-
pear: 19)
In contrast, the most natural reading of an Extended class preposition is to express
motion along a path, as shown in (3):
(3) a. The plane flew around the trees.
b. The rabbit jumped through the cage.
c. The rabbit jumped past the cage.
d. The submarine sailed under the ice.

Table 1. Preposition types (from Svenonius)

Projective Bounded Extended Particle

behind among around up

in front of between through down
inside next to across on
outside beside along off
above upon over in
below near under out
beyond against past away
 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

e. The marathoners ran along the river.

f. The revelers danced across the palace.
g. The mountaineers climbed over the dam. (based on Svenonius, to ap-
pear: 19–20)
In addition, Projective prepositions combine awkwardly with each other and other
locatives (in non-list readings), but are perfectly acceptable in combination with Par-
ticles higher in the structure (e.g., up), as seen here in (4):3
(4) a. ?the boat drifted beyond above the dam.
b. the boat drifted up above the dam. (based on Svenonius, to appear: 12)
Svenonius argues that, in cases such as (4b), the use of up serves to indicate that the
boat is higher than some salient viewpoint, such as the speaker (to appear: 17). In
other words, (4b) would be paraphrased by something like up there above the dam. In
forms such as (4b), the Particle occurs higher in the structure than the phrase contain-
ing the Projective preposition.4 Furthermore, the co-occurrence of Particle and Projec-
tive prepositions is more likely when both elements have similar meanings (Svenonius,
to appear: 18). These two facts are key to the process of reanalysis discussed later.
In addition to proposals about preposition classes, Svenonius has also suggested a
universal hierarchy within the prepositional phrase in which “the contentful material
of spatial adpositions is distributed over a series of functional heads” (to appear: 19).
The structure that Svenonius gives for in front of the house is reproduced in (5):
(5) in front of the house (Svenonius, to appear: 5)
PlaceP
wo
Place AxPartP
in 3
AxPart KP
front 3
K DP
of 6
the house

3. In some cases, Projective prepositions are acceptable in combination with lower Particles,
but I note that these do not have the same interpretation: e.g., John walked to the store. His dog
trotted behind on the sidewalk. can mean behind John, but not *behind there). I suggest that
cases such as these are actually two prepositional phrases, the first of which has a null comple-
ment: [behind Ø (= John)] [on the sidewalk].
4. My description below of the reanalysis process for prepositions holds regardless of whether
up in (4b) is considered to be an adverb or a preposition, so I will use the Svenonius model that
up is a preposition in these cases. I leave aside the question of the nature of particles occurring
in phrasal verbs.
 Cathleen Waters

However, Svenonius subsequently states that Place can be “decomposed into at least
the components Deg – Loc – Ax(ial)Part – K” (Svenonius, to appear: 7). As he does not
indicate that this decomposition should be considered nesting (i.e. it does not appear
that he is suggesting the Place head has four subparts above another AxPart), his state-
ment suggests that prepositional phrases with Projection prepositions have the inter-
nal structure seen in (6):
(6) Deg – Loc – Ax(ial)Part – K – DP
Svenonius describes the Deg layer as home to measure expressions such as one meter
in one meter above the bridge (to appear: 7). However, in cases such as in front of the
house, which lack a measure phrase, Deg is presumably null. Therefore, although
Svenonius does not explicitly state this conclusion, I will assume that elements such as
the in element of in front of the house are Loc heads. Thus, I assume that the structure
of cases such as (5) have the fuller internal structure seen in (7):
(7) in front of the house (decomposed)
PlaceP
wo
Deg LocP
Ø 3
Loc AxPartP
in 3
AxPart KP
front 3
K DP
of 6
the house
The head called Ax(ial)Part is proposed in Svenonius (2006) to explain cross-linguistic
data. AxPart is a nominal-like element indicating a space which is determined in rela-
tion to a part of an object. For example, the front element of in front is an AxPart.
Other AxParts in English include top and side (Svenonius 2006: 49). However, Sveno-
nius clearly distinguishes AxPart from N; for instance, the use of an adjective with an
AxPart is ungrammatical, whereas the use of the same adjective with the correspond-
ing nominal is acceptable:
(8) a. There was a kangaroo in the smashed-up front of the car.
b. *There was a kangaroo in smashed-up front of the car.
(Svenonius 2006: 50)
It is also clear from (8) that the nominal and AxPart uses of front do not refer to the
same space (Svenonius 2006: 50). Although AxParts commonly evolve from nouns, it
is possible for AxParts to arise from something besides a nominal. For example,
 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

beneath arose from be (by) + niðan (down), where the second element was a direction,
rather than part of an object (Svenonius 2006: 73). As I discuss below, this flexibility in
what can become an AxPart is important to the cycle of preposition renewal.
Furthermore, Svenonius argues that the of element in a phrase such as in front of
the house is a case marker, rather than a (second) preposition (to appear: 4).5 However,
of is not present in all prepositional phrases with Projective prepositions:
(9) a. above/beyond/behind/below (*)of the bridge.
b. in front/inside/outside of the house.
As K is realized as of where one (non-null) nominal element, the DP (the house), is in
complement position to another nominal-like element, the AxPart head (front), I assume
that the presence of the case marker of occurs only when the KP has not directly been
assigned structural case (e.g., by the Loc head), but rather has received inherent case,
similar to the destruction of the city (Chomsky 1986: 192, see also Anderson 2006: 119).6
Having established the internal structure of prepositional phrases with in front, I
will now discuss the structure of prepositional phrases with other Projective preposi-
tions: above, below, beyond, behind, inside, and outside. It is immediately apparent that
they do not all behave identically; the first four have some distinct characteristics from
the latter two. The first four never appear with of, whereas the latter two can (see (9)
above). Furthermore, the prepositions in (9b) are often described as being composi-
tional in nature (e.g., Hopper and Traugott 2003: 110), whereas those in (9a) are usu-
ally treated as single morphemes (e.g., Svenonius, to appear: 9).
Svenonius describes the structure of behind as consisting of an AxPart with a null
Loc (to appear: 9). However, this analysis is problematic. First, if AxParts alone could
perform prepositional functions, we would expect forms like (10) whereas these forms
arise with non-null Loc heads, as seen in (11):
(10) a. Ø front of the house
b. Ø top of the table
(11) a. in front of the house
b. on top of the table
In addition, we would expect that non-null Loc heads could combine with the AxPart
heads in a way that could be paraphrased in relation to the space identified by the
AxPart. However, as shown in (12), this is not currently the case for behind (as I de-
scribe in a later section, the availability of this interpretation appears to change over

5. I maintain the K head below it in order to be consistent with the hierarchy, though nothing
in my analysis hinges on the open question of whether K is necessary or not, i.e. the analysis
presented here is also viable if a DP or NP can take case directly.
6. The “rule of of-insertion is a ‘default case’, applying only when there is no preposition avail-
able that inherently assigns the theta-role” (Chomsky 1986: 194). This also implies that the K head
in this structure in English is always null. For a more detailed discussion, see Waters (2008).
 Cathleen Waters

time). In case (12b), similar to the situation described above for up above the dam, the
presence of an element such as in before a phrase with a Projective preposition has a
meaning along the lines of in some salient place, behind the desk:
(12) a. in front of the house = in the space to the front of the house
b. in behind the desk ≠ in the space to the back of the desk
Finally, if the assumption is correct that of­-insertion only takes place when a non-null
AxPart and KP are in a sister relationship, then we would expect cases like behind to
occur with of, which is not the case, as seen in (9a).
However, an analysis in which these prepositions are Loc heads followed by null
AxParts is more convincing. First, it correctly predicts the lack of of-insertion in (9a)
because the null AxPart would not trigger insertion. In addition, it eliminates the pre-
dictions of AxParts without Loc heads in (10), as the Loc head is occupied. The only
thing that must be explained, however, is why it is not currently possible for above,
below, beyond, and behind to combine with other AxParts, if their AxPart is null. As I
demonstrate in the next section, this constraint does not hold diachronically. At any
point in time, however, there may be semantic, rather than syntactic constraints on
combinations. Specifically, the inherent spatial meaning of cases such as above pre-
vents their combination with overt AxParts, which is not true of Loc heads like in.
While a broad definition of in would include a meaning of containment, the Loc ele-
ment in of in front does not imply this containment (in front of the house can be in the
open air, contained by nothing). Thus, it appears that a Loc head such as the in of in
front has lost some of its inherent spatial reference. On the other hand, the Loc heads
above, below, beyond, and behind do have reference to a spatial area as part of their
meaning, e.g., above refers to a the space higher than some reference point. As AxParts
also refer to spaces, we would expect them to be problematic in combination with any
Loc head which refers to some area in space. Thus, the restriction on the Loc heads in
(9a) and AxParts appears to be a semantic, rather than a syntactic issue. Given this
evidence, the structure I assume for the prepositions in (9a) is given in (13):
(13) above the house
LocP
wo
Loc AxPartP
above 3
AxPart KP
Ø 3
K DP
Ø 6
the house
Finally, I turn to inside and outside. It is interesting to note that of­-insertion can apply
optionally with inside and outside:
 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

(14) a. Mary is inside of the house

b. Mary is inside Ø the house
Furthermore, unlike above or beyond, for instance, these two prepositions are gener-
ally described as being compositional in nature with the form in + side (e.g., Hopper
and Traugott 2003: 110; Svenonius, to appear: 4). This implies that the two prepositions
in (14) have a Loc head (in and out) and an AxPart side. However, their variability with
respect to of-insertion suggests that two structures are possible. Cases like inside of the
house have a non-null AxPart and a structure parallel to (7). Cases like inside the house
have a re-analyzed Loc head and a null AxPart, with a structure similar to (13). As I
show in the next section, this variation is part of a cycle of reanalysis and renewal.
In this section, I have demonstrated that the universal structure for prepositional
phrases headed by Projective prepositions plays out in slightly different ways, depend-
ing on the preposition. There appear to be three different types of Projective preposi-
tions: null AxPart (above, beyond, below, behind), optionally null AxPart (inside, out-
side), and overt AxPart (in front). I will show in the next section that this three-way
division is three stages of a single grammaticalization process.

3. The preposition cycle: Structural and semantic reanalysis

Returning to the historical data, we see some interesting facts about the members of
the Projective group of prepositions. First, Table 2 shows the approximate date of first
attestation as a preposition for each one.
The prepositions which prohibit AxPart (the first four) are all attested much ear-
lier than those with an optional AxPart. Furthermore, the item in the list with the most
recent attestation (in front) is the one with an overt AxPart. Looking again at the data
as seen in Figure 1, we see that, historically, above, below, beyond, and behind were all
formed by the affixation of either a- or be- to various roots. In fact, Svenonius analyzes
these cases as the “Place” heads (which I analyze as Loc heads) be- and a- combining

Table 2. Earliest attested date as a preposition for the Projective class

Preposition First use as P (OED)

beyond 1000
behind 1200
above 1340
below 1575
inside 1790
outside 1795
in front 1847
 Cathleen Waters

historically with AxParts such as buven (2006: 74). Therefore, while a case such as
above once had a non-null AxPart, it has subsequently been reanalyzed as a Loc head
+ null AxPart. Therefore, we see that, at different points in time, the non-null status of
the AxPart varies.
The data further suggest that this process is a cycle with three stages. In the first
stage, a innovative prepositional element has both a Loc head and an overt AxPart
(arising, for instance, from the grammaticalization and reanalysis of a relational noun,
as discussed earlier). Later, the Loc + AxPart head is reanalyzed to Loc + null AxPart;
this is the second stage, and, as we see with inside and outside, the system at this stage
may have variability. Finally, the AxPart becomes prohibited, and the variability disap-
pears. Figure 2 outlines this process, using prepositional phrases with the Projective
class of prepositions as examples.
Assuming that the process of inherent case marking between two nominals by of
was in place by the end of the Early Modern English period, the model outlined in
Figure 2 implies that forms with of should arise before those without of. Examining the
earliest attestations for the forerunners of inside and outside (withinside and without-
side, respectively), we see this is indeed the case. (15a) shows the earliest data for the
prepositional use of withoutside, which occurs with of, and which is fifty years earlier
than the earliest attestation of the prepositional use of withoutside without a following
case marker (15b). The data in (16a-b) show similar results for withinside.
(15) a. 1638: Placing the Indians...without side of our soldiers in a ring battalia
(oed/cmh)
b. 1686: Why may not these imperfect Metalls…grow...withoutside the stalks
(oed/rp)

Stages of the reanalysis process

Stage I: Separate Place head and AxPart

[Place in [AxPart front [K of [DP the car]]]]
Stage II: Variability
[Place in [AxPart side [K of [DP the car]]]]
[Place inside [AxPart [K [DP the car]]]
Stage III: Non-null AxPart prohibited
[Place above [AxPart [K [DP the car]]]

Figure 2. Stages of the preposition reanalysis process (with examples)

 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

(16) a. 1712: What passes … within-side of those Vehicles (oed/cmh)

b. 1760: The stake … they run up withinside the spinal bone (oed/hb)7
This variability continued at the time of the loss of with to form inside and outside as
seen in (17) and (18), yielding the variability that continues today. In fact, there is even
documented intra-speaker variation, as seen in (19).
(17) 1769: Wearing their shirts withoutside of their cloaths. (oed/jb)
(18) 1774: Succeeding each other, one without side the other, like circles in dis-
turbed water. (oed/og)
(19) 1783:
a. Withinside of the hedge there is a bamboo pagar or paling… (pg/wm)
b. …a small kind of leech, which dropped on us from the leaves of the trees,
and got withinside our clothes. (pg/wm)
c. … these feasts are never suffered to take place withinside their own
kampongs. (pg/wm)
The process seen above is consistent with observed patterns of grammaticalization. In
the first stage, the elements are independent and each has lexical meaning. For exam-
ple, in and front are not combined in the orthography and both are polysemous with
what would be recognized as free morphemes (in and the nominal front). However,
their meaning together is already different than the sum of the preposition + nominal
(as described above), suggesting they have moved along the cline towards grammati-
calization. In the second stage, one element optionally, but not obligatorily, is null.
Thus we see inside and outside appear as single words in the orthography, though the
structures are variable. Finally, the AxPart becomes null as the previously independent
elements are reanalyzed as a single, higher head, and their individual standing as mor-
phemes may disappear. The reanalyzed element is interpreted as the higher Loc head
for semantic and syntactic reasons. Semantically, the Loc head, rather than the AxPart
head, provides directional information based on the region identified as the Ground
by the DP (see Svenonius, to appear: 7 for a detailed account). Syntactically, this se-
mantic distinction between the two heads suggests that the Loc head must have a fea-
ture such as [i-direction] which is not present in the AxPart. As spatial prepositional
phrases convey directional meaning, we would expect that a reanalysis of Loc + Ax-
Part would retain the [i-direction] feature and thus the reanalysis yields an element
that is a Loc head.

7. The OED contains an entry which, at first glance, appears to be an earlier use of withinside
followed directly by its object: both without and withinside other plants (1686: OED/RP). How-
ever, this instance of withinside occurs in conjunction with without, a preposition that, at that
time, as today, directly assigned accusative case, as seen here: A little Chappell a mile without the
Village (1632: OED/WL). As accusative case would be assigned by without, the process of of-
insertion would not apply.
 Cathleen Waters

In and of itself, this is a process of grammaticalization, but not a cycle. To com-

plete the preposition cycle, a further step is necessary: a new AxPart must be added.
Based on the historical data, there are two possible ways this can happen.
In the more straightforward case, the cycle may be renewed simply by the addition
of a new AxPart head. For example, Figure 3 (data from the OED) shows the evolution
of outside. The adverb outen started as an adverbial element and then became an Ax-
Part, in this case following with. However, by the early seventeenth century without
had been reanalyzed as a Loc head, and thus it was possible to add a new AxPart (side).
As demonstrated in the data above, the AxPart phrase began to be followed by of. Over
time, with was lost, and the present day preposition outside came into use. A similar
path was taken by inside (via withinside).
The historical data also reveal a second means to renew the cycle. As seen in the
data in Figure 1, an older element may be bolstered by the addition of a new preposi-
tional element, such as by or on. For example, the prepositional element a (on) was
added to bufan (above) in the early fourteenth century. However, as the Loc head is
already (and always) occupied in the hierarchy, it would seem no position would be
available for adding a new prepositional element. However, evidence from Present Day
English suggests how an additional reanalysis allows the introduction of a new AxPart.

The cycle for outside

[Adverb outen]

c.900 [Loc with [AxPart outen]]

[Loc without [AxPart Ø]] reanalysis

c.1640 [Loc without [AxPart side]] new AxPart

[Loc without [AxPart side]] reanalysis

c.1690 or
[Loc withoutside[AxPart Ø]] variability

[Loc out [AxPart side]]

or
Present day [Loc outside[AxPart Ø]] variability

Figure 3. The preposition cycle for outside

 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

As noted earlier, it is possible to have what appears to be multiple adjacent preposi-

tions, and these are more common when the two prepositions have similar meanings:
(20) up above our heads
The elements that can appear higher in the structure are Particles, including up, down
and in; these Particles also occur as Loc heads. Thus, we have two versions of each
Particle: e.g., up1, which occurs higher in the structure than the Loc head, and up2,
which is a Loc head. A structure such as up1 above can be reanalyzed such that the
second element (above) becomes an AxPart following the homophonous Place head
(up2). This process does not involve the higher elements moving down the tree, but
rather it is a reinterpretation of a whole structure. As noted earlier, AxPart can evolve
from a variety of syntactic types, not only nominals, which allows some flexibility in
what may be recruited for the AxPart role. Furthermore, as cases such as above appear
to retain an inherent reference to a space, they are good candidates for reanalysis as
AxPart. The presence of two preposition-like elements can plausibly lead to a reanaly-
sis of the structure; this process is one of reinforcement, rather than a change in mean-
ing. As the OED states, “The simple ufan originally expressed the whole idea of its
successive expansions b(e)ufan, a-b(e)ufan.” Based on these observations, Figure 4
outlines how the cycle has taken place for above (all data from the OED).
I have suggested in Figure 4 that we are approaching reanalysis because there is
data from Present Day English sources which suggest that we are on the verge of the

The cycle for above

[Adverb ufan]

c.1000 [Loc be [AxPart ufan]]

[Loc be (e)ufan[AxPart Ø]] reanalysis

[“P1” a [Place buven[AxPart Ø]]]

c.1300 [Loc(“P2”) a [AxPart buven]] reanalysis

Present day [“P1” up [Loc above[AxPart Ø]] approaching

variability

Figure 4. The preposition cycle for above

 Cathleen Waters

next renewal of the cycle. The data in (21) – (24) were collected from Google from
what are plausibly native speakers:
(21) This idea up above of Rahm Emanuel would be a waste of time and sorely
needed funds. (G/G1)
(22) So if I chose one of these other ones you would see a preview down below of
what that line looked like. (G/G2)
(23) I love the picture up above of your site (G/G3)
(24) You’re on your way to down below of your own goddamned intention (G/G4)
While the of phrases in (21) and (22) clearly relate to the nominal preceding up above
and down below, they provide an environment for reanalysis. The data in (23) and (24),
on the other hand, appear to be early indications of reanalysis, as it clear from the
larger context in which of your site in (23) appears that it refers to the location (not the
content) of the photo.8 Furthermore, the of phrase in (24) clearly does not apply to the
preceding nominal (way).
What determines which path is taken? Both cycles, the one seen with outside and
the one with above, are reinforcements of the previous meaning, rather than introduc-
tions of a new meaning; the two paths achieve the same end. Therefore, there must be
something outside of the cycle which determines which route a preposition follows. It
is interesting to note that without contains an element (out) that also exists (polyse-
mously) as a Particle. Thus, in cases where the Loc head resembles a Particle, the rea-
nalysis may tend toward the addition of an AxPart, whereas Loc heads that do not re-
semble existing Particles may be analyzed in conjunction with a higher Particle.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, I outlined the syntactic processes that contribute to the cycle of rein-
forcement observed in spatial prepositions in English by focusing on above, behind,
below, beyond, inside, outside, and in front, prepositions with similar semantic and
syntactic behavior. Using a recent proposal by Svenonius for a hierarchy of functional
heads, and historical data, I demonstrated that the prepositions in this class are at dif-
ferent stages in a grammaticalization process, namely, the reanalysis of Loc and AxPart
heads. The least grammaticalized of the group is in front, in which the AxPart is non-
null; the most grammaticalized are beyond, behind¸ below, and above, in which the
AxPart is always null. Furthermore, I outlined how the presence of the null head ulti-
mately creates a situation in which renewal of the cycle can occur. The renewal may
take place with the addition of a new AxPart head, as seen in the evolution of outside.
Alternatively, the Loc head and a higher Particle element may be reanalyzed as Loc +

8. As a native speaker of English, I find these last two slightly odd, but not nearly as bad as
something like above of your site.
 Chapter 12. The preposition cycle in English 

AxPart, as has occurred in the history of above. These changes taken together form a
grammaticalization process, the preposition cycle. In the future, it would be interest-
ing to extend this model to other spatial and non-spatial prepositions, both in English
and in other languages.

References

Anderson, John M. 2006. Modern Grammars of Case. Oxford: OUP.

Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York NY: Praeger.
Gelderen, Elly van. 2004. Grammaticalization as Economy [Linguistik Aktuell-Linguistics Today
71]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Heine, Bernd, Claudi, Ulrike & Hünnemeyer, Friederike. 1991. Grammaticalization: A Concep-
tual Framework. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Hopper, Paul & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: CUP.
Project Gutenberg Online. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page. Retrieved January 2009.
Roberts, Ian & Roussou, Anna. 2003. Syntactic Change: A Minimalist Approach to Grammati-
calization. Cambridge: CUP.
Svenonius, Peter. To appear. Spatial P in English. In The Cartography of Syntactic Structures,
Guglielmo Cinque & Luigi Rizzi (eds), Vol. 6. Oxford: OUP.
Svenonius, Peter. 2006. The emergence of axial parts. Nordlyd: Tromsø Working Papers in Lan-
guage and Linguistics 33: 49–77.
The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Retrieved December 2007.
Waters, Cathleen. 2008. The internal structure of place class prepositional phrases in English.
Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistics Association annual meeting 2008.

Appendix – Abbreviations in data

CMH: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Ser. III. VI. 23. 1638.
G1: http://www.examiner.com/blog/includes/loadComments.cfm?id=46655&blogID
=536&commentcount=811&lastID=64636%2C62486&stRow=1%2C21%2C41.
G2: http://movielibrary.lynda.com/transcripts/37048/WordPerfect_Office_X4_Essen-
tial_Training/Creating_a_table_of_contents/
G3: http://adifferentlight.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/do-you-really-want-to-hurt-
me-respecting-the-physical-boundaries-of-people-with-disabilities/
G4: http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Under_the_Sea,_the_City_(Chronicle)
HB: Brooke, Henry, 1703–1783. The fool of quality; or the history of Henry, Earl of
Moreland 1760–72.
JB: Bush, John. Hibernia curiosa. 1764.
 Cathleen Waters

OG: Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730–1774. A survey of experimental philosophy. 1774.

RP: Plot, Robert, 1640–1696. The natural history of Staffordshire. 1686.
WL: Lithgow, William, 1582–1645. The totall discourse of the rare adventures and
painefull peregrinations of long nineteen yeares travayles III. 94. 1632.
WM: Marsden, William, 1754–1836. The History of Sumatra: Containing An Account
Of The Government, Laws, Customs And Manners Of The Native Inhabitants. 1783.
part iv

An experiment
 chapter 13

The study of syntactic cycles

as an experimental science

Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

University of Arizona

Linguistic cycles in the syntactic expressions of particular functions (e.g.,

negation) exemplify a dynamic competition between distinct representational
architectural constraints. We study these constraints in an experimentally
controllable synchronic paradigm, using situated artificial language learning
to induce syntactic cycles. Adults and children learn to use different languages
in production and comprehension. The languages appear with frequency-
controlled variability in alternate forms with a directionality that the
representational architectural constraints predict. Each subject’s learned output
is the training input of the next, to accelerate syntactic changes. Questions
include: do learners pick up new usage patterns in the predicted cyclical
direction; do children change their usage in the predicted direction faster or
with weaker frequency bias than adults; what is the relation between emerging
changes in language usage and grammaticality intuitions? This research
program offers detailed information about cyclic transitions that can enrich an
understanding of historical data. Most important, it can give direct experimental
confirmation of the dynamic presence of the architectural constraints proposed
as the cause of historical cycles.

Introduction

The study of language histories has served the field of theoretical linguistics by taking
historical changes as the effects of dynamic inner constraints on possible languages
that create the changes. Of great interest for linguistic theory is the discovery that cer-
tain kinds of patterns of change are repetitive: in the simplest case, a particular lan-
guage structure type 1, becomes type 2, and then type 1 again, and then type 2…etc.
These are known as “historical cycles”, described in other chapters in this volume.1

1. Abbreviations include: HPP = Head Preference Principle; LMP = Late Merge Principle:
CFP = Clitic Formation Principle; FRP = Functional Recovery Principle; ALL = Artificial Lan-
guage Learning; sALL = Situated Artificial Language Learning.
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

Van Gelderen is a principal in creating a syntactic architectural theory of why the

cycles exist – essentially a dynamic between two kinds of representational constraints
in syntax. The important underlying theme is that at any given time, specific construc-
tions in the overt syntactic structure of a language reflect a computational compromise
between the different constraints on linguistic representations. Over time, one con-
straint dominates or replaces the other, and then is dominated or replaced by the other,
resulting in the overt historical cycle. Typical overt cycles are seen in negation, agree-
ment systems, pronominal systems, tense systems and other functional constructions.
The child learner is parent to the adult language. Thus, we are interested in under-
standing the language constraints and learning dynamics in the individual language learn-
er that result in the cycles of language change. The logic underlying our program is this:
(1) a. the language learner is the dominant force in re-analyzing his/her language,
b. historical cycles demonstrate the competition of different architectural
principles of syntactic representations,
c. the competing architectural principles must be available to the learner.
Thus, the historical facts motivate a dynamic architectural theory, which in turn must
claim that the dynamic is part of the language learner’s cognitive and linguistic reper-
toire. The problem we address here is how to study the learner’s access to the architec-
tural principles in a more direct way than delineating the historical cycles. That is, we
would like to find synchronic evidence that the child indeed applies the competing ar-
chitectural constraints as s/he learns the language.
Below, we outline how we are using a naturalistic, “situated” artificial language
paradigm and transmission of language training across “generations” of learners to
study experimentally the dynamics of language change. It is critical that the paradigm
can be used with children who are still in the normal language learning age range. The
kernel of the idea is first that we can structure the artificial language to be intermediate
between different historically attested cycles, and examine which direction the lan-
guage is changed by the learners as they make and transmit errors. Secondly, we can
manipulate the dynamics of how the training is presented, presenting critical examples
in different ways, to illuminate how the individual learner interacts with the data and
imposes constraints on it. Finally, we can probe the relationship between learning to
use a new grammar as knowledge shifts from one stage to another, with the emergence
of grammaticality intuitions about the new structures. This affords a unique opportu-
nity to study the relation between usage and intuitive categorical knowledge in a con-
trolled setting.
We first review salient aspects of van Gelderen’s proposals, current practice in arti-
ficial language learning, and recent artificial language studies of compressing the “evo-
lution” of language. Then we introduce our paradigm and some sample studies. The
reader should note that the application of sALL to the study of “synchronic cycles” was
sparked by the recent conference that resulted in this volume. We have created the
paradigm and are piloting studies but we do not yet have definitive data. Thus, the
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

initial goal of this paper is to outline the logic of the prediction that historical cycles
make for the language learner, and to present a method for studying those predictions.

1. The economy of language change

Van Gelderen (2004, 2008) proposes that two minimalist principles of computational
efficiency and locality largely drive syntactic change in conjunction with a cyclic proc-
ess of phonological weakening and strengthening. The reader will be aware that van
Gelderen’s theory of reference is the minimalist program, although the principles she
adduces may be statable in other frameworks. We do not dwell on the theoretical back-
ground here; the reader is again invited to consult the other papers in this volume. The
principles we will use are given in (2) and (3):
(2) The Head Preference Principle (HPP): Material in head positions is more
structurally accessible for feature checking compared to Spec-head checking.
The typical result of the HPP historically is that a double-marked process, e.g., for ne-
gation, which has to be analyzed as Spec+head, collapses to a single process, allowing
analysis of the head without Spec.
(3) Late Merge Principle (LMP): Lexical insertion (external merge) is preferred in
situ rather than requiring “move” (or “copying”, internal merge).
Typically, a lexical item in an embedded part of a phrase (e.g., in the VP) which moves
(or is copied) outside of the phrase becomes directly inserted in its final position and
takes on properties of a function word. For instance, nothing inside a VP becomes not
outside the VP. The associated result is that the word that originally required a theta
role, now becomes a pure “syntactic” word without a theta role.
Two additional well-attested principles play a critical role in interacting with these
principals in the dynamics of historical change. They are given as (4) and (5):
(4) Clitic Formation Principle (CFP): Functional elements with primarily formal
content become incorporated phonologically as components of head phrases.
(5) Functional Recoverability Principle (FRP): Functional elements must be suf-
ficiently clear phonologically to trigger distinct computational processes.
While learnable and economically constrained by the first two principles, the usability
of a grammar they motivate may suffer through reduced phonological clarity as the
function word becomes a clitic, thereby reducing its recoverability (e.g., /not/ goes to /
nt/). This can motivate the adoption of new elements to reinforce the increasingly pho-
nologically weak marker to make sure there is functional recoverability. As additional
elements (e.g. double negatives) appear, the cycle begins again. For example, consider
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

a canonical example of language change studied by Jespersen (1917) in Germanic lan-

guages. This is stated for English, following van Gelderen (2008) as Figure 1.
Stages L1 to L3 depict possible NegP constituents at various stages of the neg-
ative cycle.
At the L2 stage no thing becomes a grammaticalized negative marker, noght, and
the phonologically weak negative marker ne gradually becomes a clitic, leaving an
empty head under NegP. In L3, this position is filled with not, formerly in Spec, ac-
cording to the HPP. Roughly at the same time, noghi (as a negative marker) weakens
phonologically to not(n’t). The weakening eventually prompts the appearance of a new
reinforcing element and the cycle begins again. This aspect of the cycle can be seen in
those modern dialects of English that permit double negatives.
Jespersen’s Cycle of historical changes in the negative construction is a classic and
well-studied example of syntactic change. The evidence in general for syntactic cycles
comes largely from incomplete historical texts, making difficult an empirical investiga-
tion of the underlying driving factors, such as van Gelderen’s hypothesized economy
principles. Even the full negative cycle – portions of which are well-attested cross-lin-
guistically – has not been completely documented in a single coherent historical mod-
el (Dahl 1979).

NegP L1

no thing Neg’

Neg VP

ne no thing
FRP-Phonological LMP eliminates
strenghtening and ‘movement’ from VP
renewal of the cycle

L3
NegP NegP

Neg’ no thing Neg’

Neg VP Neg VP
HPP fills phonologically
weakened head with fromer
not Spec
ne
L2

Figure 1. The negative cycle

 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

The critical feature of van Gelderen’s ideas is the particular principles; the histori-
cal data serve as confirmation of them: thus, the incompleteness of historical data is
not a crippling problem, since complete prediction of the historical changes is not in-
trinsically required by the claim that they result from the interaction of the particular
structural constraints. However, it will be useful to be able to test the principles ac-
tively rather than being dependent on incomplete historical records. To that end, we
are applying a naturalistic paradigm for “situated” artificial language learning that can
then be used with adults and children to test the effect of the theoretical principles.
Below we discuss some background involving artificial language learning. We then
present our new paradigm and examples of how it may be used to test the synchronic
principles that have been proposed to explain the diachronic cycles.

2. Artificial language learning and change

In this section, we discuss artificial language learning in general, how it has been ap-
plied to language change, and some criticisms of the traditional paradigm.

2.1 Artificial language learning

In the more experimental areas of linguistic inquiry, artificial language learning (ALL)
paradigms have been used to study conditions on language learnability and processing
mechanisms. ALL paradigms have four salient features, given in (6):
(6) a. the structure of the grammar to be learned;
b. the way the evidence is presented to the subjects;
c. the discriminative response expected from the subjects to show learning.
d. the motive to learn the grammar.
In the most basic of these paradigms, a subject is passively exposed to strings gener-
ated by some form of a grammar (often finite state). After some training period, the
subject’s ability to distinguish novel strings generated by the target grammar from un-
grammatical strings is tested using a head-turn or listening time preference paradigm
(in the case of infants; cf Kemler Nelson et al. 1995; Gómez & Gerken 1999). In the
case of adults, a standard procedure is to present examples of grammatical strings and
then to assess learning through explicit grammaticality or recognition judgments (Re-
ber 1969). Procedures like these are limited to tests of simple pattern-recognition abil-
ity, usually of grammars with simple formal structure; attempts to teach passive sub-
jects more complex grammars have been generally unsuccessful.
Subjects can learn to make grammaticality judgments on more complex gram-
mars, including simple context-free grammars, when explicit instruction is provided.
In this version of the paradigm, a subject is presented with a series of grammatical and
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

ungrammatical strings and makes grammaticality judgment in response to each, re-

ceiving explicit feedback after each trial (cf. Friederici et al. 2006)
In a very small number of cases, subjects are taught to use the language in some
way, without being given explicit instruction in grammaticality – rather, their success-
ful use is dependent on creating or understanding or extending sequences with correct
grammatical knowledge (Bever and Hansen 1988). Perhaps the most natural proce-
dure of training and learning an artificial language to date is that introduced by Fried-
erici et al. (2002). Their ultimate goal involved examining brain activation patterns
when making grammaticality judgments about the artificial language they have
learned. Their language, “Brocanto”, had 14 words that characterize a small set of ob-
jects, verbs and locations in a matrix of locations on a screen. The language was inter-
esting in that it included “moves” that objects could make from one location to an-
other on the screen. Learning was inculcated by having subjects work in pairs, in which
each subject had to tell the other the move s/he had just made in Brocanto, and the
other subject had to make the corresponding move on his/her display. In this way,
Friederici et al. captured many aspects of normal language learning: notably, subjects
were motivated by the need to communicate, subjects received both production and
comprehension experience, and the communication was entirely verbal (with auto-
matic computer correction of errors). Subsequently, Morgan et al. (2009) have used a
variant of Brocanto, but with subjects trained individually in separate training blocks
with feedback for production and comprehension, as in Bever and Hansen.

2.2 All studies of language change

Over the past decade, a number of computational models have been developed in sup-
port of the idea that language ‘evolves’ as an adaptive means of transmitting cultural
information through successive generations. These iterated learning models (ILMs),
have recently been brought into the realm of behavioral experimentation using an ALL
paradigm (Kirby, Cornish & Smith 2008). Kirby et al. draw ambitious conclusions from
these experiments about mechanisms for the original evolution of language, which are
not immediately relevant to our research. But their methodology may be useful when
applied to a more grounded study of the dynamics involved in syntactic change.
Kirby and colleagues use a recursive multi-generation paradigm, paralleling the
prior simulations, in which subjects are instructed in a language as generated by a
previous participant under the guise of learning alien descriptions for simple moving
objects. Each subject passively views a number of picture-string pairings and is then
called on to produce strings for a set of test pictures (half of which were previously
seen by the subject). Starting from completely random picture-string pairs, the first
few subjects face an impossible memory task and, as may be expected, produce a
number of recall/transcription errors. Eventually, the strings given for novel pictures
are the product of innovative systematization of various kinds that simplify learning
and retention. The subject’s pairings, including any errors, are then passed to the next
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

“generation” of learners (i.e. the next subject in the experiment). The general result of
these studies is to show that subjects tend to create paradigmatic “morphology” out of
systematic errors in learning, memory and transmission to succeeding subjects. The
final state of the iterative process generally looks like classic paradigms of a morpho-
logically rich sub-language, in which individual sub-components of “words” are sys-
tematically related to particular objects or particular kinds of motions. In other words,
over successive mis-learnings and mis-recalls, subjects converge on a componential
relation between the words and what they refer to.
Kirby et al. argue that this is a miniature replication of how language might have
evolved. This is an ambitious interpretation of what is justified by their subjects “item-
and-arrangement” solution to an otherwise impossible learning problem. But for our
purposes, their method has pioneered a way to hasten the impact of formal constraints
on possible languages on changes in time: as subjects learn what they can, and that
becomes the model for the next set of subjects to learn from, we can trace dynamic
changes in the linguistic structure itself.
Hudson Kam & Newport (2005) study the acquisition aspect of language change,
with particular focus on the regularization of creoles. In this paradigm, participants
are instructed in artificial VSO languages containing various degrees of unpredictable
variation in the use of determiners as part of N + Det structures. The degree of varia-
tion had no effect on the ability of participants to learn vocabulary or make forced-
choice grammaticality judgments. In a sentence completion task, however, children
(mean age 6;4.10), but not adults, regularized determiner usage (or non-usage). It is
hard to pin down how much of the training involved natural features, but the sentence
completion task certainly recruited both comprehension and production processes.

2.3 Criticism of traditional ALL paradigms

Consider a broad outline of the circumstances in which children usually acquire

knowledge of a language and grammaticality sense. The terms mentioned in (6) char-
acterize and differentiate ALL paradigms. In (7), more detail is provided.
(7) a. The structure of the grammar to be learned. This of course, is the subject of
linguistic investigations and theories with many conflicting ideas and
proposals. Yet, several features endure across many different linguistic
theories: sentences are a natural unit of complete meanings, with struc-
ture and meaning compositionally derived from their constituent phrases;
sentences have derivations, relating inner (aka ‘logical’) form to outer
structures and phrasal sequences.
b. The way the evidence is presented to the subjects. Children characteristi-
cally hear language in its natural use, not a formal or didactic setting with
strictly grammatical sentences correctly applied. They hear fragmentary
sentences, optional variation in particular constructions, and outright
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

ungrammatical sequences that are nonetheless communicatively effec-

tive. Most important, the language exposure is “open ended” in the sense
that there is no formally circumscribed domain of discourse: at the same
time, there is usually a set of focal topics with a good deal of repetition
both of content and form.
c. The discriminative response expected from the subjects. As they grow up,
children are expected to pronounce their language correctly, to under-
stand the sentences appropriately, and to speak in a natural way. They are
not required to speak strictly grammatically, nor are they required to un-
derstand only grammatically correct and complete utterances. Rather,
they are expected to speak and understand with the same variability, ap-
propriateness and correctness as adults. Most important may be the fact
that they are required not only to understand sentences but also to pro-
duce them as part of their natural language behavior.
d. The motive to learn the grammar. This is the most vexed and controversial
of matters in the relevant fields. The simplest functionalist answer is that
learning the grammar is the best vehicle for achieving what is required in
(c): that is, speaking and understanding fragmentary and sometimes un-
grammatical sequences as well as grammatical sentences may be best fa-
cilitated via knowledge of the correct structures, and then behavioral habits
that deviate from them in standardized ways. The simplest structuralist/
nativist answer is that the child is predisposed to learn particular kinds of
grammatical structures, with great filtering power over the apparent vari-
ability in its linguistic experience. In a general sense, both approaches to
the problem may be true, since they tend to complement each other. A dif-
ferent kind of model has been suggested by Bever, namely that the abstract
grammar is acquired by individual children, one at a time, because it rec-
onciles conflicting representations between what the child can say and
what it can understand: in this sense, the language structure presents a ca-
nonical problem of the kind that humans like to solve: that is, learning the
abstract grammar is intrinsically mental fun. (Bever 1975, 1992, 2008).
In light of these characteristics of natural language learning, ALL paradigms necessar-
ily place subjects in an unnatural learning situation. The most problematic aspect of
the paradigm is the usual focus on grammaticality judgments, a rather sophisticated
behavior that children are rarely explicitly taught. By explicitly teaching grammatical-
ity judgments, these paradigms shortcut the mechanism through which the ability to
make such judgments naturally appears, with unknown consequences for the internal
grammatical representation. The lack of semantic context and production in many
other ALL paradigms preclude their use for any serious study of language change (but
note Friederici et al. 2002, which does capture many natural features).
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

Dulany, Carlson & Dewey (1984; also Perruchet & Pacteau 1990) provide evi-
dence that the basic ALL paradigm does not produce (or at least does not measure)
unified internal grammars. In these experiments, subjects provided explicit informa-
tion about their grammaticality judgments, as by indicating where an ungrammatical-
ity occurred in a string of letters. Explicit judgments were highly predictive of per-
formance when the ungrammaticality was the result of a simple pattern violation, such
as an illegal bigram. Subjects were unable to articulate more complex violations or vio-
lations of multiple simple rules. These failures of explicit knowledge were closely cor-
related with chance performance, suggesting that explicit knowledge often drives ALL
performance. Natural language competence, in contrast, is to some extent disassoci-
ated from explicit knowledge and requires a more coherent knowledge (conscious or
unconscious) of the grammar.
A few of the paradigms we have reviewed mitigate the drawbacks of ALL in one
way or another. The Kirby et al. paradigm, in which subjects basically tell and then
retell simple utterances, involves creating “natural” errors and variability in what suc-
cessive subjects experience. Yet the paradigm is relatively artificial in how the stimuli
are presented, and the range of contents. The Hudson Kam et al. studies involve actual
situations, experimenter-controlled variability in the critical data the child experiences
and a relatively natural response (completing sentence fragments). It is also relatively
unusual in using auditory and verbal activity rather than displayed or typed texts. Yet
an important virtue of the paradigm also limits its use: subjects are in a real person-to-
person context with natural responses possible and studying young children, still in
the normal first-language-learning age range. This requires time-consuming video
analysis of data instance by instance, with loss of much information and requiring in-
ter-judge reliability measures. Friederici et al. (2002) come closest to a paradigm that
is natural in relevant ways. We will now discuss an alternative which combines some
virtues from the methodologies in Bever and Hansen, Friederici et al. and Kirby et al.

3. Situated artificial language learning

Our goal is a paradigm that captures certain essential properties of ALL methods that
will make it possible to study dynamics of learning and language change in children,
with a relatively natural auditory/verbal learning situation.
To this end, we have developed a novel ALL paradigm, “situated ALL” (sALL), that
allows us to study links between language use and grammar acquisition. Our initial
results show that moderately sophisticated grammars can be learned through usage in
an experimental setting and demonstrate the predicted importance of integrating per-
ception and production in learning. The main feature of the sALL paradigm is seman-
tic context in the form of a simple 2-dimensional visual world. A sample display is
shown in Figure 2, where in the real experiment some of the shapes have color.
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

Figure 2. Sample computer interface presented to subjects

Using our custom software, subjects can freely create and move geometric shapes on
the screen and change any of several visual attributes. A corresponding phrase struc-
ture grammar, as in Figure 3, can be used to provide a linguistic description of a given
visual arrangement, specifying the appearance of each shape and their spatial relation
to one another. For example, (8) describes the arrangement in Figure 4 using the gram-
mar in Figure 3:
(8) red star solid green triangle dotted the yellow diamond left-of above
the solid, red star is above the dotted green triangle that is left of the yellow diamond.
After a short practice session (creating arrangements from English instructions), sub-
jects become proficient in the use of the software.
In a typical experimental session, a subject is pseudo-randomly presented with
either a sentence from the target grammar (displayed on screen or spoken through
headphones) or a visual world. The subject is then prompted to produce a correspond-
ing world or sentence. In the most natural case, linguistic stimuli are spoken via the
MaryTTS text-to-speech system (Schröder & Trouvain 2003) and responses are ver-
bal, processed by speech-recognition software with a limited vocabulary (Dragon
Naturally Speaking). The visual world is manipulated using a touch screen display, al-
lowing for a minimal technology barrier.
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

S NP Pred
NP (ADJ) Noun (Size)(Pattern)(Clause)
Clause te Pred
Pred ADJ
Pred NP Rel
Pred NP NegP
Noun {square, rectangle, star, pentagon, diamond, triangle}
Size {small, medium, large}
Pattern {striped, dotted, solid}
ADJ {red, yellow, green, blue, purple, thick, thin,whole, cutout}
Rel {above, below, left-of, right-of, behind, infront-of}
L1 NegP ne Rel (NOT)
Noun {..., nothing, anything}
L2 NegP (ne) Rel (Adv) NOT
L3 NegP Rel NOT

Figure 3. Rules for three simple artificial languages. Each language contains the basic rules
and one of the last three rules for negation

Figure 4. A production trial with the target “red star solid green triangle dotted the yellow
diamond left-of above” (the solid, red star is above the dotted green triangle that is left of
the yellow diamond)
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

After responding, a correct response is presented. These mapping trials constitute the
training portion of the experiment and provide a continual measure of production and
comprehension performance. Competence is periodically probed through grammati-
cality judgment trials. On these trials, a novel sentence is presented in isolation and the
subject is prompted to judge whether or not the sentence is possible in the learned
language. No feedback is given.
Bever & Hansen (1988) used a very simple version of a similar paradigm to examine
the role of bidirectional language usage in grammatical induction. Subjects participated
in a production-only (picture>sentence), comprehension-only (sentence>picture) or
mixed condition. Subjects in the mixed condition show markedly higher performance
on production trials, despite receiving half the production training of those subjects in
the production-only condition, and in making grammaticality judgments. These results
support the hypothesis that bidirectional language usage facilitates the development of
structural representations. The change in mapping performance also suggests a transfer
effect between language comprehension and production which is modulated by the
emerging grammatical representations (see Bever, 1975, 1992, 2008).
Earlier studies and our streamlined paradigm open up the possibility that we can
adapt it to study the basic principles that have been supported by diachronic syntactic
cycles. The new version of the paradigm is one that children can master, indeed may
do much better than adults, using the verbal input and output facilities. There are
many uses for this paradigm, including sophisticated studies of neurological organiza-
tion of different kinds of grammars with different kinds of training regimes. The new
questions for the concerns of this paper are:
(9) a. Can we replicate diachronic cycles synchronically?
b. Can we elucidate with more detail than allowed from the historical data,
the basic principles that constrain the cycles?
c. Will the progressive direction of the cycles depend in part on both com-
prehension and production experience?
d. How will the change in grammatical structure use be reflected in elicited
grammaticality judgments.
e. Are children under ten more likely than adults to respond categorically
and rapidly go through cycles?
In considering how the sALL paradigm might be used to study syntactic cycles and
grammaticalization, we adopt van Gelderen’s (2008) theoretical framework of syntac-
tic cycles as a dynamic process stemming from conflicting constraints.
One possible methodology for studying a cycle like the classic negative one fol-
lows Hudson-Kam and Newport (2005), presenting variable mixtures of negative
forms on comprehension trials and examining the corresponding frequencies on the
production side. As discussed above, our paradigm is suitable for use with children,
where any cyclic shift should be most apparent. This method can be extended and
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

possibly sharpened by applying a paradigm like that of Kirby et al., in which the input
data to each subject is the final stage of output from a prior subject.
The introduction of variability drawn from different stages of a cycle is critical to
our synchronic studies. First, we cannot expect subjects to spontaneously develop “er-
rors” in the direction of or against a cycle in such a short time – historical cycles de-
velop over many generations of learning and adult use. Second, we can calibrate the
effect of directionality by manipulating the relative frequencies of the alternate vari-
ants of a cycle – we can expect that the frequency of alternate forms that move in the
predicted direction can be lower and have an effect than the frequency of alternate
forms that move against the predicted direction. That gives us a quantitative tool to
compare adults and children. All subjects may shift in the predicted direction to some
extent, but we predict that the balance of alternate forward and backward forms that
shift children in the predicted direction will be less extreme than for adults.
A separate feature of our paradigm is that we can contrast changes in language
behavior patterns governed by cycles against corresponding changes in grammatical-
ity intuitions. This will allow us to investigate the dynamic relation between gradual
shifts in artificially induced ‘dialects’ against shifts in grammatical representations. The
proposed experiment illustrates an empirical approach to historical cycles, using the
negative cycle as a convenient and well-understood example, but the paradigm has a
straightforward application to virtually any other cycle. The basic principle comes
from the Hudson Kam & Newport study, namely that learners (at least children) will
tend to reduce variation during production. In the Hudson, Kam & Newport study,
this behavior is likely the result of general learning mechanisms. Here, we introduce
economy factors that should amplify (or dampen) the regularization effect. The train-
ing set (presented as a mixture of production/comprehension trials) conceptually con-
sists of three languages, corresponding to the three stages of the negative cycle. Two-
thirds of the relevant training sentences use negative constructions; two-thirds show
one of three non-cyclic variations (control languages). The overlapping sentences are
fully crossed control markings and negative constructions with equal frequency for
each combination. The frequency of each construction for each experimental condi-
tion is given in Table 1.
The Forward condition (and Forward' which reverses the control mixtures) tests
the tendency for the negative cycle to progress in the canonical direction. The Equal
condition serves as a control with respect to the control constructions (presented with
equal frequency) and measures any tendency for the cycle to progress in the absence of
frequency differences. The Reverse (and Reverse', again reversing the control mixtures)
condition allows the unidirectionality of the cycle to be tested. Subjects will be trained
to an acceptable level of performance (note that any of the possible negative and con-
trol constructions will be acceptable on production trials). Following criterion, critical
test production trials eliciting negative and marked constructions will be given.
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

Table 1. Experimental language mixtures

Basic Word Order Mixture (%)

Forward Equal Reverse

(Forward') (Reverse')

L1 N N Neg V (Neg) 4.7 11 19

L2 N N (Neg) V [(Adv) Neg] 9.5 11 9.5
L3 N N V Neg 19 11 4.7
Control 1 4.7 (19) 11 19 (4.7)
Control 2 9.5 11 9.5
Control 3 19 (4.7) 11 4.7 (19)
Control1,2,3 × L1,2,3 3.7 3.7 3.7

The variability in case marking provides a control and baseline of regularization. Based
on the results of Hudson Kam & Newport, adult participants should show a pattern of
probability matching, rather than regularization, for case marking. The same behavior
may be seen for negation, although a change in negative construction probabilities
would be suggestive.
Children should reduce variability in both the negation and case marking aspects
of the language. A change in case marking probabilities should be purely the result of
regularization; a differential change in negation probabilities would suggest that non-
statistical factors influence their distribution. Support for this can also be obtained by
comparing the regularization towards L3 in the forward condition to L1 in the reverse
condition. According to the economy explanation, L1>L2>L3 is the logical (and at-
tested) ordering of the cycle. The L3>L2>L1 order is uneconomical since L3>L2 goes
against the HPP and L2>L1 against the LMP.
The production frequency shift is modeled as a function of regularization, gram-
maticalization and their interaction. From a regression perspective, this can be stated as
(10), where R and G are regularization and grammaticalization functions, respectively:
(10) f (Li) ≈ β1R(f(L)) + β2G(f(L)) + β3R(f(L))G(f(L)) + e
The use of the control constructions provides an important baseline against which the
effect of grammaticalization beyond the tendency for regularization can be determined.
We can also deploy this paradigm in a version with successive subjects, following
Kirby et al., to track the evolution of the different ways to express negation. Given the
auditory/verbal manipulation we may be able even to enhance the cliticization of cer-
tain forms by pressuring subjects to speak quickly.
Much of this is conceptual at the moment, and, of course, this particular experiment
involves negation, which English speaking subjects have already learned in a form re-
lated to the historical variations. We can also use the paradigm with colleagues in coun-
tries with non Indo-European native languages (e.g., Chinese) to neutralize the impact
 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

of directly related prior language experience. We will now give an outline of an experi-
ment with a less attested cycle involving features not indigenous to English syntax.
A different way to test the principles with English speaking subjects is to construct
a cycle that could exist following the architectural principles, using a syntactic/semantic
feature that does not play a role in English syntax. Consider for example, the relation
between telicity, unaccusativity and reflexives, which does play a role in many other
languages (e.g., Spanish: Tenny 1994, Sanz 2000). The sALL paradigm does allow for
presentations and productions of different kinds of motions. For example, it can repre-
sent “explode” as a telic mono-argument predicate (also known as “unaccusative”) with
a specific end point in time by showing an object that actually explodes visually: and
“bounce” can be depicted as an atelic mono-argument without specific end points by
having an object bouncing for the duration of the display (in sALL the depictions are
actually dynamic, but Figures 5 and 6 represent them statically for this paper).
We can construct a cycle, regardless of actual historical facts of English as to how
telicity is marked, although there may be some evidence of actual cycles of this sort
historically in the background of languages other than English. The different single-
argument telic constructions would look like the sequence in (11), in order of change
(the examples use actual English-like words for exposition, but in an sALL paradigm
will be nonsense words):
(11) the circle s[+telic]’exploded itself[+telic]
The kinds of cases that we can present to subjects with differing probabilities are based
on the following fictitious but theoretically motivated cycle, presented as Figure 7.

Figure 5. A telic event (‘explode’) seen as a series of frames

 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

Figure 6. An atelic event (‘bounce’) seen as a series of frames

InnerAspP L1

itself InnerAsp’

InnerAsp VP

(se) itself
FRP LMP

L3
InnerAspP InnerAspP

InnerAsp’ itself InnerAsp’

InnerAsp VP HPP InnerAsp VP

(it)se(lf) (se)
L2

Figure 7. A theoretically motivated telicity cycle

 Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science 

Figure 7 depicts a cycle analogous to the negative cycle. In L1 an additional supportive

word merges out of the VP to support the weakened clitic marker. Weakening contin-
ues and the support word becomes incorporated under Spec in L2. In L3, the clitic has
disappeared and the support word appears in head position:
(12) the circle exploded (it)self[+telic].
The cycle of cliticization and recoverability continues back to L1. The language also
includes evidence for the transitive construction, namely (13).
(13) the square exploded the circle
The actual experimental paradigms based on this cycle can be organized in the same
way as for the negative cycle example: subjects are presented with mixed cases that
vary in the relative frequency of the adjacent construction types. The same experimen-
tal paradigm variants can be used to study the relative learning and directionality of
mistakes, as well as paradigms that involve taking the learned output of one subject
and using it as the training input for the next.
We should note that while this cycle follows the architectural principles, it does
not enjoy as much historical justification as many others. We find that to be a virtue –
testing a cycle that should exist, but may be rare. Other, well attested cycles that are
novel for English include subject/object agreement, and the copula cycle.

4. Conclusion

This paper demonstrates how we can expand the empirical support for the structural
principles proposed by van Gelderen. Our approach promises to supplement scattered
historical data with synchronic experimentally replicable research. The outcome will
be to verify the presence and dynamic competition of the structural principles. It will
be of considerable significance if children impose the cycles relative to non-cyclic con-
trol structures and adults do not: this will lend further confirmation of the idea that
the underlying architectural principles that result in cycles are part of the language
learning child’s structural repertoire. An additional benefit may be that the paradigm
allows for detailed analysis of “micro-steps” in the experimentally-induced miniature
evolution of the cycles: this can sharpen the search for details in actual historical cycles
that have hitherto been unnoticed. Finally, the data for actual cycles is based largely on
documented usage, not grammaticality intuitions: we will be able to compare shifts in
usage against shifts in grammaticality. This may give detailed insight into how shifts in
usage emerge as shifts in grammatical representations. Since linguistic science at its
best rests on accounting for details, this research may make some unexpected contri-
butions to the field of historical linguistics and linguistic theory in general.
 Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever

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 Author index
A Borkovskij, Viktor Ivanovič 81,
Adams, Marianne 186, 204
Aelbrecht, Lobke 102, 126
Åfarli, Tor 210-2, 229, 239-41
Aissen, Judith 281, 283
Alexiadou, Artemis 166-7, 170,
181, 183
Alighieri, Dante 206
Anagnostopoulou, Elena 181
Andersen, Henning 10, 157-8,
165-6, 172, 181
Anderson, John M. 71, 241,
291, 299
Anderwald, Lieselotte 37, 66
B Bush, John 299
Bailyn, John F. 170, 181
Baker, Mark 4, 10, 210-1, 239
Bański, Pjotr 175, 182
Barbiers, Sjef 12, 34, 36, 49, 62,
66-7, 126, 239
Barbosa, Pilar P. 166-7, 181
Beck, Sigrid 251, 263
Bell, Arthur 93, 113, 125-6
Belletti, Adriana 89, 128, 152,
154, 204, 240
Benincà, Paola 145, 154, 156,
186, 189, 192, 195-6, 198, 201-2,
204-6
Benveniste, Émile 177, 181
Bernini, Giuliano 16, 32, 37, 50,
51, 54, 66
Besten, Hans den 76, 99, 116
Beths, Frank 241, 264
Beukema, Frits 66, 239
Biberauer, Theresa 4, 6, 49, 51-2,
67, 91, 93-4, 99-100, 104, 112-4,
116-9, 121, 125-7, 229, 239, 242
Blancquaert, E. 50, 62, 67
Błaszczak, Johanna 124, 127
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen 274, 283
Bonet, Eulàlia 177, 181
Bopp, Franz 2, 10
Borer, Hagit 167, 181
87, 89, 157, 171, 181
Boström, Ingmar 140, 149, 155
Bowers, John 210, 211, 239
Boya, Li 189, 205
Breitbarth, Anne 16, 32, 41, 46,
59, 61, 65, 67, 119, 121, 125-7
Bricker, Victoria R. 270, 273,
276, 280-1, 283
Brinton, Laurel 7, 10
Brody, Michael 119, 127
Brooke, Henry 299
Brown, Sue 82, 85, 86, 89
Buridant, Claude 40, 67
Burridge, Kate 38, 67
C Dieterich, Thomas J. 246, 263
Calabrese, Andrea 135, 155
Cardinaletti, Anna 96, 127, 133,
135, 141-2, 144, 148-50, 155,
162, 181
Caubet, Dominique 43, 67
Cavalcante, Rerrison 125, 127
Caz Cho, Sergio 276, 277, 283
Chaker, Salem 43, 67
Chomsky, Noam 1, 8, 11, 75, 89,
127, 173, 181, 213, 214, 216, 218,
236, 239-40, 291, 299, 320
Choo, Sukhoon 159, 181
Church, Kenneth 26, 32, 80, 85,
89, 171, 182
Citko, Barbara 164, 181
Claudi, Ulrike 4, 6, 11, 212, 241,
286, 299
Condillac, Etienne Bonnot
de 2, 11
Condoravdi, Cleo 16, 19, 33, 42,
69, 96, 97, 113, 127, 128
Corver, Norbert 248, 263
Croft, William 36, 53, 54, 67
Crowley, Terry 56, 67
Cruschina, Silvio 198, 202, 205
Culicover, Peter W. 246, 263
Curiel, Alejandro 271, 283
Curnow, Timothy J. 56, 67
D
Dahl, Östen 37, 57, 67, 97, 127,
306, 320
Dasher, Richard 3, 7, 12, 250, 264
Dayley, Jon P. 271, 276, 283
De Cuypere, Ludovic 54, 55, 67
De Vogelaer,Gunther 12, 34
Delfs, Laurel 247, 264
Denison, David 9, 11
Deprez, Viviane 16, 32, 33
Detges, Ulrich 64, 67
Devos, Maud 66, 67
Diesing, Molly 123, 127
Diessel, Holger 164, 165, 182,
219, 240
Donaldson, Bruce 93, 104, 127
Donhauser, Karin 38, 67
Duffield, Nigel 125, 127
E
Early, Robert 4, 11, 36, 55, 57,
63, 67
Eckardt, Regine 46, 67, 68, 250,
254, 263
Egerland, Verner 134, 143-4, 149,
150, 155
Eide, Kristin M. 211-2, 240
Embick, David 167, 182
Emonds, Joseph 246, 263
England Nora C. 268, 270-3, 283
Espinal, Maria Teresa 127-8
F
Falaus, Anamaria 122, 128
Fernández, Soriano 155, 205
Fintel, Kai von 246, 252, 253, 258
Fischer, Olga 67-8, 181-2
Fleischer, Jürg 10-11
Flier, Michael S. 172, 182
Floricic, Franck 49, 68, 128
Fornaciari, Raffaello 151, 155
Fox, Danny 97, 128
 Cyclical Change
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt 182, 235,
240
François, Alexandre 54, 55,
56, 68
Franks, Steven 159, 175, 182
Frascarelli, Mara 155, 205
Furbee-Losee, Louanna 274, 283
G Honda, Isao 54, 68
Garbacz, Georg von der 122, 128
Gardiner, Alan H. 2, 16, 33, 35,
42, 68
Gärtner, Hans-Martin 89, 124,
127, 240
Garzonio, Jacopo 190, 205
Gass, Kate van 107, 108, 109
Gelderen, Elly van 6, 8-9, 16,
29-30, 32, 36, 66, 73, 79, 120-1,
134, 142, 157, 159, 173-5, 180,
185, 210-6, 228, 236, 260-1,
304-7, 314, 319
Gergel, Remus 5, 6, 243, 246,
260, 263
Giannakidou, Anastasia 33, 76,
90, 100, 106, 118, 128, 246, 263
Gildea, Spike 224-5, 240
Giusti, Giuliana 148, 155
Givón, Talmy 2, 7, 11, 73, 90,
174, 182
Goldsmith, Oliver 300
Gorškova, Ol’ga V. 84, 90
Greenberg, Jospeh 2, 11
Grosu, Alexander 222, 239,
248, 263
H López Ramírez, Ana 273
Haegeman, Liliane 29, 33, 46,
59, 65, 67-8, 90, 107, 117, 119,
121, 125, 127-8, 183
Hagège, Claude 9, 11
Hanks, Patrick 26, 32
Hansen, Britt M. 47, 68
Hansen, Ralph 308, 311, 314, 320
Harris, Alice C. 40, 68, 181
Haspelmath, Martin 68, 165, 182
Heim, Irene 244, 250, 251, 252,
253, 254, 258, 263, 320
Heine, Bernd 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12,
209, 212, 215, 233, 236, 241,
264, 286, 299
Herburger, Elena 128, 154, 205
Hicks, Glyn 8, 11
Hiraiwa, Ken 75, 90
Hock, Hans Henrich 43, 68
Hodge, Carleton 2, 4, 11, 73, 90
Hoeksema, Jack 4, 5, 15, 16, 20,
27, 28, 30, 33, 38, 48, 56, 68,
76, 90
Hofling, Charles Andrew 279,
280, 283
Holmberg, Anders 135, 155,
166, 182
Hopper, Paul 3, 8, 11, 67, 68, 127,
212, 241, 282, 283, 286, 287,
291, 293, 299
Horn, Lawrence R. 20, 33, 34,
48, 59, 68, 70, 87, 90, 110, 120,
126, 128, 130
Huang, C.-T. James 166, 182
Huddleston, Rodney 245, 263
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 2, 11
Hünnemeyer, Friederike 4, 6,
11, 212, 241, 286, 299
I Le Feuvre, Claire 161, 182
Isačenko, Alexander V. 157, 182
J 241
Jäger, Agnes 16, 22, 27, 33, 68,
113, 117, 128
Jakobson, Roman 165, 182
Jelinek, Eloise 168, 176, 182
Jespersen, Otto 2, 6, 9, 11, 15, 16,
18-21, 26-7, 29, 31-7, 39-42, 46-
7, 49-50, 53-4, 56, 60, 64-71, 74,
90-2, 96, 104, 126-8, 130, 247,
263, 306, 320
Joly, André 45, 68
K
Kaiser, Georg 204, 205
Kari, James 6, 11
Kasombo Tshibandi,
Michael 67
Katz, Aya 5, 11, 164-6, 182, 222-3,
241
Kaufman, Terrence 266, 268,
270-1, 273, 281, 283
Kawaguchi, Yuji 44, 68
Kayne, Richard 120, 128, 135-6,
155, 178, 182, 190, 205
Keller, Kathryn C. 277, 278, 283
Kemenade, Ans van 16, 68, 117
Kiparsky, Paul 16, 19, 33, 42, 69,
96-7, 113, 128
König, Ekkehard 246, 264
Kornfilt, Jaklin 237-8, 241
Kouwenberg, Sylvia 51, 69
Kratzer, Angelika 241, 244, 250,
252-3, 263-4
Kroch, Anthony 180, 182, 214,
241, 247, 253, 264
Kroskrity, Paul V. 54, 69
Kupść, Anna 77, 90
Kuteva, Tania 7, 9, 11, 209, 212,
215, 232-3, 236, 241
Kuznecov, Petr Savvič 157, 171,
181
L
Labov, William 15, 27, 33
Ladusaw, William A. 15, 33, 34,
76, 90
Laka, Itziar 76, 90, 106, 119-20,
128, 205
Lambrecht, Knud 4, 11
Larrivée, Pierre 69
Larsen, Thomas W. 281, 283
Lass, Roger 177, 182
Ledgeway, Adam 154, 195, 205
Lehmann, Christian 2, 11, 212,
Lenz, Barbara 37, 69
Levy, Yonata 177, 183
Li, Charles N. 164, 218, 219, 220,
222, 223, 224, 241
Lightfoot, David W. 3, 11, 214,
220, 241
Lindseth, Martina 159, 182
Lithgow, William 300
Lohndal, Terje 5, 6, 10, 90, 107,
121, 128, 174, 209, 210, 211, 241
Lucas, Christopher 16, 22, 27,
34, 37, 54, 69, 121, 127
Lunt, Horace G. 171, 182
Lyons, Christopher 3, 11
M
Malchic, Nicolás 276, 283
Manning, Christopher D. 26, 34
Marchello-Nizia, Christiane 69
Marsden, William 300
Martineau, France 33, 39, 44,
46, 68, 69, 90
Martins, Ana Maria 178, 183
Mateo, Pedro 272, 273, 283
May, Robert 2, 108, 109, 250, 264
McCormick, Kay 94, 108, 128
McFadden, Thomas 167, 169, 183
McQuown, Norman A. 280, 283

Meillet, Antoine 16, 34-5, 42, 69
Mel’ničenko, G.G. 83, 90
Merchant, Jason 246, 264
Miestamo, Matti 54-7, 65, 69,
97, 128
Mitchell, Bruce 247, 264
Mó Isém, Romelia 283
Mohr, Sabine 116, 129
Möhren, Frankwalt 44, 69
Molinu, Ludia 49, 68
Molnárfi, Laszlo 93, 107, 127, 129
Morgan, William 7, 12, 308, 320
Mougeon, Raymond 39, 44,
46, 69
Muller, Claude 37, 44-6, 69
Müller, Gereon 166, 179, 183
Munro, Pamela 231, 242
N 242
Napoli, Donna J. 246, 263
Nater, H.F. 55, 69
Neuckermans, Annemie 36, 49-
50, 59-60, 62, 69, 70-1, 105, 126
Newmeyer, Frederick 3, 12
Norde, Muriel 165, 182-3
Nørgård-Sørensen, Jens 171, 183
Norman, William M. 281, 283
Nunes, Jairo 178, 183
O Ringe, Donald 264
Obenauer, Hans-Georg 192,
193, 205
Oosthuizen, Johan 93, 113, 118,
129
Ouhalla, Jamal 29, 34
Overdiep, G.S. 60, 61, 62, 65, 69
P Roberts, Ian 16, 34, 54, 70, 113-4,
Paesani, Kate 115, 129
Parry, M. Mair 66, 69
Paul, Ileana 115, 129
Pauwels, J.L. 49, 50, 51, 52, 62,
70, 129
Penka, Doris 117, 129
Perle, Friedrich 42, 70
Pernicone, Vincenzo 147
Pesetsky, David 236, 242, 245,
264
Petrarca, Francesco 147
Petruxin, Pavel
Vladimirovič 183
Pintzuk, Susan 33, 128, 264
Plácido, Luiciano G. 283
Platzack, Christer 167, 168, 183
Plot, Robert 300
Pohl, Jacques 70
Poletto, Cecilia 5, 113, 117, 120,
125, 129, 155, 185, 188-9, 195,
198-02, 205
Polian, Gilles 270, 284
Pollock, Jean-Yves 29, 34, 170,
183
Ponelis, Frederick 93, 101, 129
Portner, Paul 154, 193, 205, 263
Postal, Paul M. 20, 34, 48, 70
Postma, Gertjan 16, 34, 70
Press, Ian 80, 90
Przepiórkowski, Adam 77, 90
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 176, 184,
245, 263
Pustet, Regina 209, 216, 225-6,
232, 237, 238, 242
Pye, Clifton 5, 265, 276
R Stavrou, Melita 246, 263
Radford, Andrew 8, 12, 216, 242
Ramat, Paolo 16, 32, 37, 49-51,
54, 66, 70, 181
Ramchand, Gillian 121, 129,
211, 239
Rechzieglova, Adela 77, 90
Reinhart, Tanya 97, 129
Renzi, Lorenzo 143, 154, 155, 156,
205, 206
Rissanen, Matti 247, 264
Rizzi, Luigi 75, 90, 116, 128, 143,
155, 156, 166, 183, 205, 299
Robbers, Karen 93, 99, 129
Roberge, Paul T. 49, 51, 70,
113, 129
117, 120-1, 125, 127, 129, 155-6,
166, 178-9, 183, 202, 205, 209,
212, 214, 242, 253, 259-60, 264,
286, 299
Robertson, John S. 270, 277-8,
280, 282-4
Rodrigues, Cilene 178, 183
Rohlfs, Gerhard 156
Rooryck, Johan 117, 123, 129, 241
Roussou, Anna 16, 34, 54, 70,
113, 117, 120, 129, 156, 209, 212,
242, 261, 264, 286, 299
Rowlett, Paul 16, 34, 117, 129
Rutkowski, Pawel 164, 183
S Vainikka, Anne 177, 183
Salvi, Ivan A. 143, 154-6
Author index 
Sántiz, Roberto 270, 284
Santorini, Beatrice 247, 264
Schøsler, Lene 70
Schwegler, Armin 40, 49-50,
52, 70
Schwenter, Scott A. 17, 19, 34,
49, 70, 97, 108, 110, 129, 130
Ševelëva, Marija Naumov-
na 159, 161, 163, 183
Siewierska, Anna 176, 183
Sigurđsson, Halldór Ár-
mann 169, 183
Sims, Lynn 7, 12
Smith, John Charles 89, 126, 177,
183, 308, 320
Starke, Michal 96, 127, 133, 135,
141-2, 148-9, 155, 162, 181
Stassen, Leon 209, 216-8, 237,
Stechow, Arnim von 251, 252,
254, 262, 263
Stender-Petersen, Adolf 80, 90
Stern, Gustaf 247, 264
Stowell, Timothy 115, 130
Svenonius, Peter 285, 286, 288,
289, 290, 291, 293, 295, 298,
299
T
Tamburelli, Marco 166, 183
Taraldsen, Knut Tarald 156, 166,
168, 179, 183
Tauli, Valter 2, 12
Taylor, Ann 247, 264
Terzi, Arhonto 168, 183
Thompson, Sandra A. 164, 182,
218-20, 222-4, 241
Timberlake, Alan 166, 183
Tooke, John Horne 2, 12
Torrego, Esther 236, 242, 245,
264
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs 2, 3, 7,
8, 11-2, 68, 181, 212, 214, 241-2,
246, 250, 264, 282-3, 286-7,
291, 293, 299
Travis, Lisa 30, 34
Tul Rax, Augusto 283
U
Ura, Hiroyuki 75, 90
V
Vallduví, Enric 76, 77, 87, 90
 Cyclical Change
van der Auwera, Johan 2, 4, 6,
10, 12, 16, 34, 36-8, 63, 66-7,
70-1, 97, 105, 112, 126
Van der Horst, Joop 30, 33, 40,
61, 71
Van der Horst, Kees 30, 33
Vanelli, Laura 133, 134, 143, 146,
147, 156, 186, 206
Varchi, Benedetto 150, 156
Vázquez Alvarez, Juan
Jesús 275, 284
Vedovato, Diana 5, 9, 133, 156
Vennemann, Theo 40, 71
Vikner, Sten 116, 130, 183
Villalta, Elisabeth 254, 264
Vinet, Marie-Thérèse 44, 69,
115, 130
Visconti, Jacqueline 68
W Aleksandrovič 159, 161, 163,
Wackernagel, Jacob 71
Waher, Hester 93, 130
Wal, Marijke van der 40, 71
Wallage, Phillip 46, 61, 71, 117,
130
Waltereit, Richard 64, 67
Watanabe, Akira 100, 130
Wauchope, Robert 283
Weiss, Helmuth 113, 130
Willis, David 16, 22, 34, 54, 71,
104, 121, 125, 127, 130
Winand, Jean 71
Winkler, Susanne 246, 263, 264
Wurff, Wim van der 45, 66, 68,
71, 239
Wurmbrand, Susanne 113, 115,
130
X
Xaburgaev, Georgij
184
Xmelevskaja, Tatiana Aleksan-
drovna 84, 90
Y
Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria 10, 12
Young, Robert 7, 12
Z
Zaliznjak, Andrej
Anatol’evič 159, 160, 161, 162,
171, 177, 178, 184
Zanuttini, Raffaella 29, 33, 34,
76, 77, 90, 117, 128, 130, 154,
193, 205
Zeijlstra, Hedde 16, 34, 37, 71,
74, 75, 78, 79, 85, 86, 89, 90,
101, 104, 113, 121, 127, 130
Zribi-Hertz, Anne 4, 5, 12
Zwarts, Frans 34
Zwicky, Arnold 176, 184
 Subject index
A Bolewa 235
absolutive 140, 223, 266-8, 271-2,
277, 282
actualization 181, 183, 282
adverb 3, 5-7, 27, 29-31, 36-9, 42,
63, 74, 96, 101, 122, 143, 170,
193-8, 201, 203-4, 215-6, 227,
246-7, 252, 260-2, 267, 274, 296
adverbial 4, 5, 15, 23, 27-32, 42,
74, 118, 187, 193, 214, 227, 258,
273, 275, 286, 296
Afrikaans 4, 49, 51, 67, 70, 89,
91-130
Agree 75, 78, 86, 236
agreement 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 31, 90,
78-9131, 134, 142, 166-79, 210,
231, 234, 237, 224, 265, 269,
286, 304, 319
Alyawarra 229
analytic 4, 73, 162
anti-grammaticalization 165
aorist 157-8, 160, 162, 169, 171
Arabic 16, 22, 43, 54, 69, 164,
222, 244
Arizona Tewa 54, 69
artificial language learning 303-
11
aspect 2, 3, 5, 7, 56, 73, 157-8,
171, 183, 213, 214, 224, 225, 233,
265-71, 273-6, 274-310, 317-9
Athabaskan (Athabascan) 6, 16
auxiliary 3, 5, 6, 7, 37, 157,
160-84, 201-2, 204, 213-5, 225,
229-34, 243, 249
Avava 56
Awa Pit 56
B 250-60, 264
Bantu 66,
BE 157-84
Bella Coola 55
Berber 16, 43, 217
Berbice (Creole) Dutch 51
bleaching 41, 43, 47, 50, 53, 54,
56, 66, 97, 119-20, 246, 285-286
bound 251, 261, 274
Brabantic 38, 49-52, 62, 64, 65,
70, 126
Brazilian Portuguese 47, 49-52,
70, 125, 129, 178-9, 183
broken cycle 5, 133- 4, 147, 154,
185, 201
C 229, 258
Cambodian 217
Catalan 17, 22, 47, 78, 85-7, 90,
127
Chalcatongo Mixtec 228, 241
Chantyal 230
Chinese 4, 6, 16, 189, 205, 219-
22, 224, 244, 316
Chontal 277- 8, 280, 283
cline 3, 8, 133, 143, 174, 295
clitic 4, 22, 30, 31, 41, 69, 74,
133-5, 139, 140, 142-3, 148-51,
153, 161, 162, 168-9, 173-6, 180,
193, 196, 266, 272, 303, 305,
306, 319
clitic cluster 150-1
Cocopa 217
Colloquial Afrikaans 94, 100,
124
Colloquial French 5, 93, 112,
135, 173
Colloquial Italian 138, 140,
141, 153
Colonial Yucatec 270, 280
Common Slavic/Slavonic
(see also Late Common
Slavic) 80, 157
comparatives 22, 25, 101-2, 246,
complement 22, 24, 29, 32, 61,
63, 113-5, 135, 136, 143, 154, 164,
187, 190, 210, 215, 233, 244, 245,
257-8, 267-85, 289, 291, 310
complementation, 245, 256,
265-83
complementizer 7, 120, 128, 194,
199-201, 214, 221, 236
conjunction 85, 158, 187-8, 190,
203-4
Coptic 42-3, 69
copula 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 35, 57, 158-9,
163-6, 180, 209-42, 269, 319
CP 113, 116-9, 125, 145-6, 155, 179,
185-7, 190-205, 214, 216, 221,
Czech 76-9, 90
D
definite(ness) 3, 7, 11, 22, 240,
268
degrammaticalization 165, 183
degrammation 165, 181
demonstrative 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 139,
141, 143, 164-5, 174, 209, 218-
29, 236, 239, 240
dependent status 272-5, 282
double negation 15-6, 29, 31,
59, 65, 68, 74, 76-7, 92, 108-9,
128, 305-6
doubling 18, 36-7, 47-9, 51-3,
58-9, 60-3, 64-6, 129, 130, 152,
154, 161, 190
drecative 20
Dutch 4, 6, 10, 16-7, 18, 20-2, 23,
24, 28, 30, 31-3, 34, 36, 38, 44,
46, 49, 51-2, 60-2, 66-7, 92-3,
96, 105, 112-3, 124, 127, 130
E
economy 3, 5, 8, 46-7, 68, 79, 89,
128, 133-4, 141, 174, 210, 212-4,
216, 218, 220, 236-7, 243, 244,
255, 261-2, 263, 305-6, 315-6,
320
emphasis 35, 42, 45-6, 50, 52-4,
56, 58-9, 63, 65, 96, 101, 104,
108, 122, 179, 227, 268
emphatic 3-5, 7-8, 17, 19, 22, 41-
9, 50-60, 63-6, 87, 95-7, 103-4,
 Cyclical Change
106, 108-9, 112-3, 122, 160-1,
174, 177
emphatic negation 42-3, 49,
52-3, 59, 64, 87, 97
EPP 167, 170, 181
ergative 217, 265-8, 274, 277-9,
281, 283
Erzya 230
Ewe 226-7, 236
exaptation 177, 182
exclamative 186, 191-3
F 222-3, 239
feature 3, 5-8, 15, 19, 21, 42, 73,
75, 78-80, 84-7, 116, 119-20,
125, 133, 141, 157, 159, 161, 166-
72, 179-80, 213, 216, 218, 232,
236, 239, 295, 305
feature checking 75, 86, 127,
175, 305
Feature Economy 3, 5, 8, 79, 213,
216, 218
feature loss 87
Flemish 59, 64, 66, 68, 107, 119,
125
focus 5, 30-2, 100, 111, 115-6, 135-
6, 185-6, 189, 192-3, 195-205,
230, 237
focus marker 5, 186, 198-201,
204, 237
French 4-5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 19, 20, 22,
29-31, 36-7, 39-42, 44-8, 53, 56,
60, 64, 93, 96, 105, 107, 112-3,
123-5, 143, 144, 173, 179-80, 195,
202, 215, 244
future 3, 7, 157-8, 162, 274, 278
G Kiowa 54, 217
Gbeya 218, 234
German 10, 16, 20, 22-4, 28, 30-
2, 42, 61, 105, 113-4, 124, 143,
168, 195-6, 244, 251, 259
Germanic 7, 22, 31, 43, 49, 92,
107, 118, 125, 143, 188, 306
Goal 75
Gola 218
grammarians (role of) 9, 56,
147, 154
grammaticality intuitions 140,
303-304, 307-10, 314-5, 319
grammaticalization 2-3, 5-8, 22,
30, 42, 46, 53, 57, 68, 70, 74,
133, 134, 141, 143, 154, 165-6,
187, 209-10, 212-3, 215-6, 218-9,
225, 235-6, 239, 245-6, 256, 267,
274-6, 282, 286, 293-6, 298-9,
314, 316
H M
hanging topic 188-90, 192, 195,
197
Head Movement Constraint 30
Head Preference Principle 29-
32, 121, 134, 142, 174, 213, 236,
261, 305
Hebrew 5, 164, 166, 183, 209,
Huastec 268, 278, 282
I 54-6, 74, 79, 84, 87-8
imperfect 157-60, 169
Imonda 233
indicative 17, 269, 271, 274, 282
Inertia Principle 31
interpretable 7-8, 75, 78, 79, 85,
87, 166-9, 180, 191, 216, 239,
252-3
interrogative 9, 17, 28, 44, 76,
116, 186, 191, 193, 200
intransitivization 281
Italian 5, 17, 49, 66, 68, 69, 70,
76-7, 78, 79, 85, 86, 120, 125,
129, 133-156, 183, 185-206, 232
J Multiple Agree 75, 86, 90
Jespersen Cycle 6, 15-6, 18-21,
26-7, 29, 31-2, 35-7, 41, 43, 46,
50, 53-4, 56, 60, 64-6, 74, 91-2,
96, 306
K 73-4, 79, 306, 315, 319
Kenya Luo 225
Kui 233
L 32, 36, 44-6, 54, 60-5, 76, 105
Lahu 217
Lango 225
Late Common Slavic 157-61,
166, 169-70
Late Merge Principle 174, 213,
232-3, 261, 305
Latin 16, 37, 42, 134, 143, 150, 232
Lewo 4, 36, 55-7, 63-4, 67
Lisu 217
l-less perfect (bezèlevyj per-
fekt) 170-5
Loc, 285 290-8
loss of V2 (Verb Second) 170,
185-7, 198, 201-2
Lower Tanana 6
Mam 270-3, 282-3
Mayan 265-83
Merge 22, 168, 213-4, 229, 231-4,
239, 252-3, 260-2, 305, 319
metalinguistic compara-
tives 246
Middle Dutch 27, 31, 61, 96
Middle English 46, 61, 65, 214,
247-8, 256
minimizer 7, 20-7, 29, 44, 48, 53,
modal 1, 5-7, 23, 176-7, 181, 202,
204, 214-5, 229, 243-62, 266,
275
modal restrictor 259
Modern Yucatec 267-8, 280-1
Mojave 217, 231
Motlav 55-6
movement 30, 32, 40, 116, 123-4,
134, 145, 167, 186, 189, 199,
201-3, 213, 232, 244, 250-1, 255,
260-1,
movement verb 268-73, 275-6,
282
N
Navajo 7, 12
negative cycle (see also Jes-
persen Cycle) 1-2, 4, 6, 35, 37,
negative marker 4, 6, 17, 36, 55,
64, 73-89, 94, 200, 214, 306
negative operator 78-9, 86, 124
negative polarity 15, 17, 19, 27-8,
negative quantifier 4, 21, 24-9,
32, 36, 51, 53-5, 65, 76, 92-3, 98,
100, 103-9, 113, 120-4, 200
NegP 15, 29-32, 79, 85-7, 118,
126, 306
nominalized 271-4, 279-82
non-stative (aspect) 269
North Carolina Cherokee 217
Northern Italian Dialects 143-6
Norwegian 31, 211-2
Novgorod 82-3, 158-9
n-word 6, 22-4, 27-8, 31, 73-4,
76-89, 106-7, 120, 123

O R
of-insertion 291-3
Old Church Slavonic 80, 85, 171
Old English 8, 71, 74, 93, 112,
247, 256, 260
Old Italian 143-4, 149-50, 185-91,
193, 196, 198, 201-4
Old Senese 143, 150
ordering 121, 124, 180, 244, 254,
260, 262, 316
P 136, 143-5, 160, 177, 188, 198-9,
Paamese 56
Palestinian Arabic 222
Panare 223-5
parameter 35, 134, 159, 166-70,
176, 178, 180
parsing 164-5, 173
perfect 157-8, 160-2, 165-72,
175, 273
Person-Case Constraint 177
phi-features 7-8, 75, 145, 166-9,
175, 179-80, 236
Polish 77, 164, 175
Poqomam 276
Portuguese 9, 47, 49-52, 125,
178-9
pragmatic overload 254, 260
preposition 5-7, 9-10, 52, 158,
167, 214, 218, 234-7, 285-99
preposition cycle, 285, 296-9
preposition stranding 10
prescriptive grammar/rules 5,
9-10, 24, 25, 100-101, 133-4,
147-8, 154
present tense 170, 222, 225
probe 3, 7, 8, 75, 116, 216, 236
progressive 232-3, 266, 271-6,
281
prohibitive 4, 32, 38, 63
projective preposition 288-94
pronoun 1-5, 7-8, 22-3, 36, 48,
54, 63, 133-54, 157-81, 191, 195,
200-1, 209, 213, 218, 219, 220-
6, 239, 269
Q Zande 218
quantifier raising (QR) 243, 250
Subject index 
Tamazight 217
reanalysis 5-6, 21, 27, 29-30, 32, Tariana 9
44, 55, 58-9, 64-5, 74, 88-9, 97, Temne 218
105, 120-1, 125, 157-70, 177-80, tense 62, 157-8, 160-2, 165, 167-
185-6, 203-4, 220, 263, 279, 72, 175-6,180, 210, 212, 222,
285, 286-7, 289, 293-8 224-5, 229, 234, 236-7, 254, 274,
renewal 1, 3, 6-8, 15, 18, 35-6, 282, 304
46, 236, 267, 279, 285-6, 291, than-clause 249, 252, 262
293, 298 topic 5, 116, 131, 135, 154, 164,
resumptive pronoun 164, 227 166, 185-99, 203-4, 212-3, 220,
Romance 7, 46, 49, 118, 125, 134, 223, 227, 250
topic marker 131, 185, 187-8,
202, 282 190-3, 203-4
Russian, 4-5, 73-89, 157-81 tripling 57-8, 62-6
Turkish 5, 164-6, 223, 237-8
S Tzeltal 270, 272, 277
Saramaccan 227, 228 Tzutujil 276
school teaching 147
Scottish Gaelic 164 U
semantic negation 76, 82 unidirectional 3, 16, 139, 255,
Shilha 217 262, 315
Shona 218 uninterpretable 3, 8, 75, 78, 85,
Sicilian 198, 201, 202, 205 166, 168-70, 180, 216, 239
situations 252-5
Slavic 46, 74, 76, 80, 89, 157, 178 V
Spanish 49, 76-7, 152, 232, 271, verbal complex 265-7, 281-283
317 Verb-second (V2) 115, 179, 186
specifier 8-9, 29, 75, 116, 118, 121, V-to-C movement 116, 134, 145
134, 187, 190, 202, 204, 210, W
216, 218, 221, 228-9, 237, 239, Wappo 222
261-2 weak pronouns 5, 133-5, 137-8,
spiral 2, 42, 174 143, 147, 149, 179
Sranan 226-7 weakening 39-42, 44, 48, 59, 74,
standard Italian 5, 133, 147, 154 79, 96-97, 112, 142-3, 146-8,
stative 226, 267-9, 273-4 150, 154, 305-6, 319
subject 2-4, 6, 8, 25, 37, 57, 63, 73, Welsh 16, 22, 54
77, 85, 87, 103-4, 107, 116, 133-5, Western Poqomchi’ 271
137, 139, 143-7, 149, 152, 157-81, word order 30, 40, 59, 71, 105,
191, 196, 201-2, 210-11, 220-5, 224, 268, 316
227, 231-2, 245-7, 257, 262, 265,
268, 274, 281 Y
subject clitics 145, 155-6 Yavapai 217
subject cycle 8, 73, 143, 157, 159, Yoruba 237
170-6 Yucatec 267, 272-4, 276, 279-82
syntactic agreement 78-9, 86, 89
Z
synthetic 4, 73
T Zulu 218
taboo 20-2, 24-5, 27, 32, 36, 48
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com

148 Hogeweg, Lotte, Helen de Hoop and Andrej Malchukov (eds.): Cross-linguistic Semantics of
Tense, Aspect and Modality. Expected October 2009
147 Gomeshi, Jila, Ileana Paul and Martina Wiltschko (eds.): Determiners. Universals and variation.
vii, 241 pp. + index. Expected October 2009
146 Gelderen, Elly van (ed.): Cyclical Change. 2009. viii, 329 pp.
145 Westergaard, Marit: The Acquisition of Word Order. Micro-cues, information structure, and
economy. xii, 242 pp. + index. Expected August 2009
144 Putnam, Michael T. (ed.): Towards a Derivational Syntax. Survive-minimalism. 2009. x, 269 pp.
143 Rothmayr, Antonia: The Structure of Stative Verbs. 2009. xv, 216 pp.
142 Nunes, Jairo (ed.): Minimalist Essays on Brazilian Portuguese Syntax. 2009. vi, 243 pp.
141 Alexiadou, Artemis, Jorge Hankamer, Thomas McFadden, Justin Nuger and Florian
Schäfer (eds.): Advances in Comparative Germanic Syntax. 2009. xv, 395 pp.
140 Roehrs, Dorian: Demonstratives and Definite Articles as Nominal Auxiliaries. 2009. xii, 196 pp.
139 Hicks, Glyn: The Derivation of Anaphoric Relations. 2009. xii, 309 pp.
138 Siddiqi, Daniel: Syntax within the Word. Economy, allomorphy, and argument selection in Distributed
Morphology. 2009. xii, 138 pp.
137 Pfau, Roland: Grammar as Processor. A Distributed Morphology account of spontaneous speech errors.
2009. xiii, 372 pp.
136 Kandybowicz, Jason: The Grammar of Repetition. Nupe grammar at the syntax–phonology interface.
2008. xiii, 168 pp.
135 Lewis, William D., Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar (eds.): Time and Again.
Theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics. In honor of D. Terence Langendoen. 2009. xiv, 265 pp.
134 Armon-Lotem, Sharon, Gabi Danon and Susan Rothstein (eds.): Current Issues in Generative
Hebrew Linguistics. 2008. vii, 393 pp.
133 MacDonald, Jonathan E.: The Syntactic Nature of Inner Aspect. A minimalist perspective. 2008.
xv, 241 pp.
132 Biberauer, Theresa (ed.): The Limits of Syntactic Variation. 2008. vii, 521 pp.
131 De Cat, Cécile and Katherine Demuth (eds.): The Bantu–Romance Connection. A comparative
investigation of verbal agreement, DPs, and information structure. 2008. xix, 355 pp.
130 Kallulli, Dalina and Liliane Tasmowski (eds.): Clitic Doubling in the Balkan Languages. 2008.
ix, 442 pp.
129 Sturgeon, Anne: The Left Periphery. The interaction of syntax, pragmatics and prosody in Czech. 2008.
xi, 143 pp.
128 Taleghani, Azita H.: Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian. 2008. ix, 183 pp.
127 Durrleman-Tame, Stephanie: The Syntax of Jamaican Creole. A cartographic perspective. 2008.
xii, 190 pp.
126 Schäfer, Florian: The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives. External arguments in change-of-state contexts. 2008.
xi, 324 pp.
125 Rothstein, Björn: The Perfect Time Span. On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English.
2008. xi, 171 pp.
124 Ihsane, Tabea: The Layered DP. Form and meaning of French indefinites. 2008. ix, 260 pp.
123 Stoyanova, Marina: Unique Focus. Languages without multiple wh-questions. 2008. xi, 184 pp.
122 Oosterhof, Albert: The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages. 2008. xviii, 286 pp.
121 Tungseth, Mai Ellin: Verbal Prepositions and Argument Structure. Path, place and possession in
Norwegian. 2008. ix, 187 pp.
120 Asbury, Anna, Jakub Dotlačil, Berit Gehrke and Rick Nouwen (eds.): Syntax and Semantics of
Spatial P. 2008. vi, 416 pp.
119 Fortuny, Jordi: The Emergence of Order in Syntax. 2008. viii, 211 pp.
118 Jäger, Agnes: History of German Negation. 2008. ix, 350 pp.
117 Haugen, Jason D.: Morphology at the Interfaces. Reduplication and Noun Incorporation in Uto-Aztecan.
2008. xv, 257 pp.
116 Endo, Yoshio: Locality and Information Structure. A cartographic approach to Japanese. 2007. x, 235 pp.
115 Putnam, Michael T.: Scrambling and the Survive Principle. 2007. x, 216 pp.
114 Lee-Schoenfeld, Vera: Beyond Coherence. The syntax of opacity in German. 2007. viii, 206 pp.
113 Eythórsson, Thórhallur (ed.): Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory. The Rosendal papers. 2008.
vi, 441 pp.
112 Axel, Katrin: Studies on Old High German Syntax. Left sentence periphery, verb placement and verb-
second. 2007. xii, 364 pp.
111 Eguren, Luis and Olga Fernández Soriano (eds.): Coreference, Modality, and Focus. Studies on
the syntax–semantics interface. 2007. xii, 239 pp.
110 Rothstein, Susan (ed.): Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect. 2008.
viii, 453 pp.
109 Chocano, Gema: Narrow Syntax and Phonological Form. Scrambling in the Germanic languages. 2007.
x, 333 pp.
108 Reuland, Eric, Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Giorgos Spathas (eds.): Argument Structure. 2007.
xviii, 243 pp.
107 Corver, Norbert and Jairo Nunes (eds.): The Copy Theory of Movement. 2007. vi, 388 pp.
106 Dehé, Nicole and Yordanka Kavalova (eds.): Parentheticals. 2007. xii, 314 pp.
105 Haumann, Dagmar: Adverb Licensing and Clause Structure in English. 2007. ix, 438 pp.
104 Jeong, Youngmi: Applicatives. Structure and interpretation from a minimalist perspective. 2007.
vii, 144 pp.
103 Wurff, Wim van der (ed.): Imperative Clauses in Generative Grammar. Studies in honour of Frits
Beukema. 2007. viii, 352 pp.
102 Bayer, Josef, Tanmoy Bhattacharya and M.T. Hany Babu (eds.): Linguistic Theory and South
Asian Languages. Essays in honour of K. A. Jayaseelan. 2007. x, 282 pp.
101 Karimi, Simin, Vida Samiian and Wendy K. Wilkins (eds.): Phrasal and Clausal Architecture.
Syntactic derivation and interpretation. In honor of Joseph E. Emonds. 2007. vi, 424 pp.
100 Schwabe, Kerstin and Susanne Winkler (eds.): On Information Structure, Meaning and Form.
Generalizations across languages. 2007. vii, 570 pp.
99 Martínez-Gil, Fernando and Sonia Colina (eds.): Optimality-Theoretic Studies in Spanish
Phonology. 2007. viii, 564 pp.
98 Pires, Acrisio: The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains. Gerunds and infinitives. 2006. xiv, 188 pp.
97 Hartmann, Jutta M. and László Molnárfi (eds.): Comparative Studies in Germanic Syntax. From
Afrikaans to Zurich German. 2006. vi, 332 pp.
96 Lyngfelt, Benjamin and Torgrim Solstad (eds.): Demoting the Agent. Passive, middle and other
voice phenomena. 2006. x, 333 pp.
95 Vogeleer, Svetlana and Liliane Tasmowski (eds.): Non-definiteness and Plurality. 2006. vi, 358 pp.
94 Arche, María J.: Individuals in Time. Tense, aspect and the individual/stage distinction. 2006. xiv, 281 pp.
93 Progovac, Ljiljana, Kate Paesani, Eugenia Casielles and Ellen Barton (eds.): The Syntax of
Nonsententials. Multidisciplinary perspectives. 2006. x, 372 pp.
92 Boeckx, Cedric (ed.): Agreement Systems. 2006. ix, 346 pp.
91 Boeckx, Cedric (ed.): Minimalist Essays. 2006. xvi, 399 pp.
90 Dalmi, Gréte: The Role of Agreement in Non-Finite Predication. 2005. xvi, 222 pp.
89 Velde, John R. te: Deriving Coordinate Symmetries. A phase-based approach integrating Select, Merge,
Copy and Match. 2006. x, 385 pp.
88 Mohr, Sabine: Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions. Impersonal constructions in the Germanic
languages. 2005. viii, 207 pp.
87 Julien, Marit: Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective. 2005. xvi, 348 pp.
86 Costa, João and Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva (eds.): Studies on Agreement. 2006. vi, 285 pp.
85 Mikkelsen, Line: Copular Clauses. Specification, predication and equation. 2005. viii, 210 pp.
84 Pafel, Jürgen: Quantifier Scope in German. 2006. xvi, 312 pp.
83 Schweikert, Walter: The Order of Prepositional Phrases in the Structure of the Clause. 2005.
xii, 338 pp.
82 Quinn, Heidi: The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English. 2005. xii, 409 pp.
81 FuSS, Eric: The Rise of Agreement. A formal approach to the syntax and grammaticalization of verbal
inflection. 2005. xii, 336 pp.
80 Burkhardt, Petra: The Syntax–Discourse Interface. Representing and interpreting dependency. 2005.
xii, 259 pp.
79 Schmid, Tanja: Infinitival Syntax. Infinitivus Pro Participio as a repair strategy. 2005. xiv, 251 pp.
78 Dikken, Marcel den and Christina Tortora (eds.): The Function of Function Words and Functional
Categories. 2005. vii, 292 pp.
77 Öztürk, Balkız: Case, Referentiality and Phrase Structure. 2005. x, 268 pp.
76 Stavrou, Melita and Arhonto Terzi (eds.): Advances in Greek Generative Syntax. In honor of Dimitra
Theophanopoulou-Kontou. 2005. viii, 366 pp.
75 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): UG and External Systems. Language, brain and computation. 2005.
xviii, 398 pp.
74 Heggie, Lorie and Francisco Ordóñez (eds.): Clitic and Affix Combinations. Theoretical perspectives.
2005. viii, 390 pp.
73 Carnie, Andrew, Heidi Harley and Sheila Ann Dooley (eds.): Verb First. On the syntax of verb-
initial languages. 2005. xiv, 434 pp.
72 FuSS, Eric and Carola Trips (eds.): Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar. 2004. viii, 228 pp.
71 Gelderen, Elly van: Grammaticalization as Economy. 2004. xvi, 320 pp.
70 Austin, Jennifer R., Stefan Engelberg and Gisa Rauh (eds.): Adverbials. The interplay between
meaning, context, and syntactic structure. 2004. x, 346 pp.
69 Kiss, Katalin É. and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.): Verb Clusters. A study of Hungarian, German and
Dutch. 2004. vi, 514 pp.
68 Breul, Carsten: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar. An integrated syntactic, semantic and
intonational approach. 2004. x, 432 pp.
67 Mišeska Tomić, Olga (ed.): Balkan Syntax and Semantics. 2004. xvi, 499 pp.
66 Grohmann, Kleanthes K.: Prolific Domains. On the Anti-Locality of movement dependencies. 2003.
xvi, 372 pp.
65 Manninen, Satu Helena: Small Phrase Layers. A study of Finnish Manner Adverbials. 2003. xii, 275 pp.
64 Boeckx, Cedric and Kleanthes K. Grohmann (eds.): Multiple Wh-Fronting. 2003. x, 292 pp.
63 Boeckx, Cedric: Islands and Chains. Resumption as stranding. 2003. xii, 224 pp.
62 Carnie, Andrew, Heidi Harley and MaryAnn Willie (eds.): Formal Approaches to Function in
Grammar. In honor of Eloise Jelinek. 2003. xii, 378 pp.
61 Schwabe, Kerstin and Susanne Winkler (eds.): The Interfaces. Deriving and interpreting omitted
structures. 2003. vi, 403 pp.
60 Trips, Carola: From OV to VO in Early Middle English. 2002. xiv, 359 pp.
59 Dehé, Nicole: Particle Verbs in English. Syntax, information structure and intonation. 2002. xii, 305 pp.
58 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 2: Morphology, phonology, acquisition.
2003. vi, 309 pp.
57 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 1: Syntax and semantics. 2003.
vi, 405 pp.
56 Coene, Martine and Yves D’hulst (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 2: The expression of possession in
noun phrases. 2003. x, 295 pp.
55 Coene, Martine and Yves D’hulst (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 1: The syntax and semantics of noun
phrases. 2003. vi, 362 pp.
54 Baptista, Marlyse: The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole. The Sotavento varieties. 2003.
xxii, 294 pp. (incl. CD-rom).
53 Zwart, Jan-Wouter and Werner Abraham (eds.): Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax.
Proceedings from the 15th Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax (Groningen, May 26–27, 2000).
2002. xiv, 407 pp.
52 Simon, Horst J. and Heike Wiese (eds.): Pronouns – Grammar and Representation. 2002. xii, 294 pp.
51 Gerlach, Birgit: Clitics between Syntax and Lexicon. 2002. xii, 282 pp.
50 Steinbach, Markus: Middle Voice. A comparative study in the syntax-semantics interface of German.
2002. xii, 340 pp.
49 Alexiadou, Artemis (ed.): Theoretical Approaches to Universals. 2002. viii, 319 pp.
48 Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Sjef Barbiers and Hans-Martin Gärtner
(eds.): Dimensions of Movement. From features to remnants. 2002. vi, 345 pp.
47 Barbiers, Sjef, Frits Beukema and Wim van der Wurff (eds.): Modality and its Interaction with the
Verbal System. 2002. x, 290 pp.
46 Panagiotidis, E. Phoevos: Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns. ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax.
2002. x, 214 pp.
45 Abraham, Werner and Jan-Wouter Zwart (eds.): Issues in Formal German(ic) Typology. 2002.
xviii, 336 pp.
44 Taylan, Eser Erguvanlı (ed.): The Verb in Turkish. 2002. xviii, 267 pp.
43 Featherston, Sam: Empty Categories in Sentence Processing. 2001. xvi, 279 pp.
42 Alexiadou, Artemis: Functional Structure in Nominals. Nominalization and ergativity. 2001. x, 233 pp.
41 Zeller, Jochen: Particle Verbs and Local Domains. 2001. xii, 325 pp.
40 Hoeksema, Jack, Hotze Rullmann, Víctor Sánchez-Valencia and Ton van der Wouden
(eds.): Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items. 2001. xii, 368 pp.
39 Gelderen, Elly van: A History of English Reflexive Pronouns. Person, Self, and Interpretability. 2000.
xiv, 279 pp.
38 Meinunger, André: Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment. 2000. xii, 247 pp.
37 Lutz, Uli, Gereon Müller and Arnim von Stechow (eds.): Wh-Scope Marking. 2000. vi, 483 pp.
36 Gerlach, Birgit and Janet Grijzenhout (eds.): Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and Syntax. 2001.
xii, 441 pp.
35 Hróarsdóttir, Thorbjörg: Word Order Change in Icelandic. From OV to VO. 2001. xiv, 385 pp.
34 Reuland, Eric (ed.): Arguments and Case. Explaining Burzio’s Generalization. 2000. xii, 255 pp.
33 Puskás, Genoveva: Word Order in Hungarian. The syntax of Ā-positions. 2000. xvi, 398 pp.
32 Alexiadou, Artemis, Paul Law, André Meinunger and Chris Wilder (eds.): The Syntax of
Relative Clauses. 2000. vi, 397 pp.
31 Svenonius, Peter (ed.): The Derivation of VO and OV. 2000. vi, 372 pp.
30 Beukema, Frits and Marcel den Dikken (eds.): Clitic Phenomena in European Languages. 2000.
x, 324 pp.
29 Miyamoto, Tadao: The Light Verb Construction in Japanese. The role of the verbal noun. 2000.
xiv, 232 pp.
28 Hermans, Ben and Marc van Oostendorp (eds.): The Derivational Residue in Phonological
Optimality Theory. 2000. viii, 322 pp.
27 Růžička, Rudolf: Control in Grammar and Pragmatics. A cross-linguistic study. 1999. x, 206 pp.
26 Ackema, Peter: Issues in Morphosyntax. 1999. viii, 310 pp.
25 Felser, Claudia: Verbal Complement Clauses. A minimalist study of direct perception constructions.
1999. xiv, 278 pp.
24 Rebuschi, Georges and Laurice Tuller (eds.): The Grammar of Focus. 1999. vi, 366 pp.
23 Giannakidou, Anastasia: Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency. 1998. xvi, 282 pp.
22 Alexiadou, Artemis and Chris Wilder (eds.): Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the
Determiner Phrase. 1998. vi, 388 pp.
21 Klein, Henny: Adverbs of Degree in Dutch and Related Languages. 1998. x, 232 pp.
20 Laenzlinger, Christopher: Comparative Studies in Word Order Variation. Adverbs, pronouns, and
clause structure in Romance and Germanic. 1998. x, 371 pp.
19 Josefsson, Gunlög: Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax. Word formation in Swedish. 1998. ix, 199 pp.
18 Alexiadou, Artemis: Adverb Placement. A case study in antisymmetric syntax. 1997. x, 256 pp.
17 Beermann, Dorothee, David LeBlanc and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.): Rightward Movement.
1997. vi, 410 pp.
16 Liu, Feng-hsi: Scope and Specificity. 1997. viii, 187 pp.
15 Rohrbacher, Bernhard Wolfgang: Morphology-Driven Syntax. A theory of V to I raising and pro-
drop. 1999. viii, 296 pp.
14 Anagnostopoulou, Elena, Henk van Riemsdijk and Frans Zwarts (eds.): Materials on Left
Dislocation. 1997. viii, 349 pp.
13 Alexiadou, Artemis and T. Alan Hall (eds.): Studies on Universal Grammar and Typological
Variation. 1997. viii, 252 pp.
12 Abraham, Werner, Samuel David Epstein, Höskuldur Thráinsson and Jan-Wouter Zwart
(eds.): Minimal Ideas. Syntactic studies in the minimalist framework. 1996. xii, 364 pp.
11 Lutz, Uli and Jürgen Pafel (eds.): On Extraction and Extraposition in German. 1996. xii, 315 pp.
10 Cinque, Guglielmo and Giuliana Giusti (eds.): Advances in Roumanian Linguistics. 1995. xi, 172 pp.
9 Gelderen, Elly van: The Rise of Functional Categories. 1993. x, 224 pp.
8 Fanselow, Gisbert (ed.): The Parametrization of Universal Grammar. 1993. xvii, 232 pp.
7 Åfarlí, Tor A.: The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions. 1992. xii, 177 pp.
6 Bhatt, Christa, Elisabeth Löbel and Claudia Maria Schmidt (eds.): Syntactic Phrase Structure
Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences. 1989. ix, 187 pp.
5 Grewendorf, Günther and Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.): Scrambling and Barriers. 1990. vi, 442 pp.
4 Abraham, Werner and Sjaak De Meij (eds.): Topic, Focus and Configurationality. Papers from the 6th
Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984. 1986. v, 349 pp.
3 Abraham, Werner (ed.): On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from the 3rd Groningen
Grammar Talks (3e Groninger Grammatikgespräche), Groningen, January 1981. 1983. vi, 242 pp.
2 Ehlich, Konrad and Jürgen Rehbein: Augenkommunikation. Methodenreflexion und Beispielanalyse.
1982. viii, 150 pp. With many photographic ills.
1 Klappenbach, Ruth (1911–1977): Studien zur Modernen Deutschen Lexikographie. Auswahl aus
den Lexikographischen Arbeiten von Ruth Klappenbach, erweitert um drei Beiträge von Helene Malige-
Klappenbach. (Written in German). 1980. xxiii, 313 pp.