The linguistic variables studied in this thesis

4. Is there any evidence of ongoing linguistic change in negation in each dialect?

Examining how each linguistic variable patterns according to linguistic and external factors in each dialect provides a window into ongoing change, allowing us to identify the communities where a change is most advanced and those where it has yet to reach its full potential.

Comparisons can be made to see whether variation on a particular level of linguistic structure is particularly prone or resistant to change and whether the communities are always ranked in the same way in terms of their conservative or innovative status in this respect. This insight informs us about the typical mechanisms and trajectories of different types of linguistic change.

1.8. The linguistic variables studied in this thesis

As discussed earlier, negation has many intriguing properties. It is highly variable in terms of the ways it is expressed within and between language varieties, yet this variability is also highly structured. It is constrained by syntax, but it is also sensitive to other levels of

linguistic structure including semantics and discourse-pragmatics. The changes that negation undergoes in the world’s languages are remarkably consistent and display universal

tendencies. Negation is therefore ideal for the investigation of the interplay between

constraints on various levels of linguistic structure and how these operate in different English dialects. The range of negation phenomena in English alone means that there are many different linguistic variables to choose from. The three variables studied in this thesis were selected to address the research questions outlined in section 1.7.

The first variable is not-/no-negation and negative concord, which concerns the expression of negation with a negative polarity item (NPI) of the form any-, as in (12). The distribution of NPIs under negation is one of the most heavily-debated aspects of syntactic theory, in part because analyses must attempt to reconcile many different issues, including the distribution of NPIs in various sentence types (both with and without negation) and accounting for cross-linguistic variation (see, e.g., Krifka 1991; Progovac 1994; Hoeksema 2010; Zeijlstra 2004).

The expectation that the variable is predominantly constrained by internal factors was the impetus for my analysis, where I present two alternative syntactic accounts of the variation that make different predictions about the distribution of variants according to verb type and the presence of additional auxiliary verbs. The hypotheses generated from these two accounts are subsequently tested in my spoken corpora. Discourse status (old vs. new), which was

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found to be relevant to the variation in previous research, is also considered, alongside social factors which can provide insight into the state of the previously-identified change from no-negation towards not-no-negation (Tottie 1991a, b; Varela Pérez 2014).

(12) Not-/no-negation and negative concord

a. Not-negation e.g. I didn’t see anything b. No-negation e.g. I saw nothing

c. Negative concord e.g. I didn’t see nothing

The results regarding the progress of the change tentatively suggest that Tyneside may be lagging behind the other communities, but the syntactic and discourse-pragmatic constraints on the variation are robust between the communities. The results support an account of the variation where not-negation and negative concord have the same underlying structure

consisting of a negative marker in NegP (which in the latter case enters into an Agree relation with the post-verbal indefinite), whereas no-negation is marked within the post-verbal

indefinite DP and moves to NegP for sentential scope. The alternative proposal, where no-negation is also derived via Agree with a covert operator in NegP, is not as strongly supported.

The second variable studied in this thesis is the alternation between non-quantificational never and didn’t, shown in (13), which has received relatively little scholarly attention as a variable.

However, Lucas and Willis (2012) outline in detail the formal properties of never and observe that it is grammaticalising from a universal quantifier over time to develop

quantificational uses, of which one is standard and the other (a subsequent innovation) is non-standard. My analysis of the alternation between never and didn’t reveals that never has retained its preference for particular semantic-syntactic contexts of use as it grammaticalises, but that it has developed new functions in the process. While the contexts in which standard non-quantificational never is used are inherently associated with counter-expectation (even when didn’t is used instead), never as a non-standard negator is, on the other hand, found to be associated with explicit denials.

(13) Non-quantificational never and didn’t

a. Non-quantificational never e.g. He never called Kate at 6pm b. Didn’t e.g. He didn’t call Kate at 6pm

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The third and final variable studied is the realisation of negative tags, shown in (14). This variable stands in contrast to the previous two since it is discourse-pragmatic in nature. The analysis examines whether reduction in phonetic form and particular changes in discourse-pragmatic function, two characteristic processes of grammaticalisation (Brinton & Traugott 2005: 100), pattern in tandem with one another and consistently across the communities. I trace the trajectories of change for this variable in each community, finding that while linguistic factors are consistent across dialects, the form-function associations and relevance of social factors differ cross-dialectally, reflecting how advanced each locality is with respect to the change.

(14) Negative tags

a. Full variants e.g. That’s right, isn’t it? / He did, didn’t he?

b. Reduced variants e.g. That’s right, int it? / He did, dint he?

c. Coalesced variants e.g. That’s right, innit? / He did, dinne?

The negative tag analysis leads on to an investigation of interviewer effects on the variation in the Tyneside data in Chapter 6. The results reveal that the interviewer’s relationship with their interviewees, as well as the interviewer’s dialect of English, influence the extent to which interlocutors reduce their negative tags. The analysis demonstrates how situational factors can impact upon the frequency of variants, but that the linguistic and social constraints remain the most significant factors affecting the variation.

1.9. Overview of thesis

The research in this thesis demonstrates the overarching importance of internal constraints, i.e. syntactic and semantic factors, in accounting for variation in negation.

Discourse-pragmatic factors also contribute greatly to the variation, exhibiting consistent effects between the dialects when these effects relate to information status (i.e. marking discourse-old vs. new information; expressing counter-expectation or contradiction vs. no counter-expectation).

Negative tags are much more variable with respect to their form-function associations, which reflects the more interpersonal nature of their functions and is indicative of different stages of grammaticalisation in each locale. The patterning of not/no/concord and non-quantificational never/didn’t according to social factors is suggestive of particular trajectories of change in each community, but these are not as significant or robust as their distribution on internal dimensions. The impact of external factors on the distribution of variants becomes more

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significant with respect to the discourse-pragmatic variable of negative tags, the variants of which are defined on a phonetic basis.

The structure of this thesis is as follows. Chapter 2 provides details of my data sources for the analysis of the variation, namely three pre-existing corpora of regional varieties of English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside and Salford. The chapter explains how the speaker samples were selected from these corpora to maximise comparability between the three regional datasets. Also included are details of how the variable tokens were extracted, coded and analysed, with discussion of the qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. Following this are the three chapters of analysis on each of the variables above: not-/no-negation and negative concord (Chapter 3); non-quantificational never and didn’t (Chapter 4); negative tags (Chapter 5). The results of the analysis in Chapter 5 leads to further exploration of the impact of interviewer effects on negative tag realisations, presented in Chapter 6. Chapter 7

concludes the thesis by collating the findings of my investigation and highlighting their theoretical implications.

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