THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEGATIVE-INITIAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

This paper investigates the development of negative-initial constructions in the history of English, along the three stages of Jespersen’s Cycle. It is proposed that two types of the negative marker ne were in competition at Stage 1, thereby motivating the loss of ne-initial constructions. Turning to Stage 2, the absence of negative inversion is argued to be accounted for in terms of Last Resort. Then, it is shown that the negative marker not has undergone structural competition from Stage 3 onward, but negative adverbs such as never have not. This difference is clearly reflected in the (im)possibility of their being fronted to sentence-initial position in Present-day English.