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The Spread of Change in French Negation
- Author(s):
- Angus Grieve-Smith (see profile)
- Date:
- 2017
- Group(s):
- LLC 19th-Century French, LSL General Linguistics, LSL Language Change, LSL Linguistics and Literature, LSL Romance Linguistics
- Subject(s):
- French language, Language and languages, Linguistic change, History, Linguistics
- Item Type:
- Dissertation
- Institution:
- University of New Mexico
- Tag(s):
- 16th Century, 19th Century, negation, Historical linguistics, Language change, French theatre, Language, Linguistic history
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6V065
- Abstract:
- Many varieties of French have changed over the years from expressing predicate negation (Geurts 1998) with ne alone, to the embracing construction ne … pas, and then to postverbal pas alone (Jespersen 1917). When the increase in the frequency of ne … pas over time is plotted on a graph, it takes the S shape of the logistic function (Kroch 1989). Bybee and Thompson (1997) note that “the type frequency of a pattern determines its degree of productivity,” but “high frequency forms with alternations resist analogical leveling.” These two observations provide an explanation for the logistic progression observed by Kroch (1989). Following Lotka (1925) and Volterra (1926), we can extend this model to take into account the competition between constructions to express the same function. To test these models, I have compiled a corpus of French theatrical texts from the twelfth to the twentieth century. The logistic function accurately models the use of ne … pas in these texts (R2 = 0.899), but the Lotka-Volterra model predicts the post-1600 changes in preverbal ne alone and embracing ne … pas and ne … point with even greater accuracy (r = 0.948 and 0.978).
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 years ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial
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grvsmth-phd091020.pdf