The Spread of Change in French Negation

<p>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).</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Educational Linguistics

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Department of Linguistics

Year

2009

Author dc:creator

• Grieve-Smith, Angus

Contributors dc:contributor

• Axelrod, Melissa
• Croft, William
• Travis, Catherine
• Schwenter, Scott

• Linguistics
• French

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/12

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalrepository.unm.edu:ling_etds-1011