The evolution of negation beyond the Jespersen Cycle (De Gruyter Mouton, 2011)
Is there a Jespersen cycle?; Negative words and related expressions: A new perspective on some familiar puzzles; Negative words and negation in French; Secondary negation and information structure organisation in the history of English; Looking high and low for NegP in early English; Ne-drop and indefinites in Anglo-Norman and Middle English; Looking at Middle English through the mirror of Anglo-Norman; Ne-absence in declarative and yes/no interrogative contexts: Some patterns of change; The early absence of the French negative marker ne
Atoms of negation: An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord"Atoms of negation: An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord." Discussion; Negative polarity and the quantifier cycle: Comparative diachronic perspectives from European languages; Indefinite pronouns, synchrony and diachrony: Comments on Willis; Subject index; Language index
Why do languages change? The proposal that the grammar of negation evolves according to cycles is looked at from the behaviour of negative items and constructions, mainly through the history of English and French. The studies show that the variation within a language at any given point of history is too great for cycles to be invoked as an autonomous mechanism of grammar change. Instead, variation may be understood by looking at the patterns of evolution of individual (families of) items