The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

124 The syntax of early English(65) . . . æt he na sian geboren ne wurdethat he never afterward born not would-be‘. . . that he would not be born afterward’ (Or 6.9.139.10)(66) . . . æt heora nan ne mehte nanes wæpnes gewealdanthat of-them none not could no weapon wield‘. . . that none of them could wield any weapon’ (Or 4.10.103.24)Sentential negation is nearly always marked by ne procliticized to the finiteverb. By sentential negation, we mean those cases where the only interpretationavailable is that the whole statement is negated:(67) Ne sende se deofol a fyr of heofenum, eah e hitnot sent the devil then fire from heaven though that itufan comefrom-above came‘The devil did not send fire from heaven, though it came from above’(ÆCHom I(Pref)6.13)(68) He ne andwyrde am wife æt frumanhe not answered the woman at first‘He didn’t answer the woman at first’ (ÆCHom II, 8.68.45)There is also a (minority) negation pattern in which sentential negation isexpressed by nefinite verb as well as na or some variant thereof. 6(69) onne ne miht u na æt mot ut ateon of æs mannes eaganthen not could you not the speck out draw of the man’s eye‘then you could not draw the speck out of the man’s eye’(ÆHom 14.153)(70) Ne bi na se leorningcniht furor onne his lareownot is not the apprentice further than his master‘The apprentice is not ahead of his master’ (ÆHom 14.134)These are examples of multiple sentential negation, and they show that thephenomenon existed at a rather earlier period than is usually assumed, sincethe – sometimes implicit – assumption in the literature is that multiple sententialnegation is first attested in Middle English. 7 In both of (69) and (70),6This is discussed in more detail in van Kemenade (1999). The pattern is a very minorone: an exhaustive study of all the major prose texts has thrown up some 330 examples.It is hard to quantify this percentagewise, since the number of examples of sententialnegation with ne alone is vast, but 330 examples is certain to be well below 5per cent of the potential. This pattern is also discussed in section 9.3.2.7Detailed discussion of multiple sentential negation in Middle English can be foundin Jack (1978a, b, c).