The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Grammaticalization and grammar change 309Negative sentences with ne alone can also be subject-initial, as in (24).(24) æt cildh ne mihte na a gyt mid wordum his hælend gegretanthe child not could not yet with words his Lord greet‘The child could not yet greet his Lord with words’ (ÆCHom I, 13.202.20)There are some instances of topic-initial negative sentences with ne alone, butthey are extremely rare. (25) is an example:(25) Be æm eac cwæ Dryhten urh Essaias one witgan: inraof which also spoke Lord through Isaiah the prophet of yoursynna ne weore ic gemunende, ac gemun u hiora.sins not be I mindful, but remember you them‘Of which the Lord also spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I will notremember your sins, but do thou remember them.”’ (CP 53.413.20)There is also sentential negation with more than one negative marker in OldEnglish, contrary to what is often said. The standard story, implicit inJespersen (1917) and explicit in Jack (1978a, b, c), is that multiple sententialnegation is first attested in the Middle English period. But there is, on a verylimited scale, multiple sentential negation in Old English: the most commonsecond negator in such cases is the standard constituent negator na/no. 10 (21)above is a relevant example of this. Some more examples are given in (26):(26) a. Ne het he us na leornian heofonas to wyrcennenot ordered he us not learn heavens to make‘He did not order us to learn to make heaven’(ÆLS (Memory of Saints) 127)b. Ne sæde na ure Drihten æt he mid cynehelme oenot said not our Lord that he with diadem ormid purpuran gescryd, cuman wolde to uswith purple clothed come wanted to us‘Our Lord did not say that he would come to us with a diadem or clothedwith purple’ (ÆLS (Martin) 762)Examples like (26) were already discussed in chapter 4, where we based a wordorder argument on them, showing that pronominal subjects occupy a positionhigher than that of nominal subjects. For our present purposes in this chapter,they serve to illustrate multiple sentential negation with na. These areinstances where there is a potential for confusion between multiple sententialnegation with na, and constituent negation with negative concord. However,as in example (21) above, a constituent negation reading is not available: (26a)10There are also some instances where the precursor of present-day English not,nawiht/nowiht, is used as a second sentence negator. But nawiht/nowiht is somewhatvariable in its behaviour; it can be used as a negated noun, as an emphatic negator,meaning something like ‘not at all’ and as a non-emphatic second negator.