Negative Concord in an English of the Southern US and Beyond

Abstract

This study investigates Negative Concord cross-linguistically in the context of past proposals, beginning with a non-standard variety of American English. In using data from this non-Standard English, I hope to propose a new analysis of Negative Concord which avoids some of the pitfalls which past proposals suffer from. I then extend the analysis from this non-Standard English to other Negative Concord languages, and in doing so extend empirical coverage and naturally account for a long-standing puzzle in Romance Negative Concord data. Finally, I investigate Double Negation in this English, and arrive at a fully compositional analysis for Negative Concord and Double Negation which need not posit any ambiguity in so-called n-words.