Modality and negation in the history of Low German

The aim of the present paper is to study and account for the scopal interaction between modal verbs and sentential negation in historical Low German. A number of proposals concerning the scope of negation in clauses with modal verbs for other languages (mainly English) will be evaluated against the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 2011-10, Vol.30 (2), p.131-167
Main Author: Breitbarth, Anne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Diachrony and historical linguistics
language change
Linguistics
Middle Low German
modal verbs
Old Low German
polysemy
scope of negation
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Summary:The aim of the present paper is to study and account for the scopal interaction between modal verbs and sentential negation in historical Low German. A number of proposals concerning the scope of negation in clauses with modal verbs for other languages (mainly English) will be evaluated against the empirical findings from historical Low German. It will be argued that syntactic accounts of this interaction are not empirically adequate, and that a lexical account will have to be complemented by a pragmatic one in order to account for the behaviour and development of some modal verbs.
ISSN:0721-9067
1613-3706
DOI:10.1515/zfsw.2011.007