Never again: the multiple grammaticalization of never as a marker of negation in English

Lucas, Christopher; Willis, David

Abstract

In both standard and nonstandard varieties of English there are several contexts in which the word never functions as a sentential negator rather than as a negative temporal adverb. This article investigates the pragmatic and distributional differences between the various non-temporal uses of never and examines their synchronic and historical relationship to the ordinary temporal quantifier use, drawing on corpora of Early Modern and present-day British English. Primary focus is on (i) a straightforward negator use that in prescriptively approved varieties of English has an aspectual restriction to non-chance, completive achievement predicates in the preterite, but no such restriction in nonstandard English; and (ii) a distinct categorical-denial use that quantifies over possible perspectives on a situation. Against Cheshire (1998), it is argued that neither of these uses represents continuity with non-temporal uses of never in Middle English, but both are instead relatively recent innovations resulting from semantic reanalysis and the semanticization of implicatures.

Citation

Lucas, C., & Willis, D. (2012). Never again: the multiple grammaticalization of never as a marker of negation in English. English Language & Linguistics, 16(3), 459-485. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674312000196

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Oct 25, 2012
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2025
• Journal: English Language and Linguistics
• Print ISSN: 1360-6743
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-4379
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 459-485
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674312000196
• Publisher URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8718466