Jespersen's cycle is a series of processes in
historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...
, which describe the historical development of the expression of
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
in a variety of languages, from a simple pre-verbal marker of negation, through a discontinuous marker (elements both before and after the verb) and in some cases through subsequent loss of the original pre-verbal marker. The pattern was formulated in
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Ste ...
's 1917 book ''Negation in English and Other Languages'', and named after him in Swedish linguist
Östen Dahl
Östen Dahl (; born 4 November 1945 in Stockholm) is a Swedish linguist and professor best known for pioneering a marker-based approach to tense and aspect in linguistic typology. Dahl finished his PhD at the University of Gothenburg and subsequ ...
's 1979 article ''Typology of Sentence Negation.''
Introduction
The linguist
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Ste ...
began his book with the words:
The process has since been described for many languages in many different families, and is particularly noticeable in languages which are currently at stage II (both the original and the additional word obligatory) such as French, Welsh, and some dialects of Arabic and Berber.
The fact that different languages can be seen to be in different stages of the process, and that sometimes, as Jespersen says, the whole process can begin again after renewal, prompted Dahl to name the process "Jespersen's cycle". The observation was however made earlier, most noticeably by
Antoine Meillet
Paul Jules Antoine Meillet (; 11 November 1866 – 21 September 1936) was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. He began his studies at the Sorbonne University, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, the Swiss l ...
, who used the term 'spiral'.
Process
There are three stages, labelled I, II and III:
In Stage I, negation is expressed by a single pre-verbal element:
In Stage II both a preverbal and a postverbal element are obligatory:
In Stage III the original preverbal element becomes optional or is lost altogether:
Examples
French is well known to use a bipartite negative, e.g. : "I don't know", . (The second negative element originally had a semantic connection with the verb: originally meant "I don't walk a step".)
Welsh has a very similar pattern, , . In both languages, the colloquial
register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), ...
is at a more advanced stage in the cycle, and the first part ( or ) is very frequently omitted. In formal Welsh registers, by contrast, tends to be used without . This is not true of formal registers of modern French, but the use of on its own survives in certain set expressions (e.g. 'no matter what/anything') and with certain verbs (e.g. 'She doesn't stop talking').
Spoken
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (; ; also known as pt-BR) is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of Portuguese language native to Brazil. It is spoken by almost all of the 203 million inhabitants of Brazil and widely across the Brazilian diaspora ...
is also in differing stages of Jespersen's Cycle, depending on register and
dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
. The original way to form a negative, as in most Romance languages, was the negative adverb ''
não,'' as in ''Maria não viu o acidente'' "Maria did not see the accident". This pre-verbal ''não'' is usually pronounced in a reduced form, which led to another ''não'' being used where negative adverbs usually go: ''Maria não viu o acidente não''. Now, sentences without the initial reduced ''não'' can be encountered in colloquial varieties: ''Maria viu o acidente não''.
English too passed through Jespersen's cycle early in its history: for example "I didn't see" would be expressed in
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
as ; then strengthened with the word (from
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
' 'no thing') as
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...
; then leading to
Early Modern English
Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...
''I saw not''. The same development occurred in the other Germanic languages such as German and Dutch, which produced their respective postposed negative particles and , first duplicating and eventually ousting the original preposed negative particle *''ne'' / *''ni''.
Modern English's
do-support
''Do''-support (sometimes referred to as ''do''-insertion or Periphrasis, periphrastic ''do'') in English grammar is the use of the auxiliary verb ''do'' (or one of its inflected forms, e.g. does) to form Negation (linguistics), negated clauses an ...
and contraction of "do not" to "don't" in colloquial speech could be argued as moving English back toward Stage I of Jespersen's Cycle—"I didn't see".
Palestinian Arabic
Palestinian Arabic (also known as simply Palestinian) is part of a dialect continuum comprising various mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by Palestinians in Palestine, which includes the State of Palestine, Israel, and t ...
creates negation through suffixation (e.g. 'I don't know' which comes from an earlier/alternate form of ( 'I don't know' ).
[ More recently at ]
Central Atlas Tamazight
Central Atlas Tamazight or Atlasic (native name: ''Tamazight'' ; ) is a Berber languageCentral Atlas Tamazight may be referred to as either a Berber language or a Berber dialect. As Berber languages have some degree of mutual intelligibility, ...
, a
Berber
Berber or Berbers may refer to:
Ethnic group
* Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa
* Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages
Places
* Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile
People with the surname
* Ady Berber (1913–196 ...
language spoken principally in Central
Morocco
Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...
, uses a bipartite negative construction (e.g. 'he
didn't go out' — the underlined elements together convey the negative) which apparently was modeled after proximate
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
varieties.
The
Chamic languages, spoken in parts of
Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
,
Vietnam
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
, and
Hainan
Hainan is an island provinces of China, province and the southernmost province of China. It consists of the eponymous Hainan Island and various smaller islands in the South China Sea under the province's administration. The name literally mean ...
, may also be undergoing Jespersen's cycle.
Italian and the various Italian regional languages are also undergoing a similar transformation, where all three stages can be seen in action at once: The standard language is generally at stage I, with e.g. 'I haven't told him/her', and this form is also customary in colloquial language. Especially in
North-Western variants, this can become colloquially, however with a slight difference with respect to
pragmatics
In linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is the study of how Context (linguistics), context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship ...
(stage II), and further be reduced to (stage III) (sub-standard and only regionally in some varieties) or (colloquial, more widespread, but with identical meaning as stage II), which already presents the form of a stage I in a new Jespersen's cycle. The word originally means '(pieces of) soft inside of bread' or 'crumb', similarly to more standard ; it then grammaticalised in the meaning 'a little, (in) the least'. It is part of a series of words used in various registers, dialects and time periods in this same context, like e.g. 'point' or '(small) step' (like in French), or also , originally 'in fact, at all', now generally perceived with a negative valence: ''Non gliel'ho punto detto'', ''Non gliel'ho passo detto'', ''Non gliel'ho detto affatto''. In
Western Lombard
Western Lombard is a group of varieties of the Lombard language, a Romance language of the Gallo-Italic subgroup. It is spoken primarily in Italy and Switzerland. Within Italy, it is prevalent in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza and Brianz ...
, the archaic 'I haven't seen him/it' has long since become or with no change in meaning (where ''minga'' ≡ it. ''mica'').
References
Bibliography
* Breitbarth, Anne,
David Willis, and Christopher Lucas (eds.). 2020. ''The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, Volume II: Patterns and processes''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard, and Jacqueline Visconti (eds.). 2014. ''The diachrony of negation.'' Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
*
*
*
* Veselinova, Ljuba & Hamari, Arja (eds.). 2022. The Negative Existential Cycle. (Research on Comparative Grammar 2). Berlin: Language Science Press. .
*
Willis, David, Christopher Lucas, and Anne Breitbarth (eds.). 2013. ''The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, Volume I: Case studies''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN, 9780199602537
1917 introductions
1979 neologisms
Historical linguistics
Otto Jespersen