This paper has three main points. First, contrary to what is often stated, negative concord is not all that frequent and certainly not the most frequent strategy to express single clausal negation in a clause with an indefinite noun phrase or adverbial in the scope of the negation. Second, the subty...

This paper argues that Negative Concord is generated by the grammars of all English varieties, but just not “realized” in the standardized variety, in the sense of Barbiers (2005, 2009). I show that Double Negation constructions, wherein two negative elements yield a doubly negated meaning, are form...

This paper examines negative concord and the behaviour of negative polarity items in AAVE, often stigmatised by language purists as "English with mistakes" because of its negative concord. My primary objective is twofold: (1) to compare n-words in AAVE with n-words in Modern Standard English (MSE) a...