The paper addresses the evolution of taboo negators in Australian English, focusing on two different types of constructions involving taboo negative polarity items (NPIs): (1) constructions of indifference (“care/give a X”) with negated verbs in combination with a taboo NPI (e.g. I don’t give a damn/shit/fuck); (2) constructions with taboo NPIs, but the verb may or may not be negated (e.g. I (don’t) know bugger all/fuck all/shit).

It has been argued by scholars such as Lawley (1974) and Hoeksema (2009) that in American English these constructions have undergone a small-scale Jespersen Cycle, in which the NPI is reanalysed as a negator, permitting the omission of the original negator (e.g. He didn’t tell me fuck all about the car > He told me fuck all about the car)

Burke’s (2017) examination of conversational Australian English has revealed that the X-all series (like bugger all and fuck all) appear to be well advanced in the Jespersen Cycle, and are in the process of extending from simple nominal quantifier (= “nothing”) to the more versatile negative adverb (= “not”). For example:

[1]: Do you think you’ll ever work somewhere else or you happy pulling being a plasterer?

[2:] Umm yeah just depends I guess umm happy at the moment coz in summer it’s got good money but winter you just you work bugger all so umm last year I considered the mines and... [UWA 2013: D1: Male: 21]

What is lacking, however, is the historical evidence to back this up this scenario — are we really seeing a mini Jespersen Cycle here, or is there another explanation?

Drawing on the proceedings of the nearly 200, 000 criminal trials held at the Old Bailey (London’s Central Criminal Court), we attempt to answer this question. The trial transcripts (1674-1913) offer as close to “verbatim” vernacular texts as we can get for the early modern period — even taboo words (notoriously absent from other writing) make an appearance. This body of texts is a valuable historical resource that we can use to put the spotlight on the early grammatical behaviour of these less respectable negators.

References

Burke, I. 2017. Wicked which and ninja never: relative clauses and negation in modern Australian English conversation. [Monash PhD Thesis.]

Hoeksema, Jack. 2009. Jespersen Recycled. In Elly van Gelderen (ed.), Cyclical Change, 15-35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and other languages (2nd ed.). København: Munksgaard.

Lawler, J 1974. Ample Negatives, in Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 10))