Negation

As Britain points out (2010: 44) this is a 'site of considerable diversity' in dialect grammar. Of particular interest in NEE are the variants of negated forms when they are attached to the auxiliary/operator as a clitic. A sense of this diversity can be gleaned from SED data. For example, consider these responses to a prompt about what someone would say if they were asked the time and they didn't have a watch (Orton and Halliday 1963: 806-807).

I dinna* ken (Nb)

I divent know (Nb)

I divan know (Nb, Du)

I divva know (Nb, Du)

I dunnat know (Du)

I dinnet know (Du)

I dint know (Du)

I canna* tell (Du)

There is more on variation in forms of do in the section on lexical and primary verbs.

Respondents were also asked to fill this gap: You can't have my spade today because I want it, but you can have it tomorrow, because then I ... want it (Orton and Halliday 1963: 1018).

don't (Nb, Du)

divent (Nb)

wunna* (Nb)

shan't (Du)

Also, if asked to do something and you don't wish to do it, you say: No, I ... do it (Orton and Halliday 1963: 1019). According to the OED the reduced form of will in -i with the negator attached has been attested in Scotland and the north of England since the seventeenth century.

winna* (Nb)

won't (Nb)

wunna* (Nb)

wunnat (Nb, Du)

winnat (Du)

Yes, tomorrow I could, but today I ... (Orton and Halliday 1963: 1032).

canna* (Nb, Du)

cannat (Nb, Du)

can't (Du)

I do care for it, but he ... (Orton and Halliday 1963: 1036-37).

disn't (Nb, Du)

divent (Nb, Du)

dinnat (Nb, Du)

disna* (Nb)

doesn't (Du)

Some of the clitics in these responses correspond with what we would expect in SE (e.g. -n't). But in NEE we see two types of additional clitics: -na types (marked with * in the SED examples above) and -not types.

In these RTG examples, the main orthographic representations of the -na types are exemplified.

(1) Ye canna mak a savaloy out of an alsatian, man haway (2018)

(2) Ye cannae beat a canny bag o’ Tudor (2012)

(3) You surely cannee complain about that! (2011)

The spelling <-na> probably represents [nə], while <-nee> represents [ni:]; <-nae> probably does duty for [nə] or [ni:]. Where do the -na types come from? Jespersen (1917, in Anderwald 2002: 54) states that ‘na was very frequent in OE and later as a rival of not, and has prevailed in Scotch [sic] and the northern dialects, where it is attached to auxiliaries in the same way as -n’t in the South: canna, dinna, etc.’ It could therefore be claimed that this clitic represents the preservation of a form which once prevailed across the north of England and Scotland, but is now in decline in England. For example, the SED identifies Northumberland, County Durham and Cumberland as the northern strongholds of -na as a negator of auxiliary verbs, with some evidence of usage in other northern English counties, including Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire (Upton et al. 1994: 502). Heslop (1892: 129) has a separate entry for canna, with the date of the citation indicating its longstanding prevalence in NEE.

CANNA, cannot. “Ye canna say them nay, Mr. Mayor.” Quayside Ditty, 1816

The -not types we see in the SED are also to be found in RTG, spelled to capture pronunciations such as [nət].

(4) Onwards and upwards marra it cannat get any worse (2018)

(5) Cannit remember that like (2019)

(6) I winnet read this story on principle (2017)

(7) A winnat, me mams coming with me (2018)

(8) I winnit be garn this year if he doesn’t introduce something a bit spicier (2014)

How do we account for forms in -at and -it? The -t could have been added to -na by analogy with -n't, possibly reflecting the influence of the Standard and the acquisition of literacy. They might also represent the 'survival' of nat (albeit in enclitic form), which like not is a reduced form of nought/naught. While evidence from Middle English texts suggests that not was more common during this period than nat (and was eventually adopted as the standard form), nat is found well into the Early Modern period, sometimes co-existing in the same text as not, as in this passage from The boke named the Gouernour, deuysed by syr Thomas Elyot knight (1531).

Wherfore it maye not be of any wyse man denyed, but that Cosmographie is to all noble men, nat onely pleasaunt but profitable also, and wonderfull necessary.

The use of two or more negative forms in a single clause is a widespread feature of vernacular English, so much so that it has been described as a 'vernacular universal' (Chambers 2004, in Britain 2010).

(1) I dint want nee screaming kids! (2012)

(2) Never saw nowt (2019)

Multiple negation (or 'negative concord') was once 'routine in all varieties of English, before becoming socially unacceptable in the emerging standard dialect in Britain between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries' (Penhallurick 2018: 204). Elizabeth Mary Wright (wife of Joseph Wright) makes the point elegantly (1913: 156-57).

The negative in O.E. was expressed by the particle ne prefixed to the verb, and to all the other words in the sentence that admitted of contracted negative forms. If no such words were present, then nā or naht was used to strengthen the ne. This usage was kept up in M.E., as: he never hadde noþing, but beside it nat, not, the weak form of O.E. nāwiht, began to take the place of the ne. In Modern English the ne disappeared entirely, and the influence of Latin grammar led to the adoption of the rule 'two negatives contradict each other and make an affirmative'. In the dialects the old pleonastic negatives remain, as: He nivver said nowt neeaways ti neean on em; Neeabody's neea bisniss ti thraw nowt inti neeabody's gardin; I deean't want nobbut yan.

The status of multiple negation as a feature of social stratification is well-known in sociolinguistics, but is there any evidence to suggest a regional distribution? Beal et al. (2012: 59-60) report findings from the Survey of British Dialect Grammar (Cheshire et al. 1986-1989) of multiple negation being more common in the south than in the north of England, a distribution confirmed by Anderwald's analysis of data from the British National Corpus (2002). However, there is nothing particularly distinctive from a syntactic perspective about multiple negation in NEE.

Never as a past tense negator with definite time reference is also a commonly reported feature of vernacular Englishes throughout the British Isles (see Cheshire et al. 1993: 67-68). The following paired sentences from RTG are more-or-less synonymous.

(1a) I never went on Saturday (2019)

(1b) I didn't go on Saturday (2010)

(2a) Pity the ref never saw it (2016)

(2b) Ref didn't see it (2013)

While this use of never was not a target in the SED it is recorded in relation to negative forms of past tense do (Upton et al. 1994: 498). It is also present in the EDD, and the OED has evidence for this usage dating back to the Middle English period.