Negative Concord in Jamaican

Abstract

This study aims to account for some dimensions of the strictness and of what will be called the ‘range’ of Negative Concord in Jamaican (also ‘Jamaican Creole’ or ‘Patwa’) and in so doing to increase our typological understanding of Negative Concord. As to the strictness, parameters will be the position of the negative indefinite relative to the verb, the pronominal vs. nominal nature of the negative indefinite, and the phonetic closeness of positive and negative auxiliaries. As to the range, it will be shown how Jamaican Negative Concord allows the privative preposition (‘without’) as a trigger and the non-indefinites ‘not at all’ and ‘neither’ as targets. It will also be shown how strictness and range interact. Throughout – and also in the negative spread pattern, the pattern with two or more negative indefinites – it will be argued that the main exponent of negation in the Negative Concord constellation is the clausal negator, which allows the negative indefinite to be interpreted as negative by association only. This results in a negative polarity reading, which then allows non-negative though still negatively polar and free choice uses.