Microvariation in American English Negative Concord: A comparative corpus study

Abstract

Negative Concord (NC) (e.g., I didn't eat nothing, 'I ate nothing') is often treated as categorical. However, observations of English vernacular varieties illustrate that NC is not the only option for expressing negation in a given variety. We present a comparative analysis of patterns of NC in corpora of two American English varieties, the Washington, DC portion of The Corpus of Regional African American Language and The Audio-Aligned and Parsed Corpus of Appalachian English. Results demonstrate quantitative differences in the frequency of NC overall, and qualitative differences in the expression of subject negation (e.g., Didn't nobody eat, Nobody didn't eat, Nobody ate). The results highlight similarities and intriguing differences among American English varieties in which NC is instantiated, and raise interesting questions about the source of the observed differences in usage patterns. We also preview an extended analysis that integrates data from a comparable portion of The Corpus of Contemporary American English representative of Mainstream US English. The results highlight important and unexpected similarities and differences between English varieties in which NC is and is not systematically employed in usage.