Kaloyan Stefanov

THE ROLE OF THE NEGATIVE MORPHEME NO/NON IN OLD SPANISH

My project investigates the semantic and syntactic contribution which the Old Spanish negative morpheme no/non makes to sentences such as nada non tenie— literally ‘nothing NEGATIVE-PARTICLE he/she-has’, idiomatically ‘He/she has nothing’. Given that nada occurs before a finite verb, I ask whether no/non contributes anything additional to what nada does, since nada already renders the sentence negative. Data will be predominantly from thirteenth- to sixteenth-century texts, when the relevant structures were in use.

My research will give linguists a better understanding of negation at all periods of Spanish, given the continuity between negation systems in different periods. Furthermore, due to the similarities across Romance, my results could be used as the basis of further research by scholars of negation and pertinent systems in related languages.

Ian Mackenzie, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

Damien Hall, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University

William van der Wurff, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University