A comparative approach to the mysteries of the Jespersen cycle (A03)

• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 509468465

The project aims to provide a new view on the development of the Jespersen cycle, i.e. the historical renewal of the sentential negative marker through a stage in which the old and the new negator coexist. We hypothesize that the speed of the cycle is determined by the type of new negator: those languages in which the new negator is already negative proceed at a higher speed. Those in which the new negator is an existential or a minimizer take longer to develop. We consider both German and Italian dialects in a historical and geographic microvariation perspective to control for normative effects and to keep constant other independent syntactic properties of the languages that might blur the picture.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1629: Negation in language and beyond (NegLaB)
• Applicant Institution: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Cecilia Poletto, since 1/2024; Professor Dr. Helmut Weiß, since 1/2024