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Negative attraction and negative concord in English grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

William Labov
William Labov*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

The attraction of the negative to subject any is an invariant rule for all dialects of English, and appears to respond to the distributive and hypothetical features of this indeterminate. Negative concord, on the other hand, is a variable rule which distributes the negative rightward in response to affective factors. It is progressively extended from one dialect to another in an implicational series which initiates negation in new positions as the rule approaches obligatory status in the original environments.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 773 - 818
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by Linguistic Society of America

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