Negate me not, negate me never : cross-varietal distributional skews in modal negation from a diachronic perspective

Abstract

The present article provides a diachronic analysis of the negation and contraction patterns of will and would in British and American English. It contrasts nineteenth- and twentieth-century data from British and American fiction, comparing the collocational preferences of negated versus non-negated and contracted versus non-contracted modals. Utilising Configural Frequency Analysis, we explore frequency differences as well as variety-specific association patterns. Results reveal predominantly commonalities. The spread of the modal contractions ’ll and ’d as well as the spread of the contracted negator n’t proceeded at similar speeds in both varieties. The analysis at the level of cotextual configurations shows the emergence of several emancipated subschemas that are each differentially entrenched and conventionalised.