Gabriella Mazzon – författare

Negation is one of the main functions in human communication.A History of English Negation is the first book to analyse English negation over the whole of its documented history, using a wide database and accessible terminology.After an introductory chapter, the book analyses evidence from the whole sample of Old English documents available, and from several Middle English and Renaissance documents, showing that the range of forms used at any single stage is wider, and the pace of their change considerably faster, than previously commonly assumed.The book moves on to review current formalised accounts of the situation in Modern English, tracing the changes in rules for expressing negation that have intervened since the earliest documented history of the language. Since the standard is only one variety of a language, it also surveys the means of negation used in some non-standard and dialectal varieties of English. The book concludes with a look at relatively recently born languages such as Pidgins and Creoles, to investigate the degree of naturalness of the principles that rule the expression of English negation.

Negation is one of the main functions in human communication.A History of English Negation is the first book to analyse English negation over the whole of its documented history, using a wide database and accessible terminology.After an introductory chapter, the book analyses evidence from the whole sample of Old English documents available, and from several Middle English and Renaissance documents, showing that the range of forms used at any single stage is wider, and the pace of their change considerably faster, than previously commonly assumed.The book moves on to review current formalised accounts of the situation in Modern English, tracing the changes in rules for expressing negation that have intervened since the earliest documented history of the language. Since the standard is only one variety of a language, it also surveys the means of negation used in some non-standard and dialectal varieties of English. The book concludes with a look at relatively recently born languages such as Pidgins and Creoles, to investigate the degree of naturalness of the principles that rule the expression of English negation.

The fact that English has always borrowed heavily from other languages is well known. However, the systemic long-term effects of the processes involved in such contacts are under-researched. This collection of articles takes a more wide-spanning approach, looking at various periods and phenomena across the centuries. The volume focusses on language contact seen as cultural contact, especially with Scandinavia and France, as well as on specific text types from times ranging from Old English to the twentieth century.The volume aims at advancing insight on the ways in which contacts with other languages and cultures influenced the English language as a whole. The book provides new reflections on borrowing and lexical innovation as cultural choices bound to different textual traditions.