Neues zur Entwicklung der Negation im Mittelhochdeutschen
AbstractThis paper investigates the development of sentential negation in Middle High German using sermons from the Upper German dialect area. To this end, a heterogeneous yet fine-grained corpus of Alemannic and Bavarian sermons is analysed with respect to diachronic development, geographical distribution and language-internal factors. What becomes clear is that Jespersen’s Cycle, a cross-linguistic model of the development of negation that can be seen as part of the received history of German negation, fails to account for the mechanisms in the development of sentential negation in German. These mechanisms cannot be understood independently of the – in some respects parallel – development of n‑indefinites. It appears that the interplay of variation and the grammaticalisation of the n‑indefinite