In this article, I conduct a quantitative analysis of negative
concord in Buckie, a relic dialect from the northeast of Scotland,
and compare these findings with transported varieties of English
in North America. Two major results arise from the analysis.
First, Buckie has high rates of use of negative concord to
indeterminates within the same clause, as do all the dialects
included in the study. Second, negative concord in other
environments is found in certain varieties in the New World
that have no counterparts in the Old World. I suggest that the
quantitative similarities can be explained in terms of the
primitive status of negative concord in vernacular varieties
of English, in combination with a shared linguistic heritage
during the colonial period. The qualitative differences demonstrate
that contexts of linguistic heterogeneity in North America during
the early colonization period led to an extension and restructuring
of the original rules.