The Jespersen Cycles 1 Johan van der Auwera U of Antwerp Elly van Gelderen (ed.) Cyclical change Amsterdam: Benjamins 35-71 Abstract The paper analyzes the kind of renewal of clausal negators referred to with the term ‘Jespersen Cycle’ and that describes how a negator may collocate with a strengthener, which may later become an additional exponent of negation and possibly the only one. Through an analysis of a century’s worth of scholarship, giving pride of place to Jesperen (1917) but also Gardiner (1904) and Meillet (1912), the paper sets out to describe parameters such as the role of emphasis, the identity or difference of the old and the new negator, and the question whether or not the stage of the two exponents simplifies into a single exponence stage or takes us to a three negator stage. In so doing the paper also advocates taking Jespersen cycle research beyond the confines of Europe and the Mediterranean. 0. Introduction This paper deals with Jespersen’s Cycle, also known as ‘Jespersen Cycle’ and ‘Negative Cycle’. I will offer an account that is more general than the one envisaged by Jespersen 1917 and others. This paper has four sections. In section 1 I sketch what Jespersen (1917) meant, how his view has been represented, and how it is partially wrong, at least for the data that he had in mind. I discuss the alternative view, also going under the label ‘Jespersen Cycle’ and spell it out in some detail. I will also argue that the alternative view has room for the original Jespersenian idea, in more than one way, and the resulting account will describe exactly eight possible trajectories or ‘cycles’. In section 2 I discuss an additional type of Jespersenian negation renewal, which is worthy of being called ‘Jespersen Cycle’ as well, not least because it fits the system described in section 1. Section 3 develops the typology even more. The typology allows at least four questions, the answers to which will be positive and lay bear yet more variation. Section 4 is the conclusion. For the analysis of Jespersen’s original idea I will mostly rely on French, which is one the languages that Jespersen (1917) had in mind and for which we possess an enormous amount of research. For the development of the typology I will primarily tap micro- variational and macro-variational sources. For micro-variation I will use materials and analyses concerning Dutch and esp. Belgian Dutch negation, which have recently come to the foreground (Barbiers et al 2009, Neuckermans 2008). 2 For macro-variation, I will use and partially reinterpret the facts of the Vanuatu language Lewo, which have stood as a challenge for Jespersen cyclists since Early (1994a, 1994b). Despite the goal of reaching a general account, let me point to some restrictions. This paper is only about the development of negative strategies that involve something like a doubling stage. To take the text book example—and to present it in a simplified way: French once had a ne negator, it is heading for pas, but there is also a middle stage with both ne and pas. Pas is the newer strategy and to reach that stage the language went through a doubling ne… pas stage. Negative strategies need not pass through any such stage, however. Negative markers may directly develop from verbs (e.g. from a verb meaning ‘not exist’) or nouns (e.g. from a noun meaning ‘taboo’) in ways that have been described by Croft (1991), van der Auwera (2006), Van Gelderen (2008), and van der Auwera (In print b). Furthermore, this paper focuses on clausal negation, the negation that has scope over an entire clause or proposition. So not much will be said about the development of ‘negative quantifiers’, like