MICRO-PARAMETRIC VARIATION AND NEGATIVE CONCORD * VIVIANE DÉPREZ & FRANCE MARTINEAU ISC, CNRS/Rutgers & Ottawa University 0. Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to compare the properties of negative concord (NC) in various French-related dialects to analyze better the factors that condition and limit observed micro-parametric variations. We examine both synchronic and diachronic Standard French (SF) in relation to Quebec French (QF) and French-based Creoles (FBC). The French dialects in example (1) make use of apparently identical negative expressions (N-words, Laka 1991) and yet manifest strikingly different NC properties: (1) a. Je (n’) ai vu personne. Standard French (synchronic and diachronic) b. J’ai pas vu personne. Quebec French c. Mwen pa wè pèsonn. Haitian Creole For instance, the copresence of sentential negation with N-words is obligatory in FBC, fairly standard in QF, possible in diachronic SF, but excluded in contemporary SF. Furthermore, there is comparable diversity for other properties of NC, such as double negation, licensing in NPI contexts, locality, and modification possibilities. Following Jespersen (1917), it has been repeatedly claimed in the literature that observed cross-linguistic differences in NC could be attributed to the differing properties of sentential negation (Zanuttini 1997). In contrast, the purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate, following Déprez (2000), that the key to NC variation resides in the syntactic/semantic properties of the concord expressions themselves, that is, the N-words, and more specifically in their internal structure. The central theses that this work supports are as follows: * This research has been partly funded by a SHHRC grant (No. 410-2001-0119). Authors’ names are listed alphabetically. We would like to thank LSRL participants for comments and suggestions. Many thanks also to our research assistant Mélanie Lamarche for help collecting the data.