Negation in Non-Standard British English - 9780415258746

Taylor & Francis

Based on the British National Corpus, this book investigates a range of morphosyntactic features of negation that can be found in everyday spoken language and provides the first thorough empirical study of the field of non-standard negation. > Despite the advances of radio and television and increasing mobility and urbanization, spoken English is by no means becoming more like the written standard. English dialect grammar, however, is still a new and relatively undeveloped area of research, and most studies to date are either restricted regionally, or based on impressionistic statements. This book provides the first thorough empirical study of the field of non-standard negation across Great Britain. > 1. Introduction2. Negation in Standard English3. Regional Variation4. Filling the Gaps?5. Negative Concord6. Ain't7. Third Person Singular Don't 8. Past Tense Be9. Conclusion