Less formal and more rebellious — An experiment on the social meaning of negative concord in American English

Negative concord, which is present in some varieties of English, is considered ungrammatical in ‘standard’ contemporary English, where negative polarity items are used. While negative polarity item constructions have the semantics of single negation, negative concord constructions are considered ambiguous between a single vs. double negation reading. Recent research shows that the perception of negative concord varies depending on the situational context of its use, the properties of the comprehender as well as the methods of data elicitation (ratings vs. self-reports). We conducted a rating study in US English examining the interpretation and grammaticality of negative concord compared to negative polarity items, and the perception of negative concord speakers regarding their social background and persona. The results show that comprehenders – mostly self-re-ported non-dialect speakers of US English – interpreted negative concord similarly to negative polarity items, but judged negative concord as ungrammatical. Moreover, they associated negative concord use with lower levels in socioeconomic status and education than negative polarity items; in terms of persona, negative concord use was perceived as less formal and as more rebellious than negative polarity items. Additionally, our study shows experimental evidence for inter-individual (e.g., age- or gender-related) variation in the comprehension and perception of negative concord.

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