The Expansion and Variation of Clausal Multiple Negation across Asian Englishes

Abstract

[eng] Clausal multiple negation is a linguistic structure that entails the coexistence of two or more negative polarity items within the same clause (e.g., She does not have nothing). Although the occurrence of this linguistic variant is normally ascribed to the non-standard dialects of the United States and British English (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, 846), its presence in other varieties of English remains underresearched. This paper explores the expansion and variation of clausal multiple negation by comparing its occurrence across the forementioned first language (L1) varieties, and the following second language (L2) Asian varieties: Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Singaporean, Malaysian, and The Philippines Englishes. With the exception of The Philippines English, which shows a high frequency of clausal multiple negation, the overall results show a lower frequency of multiple negation in most Asian varieties in comparison with L1 varieties, accounted for by the sociolinguistic constraints of the Asian region.