When change comes from within: The origin and diachronic development of 'positive' anymore from pre-Modern Scots to Modern North American English

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to provide a syntactic account of the diachronic development of the adverb anymore from a polarity sensitive aspectual adverb in Late Middle Scots (approximately 1550 to 1700), shown in (1); to a non-polarity-sensitive aspectual adverb (2); to a deictic temporal adverb in North America which I argue developed there in the eighteenth or nineteenth century (3). (1) I assuir zou I will not anie moir intertein it 'I assure you I will not any more entertain it.' (ScotsCorr, William Douglas[1627], Lothian[Southeast]/London, text ID 1378) (2) I'll be getting six or seven days' holiday anymore. (West Donegal, Ulster, Northern Ireland: 1981, Milroy 1981: 4) (3) Anymore I just say 'no'. (Washington, USA: 2018) I follow Montgomery (2006) and others who argue, based on migration patterns (Scotland > Ireland > North America) and the geographical distribution of PosA (precisely where these immigrants settled), that PosA was most likely innovated in Scotland and taken to Ulster (Ireland), then North America. Using evidence from a historical corpus study that I carried out, I propose that polarity sensitive anymore in Middle Scots is a 'continuative' aspectual adverb adjoined to AspP. These features provide an interpretation of the continuation of an imperfective event. It has uninterpretable polarity features [uVer: nonver] that Agree with a nonveridical licensor. I propose that post-change, PosA is an aspectual 'inceptive' adverb with a [boundary] feature. It also adjoins to AspP. It requires non-episodic, non-past events, which in my analysis is due to a [non-specific/indefinite] feature. I show that the reanalysis likely happened in a future irrealis context that also contained negation. This was a transitional context where a language acquirer could interpret anymore as polarity sensitive or as requiring non-episodic contexts. I argue that there was one additional condition in the reanalysis: it happened in contexts where anymore was fronted and took scope over negation, in order to produce the 'inceptive' meaning of PosA. Previous accounts have proposed that PosA is the result of language contact with Irish or Scottish Gaelic. I propose instead that any influence from language contact was in addition to language-internal factors, which were the main stimulus of the change. The second change considered in this thesis is the change from this non-polarity-sensitive, or 'positive' anymore (PosA) in the British Isles to North American PosA. I build on previous research and use evidence from a synchronic grammaticality judgment study and a diachronic corpus study of North American PosA to provide a thorough analysis of North American PosA. It is restricted to present tense, imperfective (but not in-progress progressive) contexts. I propose that North American PosA is a present tense deictic temporal adverb adjoined to TP. It has [T:present] features that constrain it to present tense contexts. Like British Isles PosA, it has [boundary] features that account for its meaning of contrasting of a state of affairs at speech time with the absence of this state of affairs during a period prior to speech time. Also like British Isles PosA, it has [indefinite/non-specific] features that render it compatible with states or habitual or generic events only. I demonstrate that the surface realization of a present tense clause with British Isles aspectual PosA in AspP is also compatible with a structure in which PosA is a TP-adjoined temporal adverb with slightly different features and a slightly different interpretation. I propose that since British Isles-type PosA did not appear in past contexts, language acquirers likely encountered PosA often in present contexts and came to see present tense as part of the adverb's featural makeup. Furthermore, I propose that Late Merge (van Gelderen 2004, 2011) acts as a catalyst for anymore to wait to Merge in a higher position, adjoined to TP instead of AspP.