Morphosyntactic change: Ne deletion

Ne deletion - Variable marking of negation: 

• An example of grammatical change 
• e.g. 'on (ne) vous connaît pas" 
• double negation is unusual cross linguistically 
• communicative redundancy
• l'effacement du 'ne' (ne deletion) has become an option i.e. that simply saying 'pas' is enough to signify negation
• a choice exists, which means change could take place 
• morpho-syntactic change 
• ne = bound morpheme
• negation = grammatical, therefore syntactic 

History:

• The 'ne' is close to Latin, where the negative morpheme 'non' comes before the verb
• In Old/Middle French, the formula 'ne verb (pas)' was common - 'pas' was a choice
• In classical French, 'ne verb pas' became standard
• In modern French, the form has changed to '(ne) verb pas' where the 'ne' is not categorical
• This suggests that in the future the 'ne' could disappear entirely

Descriptive investigations:  

Study	Place	Date	% Use
Ashby	Tours	1976	37
Ashby	Tours	1995	16
Sankoff & Vincent	Montreal	1977	1
Armstrong (adolescents)	Lorraine	1990	2

Observations:

• Data collected on Quebecois French and adolescent Metropolitan French indicates almost categorical ne deletion
• as these are the groups which are generally the most advanced in terms of language change, this indicates that a change is underway
• Ashby's two studies in Tours, 20 years apart also show a significant increase in ne deletion 

Social and Stylistic Constraints: 

• Age 
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among younger age groups
• Gender
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among males
• Lorraine - minimal difference
• gender difference found in older speakers has disappeared among adolescents
• Class  
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among lower classes 

Hyperformal Marker: 

• Current status of 'ne' - use sounds overly formal
• Weak to non-existent ties with social variables 
• Similar to 'nous' 
• nous vs on variation